Freckle Face

I like freckles now, but that wasn't always the case.



I was thirteen years old when I first got contacts. I remember sitting in the Super-X drugstore learning to put them in. It burned a little, then my eyes got watery. I blinked and wiped, blinked and wiped, and then suddenly I started to be able to see. I could see across the store! I could read the signs above the aisles! I could even read the packaging on the shelves. I couldn't get over it.

The colors seemed so vivid. I stared out into the store and marvelled at how clear everything looked. The world had been so blurry for so long. Then the optometrist handed me a mirror and I held it up to my face. I think my eyes started to water again. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Freckles. Lots and lots of dark brown freckles. They were all over my face. I was hideous.

I honestly wanted to take my contacts right back out. I never wanted to see myself again. I hated those freckles. And then it occurred to me that everyone else saw them, too, every time they looked at me. I was mortified. They'd seen them all along. The whole world knew what I looked like; it was I who didn't have a clue.

Before I got contacts, I did see freckles when I looked in the mirror, but they weren't that dark, and there weren't that many. They were more of a brownish smear on my face. They certainly weren't distinct. My mother (whose freckles I loved, go figure) always told me they were "kisses from the sun." I didn't fall for that. They were ugly. They were horrible. They were spots, and I didn't want any part of them.

Naturally, I tried to remove them. Like Jan Brady on The Brady Bunch, I rubbed lemon juice on my face despite the fact that it didn't work for her. It didn't work for me, either. I knew there couldn't be an easy cure for this curse. The best I could do was try to hide them with make-up. Still, they were always there.

I resigned myself to the fact that I'd have them for life (since my mom did, and she was in her thirties!). Then I forgot about them. Until my children were born. They each got a smattering of the cutest freckles ever across their cheeks. I boasted that they got them from me, though more and more, my freckles have faded as I've aged. I don't even see them when I look in the mirror anymore, unless I've been out in the sun. Oh, they're still there. I just don't see them. And of course, now I love them.

But oh, how painful it was to have them as a young girl. I'll never forget sitting in that chair with a mirror in my hand and seeing myself - really seeing myself. Freckled. Freaky. Ugly. Thirteen.