Don't Gel Too Soon

New Years and Long Marriages: How Have We Done It?

It's very hard to be married.  This is no headline.  But the Sunday New York Times on December 13th carried a piece by David Sarasohn; a meditation on marriage, moving from the first lines:  "I have been married forever.  Well, not since the Big Bang but since the Nixon administration — 35 years — a stretch long enough to startle new acquaintances or make talk-show audiences applaud" to the last.

As you may deduce from the hair, we too married during the Nixon years, and we too are still together. We were married on September 12, 1971 and have survived more than 38 years of complicated marriage about which I've written before.  So why now?

Well, first of all because my husband asked me to write it.   Just to see what came out, I think.  How did we do it?  How are we still doing it?  Oh - and why have we bothered?  We've seen friends split over much less than what we've faced, so what was different?

Here's Mr. Sarasohn's theory:

I am somewhat better with words than my wife is; she is infinitely better with people. In different ways, we translate each other to the rest of the world, and admire each other’s contrasting language skills. Being married to someone you respect for being somehow better than you keeps affection alive. That this impressive person chooses you year after year makes you more pleased with yourself, fueling the kind of mutual self-esteem that can get you through decades.

Not bad.  I know we've been all over the world and I would never have had the nerve with out him; he is the one who was probably an airplane in a previous life.  And that we met an extraordinary number of wonderful people because of the work he chose to do.  And that he pushed me to write my book and never expected me to be anything but a working mom.  And among psychoanalysts in Manhattan in the 70s and 80s that was pretty amazing.  OH and he shoved and pushed and pulled me to spend money on myself once in a while, which was very hard for a girl from a Depression-scarred background.  I know he's got his own list for me as well.

Of course we've faced plenty of though stuff too.  His chronic illness is a rotten burden and one that has colored much of our time together.  And we've had professional and financial crises, and moved from Washington to Palo Alto to New York to another apartment in New York to Los Angeles to another house in Los Angeles to Washington and another house in Washington.  We've had some challenges as parents and as partners, other health issues including open-heart surgery, loss of our parents and very tough moments even now.  But leaving - that was never an option.  We have many young friends who wonder at the fact that we are still together and it's one of the few times I feel a distance from them. I'm so aware that it's something you know more than you say, despite the beauty and wisdom of the Sarasohn piece and despite my efforts here.   

Once my dad told me that he was sure we'd never be divorced; we were both too stubborn.  I guess that's true too, but it takes more than that.  We are never ever bored with each other.  We share basic values that we've been able to pass on to our kids even though we may have differed on the details.  We trust each other.  We have fun - and now, day-by-day, we share a history.

A collected set of joint memories is not a small thing.  I always say it's like quitting smoking - every day you accumulate increases the value of the commitment.  Just this morning, listening to the blizzard weather predictions, I recalled an orange outfit we had bought our toddler in Paris more than thirty years ago.  " Remember the orange snowsuit we bought Josh in au Printemps?" I asked him.  He smiled in fond recollection and said "Yeah, but it was Galeries Lafayette."  There are a lifetime of those moments. 

 That was, by the way, the same trip where Josh stared up at the Winged Victory of Samothrace towering at the top of the main staircase in the Louvre and said "pigeon."   

I'm telling you these small memories for a reason.  The big things are cool too - watching a son get married, fancy parties with high-profile people, trips around the country and around the world.  But within and surrounding the gigantic are those moments that make a marriage, tiny and still; a quiet loving word from a son, or the sharing of a meal he has prepared, the deck of a beach house while the sun goes down, wonder at a great performance or a great meal shared.  For the two of us, 38 years of those trump the aggravation and the stressful moments.

Frighteningly, I'm about to turn the age I always thought a subject for humor - after all, there is even a song. 

When I get older, losing my hair,

Many years from now.

Will you still be sending me a valentine

Birthday greetings bottle of wine?

 

If I'd been out till quarter to three

Would you lock the door?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me,

When I'm sixty-four.

