advice from Beulah

The year is 1933 -- my grandmother Ruth is about 19 years old and she's at the movies with three of her best friends (who I believe she met at college).

The movie is "I'm No Angel" by Mae West* and Ruthie and her three friends are giggling through the beginning, middle, and end of the movie, I'm sure -- they were gigglers.

* (the pseudonym I'd use all through my 20s as my bowling ID, the name I'd sign affectionately to friends in letters, and a name I'd occasionally tell a drunk frat guy at the bar to get him off my case--not realizing the connection between Mae, my grandmother and me)

But it was these lines between Mae and her maid that would stay with her forever, passed down to me through laughter for many years:
Mae West: Oh, Beulah
Beulah: Yes, ma'am?
Mae West: Beulah, darling, peel me a grape.

Ruthie and her friends thought this line was so hysterical that for the next seventy years, they would all refer to each other solely as "Beulah." There are at least two living Beulah's today-- my grandmother passed away in her early 90s, and my second favorite Beulah is 95 and just told my mom on the phone that she finds it odd how hard of hearing and "noisy" the "elderly people at her retirement are." She says that eating dinner with them is like watching the "who's on first?" routine and she finds it so amusing that she has to eat with a straight face and then go back to her small apartment to dissolve into giggles at the absurdity and redundancy of senile conversations.
My mother asked if Beulah had a kitchen in her apartment.
"No," she replied, "and I like eating with others, anyway. I do have a mini-fridge but it's not much."
Mom asked, "is that just for your little snacks?"
Beulah, totally seriously, replied "no dear, it's for my vodka tonics."

Beulah, when I knew her, had a cone-shaped perm of red hair and wore a slightly mis-matched but radiantly Tim Burton red lipstick. She's probably all of 4'7" tall, at the most, with a petite but fiercely funny and alive personality. I barely know her, but I love her dearly.

My mom was amazed by how coherent and sharp Beulah was on the phone-- she's 95 and hasn't skipped a beat. Apparently she only paused momentarily to think of a couple words, one being "transcript" and the other was something like "happenstance."

Beulah said she was sad that she had to live in a retirement community and that she would prefer to still be at home, but her neices and nephews were concerned and wanted her there. Mom asked what it was like now that she had moved.
Beulah's answer touched me-- she said that although it wasn't her first choice, she was very happy. She thinks it's important to be happy with what you're doing, and see it with eyes that that's where you are, and it's meaningful. Find meaning where you are...

"the true voyage of discovery..."

Beulah really means it, and although I learned of her philosophy indirectly through my mom, the romantic in me feels like it was a small gift from Beulah and my grandmother to me.

I've been having a really hard time with anxiety and "big picture" thinking lately... while I feel happy, and am trying very, very hard to "do the right thing" with who and where I am, there is no subtlety to the feelings I have and the overt statements from some of my extended family and friends that "I should be elsewhere... doing something more with my life."

My philosophy so far has been to accept that thought, feel it, consider it, and store it away. I'm trying to accept where I am and what I do. I'm repeating to myself that the grass is always greener and if I leave, it's purely for cerebral reasons and visions of grandeur more than a palpable dream. But every time I drive through the roads of my childhood to see my family or friends... every time I see an old peer at a restaurant or show... it's a small sting that I haven't left the place that I so desperately wanted to leave from childhood through my high school graduation.

Beulah's advice makes me want to cry. I can't remember the exact way she put it, but just her firm emphasis that she's not wallowing-- she's LIVING damnit, and we should be, too -- is one I need to learn from. Especially considering how much more she's experienced and loved and lost and learned on this earth than me.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and feel like my face is aging more than it should be. Partially because the media tells me I'm supposed to have the complexion of a fetus, but also because it's changing in some ways. Sometimes I feel like the stress I feel inside is inevitably hurting my body, and the stress that I have because I'm feeling stress is just pathetically adding on to that. And I want to have radiant skin, healthy organs, and a heart that will beat away until my healthy mid 90s.

I want to live a life that's as happy as the happiness I experience every day, whether it's for an hour or 12 hours. I'm a sensitive and anxious but deeply happy and appreciative person, which is a weird and almost impossible combination.

There's something so magical to me about the 95 Mae West impersonator finding humor in "those old people" in her building. And accepting her situation with a full and sincere heart. No matter where we are, we can choose to live our lives consciously, or begrudgingly.

This year, I want to learn how to breathe more deeply-- how to let things roll off my back more easily. I want to adopt more grace and inner strength. I want to continue to feel overwhelmed by the happy moments I have with Tom, my family, my friends, and no matter how sappy it's made me this year, I want to keep experiencing this level of intensely happy and grateful love that I've finally found.
Looking back, it's clear to me how deeply unhappy and claustrophobic I get when I'm unable to vent my worries, especially the deep-down frightening ones... and when I'm unable to express, feel, or receive the heart-tugging joy that really emerges when you love something with your whole heart.

The shmaltz has been turned on. Uhgain.

I'm so appreciative for Beulah's words, and for her spirit. I so hope to be like her, my grandmother, and my mother when I am older.