My mother always insisted a woman needs to keep herself up. She couldn't contain her scorn if she saw a woman who was heavy or who had disheveled hair or who wore poorly fitted clothing or--horrors of horrors--had rough looking hands. My mother always noticed those details in every woman she saw and that critical thinking made an impression on me. After I moved away from home, whenever my mother came to visit, I'd be in the bathroom frantically doing my nails, shaving my legs and generally trying to make sure all my bits and pieces were of acceptable standard. Deep inside, I resented what I considered superficial concessions. Then.

As I got older, I understood what she meant. Maintenance is important. When one is a teenager or dabbling in your 20s, you can stay up till 3 am and roll out of bed hours later looking fresh and unmuddled. But the ravages of time do take their toll. One day, you'll stagger out of bed and realize with a fair modicum of terror that you're middle aged. That's when the aspects of maintenance are no longer a luxury; they are a necessity.

There are two options one can take at this junction. You can follow your natural biological path and embrace the gray hair that starts to show up. You can celebrate the laugh lines and the southern descent of your loose bits of skin (boobs, arms). You might even like the ringed fleshiness of your neck and look forward to a future of jowliness. We are human beings. We live! Every moment of life that I have enjoyed is worn on every inch of my skin and I have no regrets.

Fuck that. I am squarely in the alternative camp.

I'm too young to let myself go. (In my mind, I think I will always be too young to let myself go). While I don't want to go to the extreme of plastic surgery and Botox and all those cosmetic treatments that make people look alien-like, I'm not against maintenance to preserve the basic portrait of the pulled together woman my mother promoted. She was right. Age is not an excuse to let yourself go. If anything, this is war, and we have to dig in for the fight.

So I have my hair colored and blown out. I go to the gym. You know I love orange food, so I am forever dieting to some degree or another so that I may have those days where I can consume a pound of delicious fried food and not feel like I've doomed the rest of my life to the wearing of polyester pants without a zipper. I get the regular manicure and pedicure so my hands and feet look nice. I go to the Red Door salon twice a year for the mother of all facial treatments. I copiously moisturize twice a day. I floss. And come the summer, I'll be adding waxing to the mix.

When I was in my 20s and even in my 30s, I never did any of this to maintain my appearance; I usually did my own nails and my beauty routine consisted of Noxema and a Bic razor. Only in my late 30s did I realize that maintenance sometimes requires professional help and that I made enough money to enlist that help. So there you go.

I work with a woman, Norma, who started using every injection and cosmetic enhancement she could find once she hit 40. By her own admission, she's now addicted to regular injections of Botox, Restalyne, Collagen and dermabrasion treatments. I once asked her, "What would you look like if you didn't do all this stuff?" as I squinted at her face, trying to imagine the effects. She stared at me and replied coolly, "Like shit." OK. Each to their own levels of maintenance.

I think my mother would have appreciated that I took up the mantle of maintenance. She watched me with a wary eye as I went through my 20s, wondering if I would fall off the wagon and give in fully to the gluttonous hedonism that is a hallmark of my nature. By end of her life, my mother knew that I had drunk the proverbial Kool-Aid and that I would continue to maintain with the rigor she espoused. And oddly, I'm glad she knew that.