RELATIVE BEAUTIES

I grew up surrounded by great beauties: my mother, her mother and my sister.  I look like my dad, which is perfectly fine, except that I have always been aware of the difference, particularly after stumbling upon the photo album of some of my ancestors on my father's side of the family; most especially the women on those branches off my Great-grandmother's limb.  Putting it bluntly, if strong underbites were correctable one hundred years ago and I were a plastic surgeon, I'd move to Fall River, Massachusetts where I'd have enough money to retire on just from this one family.

Fortunately, I was spared that specific feature; however, not so the round, soft-edged, ruddy-cheeked, moon-pie visage of my Irish ancestry with its marginally comely but very indistinct impact not unlike that of vanilla pudding.   Everyone is indifferent towards vanilla pudding.  If it is in front of you, you'll eat and enjoy it, but otherwise it is an entirely forgettable experience and one you seldom find yourself repeatedly craving.

However, growing up with these extraordinarily attractive women alerted me at an early age to the beguiling and mesmerizing power of beauty while at the same time making me cognizant of the danger in accepting physical comeliness as the standard of beautiful.  Not that any of them were vain (well, my grandmother was, but it suited her larger-than-life, operatic presence), but I saw that, from most people, nothing more was expected or required of them.  They were easily accepted because they were easy to look at and in most cases, popularity was a given.

With my younger sister I was aware from the moment she was beyond drooling that there was a definite visual disparity between us based solely on the response she elicited from the friends of my parent's and even passing strangers.  In point of fact, she was usually readily noticed while I was regarded more like a beige carpet in an all-white room, if I was regarded at all.

My sister was more apt to be feathered with fascinated fingers; fawned and cooed over with gooey delight in a seeming uncontrollable response to her considerably ample adorableness.

In those awkward times when recognition of me was obligatory, it was all very polite and was often accompanied by a remark of vague neutrality like, "My....um... you've grown!"

This dynamic held throughout our childhoods and adolescence, (although the cooing was eventually replaced by deep, heavy sighs) and while we are quite different, in some ways, it remains the standard even today.  However, my sister is a very kind woman and did have the great charity to move to England many years ago, thus sparing me the frequent indignities of direct comparisons.

Actually, I remained emotionally scar-free until our twenty-one-month age difference placed us in the same high school simultaneously.  Then with the predictable burst of teen angst, I became officially bothered by this genetic injustice.  But that goes with the vapid and tentative emotional terrain of high school where vast quantities of otherwise healthy egos are consumed, so that, with few exceptions, by graduation day what remains are gilted facsimiles of peer pressure in corporeal form; all with an attitude.

In retrospect,  I was probably more comfortable than most with my own external shortcomings because I had never know anything else.  I was born into and could not escape the field of physical perfection that was genetically stamped on the women surrounding me and had no other choice but to find a way to individuate myself by other means, which I am sure was a major contributing factor fostering what became a full-scale, drug-fueled, counter-cultural rebellion throughout my teens and early twenties.

Yet even as I staked my claim to radical individuality, I was not unique.  My grandmother was not only beautiful but also a card-carrying eccentric as well as a matron of and participant in the arts.  She was a painter and a cabaret singer at Bill's Gay Nineties in New York City for many, many years.  Never one to shirk a challenge she then trained her voice for opera, and was a frequent performer at venues as well-known and respected as The Waldorf Astoria.

She was also a major drama queen whose insatiable lust for attention knew no bounds and often resulted in considerable residual damage being inflicted upon us, her only family; especially my mother, her only child.   But she was ours and that fact alone qualified her for lifetime benefits of unconditional love.

However, I noticed that among her wide circle of eclectic and eccentric friends; both celebrity and non, how willing they also were to repeatedly forgive her unbridled self-absorption no matter how often they had been cornered by the egocentric beast of her indifference to them.  It was obvious that, at least insofar as her friends were concerned, this forgiveness was more readily forthcoming because she was simply so beautiful and such a dynamic presence in the world.  Even so, I found it a confounding pattern.

My mother is different.  Her beauty radiates from a place of deep refinement and class and the older she gets, the more stunningly breathtaking she becomes.  She was voted the "Best Looking Girl" at her high school, and although now into her late seventies, she shows no signs of becoming less so.

Unlike my flamboyant grandmother, my mother's beauty is carried with an understated and perceptibly regal bearing that staggers onlookers almost to the point that you'd half expect them to ask for the privilege of kissing her ring or to bestow them with knighthood.

In fact, it is not at all uncommon for men or women to approach her when we are out somewhere and ask her who she is, if she is a celebrity, where does she get her hair done and comment on how beautiful she looks in the clothes she is wearing.

