First, it was one of those days when nobody rode a bicycle.

Practical glamour on my birthday.  That is the rule.

My cousin and I hung out and beautified ourselves.

Although I have high self-esteem, I lost my looks years ago and don’t care much.  Shattered by a divorce in my late thirties, I faded. I had to go back into the workforce after years of freelancing.   I didn’t tell anyone at my new job that I was getting a divorce, because I was one of three women who worked there.  I was hired because I ran into somebody at a fiction reading.

I did good work, but was very, very tired.

Sadness, ruined skin from the sun:  so what?  The looks of the women in my family do not last.  I have a picture of my vain mother after her divorce.  She tried to keep everything going:  the hair, the smile, the confidence.  It is the saddest picture I have ever seen in my life.

I was grateful for Doris Lessing’s novel, The Summer Before the Dark, during my divorce. The heroine, Kate, has a breakdown after she is left by her family for a summer.  Her husband has an affair.  After working at a high-powered summer job, she gets sick and moves into an apartment with a young “hippie” woman, Maureen.  Kate has let her beautifully-dyed hair go and stopped eating.

Kate’s relationship with Maureen is not unlike mine with my cousin.

Maureen was looking frankly and critically at Kate.  She examined the mass of crinkling hair, with its wide grey band down the middle.  She looked at Kate’s dress, walking, or stepping, carefully around Kate to do so.  Then she said, ‘Wait’ and went off for a minute.  She came back with some dresses, and held them up one by one, frowning, in front of Kate.  The two women began to laugh:  the laugh built up so that the guitar player glanced up to see what was so funny.  As a skinny frilled dress stretched against Kate’s bones, she smiled briefly, and retired back into her music.

Kate doesn’t get a divorce:  she goes back home.  I remarried.

My cousin the librarian is very different from me.  She has never married, and she is not a feminist.  She cannot understand why I don’t wear makeup.  Her mother likes it; mine used to say it was “stupid.”  A dermatologist told me years ago not to wear makeup.

But my cousin was determined to smarten me up.  “We’ll make our own,” she said.

I was leery, but I said Okay. A mask of yogurt and oatmeal:  mix a cup of yogurt and a half cup of oatmeal and smear it on your face.   Keep it on for 15 minutes.  My skin DID feel refreshed.

We hung around with cucumber cream under our eyes and drank peppermint tea.

I told her about the novel I was reading,  Zola’s The Ladies’ Paradise, about a new Parisian department store in the 19th century that drives the small neighboring shops out of business. I could see myself going mad at the lace counter, rushing home to sew “blonde lace” onto dresses. Nobody buys lace anymore. When was the last sale on lace?

“Let’s go to a department store,” my cousin said.

“Where’s the lace?”  I asked her.

She bought me a nightgown.

I can’t wait to wear it while I stay up late and watch TV.

Then the makeup counter.  She loves the practical glamour of cosmetics and decided to check out moisturizers and eye creams. Most of them cost more than her clothing.

I tried on some cream that did amazingly smooth out my skin. But they didn’t want to rip us off, so they sold us another cheaper cream and some other makeup.

“If only I had a job at the department store…” my cousin fumed.

“You couldn’t live,” I said sensibly.

But of course she would love it.

I went home and put the makeup away and made dinner.  I’m sure I’ll forget about it, but it was nice of her to give me what every woman wants.

My birthday only comes once a year.