Freshness of my skin

“Honey, what happened to your face?”
My husband looked shocked as I opened the door.
“What? Is something on my face?”
“Your face has lines on it. Look, one on the right, and another on the left.”
I rushed to the mirror. Sure enough, there was a deep crease running from under my right eye down to my jaw, and another one on the left side, starting from my eye.

“So that’s why people kept staring at me on the subway...”

Even late into the night, the creases were still there. I couldn’t sleep, worrying,

“What if they never go away? What if they leave scars?”

It had all started with a Mother’s Day gift. My younger child had bought me a one-and-a-half-hour body massage voucher at a spa near Central Park, saying it was a great deal—half price on Groupon. The atmosphere was lovely: soft scents, calm music, and stylish people coming and going.

I was led into a dim room and told to lie face down on a massage bed with a hole for my face.
Honestly, I wanted a firm massage that would really work out the knots, but the therapist was just lightly patting and rubbing. I couldn’t complain—it was a fancy place—so I lay there quietly, thinking about my friend’s outdoor “ondol” room.

My friend lives in sunny L.A., where her garden is filled with fruit trees and flowers. Every morning, she chats with her trees over a cup of coffee, and at night, she lies in her outdoor ondol room and watches the stars.
“Nothing beats an ondol room. Even a Korean sauna bed would be better than this!”
With those grumbles in my head, I fell asleep, my face pressed tightly into the round pillow with the hole—no wonder I woke up with dents!

“Mom, did you like it?”
The massage took time, energy, and money—including tax and tip—but I smiled and said,
“Yes, it was nice. But maybe next time... get me something different?”
“Why?”
“Well... I want to try a little of everything.”
(What I meant was: I never want that again.)

Looking in the mirror at my creased face, I suddenly remembered dining with a friend at a Japanese restaurant. When the giant sashimi boat arrived at our table, she started poking each piece with her chopsticks. She said it was to check freshness—“If the fish springs back right away, it’s fresh. If the dent stays, it’s not.”
That explanation now echoed in my mind.

How “un-fresh” must I be that my face still hasn’t sprung back even after midnight?

Youth... How I miss it.

“Youth—it’s a word that makes your heart race just hearing it,” 

begins Min Tae-won’s famous essay Ode to Youth. But for me now?

“Youth—it’s a word that makes your face dent just hearing it.”