My mother's gestures — what do I do with them?

My mother kept a bottle of rose water on her dressing table. She never mentioned it; she used it every evening. When I started caring for my skin, I didn’t look any further: I bought the same bottle. Not because it was the best, but because it was hers. Years later, my aesthetician pointed out that this gesture — the cool patting after removing makeup — was one of the soundest things one could do. She didn’t need to convince me. I already held it from someone I trusted.

What passes down without our noticing

There are gestures we don’t choose. We’ve seen them hundreds of times, absorbed them without knowing. The way my grandmother tapped her cream onto her cheeks, always from bottom to top, always with three fingers. The way my mother waited until her face was still damp to apply her care, because “it sinks in better.” I don’t remember anyone explaining it to me. I remember that I do it.

These gestures carry a value nothing can replace. They connect us to women who cared for themselves before us, with the means they had. They remind us that beauty is not a recent invention, that it has always been practised, in bathrooms, quietly, with no witness. My practitioner often tells me that what matters is not the quantity of products we use, but the regularity of the gesture. Our mothers may not have known it in those terms, but they practised it.

Not everything is worth keeping, and that’s all right

We also need to look at what we’ve received with a little distance. My grandmother wiped her face with a cotton pad soaked in alcohol every morning. She said it “woke the skin up.” No one would do that today, and rightly so. It wasn’t a bad gesture in itself; it was a gesture of its time. It belonged to a way of seeing the skin that has changed.

Sorting through is not renouncing. It’s recognising that some things were passed down to us because that was what people knew how to do at that moment. We can be grateful for the intention without repeating the gesture. My mother taught me to remove my makeup every evening, even tired, even late. That principle, I keep. The soap she used, however, doesn’t suit me. One doesn’t cancel out the other.

What my practitioner sees that I don’t

When I first went to my current aesthetician, I told her about my habits. Not so she would judge them, but because I wanted her to know me. She is the one who taught me to read my skin differently. She showed me that some gestures I had from my mother suited my nature perfectly, and that others did not. She didn’t ask me to change everything. She asked me to understand.

That is where transmission takes on its full meaning. We don’t keep a gesture because it comes from someone we love, but because it fits us. My practitioner helped me sort through it all with kindness. She never said “your mother was wrong.” She said: “this accompanies you, that does not.” And I understood that loyalty to a person does not require reproducing everything she did.

Duration is the proof

What reassures me is not what has just come out. It’s what has lasted a long time. My mother used the same care for years. She only changed it if her skin changed, or if her practitioner advised it. She didn’t chase promises. She trusted what endured.

I do the same. The bottle of rose water is still there, but its use is no longer the same. My practitioner explained why it suited me, what it brought to my skin, how to fit it into a routine that has evolved with me. The gesture has remained. Its meaning has become clearer. That is what transmitting means: keeping what built us, and accepting that what comes next is written with other people, other eyes.

What passes from one woman to another cannot be measured in products. It is measured in trust. If you are fortunate enough to have a practitioner who knows you, who has followed you for years, ask her to help you read what you have received. She will be able to tell you what belongs to you, what belongs to another era, and what deserves to continue. And if you don’t know where to begin, start with what you already do without thinking. That is often where the essential lies.