10:45 – I am looking at myself in a magnifying mirror in my dermotologist’s office. EEEEK!!!!
It’s as if a witch put a spell on me and made me look…like her! There, peering back at me, is the crepe-y, lined, wrinkled skin known as My Face, surrounded by brochures for Botox, Juvaderm, and Restalyne. I quickly open a nearby magazine only to find a photo of Cheryl Tiegs, a former 60’s model the same age as I am, looking like she’s still twenty. Or like she’s wearing a mask of herself at 20.
Okay, enough with these age comparisons and the even slight temptation to go Dorian Gray. I’m there to get a basal cell carcinoma removed from my back. And a mole I don’t particularly like. I have brought my own washcloth with me to wet down just in case I start to get woozy. But the whole procedure goes well. I lie on my stomach and chat with Kathy, the nurse, while the Doc injects, excises, and stitches my flesh.
I leave with a supersized bandaid near my shoulder blade. Later in the day I run into an acquaintance from my daughter’s high school. I haven’t seen this woman in years and don’t really know her. In fact, I hardly recognize her.
Her face is a mask of herself at 20, but I never knew her then. She proceeds to bemoan all the work she’s had done (“work” always means plastic surgery in L.A.), and how she regrets trying to live up to her mother’s standard of perfection. (I wonder what her mother would think of me…I know what I think of her mother!)
Then I’m walking to my car and another “sign” happens. A young female crossing guard says to me, “Hello! Have a great day! You are beautiful!” My EEEEK!!! turns to EEEELATION as I drive home, happy to be alive, to be 62, to be beautiful and healthy and have healthcare and a loving family. And I think: What if we all could tell each other, yes, even perfect strangers, “You’re beautiful!” or better yet, “You’re wonderful!” Maybe that Louis Armstrong song that’s in every other movie might just come true!
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