I Believe in Cold Creams

Today I read through 271 beauty comments because I couldn’t fall asleep.

Sure, I could have read my Eva Peron book or watched another episode of Dickinson through a singular sinus-infectedy eye… but I find comfort in skincare, and (as I’ve already shared 271 or so times myself), the skincare of thriving grannies.

I like to use things with TIME behind them.

I know that fads come and go constantly in skincare and “self care” and marketing (and cancel culture and batched Reels and botched realities and on), and because of that, I always go back to the Grands to remind myself of what’s worth my consistency.

This might be old and cliche and penuriously anti bouge - BUT … I believe in cold creams. I should be a spokesperson for Ponds by now. I use Ponds by night, and now (discovering something new in what we call old) Albolene. I had abolished other cold cream options amid all pandering Ponds posts, but now I love this new-old discovery.

As I read the 271 comments of people sharing what they remember about their grandmother’s beauty routine, I chase a different feeling all together too… perhaps the one I’m always chasing through skincare. It’s not secret salves or heralded hacks but the smell of baby powder applied to damp backsides as we exit a bath; Floridian tile floors and the occasional shower lizard a forever backdrop to a memory I can’t quite drop.

It’s the smell of gardenia bushes and grapefruit trees outside a home that feels real more through the memories of my Mother’s memory of her mother than my own.

Sometimes I look at aluminum foil in the drawer of my kitchen, and want to make tiny sailboats; set free in still waters of a bird bath outside a home where my Mom and her mom shared oceans of conversation larger than I’ll ever know.

I started using Albolene because of someone else’s memory… but no matter how late the nighttime grows, or how many traditions I unearth from another…

I always wish for just one more day of baby powder with my mother’s mother.

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