Sweet Surrender (4 page)

‘I want to grow old without facelifts . . . I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I've made.'

—Marilyn Monroe

These words – so bravely spoken, but so sad to read now – sum up how most younger women feel about cosmetic surgery. When your face is still smooth and line-free, you have absolutely no idea how you will feel when the first major signs of ageing appear. Poor Marilyn never had the chance to live to a ripe old age, and we will never know how she would have looked at sixty or seventy had she stuck to her guns and resisted plastic surgery.

When I was younger I felt exactly the same way as she did. I was critical of women who felt so insecure about themselves that they would submit to the surgeon's knife in order to cling to their fading youth and beauty. I had read Germaine Greer and was a big fan of her take on how women had been manipulated by the male-dominated medical profession and the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. My views were political as well as emotional. I didn't like the idea of being swept
up in a tide of vain women incapable of accepting the natural results of living their lives, who allowed themselves to be ‘got at' by the media and the advertising industry. I continued to feel this way very strongly – until I hit fifty! It's easy to be judgemental about all sorts of things until you find yourself affected by them.

Genetics has a lot to do with how our faces age. Those of us with Celtic complexions who grew up as beach babes in the fifties and sixties have paid the price in later life. At menopause, our skin also starts to deteriorate rapidly as our hormonal levels drop. The combination of the two effects can be truly disturbing.

For me, this sudden facial ageing really started in my early fifties, and accelerated at such a rate that I became alarmed. Until then my face had been comparatively unlined and my jawline smooth, but it seemed as though overnight I developed pouchy jowls, and my face began to look worn and weather-beaten. No amount of cosmetic creams or make-up could cover what I feared was rapidly advancing old age.

Out of curiosity, I experimented with a Botox treatment, enduring a series of injections to smooth the lines on my forehead between my eyebrows. Although it wasn't painful, it was expensive, and I didn't like the sensation of numbness that accompanied the effect. I decided I would rather have a few frown lines than an expressionless forehead.

But my anxiety about my face falling apart returned with full force when the daytime television show was proposed, and I saw some of the pilot footage. While I was more than prepared to acknowledge I was at least fifteen years older than any of the other women in the auditions, I felt miserable that in the close-ups I often looked saggy and tired – not so much when I was talking and animated, but when I was in repose.

Like so many women of my age I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom, and pulled back the skin on either side of my face to try to imagine how it would look if I had a facelift. I liked the ‘tightened up' me and started to make tentative enquiries about plastic surgeons and the various procedures that were available.

David disagreed entirely with my perception of what was happening to my face, but then again he rarely notices if I put an auburn rinse in my hair or buy a new dress. He was quite horrified when I first suggested I might do something ‘surgical' to pull my face back into line. But in November 2004 after some research, I decided on a cosmetic surgeon and booked an appointment anyway. I wasn't prepared for the clandestine nature of the industry. Apparently people having ‘work done' insist upon total discretion and often husbands and boyfriends are kept in the dark completely. When the receptionist phoned the day before to confirm my appointment – I wasn't at home at the time – she refused to say who she was or why she was calling to David, who became irritated by all the secrecy. When I arrived at the doctor's rooms I was ushered into a private waiting room just in case someone who knew me arrived at the same time. I found this cloak and dagger approach quite hilarious.

The surgeon took some ‘before' photos and we discussed the various options. I didn't want a full facelift – I dislike that artificial, stretched look that I have seen on other women. I was a fifty-five-year-old grandmother and I was happy to look my age. I just wanted my ragged edges tidied up – the good old euphemism ‘nip and tuck' was all that I desired. He recommended an ‘S-Lift', which concentrates on the lower half of the face, mainly the jawline. It was proper surgery, requiring an overnight stay in hospital and an anaesthetic. It amazed me how quickly the whole thing was organised – almost before I had time for a moment's reflection I was getting ready to trot off to hospital.

I was told to buy some concentrated spray-on arnica, to squirt under my tongue several times a day in the weeks leading up to the surgery. Arnica is a fantastic natural antidote to bruising and my doctor believed that having a good dose of it in your system before the operation would help prevent any massive swelling as a reaction afterwards. I dutifully squirted the arnica in my mouth and cut back on my drinking, again to prevent a post-operative reaction.

As I lay in pre-op a few weeks later, I reminded the surgeon that I didn't want radical surgery, just a subtle effect – the bare minimum. He was drawing lines on my skin to follow with a scalpel. David had opposed my decision. A hospital phobic, he had nightmares about me having an anaesthetic and the possible complications that could arise. And what if I ended up looking like a gargoyle? Despite my growing reservations, it was far too late to change my mind.

