Sometimes, things just creep up on you, and this is one of them.
This morning I woke up to the sweet caress of my two-year-old son stroking my face. As his little chubby fingers swirled over my forehead and down my nose, I took a moment to marvel at the pure sweetness of his touch, before opening my eyes, to find his mischievous little green ones centimetres from my face.
“Mumma,” he whispered “Why do you have so many of these sprinkles all over your face?”
Ha. My little cherub hadn’t been caressing my face out of sheer adoration per-se, but more just allowing his fingers to trace over the road map of ‘sprinkles’ that have appeared with Ebola like tenacity on my previously smooth face.
Each line seems to rapidly develop, fast resembling an overused highway as opposed to the barely visible, off the beaten track paths they started out as, only a few short years ago.
The thing is, it isn’t just my son who has noticed the fast multiplying number of ‘sprinkles’ on my face, I also noticed in a rare moment alone in front of the mirror recently and for the first time in my life I thought, perhaps I’m no spring chicken anymore?
I decided to give myself the benefit of the doubt, but just in case, I started to mentally compile a list of all my ‘mature moments’.
Unfortunately it didn’t take very long for the list to start padding out.
Not long after the wrinkles I encountered a couple of grey hairs. Then, few weeks after that, I parted my hair differently and a couple of grey hairs turned out to be A LOT of grey hairs.
That same week I had my annual check-up with the Optometrist who told me “it would be irresponsible, bordering on reckless if you don’t go straight from here to fill this glasses prescription, you’re practically blind Mrs McBryde!” Sheesh, who knew twenty-two-year-old Optometrists could be so pushy?