I remember sitting on the metallic tan folding stool with the rubbery black steps in our kitchen, looking at the off-white linoleum floor. Big squares outlined in soft brown to make them look more like tile. My mother loved to decorate, in reds and tans and browns especially. I don’t know if she picked out the kitchen flooring or if it was there when my parents got the house, but she was always improving. Crafting curtains and pillows and turning our little Connecticut raised ranch house into a home. Artfully making things comfortable and welcoming.
My hair was always wet when she cut it, and I got cold easily. I shivered and squirmed in the way that all children do; unable to contain the unbridled energy available in their every fiber as they attempt vainly to sit still. My mother ran a comb through my dark hair as wet sections fell silently to the ground in sharp little spikes.
I cringed as the comb tugged at my tangles, hissing inward through my teeth to display my discomfort to my mother as she set about the work of keeping a child groomed. Perhaps, if she saw how much I disliked my hair being pulled, she would allow me to be free of the burden.
She clucked in disapproval.
“You have to suffer to be beautiful,” she warned.
The statement was about appearance, and my young mind tried to wrap around it. Beautiful. Something to aspire to.
Well. I want to be beautiful.
So I closed my lips and tried again to hold still. Not to hiss and wince when the modest pain inevitably came. It was worth it, to be beautiful.
Right?
As I grew older, I began to be told more often that I was beautiful. That I should use that advantage. That I should model. I felt such pride at this superfluous achievement that I had done nothing to merit other than having attractive parents.
My mother had never believed herself to be beautiful. Every comment about her own appearance was a critique. She thought her nose was too aquiline. She thought her hair was too frazzled with flyaways. She thought her brows were too rounded, and her chin too prominent. She was uncomfortable with her neck, her arms, her belly, her thighs. She had been told by her own mother that she was all these things. She came to believe them.
She couldn’t see how the line of her nose was regal, how the curve of her cheeks was gentle, or how the set of her eyes was kind. She never knew that the line of her waist was soft. She never experienced how sitting in her arms and being sung to in soft, gentle tones was comfort. Was home. She had no idea how beautiful she truly was.
Yet she saw such beauty in her children. She made us believe we were worthy of love. That we were beautiful. Because she knew it to be true.
When I was sixteen, we began to go to events where modeling scouts would come to find young people to model professionally. I’d expressed interest in doing this, and though I have no doubt that she had her reservations about the industry, she supported me. She always had. Whether it was music, or acting, or sports, she was there. She took pictures for me, drove me from place to place, helped me fill out forms I was too lazy or too distractible to complete. Never once had she doubted my ability to do this. She saw me, and she believed I was beautiful.
I soon found that, while I was pretty, there were many, many people who were far, far prettier. The realization was strange for me, sheltered in my youth, as many people are, from harsh realities. The notion that I had no control over this, that I was limited in this way, was crushing to my young and privileged mind. I had been so loved, so supported and encouraged, that I had never really experienced that kind of defeat before. Still, she fought alongside me, never losing pace or tiring. She told me I was beautiful, and I started to see that looks had nothing to do with beauty.
Beauty, while often thought of as appearance, is far deeper than that. Beauty is intention. It is meaning. It is often the silent understanding of pain and the endurance of suffering, but being brave enough to continue to try. To face cruelty and defeat, and to be bold enough to answer it back with love.
My mother knew this, from a childhood that had been filled with heartbreak. From knowing loss, knowing joy, from knowing life. My mother showed me what true beauty really was.
I think back to sitting on that stool in our kitchen every time I cut my hair and a tangle catches. I think of my mother’s words, and they resonate in my heart. I don’t wince anymore. I haven’t in many years. It takes more than a brief shock of pain to rattle me now.
After all, you have to suffer to be beautiful.