Beth Broderick: Wit and Wisdom for the Ages from the Aged Podcast

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick I am going to press pause on the “Rescue Me” series to bring you a special report about very, very ordinary me.  After a considerable amount of time, close to two years without an automobile in Los Angeles, I have at last heard the siren call of the vehicular wind and purchased a car.  It had to be done. Firstly, there is the matter of the now 80-pounds and growing...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick How Walta found her way to us is anybody’s guess. MOMENTUM had been in existence for the better part of two years before she became a client. Walta was in the middle of transitioning when an AIDS diagnosis made a mockery of all of her plans, as it did for the plans of any and all who received one.  Life expectancy was six to eight months once an opportunistic infec...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick I did it on a dare.  It started in January of 1982. I was 22 years old and struggling to stay afloat in New York City. I had moved to the Big Apple in 1979, hoping for a big theater career, but had not gained much traction. I was waiting tables and scratching around trying to be serious, but not really knowing how. I worked at a restaurant in the theater district c...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick Many years ago, I was walking down the hallway of an elite women’s day spa. I had already changed into my plush robe and slippers, and savored a cup of chamomile tea in the cozy lounge. I was heading to a treatment room when a woman pointed at me and doubled over in shock. She kept screaming:  “It’s you, Oh my Lord! It’s you!!!”  It took me a minute because the who...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick “Fairness Fairness, the wonder dog. He is not a silly old frog He is such a good, good boy. He is Mommy’s pride and joy.” This is the song I have been singing to Fairness, the rescue dog who has found his way into my life. Neither one of us consider it a particularly good song, but his name is in it along with the words “good boy”, so we are rolling with it for now...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick I will be starting a new Christmas movie this week. It will be my tenth. It’s all a bit under wraps because this particular company doesn’t want us sharing information about it until they give us the thumbs up, but it will be a fun one. I have worked with these folks before, and they are lovely. The world of Christmas movies is a special place. We shoot them year-r...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick Ouch! Gol dang it!!!! I think I say this every single day of my life. It is rare that one goes by when I do not hit my head on a cupboard door, bang my hip bone into a countertop, find myself mopping up a mess of some kind. I have been known to walk into glass doors, have missed the bottom step countless times, and will trip over anything, often actually nothing. J...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick “Your house is pathologically clean,” my old friend Lawrence said as he looked around.  I was in the Hollywood hills then, in a house selected by my first husband. He was someone who could not abide the notion of a fixer-upper, so we bought one that was turn-key, and moved into its rather sterile environs. We then proceeded to get unmarried toot sweet. Not a good f...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick “When you see me again in the new year, I will look brand new.” My dear friend said this to me just before Christmas. At the time, we were dining on croissants and some kind of sugar bun, one of the many holiday feasts we had recently consumed, but soon, he promised, it would be time for famine. “I think you look good now,” I said. “You are old and blind and deaf s...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick Sunday was the big MS walk in Los Angeles. I have participated in that parade of humans many times. I am certain to be a life-long member of the big boisterous group “The Jiggy Wiggits,” spearheaded by my childhood friend Michael B Gerber and his family. The Jiggy’s gathered an army of friends and family for these events over the years and have raised over 800,000...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick The young man barely looked up. He took his seat beside me, with nary a glance in my direction. He immediately opened his small portable laptop computer and fixed a dark screen over the top of it. Perhaps to reduce the glare? To take the heat out of the blue light that screens shed, which is said to be bedeviling our eyesight and disturbing our sleep? Or to ensure...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick First of all, “idiota” is not a word. The direct Spanish translation for female idiot is “estúpida,” but that feels a tad harsh. Fair or no, it’s an indictment that I would prefer to avoid. Idiota has a nice ring to it and perfectly describes the many mishaps that occurred during my fantastic time in the great country below our Southern border.  The grand villa tha...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick I brought him a strawberry. I know in hindsight that this was a ridiculous thing to do, but he seemed weak. I confess I also dipped it into the last dregs of white chocolate cream icing that had adorned that evening’s dessert. I was doing the dishes and straightening up when I saw him there, halfway in and out of the sink in the wet bar. I had thought him gone fore...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick I sent one just the other day: a texted photo of a can of green beans. My sister, Laura, knows exactly what that means, and her wife, Sarah, is now familiar with the practice as well. It means I am having a rough go, feeling blue or stressed, or just downright cranky. It means that the only solace I can find in the immediate is a comfort meal that both Laura and I...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick “Mom, why are you hitting me?”  I always tried to reason with her: “I am trying to help you.… Come on, Mama, we can do this.” We were trying to make one of her recipes for Easter dinner with the girls. She did not have dementia, but her COPD was very advanced, and she was not getting enough oxygen to her brain. She had confused the lime jello recipe with a canned c...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick A bunch of white roses lay against the doormat. They had been bound together with a clear, two-inch-high band of tape which had a faint floral design. They were also fairly uniform in shape and size, so, definitely purchased–but from where? A grocery store with a flower department? A farmers’ market, maybe, or a big-box store? The bigger question, to my mind, was:...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick Well, the Holidays have come and gone, leaving some of us with charmed memories and others with a sense of overwhelming relief at being done with it all. Of course, that won’t last long … There is always another holiday around the corner.  The store shelves are already filling up with Valentine’s Day cards and candies and miscellaneous paraphernalia. We are a festi...