Gilding the Lily

My mother used an expression that was, for the first few years of my life, unknown to me: gilding the lily.  It isn't an idiom, per se, but rather a mash-up of a quote from Shakespeare.  In order to understand it, you first have to know that "gilding" something means decorating it with gold leaf, and that a "lily" is a beautiful white flower.  Thus, gilding the lily is a reference to the unnecessary effort of trying to improve on something that is already perfect.

The first time Mom used the expression on me, I was in the process of putting butter AND gravy on my mashed potatoes.  (Thanks, Mom.  I think of those words every single time I adorn my taters that way ever since...and I've done it MANY times!)  Mom pointed out that she had already put butter in the potatoes, but I wanted more.  I also wanted gravy.  I wasn't forbidden to have both; she just thought it was unnecessary.  (And thinking back to Mom's mashed potatoes, I realize she was right!)

My daughter has discovered the same principle with her husband.  She married a native of Russia, where rich sauces and gravies and sweet toppings help to cover up poorer cuts of meat or bland foods. Full-fat sour cream to Russians is like ketchup to Americans; and ketchup to Russians--especially if it is mixed with hot sauce, in my son-in-law's case--is desirable on just about everything.  My family didn't eat particularly high-on-the-hog when I was a kid, but my father (who grew up hungry) knew his cuts of beef and made sure we had the good stuff on special occasions.  He liked his steak rare, and he made sure it was grilled just the way he liked it when we had it.  No self-respecting Covill would DARE put ketchup or anything else but a little garlic on a sirloin or a filet!  It's okay to put that stuff on lesser cuts of meat, but steak?  Never!

And Meg (my daughter) learned that from me.  You don't gild the lily with good steaks...so you can imagine her dismay when Denis brings out sauces to garnish the meat she has already carefully seasoned, or when her Russian in-laws came for a visit and took the good steaks that Meg had been hoarding for a cookout, slathered them in mayonnaise and cheese, and put them in the oven to bake into oblivion.  It isn't that the dish turned out badly that was so worrisome--just that it wasn't the yummy grilled steak that she had envisioned as the fate of the meat.  'Twas like alchemy in reverse: trying to turn something made of gold into a different metal altogether.  Gilding the lily isn't always a good thing.

Which brings me to my final point about lily-gilding.  I was raised in a family led by members of the Greatest Generation.  (I was a Baby Boomer.)  There were standards for acceptable female looks and behavior that were, seemingly inviolable.  Wearing make-up, nylons (which you can't find anymore), high heels, and leg-shaving were reserved as rites of passage when a girl-child graduated from 8th grade.  Not permitted before that!  Pierced ears were for Latinas (certainly not for sweet little white girls).  And tattoos?  HA!  First of all, tattoos were expressly forbidden in the Bible; secondly, the only people who sported tattoos were Hell's Angels bikers and sailors who got drunk and stupid while on leave.

Along about my senior year in high school, white girls were getting their ears pierced.  My best friend Kristie did.  I didn't have the guts to ask to get pierced ears because I was afraid to buck the system, but I did secretly like the way they looked.  Little tiny pearls or little tiny sparklies seemingly suspended in the center of the earlobe entranced me.  I held out for four more years until, finally, in my senior year of college, I let Kristie pierce my ears.  She used ice cubes to numb the lobes, then used a big needle with a piece of potato behind the lobe to prevent stabbing me in the neck.  My piercings didn't bleed or cause me any problems whatsoever, and I was very happy to discover that wearing pierced earrings didn't hurt the way wearing clip-ons did. That wasn't gilding the lily.  That was progress!  (Interestingly, my mother got her own ears pierced when she was in her 60s.  Who'd a-thunk it?)  In time, I got one ear double-pierced--very brave for a simple gal like me!  But nothing else.

For thirty years or so, pierced ears were the only acceptable piercings; then, suddenly, the world was awash with piercings: belly-buttons, tongues, lips, noses, eyebrows, nipples, genitals--you name it.  I didn't think the visible piercings enhanced anyone's appearance, and I totally believed that the ones that weren't visible could only be for promiscuity purposes.  (I still think that.)  Then came tattoos.

Honest to God, I don't get it.  Young folks are hell-bent to permanently "decorate" their skin with slogans and pictures and ink that means something to them now...but what about 20 years from now?  Skin is a marvelous organ, but it ages.  It wrinkles and sags and gets scarred from cuts and burns--plus, when one gets to be my age, it gets filled with moles and skin tags and age spots that are plentiful.  Even if "George" tattooed in the middle of a heart on one's arm is still the love of one's life in 20 years, why muddy up beautiful skin so young in life??

I see gals wearing shorts who have tattoos that just look like blue blobs on their legs.  Heck, I have so many spider veins on my lower legs now that all I want to do is keep them covered.  There was a gal at Meg's church in Muncie, IN, years ago that had a large butterfly tattoo all across the upper part of her back, from shoulder blade to shoulder blade.  In order for that adornment to show, she had to wear backless clothes all year long.  Backless?  In Indiana?  In winter?

I'm not saying that tattoos are bad.  I'm just saying that they are unnecessary.  Many of my friends and family members--good people all--wear tattoos.  Most are proud of them; a few have regrets. Some just accept that what they did when they did it is done and over.  I merely suggest that getting a tattoo for whatever reason is merely an attempt to improve on what we already have in terms of beauty.  Gilding the lily.

I think of my precious grandchildren--physically perfect and beautiful in every way--and how they will soon begin to look at themselves in comparison with their peers and the plastic version of beauty that the media puts forth.  To be honest, I would love them gay or straight, smart or challenged, talented or bumbling, introvert or extrovert, tattooed or white-skinned.  I just want them to be happy in their lives and satisfied with what God has given them.  We can't improve on "the beauty of the lilies" by adorning them with anything man-made.  Robin and Ryan are the lilies of my life!

I realize that I'm old-fashioned, but not too much.  If our society keeps thinking that gilding the lilies of life is necessary for happiness, so be it.  I'm just glad that I never had to fight that demon beyond putting butter and gravy on my mashed potatoes.  I think I must have lived a sheltered life.