Tag: aging

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed more and more people who’ve “had work done” on their faces.

I genuinely hate the results of most plastic surgery; many people look like they’ve stuck their head out the window of a speeding car, the wind pushing back their skin into a perpetual grimace. They don’t look younger at all. I would pay a surgeon to NOT look like that, and the fact that so many people fork over thousands in a desperate attempt to recapture their youth is sad.

My sixty-three-year-old wife is beautiful, wrinkles and all. I have wrinkles, too. We earned them.

All those times we juggled work and daycare for the kids? There are facial lines for that.

The time my son came down with meningitis and I rushed him to the hospital for tests? It took a doctor and two nurses to hold him down while they inserted a needle into his spine to extract fluid for testing. He screamed. Afterwards, they gave him a drug to erase his memory of the experience, but there was no such drug given to me. I picked up a few wrinkles that day.

When my eldest grandson was having trouble breathing due to a bad case of RSV, the lines on my face deepened.

We prayed for him to get better, and he did. I’m keeping the resulting wrinkles to remind myself, every time I look in the mirror, that prayer matters.

I’ve had surgery on my thyroid, left foot, and several hernias. The stitches healed, but the stress added a lot more lines.

There have been many good times as well, now etched on our faces. Like all the days in the sun at Willoughby Lake in Vermont swimming with our grandkids. I can trace the lines around my mouth formed by smiling (and yes, sun damage. I should have put on more sunscreen).

Our faces are a map of our lives, each line a bend in the road marked by joy or sadness. We own them and nobody will take them away, least of all a surgeon paid to stretch them into oblivion.

Call me sentimental or old fashioned. You can even call me just plain old. There’s no point trying to be something I’m not.

In fact, I find it liberating to accept my age and all that comes with it. And the money I’m saving from avoiding plastic surgery? I’m going to buy a swing set for the grandkids.

That said, I’m not in a position to judge others, no matter what extent they go to update their faces.

Madonna recently took a lot of heat for her extensive surgery. She’s an amazing legend and what she did was her personal decision. More power to her. There are also many people who have minor work done, like the occasional Botox treatment. There is no right or wrong here.

All I’m trying to say is that the wrinkles that come with time should be accepted and even celebrated.   What do you think?