When I woke, I felt fine, although I was told that I had suffered a minor reaction to the anaesthetic during the operation. I had a strap around my face but didn't feel any pain or even much discomfort. It seemed like a doddle. Although I was still a bit groggy, I got chatting to the woman in the next bed. She was recovering from a lumpectomy for breast cancer, and was visibly distressed and quite fearful about her outcome. She didn't ask the reason for my surgery, and I didn't volunteer it. By now I was on a fully fledged guilt trip. Here I was feeling comparatively bright and breezy after what had been an elective procedure based on vanity. There she was struggling to come to terms with the possibility that her operation may not have succeeded in ridding her body of cancer cells. She was facing both chemo and radiotherapy. I was going home to rest for a couple of days until the swelling went down, then to go merrily on with my life. It felt very wrong.

I was also keenly aware of the shortage of hospital beds for much more valid elective procedures. Lack of theatre time and post-operative beds is a major cause of our medical system's long waiting lists, and I couldn't help but wonder just how many plastic surgery procedures were clogging up the system. My surgery day had been booked within weeks of my initial consultation. It was a private hospital, but the theatre and my bed could have been put to better use. I wondered how the nursing staff felt about this situation, and that made me squirm even more. I was very keen to get home.

True to his word, the surgeon had gone gently with the knife and two weeks after the surgery it was virtually impossible to detect that
anything very much had been done. I noticed a much smoother jawline – those little pouchy bits on my chin, directly below my mouth, had vanished, but otherwise I looked very much the same, perhaps just a little less haggard. I told quite a few friends but then stopped mentioning it, and nobody commented. Nobody said ‘Gosh, you look fantastic', or ‘Have you been on a holiday? You look so relaxed', or ‘How do you keep yourself looking so young?'. I certainly didn't look thirty-five, or even forty-five. I still looked like a woman in her fifties, and for that I was grateful.

What I didn't realise then is that if you seriously want to intervene in the ageing process, it's like being on a treadmill – very hard to get off. During my six-week post-op visit, the receptionists and assistants in the surgeon's glamorous rooms were effusive about the results – that's their job. They immediately suggested that I should get some Botox and Restylane fillers to ‘go with' the S-Lift. They talked about me coming back regularly for more treatments – suggesting the area under my eyes could do with some work and that I could also have work done on my neck and chest area. There's the rub. If you have a facelift you have to be prepared for the fact that it won't match the age of the rest of your body – your neck and your décolletage and your arms and your hands. Since my nip and tuck all those other parts of me have started to crumble, and quite frankly I no longer care. Well, I
do
care because I wish my skin was young and smooth and firm again. But I am finally reconciled to the inevitability of my physical decline.

The happiest time of my life was when my children were growing up. I loved every aspect of motherhood and from the age of twenty-two defined myself by that role. Looking back, I probably wasn't the best mother in the world, but at the time I certainly felt very much in control. I loved being the mistress of my home, organising the kids, cooking the meals and beavering away in my garden. I always worked in paid employment as well, but that too was a pleasurable experience. I was young and energetic and full of the joy of life.

It surprised me when our four children, as teenagers, opted for serious relationships rather than flitting from boyfriend to girlfriend. They all had a couple of minor flings during the experimental stages that young people go through when they first discover the opposite sex, but within a few years appeared to settle into relationships with one ‘special' person. They wanted commitment and permanency. Some parents might have discouraged this trend. I could have pushed them to concentrate on their careers and play the field rather than sliding so comfortably into domesticity, but I didn't.

Nevertheless, living in the Blue Mountains meant that once they finished high school they needed to leave home to pursue further
educational and career opportunities. Tony went to an apprenticeship in Sydney, Miriam moved to Canberra to study at university, Aaron travelled north to Lismore to study horticulture, and eventually our youngest son, Ethan, did the same.

Tony was the last to fall in love, the first to marry. He and his beautiful girlfriend Simone had a fairytale wedding in the garden. They lived and worked in Sydney, both had successful and well-paid careers and were planning to save for their first home. The future was rosy.

