grace

 My mother was the middle child of three sisters whose teasing father referred to them as Grace, Disgrace and Candlegrease. 

As a very little girl  I thought this wonderfully irreverent and funny.

Grace was what was said before meals, though we didn’t.  My father thanked my mother after every meal.  

I am sure I heard the opposite “disgraceful”.   And I do remember that occasionally  I heard  “graceful”  – usually of a dancer, and I do remember discovering that Ann and its variants meant grace. 

The first time I noticed grace used  to describe someone, it was Amy in the books of Louisa Alcott (best known for  Little Women and Good Wives), which I vaguely  attributed  to long skirts and good manners.

You might hear “having the grace to do the right thing”  and I focused on whatever that right thing was, rather than grace.  I didn’t think of it in connection with me. 

Through ongoing social change, big and small, changing roles, expectation and how those are defined, I have been ageing.  Beyond fortunate, I had first hand experience of that before it came to me – relatively elderly parents.   And beyond coming to terms with it, they didn’t fight it. 

…not so you can be rush off and be tweaked – to the memory of my lovely mother

It was a reality to deal with, coloured by general expectation, personal choice, physical limitation. The phrase that best described this aspect of my parents is making the best of themselves  – and it.

I am heartily sick of the pursuit of youth.   I am all in favour of changes that work for you – I have seen elderly men enhanced by better colours or different lines, a changed haircut …   I remember Bruce the Canadian filmmaker who initially dyed his hair because his partner was younger, gave up, went silver and promptly looked younger and more glamorous.   You can dress young and look silly, and dress younger and look wonderful.   Much of this now focusses on looking “hot” because that’s sex – but as  I said to a rude man years ago “Nobody  ever took me for a fella.”    

Improved health is all well and good but obsession –  with  strenuous exercise, step counting, diet, etc., etc.,  to look 20 years younger,  and how people go on about it – is  BORING .

Live out of where you are up to, remember body texture – and let me introduce you to one of the great gifts of age – grace…

Grace is what you  exercise when a young person  (I have had girls do it too) offers you a seat, or holds a door.   You don’t huff and puff about how dreadful you must be looking.  You smile your best Elizabeth II grin, say thank you with all the charm you can muster, go through the doorway or take the seat and forget it.  You have just done what the Jews call a mitzvah – a good deed.  The stressed young feel momentarily cherished for remembering some aspect of their even younger youth.  Costs nothing, mutual benefit, direct response.  Unbeatable.   

Last week an old friend, met through my son when she was in her teens, rang.  She works like a fiend, is a carer to her  disturbed mother and needy twin, so two jobs.  “I have a day off” she said.  “I’ve got the car, do you need anything.”   I said come for tea, which we never got to – it was too hot.

She brought bread for the freezer, a covered container of a wonderfully herbed salad, four peaches (“ooh” fruit), this and that and bits and the two things I had asked her to bring because she had wheels.  We talked and talked and unbidden, she told me why I mattered to her, what I did in those far away days that made the difference. 

When she left I sat in a chair and thanked heaven for the grace I didn’t know I had had or shown to her and for her grace in telling me about it now. 

No there is no mention of the World Cup, Andy Burnham or social media in this  article.  What I have written about is a largely  intangible, hard to define, human attribute, which costs nothing and makes giver and recipient feel better – even all these years later.