Gently Wash and Pat Dry

On an early episode of the TV show The West Wing, Josh steps in to do a press conference after White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg has emergency root canal and can’t speak properly (in one of Allison Janney’s more hilarious performances). Josh starts by asking a reporter if he really wants his one permitted question to be “that stupid,” and it goes downhill from there. If you’ve got three minutes, it’s worth a look.

I keep trying to start this blog and asking myself, do I really want my first post to be that stupid? I’m struggling to choose a topic. I’d like it to be neither boring nor controversial. I asked my eleven-year-old, and he thinks that as a stay-at-home/work-at-home mom, I should start with parenting; parenting wasn’t even on my list of twenty-six possible article topics!

I mean, does parenting really need its own category? It’s as inextricably linked with my identity as it is entwined with several of my brainstormed blog ideas—rural life, getting older, cooking, anxiety, autism, introversion, limb differences. And anyway, the world needs not another mommy blog, especially from an adoptive mom. I cringe at the oversharing I’ve seen from parents over the years, and for a long time I wasn’t sure I trusted myself not to do the same. With my kids now firmly in the tween/teen phase, it’s easier to remember they are their own people with their own stories to tell—or not.

So, nope. I’ll just do a mini-rant on skin care. All our lives, women are instructed to wash our faces gently and “pat dry.” We are also instructed to exfoliate frequently. OK, so why can’t I just…rub my face with the towel? Won’t that remove the dead skin? That saves me from spending money on an exfoliant. I’ve read three common arguments against toweling dry. One, it can spread bacteria that might cause acne or something. Well, I don’t have acne, and I do wash my towels. Two, your skin care regimen is supposedly more effective when you apply products to damp skin. That might be compelling if I had a regimen. And three, vigorously toweling off your face can lead to loss of elasticity. Aha! My skin has definitely, DEFINITELY lost a ton of elasticity! Like, all of it. However, this is true across my whole body, head to toe. I suspect it has much more to do with my collagen going on a permanent vacation starting in my mid-40s, and less to do with using a towel on my face a couple times a week.

If I were going to exfoliate using a product, I still wouldn’t buy one. I’d mix up sugar and coconut oil or use that old crystallized honey in my pantry. But I think I’ll stick with the towel method.