Since shelter-in-place began, I've honored the recommendations, only venturing out to shop for necessities at times recommended for those of us considered at risk, such as we who are mature or of a certain age.

Out of habit I'd pencil my eyelids with dark kohl liner, flick mascara on my lashes and brush apricot blush onto my pale cheeks. I thought those additions made me look healthier. Or maybe it was a vampire sucking the blood of my self-assuredness. At any rate, old habits fight death.

Then masking became a thing. The first day that I donned this covering, I noticed when I took it off, it was wearing my blush, so I put that cosmetic away. And the stuff on my eyes, eyes always shielded by glasses? Well, those products are fair-weather friends—an off and on again relationship like lovers who think they need to break up but can't stop seeing each other.

Back in the day, the time before this coronavirus pandemic ushered in rules related to the need for physical distancing, I showed up for exercise classes at the YMCA every morning at 8 … sans makeup. Why are you going to wear stuff that will likely sweat down to your clavicle? So no make up. A clean face, yes. Brushed hair and teeth, yes. But no added color—except maybe tinted lip balm.

Occasionally, a few of us even went for coffee together directly from the Y after class, unmadeup, wearing yoga outfits that hid little. We simply wanted to have more time to engage in our growing friendships, to talk and laugh, gossip and snicker, and at times, to vent or share some raspy reality we might be experiencing with home repairs or a kvetching family member or a pet that pees where it isn't supposed to.

Cosmopolitan, Vogue, do you hear me? It wasn't Max Factor that made our acquaintances possible. Revlon had nothing to do with our downward dogs, cats and cows or any of the other Yoga asanas. Maybelline didn't even register at the coffee house.

And now … now? Rather than a livelier shade of lipstick, we long for a life-assuring vaccine. We would love nothing more than to see each other and all the rest of our world out and about again: healthy, safe, looking forward to a future we had assumed was more or less certain. None of us ever dreamed we'd show up at a bank counter to ask for money while wearing a face mask.

When this era of plague fades into the background, will the vanity vampire have fallen victim to the virus? I suspect not. After all, we have mirrors. We try to put on the best face we can. But until then, we've had to face an invisible deadly enemy that at least I had never imagined. And facing this enemy, directly in the trenches as we are, has sharpened my myopia just enough to see a different daily priority.

Nowadays when I get up, not going to the Y at 8 a.m., I make my coffee and am so grateful that my loved ones and I are still well, still in this world, and wishing the same for others. Mascara be damned.

~ Susan Dlugach