Raging War On My Ageing face!

I laugh in joy and the lines appear … happy times, happy feelings, rewarded with lines … how does that seem remotely fair? Now … don’t get me wrong … I wouldn’t like them any more if I felt I perhaps deserved them … say, if I scowled … lots … then maybe I’d have to accept them as punishment … they would have a little more justification for sitting so obviously on my face … “Stop scowling you miserable cow” … but for laughing? … really? … “Hey you over there having so much fun have some lines” … well, that’s great … just thanks.

… then those shadows that sit there so smugly below my eyes and blacken the corners so darkly … why thank you for appearing to show the world just how damn tired I am … if I’d been partying hard and been up all night through choice then OK I admit I’d may be deserving of them … but is that really any way to reward a mother of never sitting down, of 50,000 uninterrupted night’s sleep … where, uncomplainingly (well maybe a few little times), she wakes when her child wakes and soothes them gently back to sleep? How fair is that? … who came up with that little reward system?

… and the slight puffiness that shows on my face which hints that perhaps I’ve partaken in a few glasses of wine … oh come on, please, if you’d spent just a day in my house you would see that they have been well and truly deserved … medicinal even … could you not just let me get away with a few drops without shouting out to the world “this woman neeeeeeeds alcohol, this woman had a few more than she should have done last night … on … shock, horror … a school night”

… and the lines upon my forehead that have formed from worrying, through bringing up three children, through illness, child friendship issues, mothering their hurt feelings, their damaged pride and just concern, concern, concern … could I not have been rewarded with a beautifully smooth brow to say thank you for caring … I would have much preferred that to lines … just putting it out there for future reference.

So, as much as I’m sure I am meant to be thankful that my face tells a story … that every line has earned its place and I should be grateful for so much living to tell … I think every mother would prefer just a little more graciousness in the ageing process … a little more thanks for all those sleepless nights, those hours of worry and those medicinal glasses of wine … just saying!