When my children were young and we lived in proximity close enough that we could occasionally go shopping at a mall or department store with her, I used to joke that I felt much like Quasimodo must have felt all hunched over slogging after Esmerelda while surrounded by these snot-nosed little gargoyles that passed for my kids.  It was a humbling experience, but also an extremely joyful one in that I was so proud of her and of the fact that I could also state, unequivocally, that I was not adopted.

But I was more inspired by the fact that she took herself and her appearance lightly.  She could have used her disarming beauty to manipulate and acquire whatever she wanted, but she never did, and I know she never will.  Of course, this humility makes her even more beautiful.  Darn it.

I remember when I was in high school complaining to her about the seeming inequity in the heart of God that he would place an average schlep like me in a family of favored graces like she and my sister, whereupon she would remind me of the story about the Ugly Duckling and how he grew to be a beautiful swan.

While I knew she offered this only as a helpful tether of hope to harness my woes to, I don't recall being much comforted by the idea at the time.

First of all, it was a fairy tale and everyone knows fairy tales were written to amuse, appease and morally instruct the masses.  They were a means to placate people into believing that there is always a chance you'll lose that frog face and take breakfast in bed with the queen (or king as the case may be) in that castle on the hill one day if you just keep a handle on that glass slipper, make nice with the seven dwarves, avoid indulging in gingerbread and steer clear of bad-tempered elves named Rumpelstiltskin.

Second of all, who wanted to wait for some unknown future date before they even found out whether they were in fact an ugly, life-long dependent of the Duck family or a truly long-necked Odette under wraps?

Everyone knows that high school is a short-lived, highly demanding time period without any do-overs, and from what I was told, beauty is fleeting!  I didn't have a very big window of opportunity there, so if the Makeover Fairy were going to visit my pain, I was hoping she'd get her ass in gear well before I turned eighteen!

Evidently, she took a wrong turn in Cleveland.

Oddly enough, it has only been since I've begun the half-century waltz with my fifties that I find myself suddenly being singled out and decorated with adjectives and accolades more in keeping with those I've heard directed at my mother and sister these many years.  It is purely genetic.

Rest assured, the irony in the timing of it all does not escape me.

I find it perfectly in keeping with my latent development to experience that blush of appreciation long after gravity has become a major shareholder in my future options.

To finally find myself on the receiving end of positive notice only now that gray hairs dominate blonde;  close observational demands require glasses;  and my abdomen has enough residual scarring from three C-sections and several surgeries that it looks like the switching yard of the Chicago Train Station, will not a narcissist make.

Honestly.  My body is far more tormented than toned, and the girth of future promise is notably eclipsed by the potential girth of my waist, should I ever decided to abandoned my resonant dance with that damned elliptical.  It is a blissful irony surely visited upon me for a reason.  Perhaps some ill-conceived life of hubris in the past or as a preventative measure against conceding to one now?  Who knows?

However, what is obvious is that this perfectly-timed system of checks and balances will ensure that my humility remains intact for the duration of my natural life no matter how wrinkle-free my complexion is.

Aging offers what no other consequence of sentiency can and that is the opportunity to drop all pretense and simply function as a mortal aggregate of all we have assimilated in a lifetime and as a dispensatory vehicle for all we have culled that is good.

Of course, this premise is valid only insofar as we are willing to deeply examine ourselves and rightly decide to end the game with more presence of mind and compassion than when we began, which is a lot easier to accept in theory.

In actuality, the lineage of egocentric behavioral models is long and wide and can be a much stronger opponent than our lilting altruism, especially in moments of weakness or faced with the prospect of one day melding into the faded and brittle-boned pit of geriatric anonymity.

Given the eventuality of our one day hobbling into that walker-laden realm of senior dimensions, it takes a whole lot of grounded focus and dogged introspection to refrain from wanting to lap up every last drop from the fountain of youth and cling to the worldly notion of beauty for as long as we can.

For the most part, I am very pleased to have reached this age and stage in life and don't begrudge the fact that experiencing the youthful, belle of the ball- status was not part of my earlier resume.  It granted my imagination and intellect, however limited, free reign in the experiential processing department and enabled me to discover some precious and invaluable truths about what beauty truly is; and, more specifically, about what it is not.

So, even though I may occasionally be graced with a compliment that has little to do with who I am, what I do or how I see myself and everything to do with what others believe they see on the surface, there is little danger of my assigning any great value to the observation.

And should there ever come a weak, indulgent moment of vanity when I am tempted to think otherwise, all I have to do is remind myself of one other reality:  They have never seen me naked.

Reality?  Check.