Mascara

I have learned how to pinpoint the very day that my female patients start to "feel better". Whether they are healing from stroke, spinal cord injury, or brain cancer, the evidence is clear: It is the day they come to their therapy appointment wearing either earrings or eye make up. It is then that I know we've turned a corner. Things are improving. We are moving away from "primal survival" to "surviving... with aesthetic awareness". I want to celebrate these moments above any wedding day or sweet sixteen party. Our bodies are so beautiful and miraculous but also so fragile and vulnerable. The interplay between these mortal extremes is nothing less than heartbreakingly breathtaking and I get to experience it with strangers on an almost daily basis.

I meet Miss Janice* in the waiting room. She has a folded up New Yorker in her lap and an NPR mug brimming with coffee. She is a stunning, slender woman in her nineties and today she is wearing tall boots, brown tights, a wrap around dress with the neckline buried under a maroon scarf, and a long sweater. She carries her cane rather than allowing it to steady her (which make all the physical therapist's wince). I offer to carry her mug and I tell her "You look beautiful. Very fall-like." Her eye makeup is almost perfect. There is only one smudge at the corner of her right eye. She is always stoic. Every word that comes out of her mouth is thoughtful if not occasionally profound. (The opposite of my chain-of-errors-like-a-pearl-necklace speech patterns).

"I identify with fall. She resonates in me. I never understood summer. We never developed a relationship like I did with the season of fall." I nod. I understand. I am thrilled she is wearing eye liner.



*Name and some details changed/ fictionalized to maintain privacy