Talking turkey

We developed the Thanksgiving pictures today, shortly after the event. I looked fine in one of them, not gorgeous or sexy, but me -- with an unbroken chin line and nice cheekbones. That was one picture. But the others: in the one of me eying the turkey head, it’s hard to tell whose appearance is more scraggly. And the one of me gesturing proudly to the half-cooked bird, well, put that one next to the "great shot" of me after dinner and it’s almost like a before and after facelift contrast. I am halfway minded to bring both photos with me to show Dr. Delos and challenge him to better the "after" image. "And my before and after didn’t cost me anything and didn’t require surgery," I’d like to point out to him.

The telltale . . . crow

Nando showed me the photograph we had taken with John and Nicole six weeks ago. "Look at this,” he said. "You are the only one in this picture who doesn’t need a facelift." It was true; in the photo, at least, my laugh lines had curled around to frame my smile, so you couldn’t see the sagging skin. The camera -- or was it the lighting? -- tempered my crow’s feet, and the angle was such that I was the only one without a telltale roll under my chin.

"Ah, if only I looked like that in real life," I said, "I’d be nuts to bother with surgery."

Cat's claw

We were clearing the table in the kitchen this evening. Nando watched me as I leaned over to pick up the dishes. "What happened to your face?” he demanded.

“What do you mean?”

"You look like you’ve been burned there, on the left side."

“Oh, you mean HERE.” I touched my left cheek below the cheekbone. That’s where the skin has buckled, sort of, and in the unflattering kitchen light it looks ugly. "Hey, this is the bad side of my face,” and I smiled in a half-grimace.

"Oh don’t do THAT,” he groaned. “Wait, hold that smile. Let me get a camera.”

“No camera!”

"Okay, let me draw what I see.”

His design showed a face that looked like a cat had clawed its way across.

Regal versus wrinkled

Joan’s regal English beauty is worlds apart from my smaller, livelier facial alignment. Her face is almost ironed over in its smooth alabaster perfection, but she was animated as she repeated for the umpteenth time that the facelift was the best thing she had ever done and she was sorry she hadn't done it sooner and if she had to decide again, she'd do it yesterday.

"You'll see," she predicted, as we stood side by side looking at the mirror in her office. What I saw was a tall, handsome, fashionably-dressed woman with chestnut hair sleekly pulled back -- a woman perhaps in her 40s -- standing next to a short woman whose dark brown hair went off in all directions, whose pointed features were set in the context of wrinkled, tired skin. This second woman might be smaller but she was definitely older. I am technically two years older than Joan but the mirror screamed more.

Doggy face

That got us on the subject of facelifts. Jane didn't think most of the facelifts she'd seen were especially well done, but a few of them were, in her view. Some women admitted to pain, others didn't. What she had seen hadn't convinced her that the operation was worth it. I figured she was right and told her so: her face wasn't especially lined and her wrinkles were few. Her figure is petite and her demeanor bouncy and youthful. "But why do YOU want a facelift, Claudia? You look great."

"Yeah, yeah," I thought. "It's easy to look okay at night in a trattoria with rustic lighting. You should see me in the unflattering light of day. Mine is a face only a doggie could love."