We knew each other when this song was still part of FM rotation – when we counted our ages in fewer than half those years.  Between then and now, more has happened than I can describe – both in the “outside world” and in our home.  And I know the answer to the question.  Yes - from me and from him.  When we're sixty-four and, God willng, long after that.

Happy Mountain Day - and May There Be Many More

 
When you're nineteen or twenty and living in a college dorm in western Massachusetts life is beautiful.  Especially in the morning.  There's something about a New England morning that feels like a new beginning.  If you're in the country, that's even more true.

So today, when I received my "Happy Mountain Day" message, I found myself hurtling back to those mornings- once a year - when the fall foliage was at its best and mid-terms were coming, when we'd awaken to the sound of bells and know it was Mountain Day.  Classes were canceled, box lunches were waiting in the dorm dining rooms, and the day was ours.  The idea was that we take our bicycles or the bus or someone's car and go see what a New England autumn was all about. 

Smith College was way before its time in many ways: educating women, educating the whole person (maintaining a healthy body AND a healthy mind), advocating for an equal role for all of us.  It's no accident that Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan along with Julia Child, Molly Ivins, Jane Harman, Madeleine l'Engle and hundreds of other remarkable women studied there. 

You didn't teach at Smith to get famous or publish best-sellers.  University professors got the attention, even though those who taught us were certainly as knowledgeable.  Somehow though, people who taught "girls" were considered lesser beings.  Of course there were rewards:  eager, grateful students who reveled in learning and arguing and growing toward success, students who returned to say thank-you, and a lovely, civilized environment.  When we wanted to start an African-American studies curriculum, we just found a professor who was willing to supervise us, and we had one.  Faculty members were expected to come to dinner when they were invited, and eat with a table of curious underclasswomen.  We spent enormous amounts of time hanging around with professors, and one another, figuring out everything from the meaning of pacifism to the puzzles that were Stan Brakhage films.

As women, we formed a sisterhood that lasts.  Meet another "Smithie" and there's a bond - a grateful understanding of what we've shared.  I know that happens in lots of schools, but women's colleges have a special understanding - because we made a choice to study with one another in a specific environment that enriched and strengthened us.

And Mountain Day?  Well, think about it.  Seasons, beauty, nature, a sense of priorities, self-education, fun, friendship.  All enhanced by ringing bells, box lunches and the oranges, reds and yellows of a New England fall.  Reminding all the ambitious, capable and very busy women who came to and left to remember, as they moved forward, to ring the bell once in a while, go outside and look at the leaves. 

Last Day in London, for Now, and What Did I Find?

This bench sits along the Thames, on the South Bank, between Waterloo and BlackFriars Bridges. It's a nice bench. Since we leave London tomorrow I had my last walk along the river today. And it gave me a gift. 

I walked around it, to sit down and say goodbye to the river, the bridges and London - found this:

   

It's been a lovely time.  We fly in the morning.  See you on the other side.

Back to the Future: Futurism at the Tate and 1968

In the early 20th Century there was a band of wild men who created an entire new way of thinking about "Art."  They were called Futurists and for those of you who took Art 11 and already know about them, I understand that I didn't discover them - this being particularly true since they are currently appearing in a retrospective at the Tate Modern here in London.  AND for my penultimate (I think) post here I want to tell you about them because they were a real kick.

This painting, by Luigi Russolo, is called "The Revolt."  On the right you can see "the people" pushing up against the hard line of the establishment.  It's the same thing the Futurists themselves were doing.  Here's their major "Manifesto."

These are our final conclusions:

With our enthusiastic adherence to Futurism, we will:

1. Destroy the cult of the past, the obsession with the ancients, pedantry and academic formalism.
2. Totally invalidate all kinds of imitation.
3. Elevate all attempts at originality, however daring, however violent.
4. Bear bravely and proudly the smear of “madness” with which they try to gag all innovators.
5. Regard art critics as useless and dangerous.
6. Rebel against the tyranny of words: “Harmony” and “good taste” and other loose expressions which can be used to destroy the works of Rembrandt, Goya, Rodin...
7. Sweep the whole field of art clean of all themes and subjects which have been used in the past.
8. Support and glory in our day-to-day world, a world which is going to be continually and splendidly transformed by victorious Science.

