Facing Myself

I wake up, I take my bonnet off. I put my hair back, I stand in front of the mirror. 

We make eye contact for just one second. Why is it my own eye contact that is the most intense? 

I slowly scan down my face, taking note of the pimple that rose overnight, or how my smile lines seemed to have gotten deeper. Isn’t that good, though? A permanent mark on my face that shows everyone around me that I smile and I laugh frequently. It is, however, a former insecurity; in the fourth grade, one of my peers remarked, “Caiya, you’d be pretty if you didn’t have those lines on your face”. Well, here I am. The lines still on my face. And still pretty. I smile a little. My parents have these same marks–theirs, deeper, still–but their own marks of years of smiling with friends, of laughing with loved ones, and I have the gift, the physical manifestation, of joy on my own face.

I look at my eyebrows. I forrow them, because I can. I raise them and admire the wrinkles on my forehead that form. Maybe I do not yet have years of surprise yet etched on my face, but I look forward to them. To the birthday parties, to the miraculous pet tricks, to the joy of a child walking or talking for the first time, to the awe of the glory of nature. 

I chance a look at my eyes, again. But I am still nervous to make her eye contact, so I look around her. To where my eyes are set, how my eyelids are heavy on my face, nestling into my eyes and tucking them in.  I notice that that is how my mom’s eyes are. How her lids made sure her eyes are cozy and snug, lined in a hug. My eye shape, though, is my dad’s. Almond shaped eyes that crinkle into their own smile as I do. My parents once again have me beat, with their own lines around their eyes, etched and ready to hop right back into their smiling mode.

Everyone always says my nose is my mom’s. But she says everyone said she looks like her dad. But I can see my mom, my dad, my grandfather, my grandmother, and everyone who came before me, pieces of them on my face, in my features. Generations of love, of poetry written for each other, of adoration, of gentle kisses, of passing along my nose, or my cheeks, or my eyes.

My eyes. They stare back at me, challenging, questioning. Who are you? You who try so hard to understand, to analyze. To try to know what you are doing. You try to brave this world, harsh and strong. 

But, I soften them. 

Out pours generations and generations of love, of kindness, of reflection, of sweetness, and of knowing. Of understanding. Strength does not mean going about it alone. I am generations of love and passion incarnate. I am love and passion.  

I face myself now.