Just a Little Off the Jowls, Please

THE GOOD NEWS: I had my facelift Friday. Wide awake. Heard the scissors snip, snip. Saw the needle stitch, stitch. Just a mini lift. Didn’t hurt. Drove myself home.

The bad news: On Saturday I dramatically unwrap the stretchy-bandage contraption from under my chin, round and round. “You don’t look any different,” says my sister.

Oh, no! She’s right! Shoot myself now!

“Mom, what was that thing on your head?” asks my 14-year-old son. “Jaw surgery,” I tell him. He considers that for a moment. Then he flips on ESPN and asks for his usual cheese omelet and toast. That’s more good news. For weeks you fret: What to tell the children? Apparently, you can tell them anything. The teenage ones don’t care what you wear on your head. They don’t care if you have a head at all as long as you’re quick with the cheese omelet and toast, which I was, a mere 24 hours after surgery. The oldest child, happily, is away for the summer. I do not yet need to justify to her this demented self-mutilation. But then, what would she know, at 21, of the tyranny of the jowls? Or of how a girl who once had them hopping at gas stations, office parties, just existing in a summer dress—well, how that same girl fades into the background more and more with each passing year until—poof!—she’s invisible?

The morning after the lift, like some matronly version of Dorian Gray, I spend every spare moment staring at myself. It’s what I’ve been doing, pathetically, for months before my “procedure,” maybe 10 times a day. I’ve stared while washing my face, while sitting in the car at a stoplight, while driving 75 mph down I-93. I’ve stared, horrified, whenever I’d catch my drawn reflection at the end of a two-job-six-day-workweek, divorced-mother-of-three day. I’d see how my once sharp jaw line was rounding, sagging; how my once smooth, taut cheeks were collapsing over my mouth. Would my lips be disappearing soon?

Then I’d fantasize. I’d take the index and middle fingers of both hands, pull the skin of my cheeks back, and imagine how I’d look post-knife, how my life and confidence would improve, how I’d now be able to date someone—let’s not get too carried away here—younger than 70, perhaps?

On this Saturday, I have the big hand mirror going, the three-way reflection set up, every angle, up and down and profile. My neck. My jaw. My cheeks. My mouth.

Thankfully, I do not look ridiculous, like Farrah Fawcett. I’m not bruised, hardly swollen; my stitches are well hidden by my ears and hair. But do I look “tighter, younger, rested, energized”—the supposed reward of the so-called weekend mini lift that’s far less drastic than the full-fledged deal? In on Friday, back to work in less than a week, with nary a telltale sign?

At night I visit two of my lifelong friends. Neither tells me how wonderful I look. But one of them does ask why, when I turn to the left or right, I move not just my head but my entire body, as if I’ve swallowed a fishing pole. “Jaw surgery,” I reply.