january 9, 2010

portrait of a portrait

Current mood: luminous

my daughter will be 9 in april and she is starting to show signs of more mature interests. instead of playing all the time, she wants to read. explore new ideas, create. she is still a very innocent 3rd grader but is aware of her body, changes that will be coming in the next few years. i am in complete denial and continue to try and convince myself that she will never wear high heels or makeup and don't even talk to me about sex. ugggg.....think my heart just broke a bit!

so the subject of makeup comes up the other day. being like any curious little girl, she wanted to experiment with makeup on none other than yours truly. i remember doing it to my mom too and wondering just how much blue eye shadow i could cake onto her lids. it's sort of a rite of passage for girls and their moms, or at least in my family it was.

now the kids has some general artistic ability by default simply because of my gene pool but i was pleasantly surprised to see how well she did with my makeup. now if i had stepped foot outside of the house, someone would have asked me "how much for a half and half?" but alas, we stayed put, prostitution was not solicited and we had a great time giggling and putting on makeup. she got me all dolled up (although i did do some minor modifications before photos) and i got her all dolled up. then it was washing of the faces and time for bed. i had so much fun with my little munchkin.

and when we were finished she said, "mommy, you are so beautiful. i look a lot like you so i'm beautiful too. we are beautiful together." yep, i melted. with those sweet little, honest, sincere words, she made me feel like the most stunningly beautiful woman in the whole wide world. i have never thought of myself as being so. in fact, i have never liked much about my face at all, with the exception of my full lips. but otherwise, my nose has always been too big and is now crooked from being broken, my face too round, eyes too close together, the list continues.

after she was in bed, i decided it was a good time to shoot a new self portrait. i had gotten into a habit of doing them everytime something new happened in my life but this was the first time i had a chance since moving into the new place. and i have to say, i think the kid did some good work on old mom here. if you had seen it in color, well, i looked a bit clownish but for black and whites, perfect. maybe i should wear makeup more often, just not as much?

so even though i don't always feel it, and the majority of the time i don't, my baby girl thinks i'm beautiful. and well, that's enough for me.