Bea's blog

Throughout most of my youth, I was slender. When I hit my mid-thirties, and after two close pregnancies, I ballooned to 165+ pounds, which was really considerable, given that I am only 5’3” tall. Despite the fact that I seemed to be running all day long, taking care of my two small daughters and aging mother, nothing made a dent in my weight. At night, when my responsibilities had been discharged, I consoled myself through my close friendship with Mr. Fridge and Mrs. Larder.

I tried every diet anyone recommended, and a good number of ‘fad diets’, despite health warnings, but any weight I lost just climbed right back, with a few extra pounds to spare. I do not know which was worse, - the toll on my health or the erosion of my self-esteem. I do know that the fatter I became, the more I avoided people and social occasions, unless I absolutely had to attend or entertain.

Due to my lack of agility caused by the excess weight, I took a couple of bad spills on ice and began having trouble with my knees and my back. The pain became progressively worse, and I was eventually diagnosed as having a slightly slipped disc. My doctor insisted that I exercise regularly and lose the excess weight, and I left her office armed with the best of intentions, only to learn that good intentions were no armor at all.

The exercise cycle I bought proved useful for hanging damp jackets on and the treadmill made me feel like a hamster.

Fate intervened in the form of a dog, an eight-week old purebred golden retriever who was originally intended as a gift to one of my neighbors, but as it turned out, she was allergic to him. He was sweet, loveable, and free, and turned out to be the best investment in health I ever made.

Copper became my four-footed cheering section, - my own private fan club who was pretty convinced that I could do no wrong. As for me, I think the only time I ever became angry with him was on a beautiful spring day, his first spring, when I began working in my garden.

One of my husband’s clients had given us a beautiful and rare three-year-old rose bush, and we spent a good part of the day preparing the earth for our regular garden, but taking special care to prepare the ground for this special rose bush, with its unusual blue flowers.

Even as a youngster, Copper was highly intelligent, and after a few warnings he realized that the garden in general, and this bush in particular, were precious to us.

As the spring sun lost its intensity, and our garden was in order, we went into the house to clean up and prepare dinner. Sure enough, there was a scratching at the patio door, and there stood Copper, - with the rosebush in his mouth. He had a look on his face that said, “You left this outside, and I know how special it is to you.” Gr-r-r-r.

His lack of gardening talents aside, my life began to change because of him. With those big eyes and loving attitude, he was able to convince me that in canine circles, it was considered rude not to share one’s food, and I could never resist his pleading. The amount of food I put on my plate remained the same, but my intake decreased by about half.

My sedentary and somewhat introverted lifestyle changed, too. Whereas my friends, husband and children had pretty much given up on trying to get me to stop hiding from the world (until I was acceptable, in my mind), Copper made it clear that no matter how big our backyard was, his daily life required at least one daily walk. After all, there were cats to bark at, squirrels to chase, and people…oh, how he loved people. I think his motto was, “A stranger is just somebody whose face you haven’t yet licked.”

His genuine love of people reached out to them, and strangers would stop and talk to me, asking about him. Gradually, I became less self-conscious, knowing that they weren’t looking at the lump of flesh I believed myself to be, but rather, as one of them put it, “this beautiful, noble golden beast.”

I was so busy that I forgot to be a slave to my bathroom scale. One morning I received that tender, loving comment we all long to hear, “Hey, Blubber Butt, you’re losing weight,” said my (now former) husband.

I forced myself to go shopping for jeans, something I detested doing, and learned that I had dropped an easy two sizes. I also learned that revenge is best served on a credit card. Hey, when you’ve lost that much weight, why limit yourself to new jeans?

This gave me more impetus to continue with my changed lifestyle, and much to Copper’s delight, the number of walks increased, as well as their distance.

Over the years, my weight stabilized at between 107-110 pounds, and as well as my self-esteem, my health, most particularly my knees and back, rarely if ever bother me anymore.

As for Copper? He became ill several years ago, and my vet was finally able to convince me that I was doing a disservice to this wonderful dog, who gave me so much more that I ever gave him. So, yes, I had him put down.

I still go for walks, but I am always aware of the gaping hole in my life, where once a golden angel walked beside me.

As a former columnist of a now-defunct website, I decided, for my first post, I'd share an article I wrote. I think it explains a little more of how I see myself, as a mature woman. I wanted to share it with you.

