Botox

I try to blog the positive.

If, and when I blog process, I don’t post until the stream flows back toward the bank of Hallelujah.

Sometimes this causes quiet spaces just like a pause in music creates intervals for breath.

A trio of Sojourners recently visited us Here.

A blessed repast, it also introduced an unwelcome new tradition- how to say goodbye again when the hello still paints your lips sweet like Cookies and Cream ice cream.

The Middle Girl summed it up nicely, “I don’t want to learn how to say goodbye.”

Yeah…

We’re a Hello people.

As such, for now, I will hold the report on their visit until the Hallelujah rings with genuine Thanksgiving replete with word portraits.

Today, I want to share with you instead another astute observation made by the very same Middle Girl, “Mamma, I love how your face wrinkles when you smile.”

_Insert stab-to-the-heart-mid-life-crisis-pain here. _

“Thank you, Baby,” I chuckled after a quick swallow of the vomit in my mouth, “but I don’t think you should say that to any other women.”

“Why not?” she inquired with eyes as wide open as her curiosity.

“Well, Honey, I know that you mean it as a compliment, but some women,” like me you sweet, cruel youngling I cringed to myself, “might think you are calling them old.”

“You’re not old, Mamma! It’s not being old, it’s just that the women here don’t smile with their whole face like you do.”

_Insert stab-to-the-heart-pride here._

You see, Botox is one of the cultural mores Here that is as new to our family experience as, well, Here.

In a somewhat bipolar shift of primacy, we moved from a vortex of cerebral activity where academics were all but elevated to a hive-mind mentality to a coast of aesthetic blitz.

The Middle Child is absolutely accurate in her assertion that many women here do not smile with their entire faces.

It’s not that they are humorless nor unkind; they physically can’t because their faces are purposely paralyzed with botulism.

Like Botox, another of the many other trends I am uncertain how to explain to my 9 year-old daughter is women’s footwear.

The shoes women wear around here to go grocery shopping are straight out of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex in the City.

When a woman wears Grotta Manolo Blaniks, $945.00, grocery shopping at Sweet Bays, it sends a message more arched than Botox brows can physically transmit.

Were it not such a common thing, I would be dismiss it as a simple fluke, or that I am feeling insecure about my look in this new place.

However, it is common enough that my daughter now wonders if I am ever going to wear any other shoes than flip-flops or running shoes and finds the way that I smile different from what she sees on the faces of other Mommies.

It’s a whole new village Here.

What follows some of my Botox FAQS that Google does NOT address:

• If everybody can tell it’s Botox, and the shiny sheen of the foreheads Here are more flax and monotonous than the terrain, doesn’t Botox more advertise affluence rather than youth?
• What happens when the Botox wears off? Does it frighten the children? Do suddenly look like the melting Wicked Witch of the West?
• Don’t the track marks in your brow line itch?
• Are you often misunderstood as your facial expressions don’t match your words?
• Doesn’t it hurt?

I’ve got questions about the shoes and clothes too, but for now I will leave you with a sarcastic grin that makes my eyes squint.

Well I heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do ya?
Well it goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah!