On Maintenance

I recently reread Nora Ephron’s, I Feel Bad About My Neck and was immediately engrossed in her insight and humor. When I got to the section “On Maintenance” – a seemingly superficial essay on female appearance – I recognized myself. According to Ephron, “After a certain point, it’s just patch patch patch. Maintenance is what you have to do just so you can walk out the door knowing that if you go to the market and bump into a guy who once rejected you, you won’t have to hide behind the canned goods.”

I wasn’t worried about running into a guy who once rejected me, but I recognized the issues I have with my own maintenance as I age. I’m now 67, and it’s not getting any easier.

As my mother aged, she relied on what she called her “glamour” (it was more glitz). She wore false eyelashes, sparkly clothing, too much jewelry, a teased bob, and long, brightly-painted nails into her nineties. She shunned plastic surgery, though. “I’m too old for that.” Despite all her glitz, she was forever grateful she wasn’t a “great beauty.”

“Great beauties with flawless features have to keep it up,” she told me. “The gift is not to have been born a great beauty. You have nothing to lose. So, I developed a personality,” she explained. “A good personality goes much farther than flawless beauty and that’s how I landed the third husband.”

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I got what my mother called “the gift.” I’m not a great, flawless beauty, either. Nothing to lose. Nonetheless, I try to maintain what I have – or desire to have. Call me superficial, but I love all aspects of maintenance – except, of course, those pesky important things like mammograms, physicals, and the dreaded colonoscopy.

I’m vain, but not the out-of-control vain like the sixty-something woman in Pilates yesterday who couldn’t keep her eyes off herself in the long mirror. I was in Row 2 behind that woman who was absolutely mesmerized with her reflection. I’m more mirror-avoidant and sometimes wince when I see a bad picture of myself. When given a compliment, I tend to defer back to the person who offered it: “Oh, you are so kind, but you look great!

Still, even us not-great-beauties want to look and feel our best. I’m a balance of what Nora refers to as “’Status Quo Maintenance,’ the things you have to do daily, or weekly or monthly, just to stay more-or-less even” and “Pathetic Attempts to Turn Back the Clock.”

On the Status Quo side of things are hair, nails, and of course lipstick.

My obsession with my hair has gotten worse with age.  I’m in awe of those women who’ve stuck with the same hairdresser for twenty years. I’m lucky if I have the same hairdresser for twenty minutes. Seriously. I’ve searched out what my mother termed “Hair houses” up and down the state of California. Once, after getting a great cut in San Francisco on a work trip, I flew back there for a trim a month later.

This past year, I found the perfect hairdresser in Newport Beach while at a conference. The concierge had good hair. “Where do you go?” I asked. The months that followed, I made the hour and a half drive each way from Pasadena to Newport to get that cut. That lasted until I was on vacation in Carlsbad this summer and tried someone new.  “I’ve found the best hairdresser!” I told my friends. “Five stars on Yelp!” Now, I’ll be driving fifty miles further south. It’s crazy since I live mere miles from the heart of tinsel town with salons that scream high-end hair with a price to match. And, yes, I’ve gone that route, too. Fun to sit next to celebrities but leaving a salon $700 out of pocket for a cut and a basic root touch-up is way beyond. I could have bought a Hermes bangle for that. My mother’s words came to mind as I handed over my Amex to the young woman behind the desk. “You’re not in front of a camera,” my mother would say, “It’s asinine to spend that much.”

When it comes to my nails, I’m not much better. I’ve had it all - acrylics, gels, dips, gel-X’s and now I’m into a natural nail. I’ll be bored with that soon, I’m sure. I swap nail salons every few months. Surprisingly, I don’t venture as far afield, though I just found a new nail technician in the Valley after seeing the beautiful manicure on my friend who lives on the westside. Minutes after we’d had coffee in Pasadena, I was on the 101 headed to get that Dazzle Dry manicure like a drunk seeking booze. Dare I tell my friends I’m at yet at another salon?

Now, the hunt has come to include eyeglasses. Just a quick note here about eyeglasses. I should be wearing them all the time now. My eyesight has gone south and now I need progressive lenses. Recently, at a luncheon, I complimented Autumn, a beautiful fifty-ish woman wearing hip new eyeglasses. “Where’d you get them?” I asked. She lived in Malibu (of course she did) and told me of an optical shop on trendy Montana Avenue in Santa Monica.

