For as long as I could remember, my mother suffered from relentless back pain. By her sixtieth birthday, she couldn’t stand at the kitchen counter for very long without constantly shifting her weight. By sixty-eight, bra shopping had become an exhausting ordeal—ordering several online, returning them all, and reverting to an ancient bra that left deep grooves in her shoulders.
When her seventieth birthday arrived, she finally made a decision she had contemplated for decades: she scheduled a breast reduction.
My father was far from pleased. “You’re already perfect just the way you are,” he insisted.
Mom rolled her eyes. “I am not doing this so you’ll think I look prettier.”
“I know that.”
“Then stop saying it.”
She wasn’t chasing youth. She simply wanted to tend her garden without her shoulders screaming, cook dinner without taking breaks, and live out her remaining years free from physical agony.
