I Put on Lip Gloss Just to Sit in the Carpool Line

Dear Delyara, I wasn’t going anywhere interesting. Just pickup. Sweatshirt, leggings, yesterday’s ponytail, the same coffee stain on the cup holder I keep meaning to wipe up. Still, I reached into my bag, found an old tube of lip gloss, and put it on at the red light. It felt strangely emotional. Not glamorous. Not seductive. Just… like a little signal to myself that I still exist as a woman even inside the dull machinery of routine. Then my son got in the car and immediately started telling me about something unfair that happened at school, and the moment was over. But for forty seconds, looking at my own face in the rearview mirror with a little shine on my mouth, I remembered that I used to enter rooms on purpose. Now I mostly enter them because someone is waiting. I miss purpose.