Yep, had to have them. Drove out there, tried them. Ordered my prescription and in two weeks they arrived. I slipped them on and went to the bathroom mirror that has the best lighting. Wait? What? I don’t look anything like Autumn!

“You like them?” I asked my tolerant husband, Hank.

“They look good. But, don’t you have like five other pairs of glasses?”

I thrive on finding the next best place or person to “paste paste paste” as I age. The thing is, for me the pursuit of “maintenance” is fun. A hobby of sorts. My friend, Randi, agrees. “Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, it becomes boring.”

Which brings me to lipstick. As I’ve aged, this is where I really go off the deep end. I have to find the right shade of nude pink and the occasional red. My late mother’s spirit whispers in my ear, “What is wrong with you? I wore Revlon’s Chrystal Cut Coral for years.”

My sister once sent an eyeball emoji to my phone when I told her I was at the lipstick counter in Nordstrom, as if she were my AA sponsor trying to keep me from relapse. Still, it’s a cheap fix, really. A tube of the “right” lipstick can bring great joy to my shallow mind for a mere $34. “I’ve found the one!”

Yeah, just tell that to the collection in my bathroom drawer. It’s insane. One day I added up the lipsticks. Let’s just say it was more like an Hermes shawl than a bangle. I guess it could be worse. I could be in a bar somewhere. Rationalization…

Then there are the trying-to-turn-back the clock efforts, like the cosmetic injectables. I dipped into that world in my mid-fifties. It started creep-mousy with Botox, the entry level injectable.

“Just do the 11’s between my eyes,” I told my dermatologist.  Later, I came clean to Hank.

He gave me a worried look. “Is this safe?”

“Well, if it’s not, most of Beverly Hills would be dead within a week,” I said, parroting my sister.

Before my daughter’s wedding, I started with fillers. “Lifts droopy jowls. Reduces the signs of aging and adds volume and definition to the face.” I was in.

That worked for a while, but I kept going. And going. Soon, after two syringes of Juvéderm and an injection to fill my lips, I looked like the main character in the movie “Scream.” I had to have those luscious, youthful lips, right? Oh, I got ‘em alright. Besides having monkey mouth, I looked like I lost the fight.

Hank, my daughter, and daughter-in-law all begged me. “Please, no more fillers!”

I agreed. Botox, though, still doing a little of that. Did you know they do it in the neck?

“Can you still swallow?” my sister asked.

Interestingly, the one area that I’m not all hot-and-cold, obsessed, trying new things every other week is when it comes to maintaining my weight and fitness. I lost the fifty extra pounds at Weight Watcher’s as a teen and have never wanted to return to the discomfort and unhappiness I felt when I was overweight. I’m disciplined with my eating. Something Hank has said that he wishes I had with my spending, but that’s another story.

As a part of that maintenance, working out is vital. It’s how I stay fit and deal with stress, and during rough times, has been my salvation. While my mother was dying, the dark room at SoulCycle was where I worked through the anxiety, pedaling on a bike that went nowhere.

Despite those workouts, I now find I’m waking up stiff most mornings. Ya gotta love aging! And though I used to swim daily laps in my fifties, it’s now been more than a decade since that was my routine. Last week, when I took my five-year-old granddaughter to the pool, I realized my swimming had gone downhill. My granddaughter and I were over in the deep end. “C’mon Baba, lets swim to the blue lines,” she said. I had to dogpaddle my way over to the middle of the pool. “How about we go back to the shallow end,” I suggested, hungrily looking at the edge to make my way back to the shallow end like a scared toddler.

Oh, to be relaxed like my mother. If only I’d loosen up with the maintenance, would I be happier as I age? I sometimes wonder if, with all the time I’ve spent “maintaining myself” I could have written another book or accomplished something tangible.

And, what if I find that perfect lipstick, that hairdresser or that nail salon? For real, I’ll know the pursuit is over. And then what?

Well, I’ll still have maintenance to keep up and according to Nora “when I’m old and virtually unemployable, I’ll at least have something to do.”