Ever since I passed the half-century mark a few years ago, my name seems to be on some kind of a special mailing list, no doubt with a title like, “People Who’ll Fall For Anything.”

Most of these attempts to separate me from my income do not bother me. In fact, with the adroit use of a self-adhesive label upon which you can write a new address, I have come to think of their postage prepaid return envelopes as a contribution towards keeping my mailing costs down.

Recently I received a brochure for a miraculous line of beauty products for mature women, as well as a flyer telling me that a nearby cosmetic surgery clinic was offering a reduced rate on ‘eyes’. The latter caught my attention first, because the eyes I was born with are somewhat myopic. Unfortunately, as I read further I learned that they were just offering to either remove or plump up wrinkles around my eyes.

Disappointed, I turned to the glowing testimonials about the beauty products. These were all accompanied by pictures of glowing women, one of whom I recognized as having given a glowing testimonial in a brochure I had previously received for a new line of vitamins. She was using an alias, but I definitely recognized her.

Using the calculator that came free in a package from a financial institution that also wanted to give me a new type of credit card (for which I used their postage prepaid return envelope to explain that I felt the free calculator was already more than generous on their part), I quickly added the cost of the vitamins to the beauty products. The jump was considerable, and by that time, I had begun to have some suspicions about the glowing lady. Why was she using an alias, anyhow?

The brochure asked questions, like, “When you’re walking with him on the beach, does his attention wander over to the twenty-year-olds?”

Well, yes, that did happen on occasion, but given that the beach usually involved young women in bikinis, it actually never occurred to me that what he was observing was the lack of wrinkles on their faces.

The promotion continued with promises of eternal youth; the longer you used them, the younger you would look. Presumably, you should stop once you start looking like a twenty-year old.

I began to get a bit worried. I have a friend who attracts men who are around fifty because they think she is the same age as they are. In fact, she is sixty-five, and has been for several years now.

She is somewhat shy, and is embarrassed when she has to tell them their assumptions were off by at least fifteen years. If she used these products, she would probably start attracting twenty-year-old men, and then be placed in the difficult position of trying to explain why she would rather not join them in the mosh pit at a rock concert.

When I was twenty, my face was as smooth and unlined as that of anyone who had yet to experience life fully. I am now fifty-four years old. I have wrinkles. Between my eyebrows, there is a deep line that almost looks like a question mark. I think it’s from all those times I have questioned prevailing wisdom, or wondered why things were a certain way. Lots of things in life have made me curious, and I think curiosity is healthy.

There are laugh lines around my eyes, because for the most part, I find life enjoyable and funny. Small lines sometimes start out straight from my eyes, and I think it has to do with frustration. Fortunately, I do not have too many of those.

My aspirations in life are smaller than things like world peace, which I leave to the United Nations. And while I have never seen their resumés, I am sure the people there are far better equipped to deal with such lofty goals.

I recently turned a couple of frustration wrinkles into laugh lines when I found the solution to getting my two teenage daughters to listen to their music at less than an ear-shattering level. I explained that in all fairness, we should take turns at being able to play our music out loud for an hour each evening. Those little lemmings went and agreed with me. I like opera. Not only do they now listen to their music on their earphones, but they pooled their money together and bought me a nice set, too. Take that, Kofi Annan.

Some of my wrinkles are from sorrow, of course. I think it would be hard to pass the half-century mark without having some profoundly saddening experiences. My mother died just before Christmas a few years ago; this year my father, who had taken leave from my life when I was fifteen, let his minister contact me to tell me he was dying of cancer.

I only learned when I went to visit him that he had finally been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and it explained away much of the pain I had experienced growing up. It was not until I put my arms around him as he lay in that hospital bed that I was able to say to him what I had hidden from myself for almost forty years, - that I loved him. He died two days before my birthday.

Nicholas Regush, founder and editor of Red Flags, and my boss and mentor, for whom the description ‘great man’ is too small a phrase to contain the essence of what he really was and meant to everyone who knew him, died several days ago, shortly after our Canadian Thanksgiving Holiday.

Each of these special dates will forever be just that much dearer to me because I believe that one of the most precious things about life is that it is finite. Nobody gets off this planet alive; so it is how fully we experience our life that gives it meaning.

The creases on my face show that I have loved, lost, laughed, and cried, - and I will never allow a surgeon’s scalpel or chemical product to deny the validity of my experience. They are proof that I have lived my life, and I have earned my wrinkles, every one.
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