Smile

All the smiles are mine and the photos mine.  
Collage template courtesy of Canva.

Women, far more than men, are told to "smile." It's a command--a demand--part of performing feminine for others.  In "When I Lost my Smile," one of the only honest, helpful reflections on what Bell's Palsy means for one's sense of self as a woman that I have discovered, Sarah Ruhl observes "There is a complex set of rules guiding women's smiles in public" even without the reality that sometimes, we really cannot smile.

Smiles are a part of faces--perhaps the most important part of a face, as Rosemarie Garland-Thomson articulates in Staring: How We Look.  Smiles are a crucial part of "face work," by which we and others navigate complex relationships.  Smiles empower a person to make connections, diffuse situations,  tame harsh words, and help us assess others (Garland-Thomson 41-42, 97-105).

Others see me, and know me, because of my smile.  In college, a transfer student told me that my smile and greeting (in our shared bathroom, where we all debated over the merits of the toilet paper going over or under the roll) made her feel like she had made the right choice. Years later, a student giving an important presentation shared "I was so nervous--and then you smiled at me, and I knew I would be okay." Two weeks ago, when I emailed friends and colleagues that my smile had taken a vacation, I had several people respond to get well quick, because they and our building needed my smile and good cheer.  

My smile and my general Pollyanna nature matter to others.  But they matter more to me.  My smile is my good cheer, and my good cheer is my smile. Those endorphins?  They're not there with half a smile.  Especially when that half looks very similar to my neighbor's annual jack-o-lantern after its month in the elements has caused it to wilt, cave, and collapse.

                                             

I do not have to look in the mirror to know that my smile is broken.  I know because an essential component of who I am is broken.  My heart doesn't sing like it used to, and this is not only because I am still getting over all of the other things that came along with Bell's Palsy. 

My heart sings more when I am home, and sheltered, or with students, colleagues, or friends.   I do not have a problem in those situations. I need to, will, and do interact quite comfortably.  Last week, my first week back at work, and in those comfortable contexts, I began to feel at least a little like my self. 

However, that feeling like myself is highly contingent.  

Where I most know I am not myself is when I am interacting with strangers, and even those I know, in public places.

Case in point: my campus mall, the main thoroughfare.  The former Little Miss Chipper struggles to make eye contact, to say "hello" to friend and stranger alike.  She, er, I, find myself in a double bind: to not smile is rude, and is absolutely not me.  To smile is devastating, and makes me vulnerable to others' responses. 

My habit of parking far away from my building and walking up the mall for physical and mental health no longer serves me.   I have not yet made it up the Mall (even when it is quiet) without having to give myself a stern pep talk. Or without having to force myself to stay the course when I see clusters of people.   I like how Heidi Moss Erickson describes her own experience, in a review of Ruhl's memoir, Smile: "It feels like an eternity standing naked in the snow, toggling between literally not wanting to be seen and a desperate desire to be visible in the context of one's former self." 

And even though I am making it through all of the other interactions?  It is not without shutting my office door and turning out the lights, partly to restore a still-wobbly body, but more to rest a trembling soul. 

Last Wednesday, between a class and two conferences, and feeling the effects of chronic insomnia, I sought silence: I sat in an absent colleague's  waiting area in the stillness and did nothing.  I took the paths less traveled and found green space where I could just be.  And then I came home, and I wept. 

According to Annie, we are not fully dressed without a smile.  But what does it mean when your smile is ragged and full of holes? How do you mend that, when no patchwork, safety pin, or sleight-of-hand can can give the illusion of completeness? How do you integrate the old you with the new you, when a smile isn't just what you look like, but is a fundamental part of who you are, how you relate, and how you feel?   It seems, from others' experiences, that the answer is simple-not-simple: you don't.