Lifting Up Your Face

OK. I’m jealous. Not normally the jealous type, but I have to admit that deep down, I’m jealous. Of the type of woman who Takes Very Good Care of Herself. Perhaps you know the type. Perhaps you’re one of the types.

This woman can wear very short skirts at any age and extremely high heels and not look ridiculous. She pays A LOT of money for high and low lights at the salon and she does that very frequently. If she works, it’s at a job that encourages her to have weekly acrylic nail things done. Her makeup is flawless. She drives expensive sports cars and looks good doing it. She is thin and petite and her clothes come from an upscale store in downtown Charleston. Probably that Pulitzer woman's place and I’m not talking about the writing prize.

She plays tennis fairly well, not competitively well, but socially well, once or twice a week. She does not golf. She has a sprayed on tan so that she looks good while lying by the pool at the club and still protecting herself from damaging UV rays.

And she has had work done. Every woman I know understands what that term means. None of my friends have had any work, but we all know women who have.

And today I realized some part of me envied those women.

It hit me pretty unexpectedly while my daughter and I were in a crafts store. We were in line at the checkout. I was scrounging in my beat up leather handbag to find a coupon so I could save a few pennies. And my daughter mentioned that the mother of a friend of hers looked really good at 50-something then offhandedly remarked, “She’s had some work done, though.”

BAM! A ton of bricks landed on my head. I wanted to be that woman who looked great at 53 and wore cute little dresses and didn’t have to hunt in the bottom of my bag to save a buck. The woman who doesn’t work but who has Married Well and has time and money for expensive personal pursuits.

“Where in the hell did THAT come from, " I wondered to myself because I’m usually pretty happy in my skin, sags and all. I can only imagine that it was a leftover ghostly desire from my weekend. I spend this past weekend at a conference in Hilton Head. I enjoyed it and the company I was in: nurse educators from all over NC and SC. Most of us at the peak of our careers. Most of us definitely over 45 years old. Very similar in backgrounds and careers, we all spoke the same language. Yet in the ballroom next door to ours, I think the women spoke a very different language.
It was a conference of cosmetic saleswomen.

They women were young and wore beautiful blue suits and 3 inch heels and their makeup, well, all I can say is, they DO sell makeup…. We could hear them clapping and laughing and music blaring. Our lectures were "How to give presentations when money is tight," and "what are the new NNSDO standards for career specialists." Not the sexiests subjects.

During one of our breaks these women were also on a break. A colleague turned to me as we walked down the hall behind a group of these women. “Ever wonder if we did something really wrong?” she asked. “I have torn discs in my back so that it’s hard to get out of bed. I must have gained weight but since I wear scrubs to work I didn’t realize it and when I was packing, and couldn’t find anything to wear, I had to run out to the only store open, Wal Mart, and buy an outfit that actually fits. I’m too tired after work to try to work out and I eat crap because that’s all the cafeteria sells.”

“I hear you, sister,” I told her. And I did. But today it really hit home. I could spend $44,000 on a brand new gas guzzling SUV if I wanted to, I guess. I could spend $180 every 6 wks at the salon if I really wanted that. Or I could have bought a book on how to land a millionaire husband.

Yet somewhere on earth a child starves to death every 7 seconds. Every Friday my Unitarian Universalist church provides 40 students with back packs filled with food to tie their families over until the next Monday when school, and free meals, is available to them again. Instead of knitting blankets for cancer patients or driving elderly people to social events or building Habitat Houses or providing a safe haven for a woman fleeing her home, my friends and I could be engaged in weekly "all about me" days and save our money for $7000 boob jobs and $15,000 face lifts and tummy tucks. But somehow it just doesn’t feel right. Perhaps I operate from a warped sense of guilt over my own life's good fortune or maybe I suffer from a wacked desire to feel good by helping someone else.

So I haven’t pampered myself and the real reason is probably that I really haven’t thought about it. I look in the mirror when I brush my teeth and hair in the morning and don’t look in the mirror again that day. I am too busy with life to even wonder if I have crow’s feet.

“I can’t imagine you getting any work done, “my good daughter nonchalantly told me in that checkout line. Had she seen the brief look of longing on my face? “Because you know that kind of stuff isn’t important. Besides,” she went on, “How would we know if you were smiling?” Then she gave me her own megawatt grin.
My daughter has an impeccable sense of how to bring me back to reality.

The Yacht Club

Last night my husband and I went to a party on the river. We were celebrating a friend's completion of his medical residency and the party was held at a small
yacht club on our island. In fact, the only yacht club on our island.

Not a fancy place. Almost anyone can rent the club for events. My first husband belonged to this place we kiddingly called, the Redneck Boat Club. To join you have to have a white penis. That's right. No women are allowed to join. And no one of color belongs to this club.

My first husband loved going here, even though he would not think of himself as racist or sexist. The club is simple- a bar and a small event room and a sun porch. The grounds are large and you can store your boat there. But it's the fabulous access to Charleston's harbor that probably drew him and kept him there.

Easy access to the water. Sailing lessons for members' kids. Playgrounds and boats everywhere and kayaks and a small sandy beach. A long dock to fish and crab from. Bicycling distance from the house. My children spent many hours at this place.

And I never once felt I belonged. And of course, I didn't.

Every Friday night for years, my husband and I went to this club for a cocktail hour and raffle for which you had to be present to win. I silently fought myself every Friday night about going to the club. I disliked the politics and the beliefs of almost everyone at that club. But my husband wanted me to go with him and the children- who got to play with their friends at night at the river- on these Friday nights. And being a wife who was still trying to make that marriage work, I went along.

And I actually talked myself into it for a while. Smiling at the ladies there with their husbands. Compromising my ideas about equality and fairness. About what kind of wife and mother and woman I wanted to be. Trying to belong when very clearly I didn't. Until I just gave it all up.

Last night I sat on the dock with a different husband. But not with a different me. Perhaps a truer me. Definitely a more contented me.

Compromises. Hopefully they don't damage you too badly while they're teaching you a lesson.