The Beauty Vortex

      I saw my dermatologist last week for an annual checkup. His office is upstairs in an inviting two story Spanish style building in La Jolla. There's a spacious balcony that runs in front of the second story offices and down below is a Saltillo tiled open courtyard. Lush palm trees stand in a center planter and masses of red geraniums circle the base. It looks as if years ago it might have been a seaside motel where glamourous celebrities escaped Hollywood glitz.

Dr. B's waiting room is handsome and personal. There's a glass-front case full of his grandfather's old-fashioned medical instruments and text books. Framed photos of mountains and rivers and ski slopes point to Dr. B's leisure pursuits, and on this visit there's a book of New Yorker cartoons on the coffee table in the corner. An inscription inside says something clever about Dr. B's intelligent wit.

Every year it's the same drill. Dr. B opens the waiting room door, says he's so glad to see me, and ushers me into the examining room. And every year we have this exchange:

                Cathy:  I want my skin to look like yours. 

                Dr. B:  Are you wearing sunscreen? 

I am not at all convinced that Dr. B has flawless skin because he wears sunscreen, no matter how many different brands of it he has on the ledge above his antique writing desk. But knowing him, he probably started protecting his skin at a very young age. I was busy frying my skin with cocoa butter and baby oil back then, which is why I go to the dermatologist now.

Anyway, after inspecting me head to toe, Dr. B sat back in his grandfather's chair that matches his desk, took off his huge black magnifying glasses, and said,

                What have you been doing for skin care? 

I was tempted to give him the old Washing with a mild cleanser and wearing sunscreen ruse, but I decided instead to get brave and go with the truth. I took a deep breath.

                Truthfully? I've been sucked into the vortex of the Nordstrom 
                cosmetic department. 

                Oh no! he said, feigning surprise. Please, not that! 

I insisted unconvincingly that most of my visits to the vortex have involved trying samples, but I also admitted that I've been on a rather expensive personal quest for the perfect eye cream. One that would eliminate dark circles, puffiness, and years. He must have heard this before because without missing a beat he said,

                It's all a waste of money. There's only one thing that works. 
                Here, I'll give you a prescription. 

I left Dr. B's handsome, personal office wondering if maybe I needed a 12-step program for vortex captives. I held a prescription in my hand for the only thing that works and it didn't feel satisfying at all. No subtly elegant packaging design, no marketing enticements, no free gifts or special Nordstrom scent. Nothing.

What I didn't tell Dr. B is that a couple of months ago one of the vortex companies sent me a sample of their eye cream. It was absolutely, totally perfect and I could buy it without a prescription. But when I went to order it online I discovered it cost $600 for a half ounce. Morgan wanted to know why the most expensive vortex company in the world knew my name and address. It does make one wonder. Maybe they knew about my quest and thought that sooner or later I would fall hook, line, and sinker for someone's ploys. Maybe they wanted to reel me in before anyone else snagged me. That's a scary thought.

On the way home from my appointment with Dr. B I stopped by a different vortex store at the mall, one that only sells cosmetics. As I walked up and down the aisles I saw women and men of all ages questing for beauty, and I realized my eye cream searching days had come to a quiet end. It was fun for a season, albeit a rather long, expensive, and mostly ineffective season. And sadly, after all the samples and wooing by the vortex, I somehow felt less beautiful than before. As I walked out of the store, I caught a glimpse of myself in one of the mirrors and decided it was time to opt out of the vortex lie and enjoy being me. Set free.

The Mexican Lime Tree

     

        We have a 36" green glazed planter in the back half of our patio, just past the wooden arbor smothered with flowering Mandevilla. Terra cotta shows through the glaze and creates the lip of the pot, matching the worn bricks on the ground. It was one of those way too heavy purchases that causes delivery men to groan to each other: Let's quit our jobs before she buys anything else! But I loved the thought of putting something unexpectedly enormous in my patio and bought it on the spot.

The day the planter was delivered, I met my gardener at the wholesale nursery and bought a Mexican lime tree. It's the kind with little round yellow fruit that are juicy green inside. The guys loaded the tree into the back of Maximino's truck with five bags of soil holding it in place. When we got back to my house Max placed and planted the newly adopted tree in the patio and there it grew and flourished. And all was well for three years.

Then about a month ago, when it was time for regular fertilizing, my husband helped me drag a big bag of citrus food out of the shed and offered to help dig it in. It was really nice of him, but instead of measuring out two cups of the grainy mix to sprinkle around the trunk, he dumped almost half the bag into the planter and dug it into the soil. To be fair it was half a bag between three potted citrus trees and it could have been a great idea to give the new tree a super boost, but it didn't turn out to be. (Morgan thought the incident was kind of amusing and he's chuckling right now reading this. Chuckling!)

Anyway, four days after the fertilizer mishap all the leaves from the new tree turned crunchy brown and  fell lifeless onto the bricks. Actually there were still a few leaves on the tree but they were fluttering and falling as I stood watching. It was tragic. I tried to flush out the extra fertilizer with long, deep soaks from the hose but the runoff was a terrible deep copper color that dyed the bricks, so I gave up.

I was kind of a brat about the whole thing, but not a total brat. I tried to focus on how funny this would have been as an additional scene in "Father of the Bride". Steve Martin would kill the new tree while trying to be helpful, the girls would roll their eyes in disbelief, and then they'd call Franc to save the day. That made our real life situation seem semi-funny. Semi-funny.

After several weeks of avoiding the back half of the patio altogether, and after Morgan tried repeatedly  to convince me that "The tree still has life in it!", he agreed to cut it down. We were ready to start over with a new tree and forget the trauma of the old one. It was sad because Morgan truly believed in the tree and was willing to nurse it back to health. I wondered aloud if that meant putting more fertilizer on it and rather quickly morphed into a scary version of the Queen of Hearts. Off with its head! Not my best hour.

So Morgan cut down the tree to 28". I only know the height because I went out there to measure it. It looked - I don't know - odd sticking up out of the dirt with no branches or leaves, in a lovely 36" glazed pot. But after congratulating myself for moving on emotionally -- which I don't do well -- I started to dream about a Bearss lime. Nice, juicy variety, no thorns or seeds.

For a long time the planter and the tree continued to sit right there, outside Morgan's study, looking desolate. I wished he had dug it up and put it in the green recycling bin instead of leaving the stump there to haunt me. It looked lifeless and ugly, a dead monument to what had been.

But then this morning something amazing happened. Morgan was at his desk trying to work and I was leaning back on his massage chair trying to chat with him. I saw him look up from his computer and glance outside, and then suddenly he grabbed the window sill and leaned toward the open window. "Hey, look at that!" he said triumphantly. And there they were - beautiful, lush little green leaves popping out all over the stump. I'm pretty sure I saw Morgan and the leaves do a silent high-five, and the story began anew.

There's a saying that God brings beauty out of ashes. The times I've noticed that happening in my life it seemed like the remaking was completely unrelated to my attitudes or judgments or decisions or endless efforts or faith or lack of faith. It was more like a life force that shoved and pushed its way through the hopelessly dead and abandoned parts, insisting on life. And nothing could stop it. Just like you can't stop (and why would you want to?) the green growth that appears out of the ashes of forest fires, and the new leaves that jump out of unwatered stumps of a trees. Life pushes through.


"He has sent me to comfort all who mourn...
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified."

Isaiah 66:3