Redefining Beautiful

 

Who’s the most beautiful person you know? I mean, really beautiful – inside and out?

Betty Draper is beautiful. At least I thought so at first. Now, by Season 4, she isn’t so much.

Is beauty what we see at the Benefit counter? Or is it something else?

My great-grandmother’s hands were beautiful. They were lined, and spotted, and veined. Her knuckles were swollen from strain. Her hands had done so much – they had scrubbed floors and cared for the sick and dying. They cuddled babies – namely me and my brother, among many others.

Her hands tucked tags into collars of strangers in elevators. Her hands made fried chicken from scratch. And lemon meringue pie.

They were beautiful.

I know a woman who has become homeless this summer. A single parent of a special-needs child. She lost her apartment because she didn’t want to continue taking support from others – she chose homelessness. She chose a shelter because she wanted to do this on her own. She found a shelter, and a program, and is doing everything, EVERYTHING possible to find work to support herself and her child. She volunteers for everything she can – she wants so badly to give back. And through it all, she is the most patient, diligent, compassionate mother.

She is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met.

I’m beginning to see, as I get older, that beauty, real beauty, is in the broken bits. The patched and repaired. The aged and worn. The cracks in my varnish that I talk about so often – perhaps those are just the beauty marks of my future.

Who’s the most beautiful person YOU know?