The move
My husband and I moved to Mesa three years ago to be closer to our daughter and the grandkids. We'd lived in Portland for 31 years. Everyone warned us about the summers. Nobody warned me about the water.
For the first few months I didn't think about my skin at all. I was unpacking, finding a new dentist, learning which grocery store had decent peaches. I was happy.
Then I started noticing that my face felt tight after every shower. Not dry like winter in Oregon, where a little cream fixed it. Tight like a mask, all day, especially around my mouth and across my forehead.
The year I blamed myself
I was 55 then and I did what I think a lot of women my age do. I decided this was just what happens now. Menopause, getting older, the desert air. Pick one.
I bought a richer night cream. Then a heavier one. I started putting on moisturizer twice a day, then three times. My makeup still flaked by lunchtime. The lines on my forehead looked deeper in the afternoon than they did in the morning, which I didn't understand at all.
My daughter visited once and said, kindly, "Mom, you look tired." I wasn't tired. I was sleeping better than I had in years. But I knew what she meant. My skin looked dull and a little crinkled, like paper that had been wet and dried again.
The showerhead
The thing that changed my thinking was not a skincare article. It was a plumber.
Our shower pressure had dropped to a trickle, so we had a man named Ray come out. He unscrewed the showerhead and showed me the inside. It was packed with a chalky white crust, like the inside of an old kettle.
"That's the water out here," he said. "Hard water. It leaves minerals on everything it touches." Then he pointed at the glass shower door, which I'd been scrubbing every week and which never looked clean. "Same thing."
And then, almost as a joke, he said, "My wife says it does that to your skin too."
I laughed. Then I went and stood in front of the mirror for a long time.
What I learned
I'm not a chemist, so I'll say this the way I understood it. Water in a lot of places, including where we live now, carries a lot of dissolved minerals like calcium and magnesium. When that water dries, it leaves the minerals behind. That's the white crust on the faucet.
What I read afterward said the same thing can happen on skin. A thin layer of mineral residue is left after you wash, and it can make skin feel tight and look dull. Some creams don't seem to sink in properly on top of it.
It made sense of everything. In Portland, the water was soft. My skin had been fine there for 31 years. It wasn't that my skin got old overnight when I crossed into Arizona. It was that I was washing my face every day in something different.
What I changed
I didn't do anything dramatic. We didn't install a whole-house system, although we talked about it. I changed three small habits.
First, I stopped washing my face in very hot water, because the hottest showers were always the worst. Second, I started patting my face dry right away instead of letting it air dry, since it was the drying that seemed to leave the minerals behind.
Third, and this was the one that made the difference, I started putting something on my skin within a minute of drying it, before the tight feeling set in. My daughter-in-law had a little Korean balm stick in her purse that she used on her cheeks and around her eyes. It went on like a lip balm, just rubbed across the skin and blended in with your fingers. I bought one and kept it on the edge of the sink so I couldn't forget it.
The stick was called Vitro. What I liked was that it took about twenty seconds. No jar, no dipping my fingers in anything, no waiting for it to soak in before my makeup.
The first month
The tight feeling was the first thing to go, within the first week or so. That alone was worth it. I'd forgotten what it felt like to not think about my face all morning.
The rest took longer. Around the four week mark I noticed my makeup was staying put through the afternoon. My forehead didn't look so crinkled by dinner. My skin had a little bit of a sheen to it again, which I hadn't seen since Oregon.
I'm 58 now. I still have wrinkles and I'm fine with that. But my skin looks like my skin again, not like something that had been left out in the sun.
My daughter noticed
Last Thanksgiving my daughter came over early to help with the pies. We were rolling dough at the counter and she looked at me and said, "You look really good, Mom. Did you change something?"
I told her about Ray and the showerhead. She laughed until she had flour on her face. Then she went into my bathroom and looked at the faucet, and came back and said, "Oh. Oh, that's what's on my glasses too."
She lives three miles from me. Same water.
What I'd tell a friend
I lost about a year thinking my face was just giving up on me. I spent money on heavier and heavier creams, when the problem was something I was doing to it every morning without knowing.
So if you've moved somewhere new and your skin suddenly feels different, or your shower door never looks clean no matter what you do, look at your showerhead before you blame your birthday. It might not be your age. It might just be the water.
