Nip and tuck

By TAD BARTIMUS

A recent photograph confirmed what I'd sensed for months: my left eye was squinting more than my right. Peering in the bathroom mirror, I practiced smiling. Yep, the lower lid was definitely bigger. TUMOR! As one who always assumes the worst, I poked at the pooched-out flesh and fretted while I waited for the eye specialist to see me. When he finally turned off his exam light he sighed.

We all see ourselves as somewhere between 16 and 30 no matter how old we really are. Now fat pockets under my eyelids make it harder to find that vibrant young woman I still think I am.

"There's definitely something going on there."

"Can it be fixed?"

"Yes, but it's expensive and probably temporary."

I braced myself: "Okay, I can take it. What is it?"

"Fat."

What do you mean, fat? FAT?

"A fat pocket. It happens when people get well, when they get a little older. Of course, you can have it adjusted with cosmetic surgery," the doctor continued. "People do it all the time."

Sure. I know that. But it's always other people. Just the week before I'd silently snickered as my favorite 50-something salvage yard owner showed off his stitches to a 40-something carpenter.

"Traded my Lexus to the plastic surgeon," he said, proudly pulling at tender skin under his eyes. "The old bags will be tight as a drum." The carpenter was envious. "My wrinkles are bad, man. Wish I could get rid of 'em, my girl-chasing days aren't over yet."

I'd chalked that conversation up to male menopause and over-active vanity. When crow's feet, collagen injections and liposuction came up in the conversation at my book club I'd tune out the debate, feeling smug that my grandmother's good genes would carry me wrinkle-free to Social Security. I simply couldn't understand the underlying anxiety that drove women friends to spend thousands to look 35 when they were 45.

Now, faced with a permanently altered smile unless I, too, go under the knife, I am more sympathetic. We all see ourselves as somewhere between 16 and 30 no matter how old we really are. Now fat pockets under my eyelids make it harder to find that vibrant young woman I still think I am. When I compare the way I used to look with the way I really am I'm forced to loosen my grip on my self-image.

We wear our lives on our bodies. Each scar marks a lesson learned, an escape made. Every time I take off my clothes I see the epidermal results of jumping out of a helicopter, getting butted by a loco horse and being poked with a sharp pencil by my first-grade neighbor. These physical memories aren't pretty, but they're testimony to survival.

Altering a physical image is a personal decision made for personal reasons. There's pain, risk, money and surgical skill involved. Hair plugs, a face lift or a nose job may make the beneficiary more attractive if measured by society's artificial yardstick. But a nip here and a tuck there won't alter history.

I am undecided about my fat pocket, but somehow getting rid of it feels like I'd be starting down a road I don't want to travel. I look at the spots on my hands, the gray in my hair, the little roll under my chin. These are parts of who I really am. Losing them might be the cruelest cut of all.

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