June 2, 2017
Sooty Makeup
I’m not really a makeup person. (Okay, I almost never wear makeup.) Someone says “makeup” and I think sweaty post-workout drizzle where my face looked like a tie-dyed T-shirt (which was my teenage inexperience with makeup). Rebeccah, however, is very artistic and does makeup well. It’s an art to her. Makeup is just another type of paint and human faces are her canvas.
Loving, excited aunts have made sure the girls have a colorful assortment of fun, safe makeup to play with as they enter the teenage threshold. They’ve taught the girls many makeup techniques and how to match colors. (Sometimes the craziest of color contrasts emerge, but that’s all in the learning game – and clowns need makeup artists too.)
One afternoon I was busily canning marinara sauce (a family staple) when I heard Kimberly announce from the front door, “Mom, come see, we’ve done our makeup in your style!” (Christina was just beginning to explore makeup)
My style? I was busy, but curiosity won and there’s little I could do before the steam finished exhausting. I peek and they are coming from outside, where they had discovered some soot from the outdoor kitchen. All three of them are covered in smeared soot.
“My style?” I laugh.
“Yes!” Christina says, “just like in the army!”
Camouflage! That would be my makeup style. Just let me blend in with my surroundings and disappear – that about described my normal interactions with most other humans. I didn’t realize my children knew me so well!
“Yes,” Rebeccah adds, “we can look up now, and no one can see us.”
Turns out they were playing spy games, based on the recent string of military movies we’d watched over that weekend. Of course, in black-and-white, all the face camouflage looks just like soot.
They took off to “finish their mission” and I returned to my hissing canner. At that point, I was trying very hard to do more than blend in. That doesn’t come easy for me. I can write all day and interact with imaginary people in my made-up worlds, but interaction where I make myself open to others is not easy. I love teaching, playing with, and guiding children. My own age group? It’s not easy for me.
I’m learning how to wipe off the sooty face camouflage and try my hand at real makeup. I’m learning how to be open to others and allowing myself to invest in them – to be real, invest time, to speak instead of being silent.
I’m enjoying this “be the canvas” stage I’ve entered. Plus, it’s an extra time to listen (and talk) to my daughters because I always want to be open and real for them.
Thanks for reading!
Type at you next time…
~ Nancy Tart