Wit and Wisdom
by Beth Broderick
Some time ago, I just had to admit it: I need help. I have always been headstrong, determined to handle everything on my own. This has often sent me careening down the highway to the hell of burnout. I would collapse for a day or two and then dive right back in at warp speed. I take on a lot. I have a wide variety of creative interests, as well as a keen drive to contribute to the common good. This is part pathology, of course. My mother liked to say of someone who merited her ire, “You are wasting precious oxygen that a worthwhile person could be breathing.”
It seems that I have spent a lifetime trying to earn my oxygen.
I am also, in truth, a bit of a workaholic, but that is in my nature. I love making stuff and making stuff happen. My housekeeper and friend of twenty-plus years, Gloria, used to say to me:
“Oh, Mrs. Beth, you is like that bunny de la television! Somebody put a key in you back!”
I had a therapist back then named Gary, who was a truly big influence on my life. He used to try to get me to understand that a balanced life would include eight hours of work, eight hours of nourishing activities, hygiene, and play, and eight hours of rest. This was in an era of my life when I would hold my pee for hours to avoid having to take time out to go to the restroom, especially if it meant pulling over and getting out of the car. If I managed one hour of play, that was a high achievement.
In those days, I was busy working on a series and writing on my off-days, and throwing big parties and fundraisers for politicians and causes that I believed in, and cooking for folks. Always cooking for folks.
These days, I have taken on a modeling career that I rather enjoy, in addition to the regular rigors of writing and acting (though the acting part is strangely moribund of late). I am the Chairman of the Board of a new ballet company and still involved in some political activity. I continue to be dedicated to the folks at the Good Shepherd Home and try to show up whenever I am asked by other organizations to give my time or talent. I am still cooking for folks, a form of “making stuff” that is just built into my brain and body now. I can count on one hand the times I “order in” in a given year. I tried to force myself to do take-out during the pandemic to help out the local restaurants, but I could not do it. I ended up buying groceries from as many of them as I could, but I still cooked. Oh, and I am helping to produce two projects with my dear friend and colleague Ant.
Like I said, I take on a lot. Lately, this has had the effect of being both exhilarating and a tad worrisome. I wondered as I turned sixty-five years old if I would start to live life differently. Would I want to slow down and shift my priorities? Apparently not. My response to that significant marker of age has been to load myself into a cannon and shoot myself into an orbit of constant activity. A touch of mania, perhaps? I’ll grant you I may be a little loony, but it’s how I am rolling, for now at least, while I still have wheels.
But Gary, I do get eight hours of sleep every night, so there’s that, and I always stop to pee now—well, more often, at least.
… MAKES THE DREAM WORK.
There is one big change in how and on which endeavors I spend my time. Today I have help. Talented folks who can do some of the legwork, assist with aspects of the technology, and back me up on projects when I need it. There is the lovely Rebecca, who helps format this column and finds wonderful photos to accompany my words. She does a host of other things, too, and thank God. Tucker assists with audio recording and editing and has bailed me out in a myriad of ways. Most recently, Arkin has arrived on the scene, wildly over-qualified to help sort out the other manuscripts I am working on. My friend Eric edits this piece for free, and while I frequently exasperate him with poor grammar and typing skills, he shows up to the task time and time again. A special thank you to Mr. Eric.
It takes a village.
“You are wicked smart. You could learn to do that on your own,” a friend recently said to me.
Fair point. I suppose that I could. I could learn how to format and improve my keyboard prowess. I could record my own audio and figure out how to edit that. I could learn all the things that Rebecca knows about social media posts, Dropbox, etc., I could, in theory, become a whiz-bang Final Draft expert. I might find the wherewithal to do my own taxes, for that matter, but I cannot emphasize enough how much I would rather not.
I don’t wanna. It would take oodles of time and, let’s face it, I am running out of that. I am a good bit closer to the end of things than the beginning. I greatly enjoy writing this column and I am genuinely excited to hand it over to Rebecca to see what her creativity can add to the mix. Same with Tucker and his audio expertise. I am equally keen to work on the other projects that have made their way to my desk, and that is due in part because Arkin adds the finesse and exactitude that I am in short supply of.
This allows me to pursue the things I love and still be able to take my beloved hikes or make that meal for pals, maybe even read, or watch a program. If I am going to learn new things, I want it to be advanced Spanish and maybe beginning French. At some point, I want to take a deep dive into bird watching. I love birds. If I have a break in my schedule, I want to spend it seeing where the rare off-day takes me.
One thing for sure about getting old—and I am not there yet, not old old, but the specter looms on the horizon—we are all going to need help. Humans require assistance as they come into this world and a near equal amount as they exit. A lot of folks fight that; insist that things remain as they have always been. Time laughs at this. Time sighs and shakes its head and mutters “bless your heart” under its breath. Time doesn’t care that you want to be able to sit in the exact chair you have been in for years and watch the exact thing you have viewed from that perch while eating Skinny Pop. Time is gonna snatch away your eyesight, diminish your capacity to hear and dull your taste buds.
Time is gonna knock your feet out from under you at some point. If you are dead lucky, someone will be there to help you in and out of an adjustable bed, someone will be assisting you in the handicap-equipped shower. If you are hella blessed and have stashed away some serious cash, all of this may take place in your home. For most Americans this will all take place in a home, where they will be surrounded by other people in the same predicament. Some of those joints are better than others, but none are first-choice, best-case scenarios. It’s the way it is … it is the American way.
Whatever goes down in the final stretch as we head to a different plane of existence, we will need help on the way to our exit. My old pastor Monsignor Torgersen, the wildly charismatic head of Saint Monica’s Catholic Church, once told me of last rites and tending to the deathly ill:
“I can walk them right up to the door, but I cannot see them through it,” he said. “Once there, once the dying have reached the precipice, they are in the hands of God.”
I love being the age that I am, and so far, I have not slowed, nor do I show any signs of doing so in the near future. I love the challenge of staying fit enough to model, the newest of my career pursuits. It’s a new business and one that’s interesting. My model agents in Mexico City use an app called WhatsApp for absolutely every interaction. Contracts, videos, and photos are all maintained and distributed on the tiny telephone platform. This is apparently the preferred mode of communication in most countries these days. I am catching on, managing to use it fairly efficiently, and I have to say it’s workable enough. It does not allow for the luxury of extended communication that an email affords, and I miss that, but it gets the job done and I suppose, in this new era, that’s all that matters.
I love all of the creative endeavors that I am pursuing and the wildly talented folks that I get to collaborate with. I am blessed to have the health and the help to keep living my life on my own terms.
I am not digging in and going full Luddite, but I don’t want to spend my waning years forcing myself to catch up to speed in a world that will inevitably grow beyond me, will surely leave me behind. Learning all of the new technologies does not interest me terribly much. I am an old-school gal. I am not gonna Chat-GPT my way through an essay anytime soon. I appreciate the wonder of it all, but no—I am happy to leave that to the young burgeoning experts. It’s their world now.
On we go …
P.S. If I tell you that I have done my own taxes, please call an ambulance, for I will, one hundred percent, have gone completely off my head.
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