Miriam had a steady boyfriend when she left home to go to university to study arts/law and then communications, but after that relationship broke up she fell in love with Rick, and in the last year of her degree she gave birth to Eamonn, my first grandchild. I was delighted, but also somewhat surprised when they announced the pregnancy. To both David and me, Miriam always appeared such a focused career girl, an academic overachiever who would probably end up in some high-powered city job, delaying partnership and parenthood until her late thirties. Not so. Miriam and Rick moved back to the Mountains – then to Bathurst – and over the next decade had three more beautiful boys, Samuel, Theo and Augustus. Eventually they moved to Adelaide, so that Miriam could follow her passion for natural childbirth by enrolling in the three-year Bachelor of Midwifery degree offered by Flinders University. She's a fine example of how her generation embraces change without fear: from law to communications to midwifery – I sometimes wonder what she will do next!

Aaron left school before the HSC and worked as a trainee landscaper – inspired, I suspect, by my passion for gardens and plants. At the time he had a steady girlfriend and several of his friends had decided to do university degrees in Lismore, so he enrolled in a TAFE horticulture course to formalise his qualifications. For various reasons Aaron's friends gradually dropped out of their studies and returned to the Mountains. He was lonely and, I now realise, quite depressed but he stuck it out. When he returned home he reconnected with Lorna, a girl from his
high school days. They set up house together and Aaron continued to work and study. Like Aaron, Lorna was a very hard worker, grounded and responsible, and a lot less wild than his previous girlfriends. Once again I was surprised when they announced that Lorna was pregnant. She looked a little shocked too – it was unplanned – but Aaron was over the moon. Hamish was born not long after Miriam's second child, Sam, so suddenly we had three lovely little boys in the family. Two years later – it was the year I spent six months living alone in France – Aaron and Lorna produced their second child, our first grand-daughter, Ella Mary.

Ethan, our youngest by five years, grew up even more quickly than his older siblings. He left school early and studied music in Sydney for a year, then became involved in a relationship with Lynne, who was keen to study horticulture and the environment. They moved in together, somehow surviving on a very modest income, and formed a tight-knit team from the beginning. They travelled north to study and lived frugally, even managing to save for an ancient car on their student allowances. After graduating, they moved back to the Mountains and – wanting to inspire them and to broaden their horizons – I suggested that they save up and go to stay in the little village house that David and I had bought in south-west France. Save they did. They moved back into our house, worked three or four jobs at a time, and within six months had cobbled together their airfares and spending money. I was delighted, believing this would open a door to the world for them. Even though I was thrilled with my grandchildren, part of me was a little sad that Miriam and Aaron would almost certainly be tied down for many years to come with the responsibilities of parenting when their friends of a similar age were forging ahead in their careers and travelling the world. So I really wanted Ethan and Lynne to travel and to enjoy their youth to the full.

They headed off to France and I went off to lead one of my trekking tours. I was staying in a small hotel high in the Indian Himalayas when a call came through from Miriam with the news that Ethan
and Lynne were expecting a child. To say I was stunned would be an understatement. When I managed to get through to them they told me Lynne had been feeling unwell since they first arrived in France, and that eventually she had tests which revealed her pregancy. They were both quite happy, though naturally a little surprised by the prospect, and unfortunately it meant that they would have to come home several months early because the airlines won't allow anyone over thirty-two weeks pregnant to travel on an international flight.

Lynne often felt unwell during her pregnancy but, despite that, she and Ethan had a fantastic time in Frayssinet, where they were embraced by the local community. Then they flew home – Lynne barely looked pregnant at all – and seven weeks later tiny Isabella was born. She was the smallest baby I had ever seen – terrifyingly small – with a thatch of red hair and translucent skin. She was exquisite, but something about her seemed not quite right. In France they had been warned that various prenatal test results indicated that their unborn child was at risk of a ‘chromosomal disorder', but the paediatrician in the delivery room declared that she was ‘small but perfectly formed and normal'. The whole family adored her from the first moment. It turned out that Isabella did indeed have problems, which only emerged gradually, becoming more serious with time. However Ethan and Lynne bravely went on to have second child – this time a large and healthy boy. They named him Caius, the first name of Julius Caesar, quite a moniker for our youngest grandchild to grow into.

In 2005, a few months after
The Long Hot Summer
was published, Ethan and his family came to live with us at the farm while they were saving for a house of their own. The plan was that they would build on the five-acre block at the back of the farm, which is separated from the main part of the property by the old Sydney road. We loved the idea that they would be living nearby. It meant that we could help with the children, while Ethan and Lynne could help keep an eye on the farm when we were away travelling for work.

