REFLECTIONS

Nose job, face lift, and breast enhancements complete, the patient beams at her plastic surgeon and proclaims, "I finally got self-confidence."

Funny, it took me ten years of therapy to "get" mine. It took even longer to gracefully accept the tummy that never goes away and the nose I've never been quite fond of.

But I look in the mirror and see, staring back, a face I recognize. There's a scar on my forehead that's been there since my sled hit a tree when I was five. And another on my chin from standing too close to a golf club in mid-swing.

This face has my mother's eyes and my Grandmother's cheeks. I see my father's smile (and yes, even his nose). It's a face I've known all my life, and I don't mind one bit that it looks a little wiser, a little worn.

This body--with all it bumps and imperfections--has moved around just fine in this world. It has swam in the ocean and hiked up mountains. It has danced until dawn and slept until noon. It has eaten amazing feasts and had fantastic journeys. It has marched, skipped, reclined, sashayed, and stretched. It has been whistled at, greeted warmly and loved.

No botox. No silicone. Yet no less sweet, no less precious.

"What is a weed?" Emerson once asked. "A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered."

With life well-lived, the lines will tell of love and laughter, the gray hairs of many years, the tummy of good nourishment, and the rough soles of heartfelt journeys.

What more is there to "get" than that?

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