Friends

I had coffee with my good friend Ben today. We had a great conversation about what was going on in our lives and about theatre. It was as if we'd picked up where we left off months ago, the last time we had time to talk.

Ben is my brother. The kind of brother most girls dream of having. Challenging, always asking us to do our best, and, at the the same time, totally supportive. Ben saw my potential as an actor and helped me to recognize it. I've been committed to his vision of theatre for years because his aesthetic is exquisite. We complement each other in outlook and temperment. You don't come upon many friends like that.

I've been blessed with so many good friends. Friends who are my family. I don't who said that we are blessed with two families in our lives--those we are born to and those we gather around us. I've been truly blessed with both. My friends are my treasure.

As I look to 2010, I want to find more time for my treasures. I've been reclusive, especially this last year. I need more face time with my friends. I think that's a good beginning on my resolution list.

Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn has always been my ideal of feminine beauty. I envied her long beautiful neck, her doe eyes, her dancer's poise. She was simply elegant.

As a pudgy, round-faced girl child, I longed for her waifish, yet womanly figure and her innate sense of style and sophistication. She looked beautiful even with her tattered raincoat, wet hair, and make-up smeared by rain and tears in the closing scene of "Breakfast at Tiffany's." I yearned to be beautiful like Audrey Hepburn.

I was a large-sized, short-necked, round-faced woman when I discovered Audrey's inner beauty--her devotion to her family, her service to the world's children through UNICEF. I envied her again--this time for her ability to hold a child limp from hunger, bone thin and cover with flies and to look on this tragedy with loving compassion. She embraced the children the world would throw away. She loved them and gave them hope.

There she was, my feminine ideal, surrounded by dirty, chattering, rail-thin, disease-ridden children, all smiling at this beautiful woman, no longer young, but still poised, elegant. In spite of the heat, the dust, the despair, she glowed.

Audrey Hepburn said about beauty, "For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.” It does not surprise me that she would speak these words. She seemed so comfortable with herself.

If I were to pursue Audrey's beauty, it is the beauty of her soul that I would seek. I do pursue beauty in my own way, but too often I get caught up in the desire for long neck and elegance. I get caught up in the illusion of perfect figure, hair, face. But occasionally, when my grandchild cuddles into my ample breast with a sigh of comfort or a child giggles at my joke or asks for a hug, I can see a glimmer of Audrey in my soul.

If truth be told, I'd rather have Audrey in my soul than on my frame. Physical beauty is ephemeral, here today and gone tomorrow. Beauty of the soul lasts a lifetime. It improves with age. Beauty of the soul can carry you places physical beauty never can--through heartache, disappointment, despair. Beauty of the soul turns you outward into the world not inward into yourself as physical beauty does.

I wonder, if Audrey Hepburn had not been such a beautiful soul, would the world have considered her to be the beauty it did? I'm glad we didn't have to find out. I wish we had more of her beauty in the world today.

And I am delighted that, even as a child, I could discern true beauty.

I still dream of looking like Audrey Hepburn, but that dream is no longer skin deep.

Beyond Tired

There is a point when you can't get any more tired than you already are. Beyond fatigue. Beyond bone weary. Beyond beyond. I've reached that point.

When I was younger, I could burn the candle at both ends and in the middle without any physical consequences. Lately, I've lost that resiliency and I miss it. I like being busy. I like being over-scheduled. It makes me feel alive.

Just in the last six month, I've found I don't rebound so easily from a spate of busy-ness. I find myself needing the heavy equipment just to get out of bed. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm feeling old.

My friend, Lorrie, says I've been calling myself old since I was in my forties. And she's right, I have. But that was a way to pat myself on my back for all my activity and energy. People would say, "Oh Royce, you're not old. Look at all you do!" What a sneaky way to get a compliment!?!

Now I've reached my golden years, I'm wishing I could have the resilience of my forties back. To be able to leap from bed ready to face the day instead of hitting the snooze bar for another nine minutes of sleep would be a rare gift indeed.

It is an unfortunate reality that the old saw, "youth is wasted on the young," is so true. My head doesn't believe that it's 61, but my body reminds me of my age every minute of the day.

Ah, sweet bird of youth. You have flown by so fast.

Crispy Critter

Days flow in and out with numbing regularity. Papers have to be graded, grades recorded, tests given, presentations observed, routine following routine ad nauseum. I am fried. Getting up in the morning is a battle. I have to practice tough love on myself to get myself out of bed, bathed, dressed and on the way to work. I don't believe I've even been this burnt out.

I am counting the days until Christmas break. I'm going to disappear to Club Royce. I won't answer my phone or my door. Email will be verboten. No alarm clock. Just some time with me, myself and I. Maybe I'll remember who I am.