Yesterday we took a long drive to visit a friend in Pennsylvania. On the way home we stopped in one of our old haunts, New Hope, to take a walk around. It was always one of our favorite quirky artsy towns to visit. Thirty years ago!

It has changed a lot over the years. It’s no longer shabby-chic charming. It is much more upscale and unaffordable. Glossier. But there are a few fun shops to browse. There is a great ice cream shop. And a record store.

When we stepped out of ‘Love Saves the Day’, I noticed a couple of younger people with brightly colored hair, wearing hippie clothes, standing on the corner, holding iPads. They were canvassing for the Equal Rights Campaign, handing out their iconic equal sign bumper stickers. Not everything has changed.

The traffic light turned green, and we began moving. I saw a man on the corner across the street, standing outside of a shop, near a table of sample product. I habitually, but mistakenly, made eye contact with him, and smiled.

He reached his hand out toward me, and offered me a gift. ‘Here’s a free sample for you.’ He took my hand and pressed it into my palm, so I practically had no choice but to receive the gift. I looked down at it, but couldn’t make out the label without my reading glasses.

I was going to simply say thanks and walk away, when he said, ‘Wait! Wait here one second!’ He jumped in and out of the store in what felt like a flash. He emerged with a full size bottle of something with a pump on top. ‘Oh, no thank you.’ I said, as he came closer. ‘I don’t need that. I won’t use that.’

‘You won’t use it? But this is for your lines,’ he said, as he pointed and gestured around his own eyes. ‘For all of the lines around your eyes.’ He repeated. Unnecessarily. I knew exactly which lines he meant. I was keenly aware of the lines to which he was referring.

He held the bottle out to me.

‘I love my lines,’ I said. As I made direct and unmistakable eye contact with him.

‘You do?!’ he asked, almost incredulously.

‘I embrace my lines!’ I said, a little bit louder, as I straightened my posture, squared my shoulders, and pointed my chin towards him, in slight defiance.

‘You do?’ He asked again. It seemed to be a bit less of question this time.

‘I do!’ I said in my most confident and convincing voice, with a huge sparkly smile on my face. A smile that made my lines crinkle even more.

Because in that moment, I did.

There are manymany moments when I don’t. There are manymany moments when I look in the mirror, and the aging process- the natural gift of time spent living- fills me with self-doubt, self-denial, even self-loathing. There are manymany moments when I don’t embrace those lines.

But in that moment, faced with the truth of it from this corporate capitalist MirrorMan- who doesn’t know me and my lived experience at all-, in that moment, I did.

Because in that moment I stepped out of my physical self, and became an observer. I imagined a middle-aged woman on the street being convinced that she needed to look younger, in order to feel better, and to be better.

In that moment, I wanted to tell her that she was not only good enough, but that she was the absolute perfect version of her self. In that moment I was channeling the Strength of the Sisterhood. Standing tall against the System.

I handed back the sample packet, and turned to walk on toward the others, toward the ice cream.

And as I took the first step away, he loudly said ‘You’re beautiful.’

Perhaps in that moment he realized what his sales pitch really was. Perhaps he realized that he was a part of that system that capitalizes on our insecurities.

‘You’re beautiful’ he said again.

‘I am beautiful,’ I whispered to myself, not even looking back.

And in that moment, I certainly was.