We All Know Someone from Grey Gardens

Big and Little Edie Beale

A few years ago, my sister, I and our husbands saw a production of Grey Gardens, the musical based on Big and Little Edie Beale and their home with the GG name. It's a well-constructed play with some reasonably good songs but at the time I wondered why people respond to this story. What is it about these "eccentric" women and their haphazard world that attracts us, like the wild critters they fed?  No sane person would choose such an existence but we like the women who lived it, insanity and all.  Why?  I think it's because anyone with relatives recognizes someone they love when they read about or watch the famous Beales.  All of us have a bit of Grey Gardens tucked away in the family tree.

My husband, Roger, loves to talk about my two bachelor uncles, men as close in residence as they were unalike as human beings.  The elder was a sweet, gentle soul who, except for his time in the service, stayed on the family farm and spoiled the children of his siblings, instead of having his own. The younger was a tall, thin, wasp of a man with an advanced degree in chemistry who loved travel, gadgets, and needling others with his quickfire wit. Temperamentally, they were the original Odd Couple, but they continued to argue and share a house as long as they both lived.  No one in the family thought this was strange (fish, they say, rarely notice the water) so it took my husband to point out my uncles sat in adjoining rooms watching the same football game on similar large TVs (both cranked to top volume) but they could never watch the program together. I used to think my uncles defied explanation; now I see them as the Edies in our family of Beales.

Of course, marriage meant I got to meet the eccentrics in my husband's family as well.  His parents were born dirt-poor in the South so I wasn't shocked that his Uncle John's funeral turned into a de facto family reunion.  I was surprised when my mother-in-law handed me her camera and demanded I photograph her and her sisters at the head of their brother's casket.  They leaned over so Uncle John could be in the picture as well and I tried to photograph three old ladies without seeing the corpse at the bottom of the frame.  It wasn't easy.  Tell me that's not a Grey Gardens moment!

Really, what we tossed aside as family eccentricities really stemmed from financial reasons.  My uncles were taught itwas a waste of money to live apart when they could save by sharing a house.  And before the age of selfies, photography was an expensive luxury so the picture with a deceased relative was often the only opportunity a family had the chance to catch the likeness of someone they loved and lost.  The passage of time gave my husband and I different sensibilities that questioned their decisions.  Yes their choices seemed foolish to us and our decisions  probably seem silly to the next generation.  Well, if we're remembered by our silly, eccentric choices, at least we'll be remembered.


This all came back when I heard Jonathan Goldstein describe the footage he shot of his family at a long ago Rosh Hashana dinner.  In the middle of the meal, apropos of nothing, two females independently started singing White Christmas (an odd choice for the High Holy Days) and his father left the table to repair the long-broken front door lock. You can almost feel the embarrassment of the teen-aged film-maker as he documents his family's eccentric behavior and his adult realization that the critical adolescent behind the lens was no poster child for normalcy either.  That's what time does in the end; it makes everyone look ridiculous.

So what if we all look strange to the family who precede and follow us in life?  The important thing is to enjoy being alive and share it with those you love.  At least that's the philosophy of the Beale ladies of Grey Gardens.