One To One Point Six Two

I call this my serial killer face. It was taken in a passport photo booth a year or two ago. It was specified that I wasn’t to smile, and I wasn’t to wear my glasses. The not-wearing-glasses produced its own set of problems. There were markers on the side of the mirror where the eyes were supposed to line up with but being incredibly short-sighted my face was a blur and any markers on the side of the mirror were indecipherable.

Until I got laser eye surgery, I had not really seen my face in any detail without my glasses. Washing my face involved feeling around with a facecloth rather than seeing. The day began and ended with an out-of-focus encounter. I rarely wore make-up because I couldn’t see clearly to put it on. There are gadgets, and magnifying mirrors but it was easier not to bother. Make-up wearing was not handed down in the family like knitting was.

Because I couldn’t see my face without glasses I had an image of what I looked like in my head. I hadn’t opted for and obviously flawless beauty, but I passed muster. I am not sure I would have been able to pick myself out of a line up if asked. It was all to fuzzy and all too vague.

The laser surgery happened because of cataracts that needed to be removed. It was easier to remove the whole lens and replace it was something artificial rather than leave the old lens in place. I had reached the end of where prescription glasses could take me.

It was the left eye they tackled first. The odds of problems with laser surgery were remote, but I sometimes feel like I have this jinx gene. My mother went through laser surgery in its early days and things had gone wrong with one of the eyes leaving her blind in one eye and reluctant to let anyone near the other eye. Because things going wrong had happened to her, I thought they might happen to me too. But all went smoothly.

I was in the ladies’ toilet in the hospital afterwards. I had a shiny black eye which was to be expected. What shocked me was the old lady looking back at me in the mirror. The bags under they eyes did not match up to the image of me that I had in my head. I looked so unlike how I thought I looked.

Since then I have become so used to my reflection that I have stopped flinching.

I have some very pretty girls in my gene pool. My sisters are pretty. One of my brothers is quite pretty too. The pretty genes seemed to have bypassed me. I don’t qualify as ugly, but I don’t turn heads. To some extent I have soothed myself by saying I’m pretty on the inside. I have a beautiful heart and spirit. I am also quite a clever clogs, so I suppose I have compensated for a lack of Helen of Troy looks that launch a thousand ships. Beauty fades I said.

The Song of Songs in the Bible comes under a lot of fire about why it is there. There is no obvious mention of God, and it seems a bit steamy in places. It is often seen as an allegory of the love of God towards people. The young man in the poem says to his lady love ‘show me your face/ let me hear your voice/ for your voice is sweet/ and your face is lovely.’

There is so much said about the need for people of faith to seek God’s face, to gaze on upon it and respond with praise. But here, it is the man asking to see the face of his beloved. He wants to see her face and to hear her voice.

We spend a lot of time not really showing our faces – at least not the untouched version. In every movie the waking-up woman has make-up in place and her hair brushed. It is as if we are not allowed to be anything less than well turned out. There is an image about what is expected.

My husband wakes up to a messed-up woman every morning and time spent in the bathroom does little to improve things. But he loves me. He looks at my face and he knows every contour.

It makes me wonder how much we love every contour of our face and whether we own our blemishes. There is something about the lines on the face, carved there by life, that really need to be cherished. Life is written there in light and shade and should be celebrated.

faces flood a thousand platforms.

how many likes does it take to unveil beauty?

H G says it’s in the eye of the beholder.

Fibonacci disagrees.

Fib

on

acci

says beauty

is all about maths

measure the face, its length and width

divide the numbers -

one to one

point six

two,

right?

consider the face as a three-act play.

act one - hairline to eyes;

act two - eyes to nose;

act three - nose to chin.

the Helen of Troy face measures up to

a trinity of equal numbers.

bringing out the tape measure, I discern I’m not her.

my ears and my nose

are not equal in length.

nature’s symmetry is asymmetrical in me.

the width of eye and distance between them,

like fraternal twins, mismatch.

Fibonacci says I am not beautiful

he squints through eyes half closed

my face doesn’t meet his criteria.

I flout the formula,

disguising my imperfections with a fringe.

But I know that I am loved,

not meanly or with small doses of affection. I’m

loved with extravagance, nothing held in reserve, thus

I am made beautiful - Fibonacci is overruled.