"After My Mother's Plastic Surgery, I Couldn't Recognize Her" by R.L. Maizes - O Magazine

O Magazine | July 22, 2020

“I was 34 when my mother changed her face. Too old for tantrums, but that didn’t stop me from having one. Not in front of her—even I wasn’t that self-centered—but among my friends. The softness around her eyes and cheeks was gone, replaced by taut skin and sculpted cheekbones. Looking at pictures, my friends declared her beautiful, but I couldn’t get past that she looked different.

The face I had loved since childhood, that I had gazed at during story and meal times, and that had calmed me when I was anxious about a test or later a job interview, was gone. Just looking at my mother’s face had conjured lullabies and the kisses she bestowed nightly until I moved out of the house. But now that she had altered it, I mourned what was gone. Rightly or wrongly, I felt it had belonged partly to me.”

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