Facing frivolity

So it took me until May 29 before I got up enough nerve to call Joan. When I returned from my US trip, I initially postponed the call to her. It was not that I felt awkward about asking her about her surgery; she had spoken frankly, openly to my husband. Nor did I feel embarrassed about my interest in a facelift since I had been joking about one for years. The excuse for hesitating was the frivolity of a facelift so soon after Mom’s death. At the same time, that event was my very catalyst for calling.

What I vaguely wanted to do, I thought, was to look in real life like I look in my photos. I have one of those faces that photographs well, and this has been a constant through the years. But recently, when I would be showing people a family photo album, they would ask me how many years ago such-and-such a picture was taken -- when it might have been a few weeks earlier. I would laugh and make a joke about it, but the temporal gap between my photographic image and real life was increasing.