BEAUTY PLUS… [M, 6-2-22]

I was recently corresponding with a friend who asked me how to describe a woman who has been able to put up with me for 63 years. “I don’t know her well,” he said. “I know she’s pretty, but… what else? What’s the plus?”

We first notice a person--are attracted, interested, intrigued--because of physical appearance. But that doesn’t last 63 years, or even 63 hours, sometimes. There has to be a “plus.”

There are many subsets of “beauty plus” in women. So I tried to find the correct one to describe Helen to my friend.

Our late theologian friend, Mary McDermott Shideler, during a visit to her mountain top home in Colorado, described a mutual acquaintance as “elegant,” and went on to define elegance as “beauty plus organization.”

Helen has beauty. Church member Roger Hull once said to me, so wistfully, as he took me to a chemo treatment, “I’d like to have a wife like Helen. She wouldn’t have to be that pretty, just…”

And Helen is certainly organized. “Elegance,” however doesn’t really nail it. Elegance sounds a little bit remote. Helen isn’t.

There is also the “beauty plus…” of glamor. “Beauty plus flash.” Once again, no go. Helen is not flashy.

“Sophistication” is “beauty plus style.” Well, Helen has style, if you consider style to be an appearance appropriate to the occasion, instead of the ability to make everyone look at you regardless of appropriateness. Helen is not sophisticated.

“Refinement” is “beauty plus smoothness,” like white flour or white sugar. They are refined to a level that is superficial. Not even healthy. All the nutrients smoothed out. That’s not Helen.

So I settled on “gracious,” which describes Helen very well. It is “beauty plus casseroles.”

John Robert McFarland