Mothers

When I came home from work on Tuesday Douglas was at the gym and his mother was in the kitchen. She told me a story about trimming the dog's hair that afternoon. She has a white toy poodle named Fernanda. Fernanda likes to have her belly rubbed. Fernanda's poofy forehead and ears of hair had been trimmed, and her pom-pom ankles were neatly coifed. Fernanda's eyes, is it any wonder, were sad.

A few minutes later my phone rang. It was Douglas on his way home. He was in a happy-go-lucky mood and asked if I'd noticed anything about his mom. He then told me about her visit to the plastic surgeon. I listened, like the proverbial deer in the headlights. "She what?" I asked, leaning around the living room doorway to get another look at her. I noticed she looked different, or maybe just a tad stiff, and she wasn't smiling. She couldn't. She'd spent the afternoon having botox and collagen injections. Her deadened face nerves and augmented lips were too sore for expression.

Douglas adores his mother. Everything she does is cute and amusing to him. Whereas, if I'd found my LLBean flannel jeans wearing-ice fishing mother doing anything more body altering than the South Beach Diet I'd worry. At age 50 my mom had her ears pierced for the first time. "Why?" I asked her. How could she think of changing? If everyone else ran out and jumped off a bridge would she too?

With Douglas, his mother could come home from a day of clubbing baby seals and he'd chuckle at her spirit of adventure. "You know the arctic is just overrun with those things," he'd say. "They're like pigeons. And make such great over shoulder bags."

When I first met his mother last summer, I called her Mrs. Temperin. They laughed and rolled eyes at me. I was the boyfriend from Boston who couldn't relax enough to use a first name.
My friend Turtle thinks that body altering surgery and procedures are becoming so common place and affordable that it won't be long before we can't tell who has and who hasn't. The once freakish will become the new normal. It's already happened with teeth whitening. Go back and take a look at the 1998 season of Sex and the City. Specifically watch for Cynthia Nixon's smile. She looks like a member of the British Royal Family. A coffee drinker or a smoker or both, her teeth are not white. I don't remember thinking so when I first watched the program years ago. But a recent rerun had me gawking. Apparently I'd come to accept whitened teeth as the norm.

Which brings me back to the face of the future talking to me in the kitchen. I've stopped sneaking peeks at her former wrinkles when I think she's not looking. Maybe in another week I'll look at some pictures from last summer to see if I'm shocked by what used to be there. And maybe I'll finish up that packet of Crest White Strips before heading back to France.