The local council had other ideas. Our farm had once been in the Evans Shire which, like so many regional councils across the state, was amalgamated with a larger council nearby (Bathurst City) to form a super council. The rationale was that that the administrative costs would be greatly reduced. After the amalgamation there was a moratorium on subdivisions in our region and, in principle, I agree it was necessary. It's disheartening to see productive farmland being carved up into lifestyle building blocks. However, our vacant block was certainly not productive, being covered with scrub, weeds and noxious pine tree seedlings from surrounding state forests. It needed a lot of environmental management, and Ethan and Lynne would have been just the couple to restore it brilliantly, with their horticultural and environmental bush management qualifications. When it became clear that the council was not about to make any exceptions, they continued to save with a view to buying a house back in the Blue Mountains when they could afford it, and in the meantime they lived with us.

By this time, Isabella had been diagnosed with a range of quite severe disabilities, and was in need of constant care and attention, day and night. David and I had become accustomed to living alone as a couple, and we knew we would have to adjust to having a young family in the house, especially given Isabella's problems and the recent strains on our marriage. David was worried that it might be stressful to have so many people suddenly living under the same roof, but I thought it would be good for us all. I have always enjoyed the atmosphere of a lively house full of people, and having children around is very grounding.

Child locks were fitted to the kitchen cupboards and the pantry shelves were rearranged so that only unbreakable items were on the lower shelves. Like many men after they reach middle age, David isn't relaxed about change. I was aware of him muttering and mumbling because he ‘couldn't find anything' in the pantry, and struggling to unlatch the childproof locks on the cupboards. In recent years he had taken over the laundry, doing my washing as well as his own. Suddenly the
laundry was filled with buckets and basins for soaking – both Isabella and Caius were in nappies and Isabella's feeding pump sometimes popped apart, leaking the pungent formula onto sheets and towels – and there was a mountain of washing to be done every day. The family room was filled with children's toys and various large pieces of equipment used for Isabella's daily occupational therapy and physiotherapy. Everything was very neatly stowed away and not scattered underfoot, but having a two-year-old bouncing around in his pyjamas during David's precious television news time was a bit unsettling for him at first.

But I just loved it. Even though I was working in my office most of the day, I could come out and spend some time with Isabella or Caius to free up their mother if she needed to do something else. Lynne is a super-organised, efficient young woman; she couldn't have survived the difficulties of caring for a disabled child and a toddler at the same time without being on top of everything. We took turns in planning menus and cooking. Lynne is very strict about Caius's diet – much as I was with my children when they were kids.

As well as travelling back to the Blue Mountains for his job, Ethan did a tremendous amount of work around the farm. Like all the farms around us we have been suffering from the drought – years of it – and our water supply from the spring had become fragile. Ethan encouraged us to abandon the idea of keeping stock while water reserves were so low, and he redesigned and rebuilt the fencing so that when the day finally comes that we are once again able to put animals out to graze, they won't be able to walk through the wetland or trample and despoil the creek or the dams that flow into it. He also eradicated the broom and blackberry that had started to proliferate in various paddocks and set aside an area for natural bush regeneration. The trees that have seeded on that hillside are now well over three metres tall.

Living in an extended family requires tolerance and compromise. For twenty-six years while the children were growing up, my mother, Muriel, lived with us at Leura, and it required a lot of give and take
from all of us to make it work. Having our young family at the farm reminded me of how carefully the situation had to be managed. It was harmonious most of the time, but there were some hair-trigger moments. Ethan needed to get up extremely early to shower for work. David was also in the habit of rising early, to make his ritual three cups of coffee that allow him to ‘ease into' the day. Our water pressure at the farm is pretty dodgy, reliant on a pump to send water into the kitchen and bathroom. Some mornings David inadvertently had the taps flowing in the kitchen during Ethan's shower, leaving the poor boy shivering under a pathetic cold drizzle. Words were spoken. Yet this living arrangement, so common in previous generations when young married couples often stayed with their parents until they found their feet financially, ultimately became very agreeable and cosy.

David loves small children, but doesn't have a natural aptitude with them. This interlude enabled him to develop a delightful relationship with his youngest grandson. One of David's chores is to care for our flocks of geese, ducks and chicken, which involves releasing the geese to graze every morning, feeding and watering the remaining birds and collecting the eggs. In the evening the eggs are collected, water freshened, and geese rounded up for the night. Caius took to helping his grandfather with this task, and the sight of the two of them striding purposefully down to the poultry yard together every morning, each holding a walking stick, did my heart good.