The Middle Ages: Looking Like Grandpa!

SPATULA, SPACKLE OR SCALPEL?

In the Middle Ages, most people died by the time they turned 30. The good news: average lifespan today is 80. The bad news: I've seen 80 and it's not pretty. 

Of course, you can always opt for cosmetic surgery but even then, who’s to say you don’t come out looking like Donald Duck?

My mother-in-law is 90. She got a facelift. She's shrunk several inches over the course of my marriage to her son, but while I may be taller, she looks younger. 

I started to look like my mother a couple of decades ago when I noticed two deep parallel boroughs between my eyes. I called them my “shrink lines” because they appeared at the same time I started seeing a psychologist twice a week after I left my first husband. 

It was weird looking in the mirror and seeing Beverly staring back at me. Sure, as a kid, I loved spying on her as she put on makeup in the bathroom and combed her natural red hair until it glowed shiny as an Irish Setter at Westminster. 

On the other hand, she was my mother for cryin’ out loud. I was my own person! I never wore makeup. 

So I started small. A little concealer here, a dab of cream there.

Five years later we moved from the Old Country to Los Angeles. One morning, I stared in the mirror of our Pacific Palisades rental and saw, looking back at me, my father. Without the mustache. My dad had big, brown, sad eyes, which I inherited. As Sam entered the Middle Ages, his face composed itself into the shape of an unclaimed box on the floor of UPS. 

So now here I was, overlooking the bluffs, sporting a totally unhip withered cardboard look. 

I couldn't afford a fresh look from my imaginary friend Rachel Zoe so I resorted to less expensive remedies: anti- aging this, moisturizing that. I learned to accept my fate and resigned myself to a hefty MasterCard balance every month.  

Now I can't live without it. "Hello my name is Marla and I am. . . not as young as I used to be." "Hello Marla!"

Then, three years ago, staring at the mirror in our Tujunga Village duplex, the warrior knight in me rebelled when it looked like I'd suddenly been cast in some sci-fi thriller called FaceJumper.  

That's right: My jawline jumped a generation. 

There was my grandmother staring back, as if the steam from her 20-gallon pot of matzoh ball soup simmering in a third floor walk up apartment wilted in 90 degree Chicago summer heat and humidity, along with scream lines lifted from six caterwauling children had somehow transmogrified my face. 

Jowls, be damned.! Pass me the Spatula.  

From that day forward, I resolved to walk into "polite" society only when I've trussed myself up in full metal armor: mascara, brow tint, SPF day cream, night cream, eye cream, and a Spackle-like gel that lifts things back to the general vicinity of where they once belonged. I pile these helpers atop each other like I'm composing a club sandwich from Art's Deli.

Today I woke up with my thick hair not so lustrous as it used to be, my creases magically enhanced, shocked to find myself midway through the third act of FaceJumper. There in the mirror, staring back at me, it's grandpa! 

Where the hell is Dorian Gray when you need him?