The dead shall be buried in the earth’s deepest bowels! The threshold of the future will be swept free of mummies! Make room for youth, for violence, for daring!

As I wandered through, alone and more available for being by myself, (this one is Carra's The Funeral of an Anarchist)  I felt that I knew these guys.  Yes they denigrated women (more on that in a second) but their rebellion, their anger, their passion, their desire to change everything - that was familiar.  Of course I never wanted to destroy; none of us did.  But the feelings of anger, of disappointment in the ways of the world, the desire to find new ways to say things, those were familiar -- and swept me back to the determined, impassioned girl I was then.  I can only describe my reaction as delight.

You're going to tell me that this is the kind of blind passion is just what was wrong with the 60's.  And for those who transformed these feelings not into art but into primitive acts of violence - they were wrong then and they're wrong now.  That's what is so amazing about art.  You can act, and express, through representation instead of concrete acts of violence and hatred.  That's what these enraged men did.  Meanwhile, the women artists were pretty angry, as you can imagine.  One of them, Valentine de Saint-Point, although she agreed with their ideas, had some of her own to go along with them.  Like this:

"Women are Furies, Amazons, Semiramis, Joans of Arc, Jeanne Hachettes,  Judith and Charlotte Cordays, Cleopatras, and Messalinas: combative women who fight more ferociously than males, lovers who arouse, destroyers who break down the weakest and help select through pride or despair, "despair through which the heart yields its fullest return."  

I wish I knew more because there's so much more to this; the impact of Cubism on all of it, the way it affected artists in nation after nation, and, most of all, the sheer energy of art that, instead of freezing a moment, seems to set it free and follow it.    

 

Hooray for Justice Sotomayor but I'm in London SO Let's Look at These

You're going to love Borough Market, right across from the London Bridge Tube Station and just off the Thames.

Amazing olive bread 

Do you believe these? Gorgeous! (My favorite picture)

And these?

Well,that's that. Here we go out, take a left and hit the Thames River Walk. It was a lovely day.

You Mean There Are Jewish Neighborhoods in PARIS????

I've been to Paris probably close to 15 times in the past 30 years; never has it disappointed me. But until I began living a more Jewishly observant life, I'd missed a huge part of it. Like virtually every other city in Europe, Paris has a "Jewish neighborhood." Like virtually every other city in the world - (if they hadn't been thrown out altogether) the Jews moved out of their old neighborhoods, as they did on the Lower East Side, leaving their stores and delis behind. This neighborhood in Paris, in the Marais, is somewhere in the middle. Plenty of Jews are still there; plenty more have moved on. But the services, and especially the restaurants, groceries and bookstores -- and several synagogues large and small -- they're still there. This is the bookstore where you can buy prayer books and Jewish history and Shoah books as well as candle sticks and other Jewish necessities. It's not far from a primary school whose front entrance includes a tribute to the more than 100 Jewish children seized there during the German occupation of Paris, never to be seen again. Stand outside that door and you can't help but imagine how it must have looked and sounded and felt that day.

 

On a lighter note  though, since we're Jews, there's food. This is one of two competing falafel stands on Rue de Rosiers and the lines were enormous on this hot, sunny Sunday. In addition to residents and Jewish tourists wandering by, whole tour groups arrived to try the native fare. It was quite festive, actually.

Oh, and there's a photo missing here.  I was scared to take it.   We were approaching the former home of Jo Goldenberg, the legendary Jewish restaurant in the neighborhood, internationally known even before it was bombed in the summer of 1982, killing six and injuring several others.  It's gone now, a victim of the times, but as we neared the empty building, police sirens in the ooh-aah sound European sirens make, blasted us, close by.  They screeched to a halt outside and a policeman cautiously approached a bag siting on the stoop outside the former deli.  Clearly frightened, he gingerly picked up the bag to put into the police van and move it from the area, now so full of tourists and shoppers.  Unnerved, my husband and I sped away.  

So you don't get a photo.  But I can tell you that the cop looked very scared.  And just so you don't think this is a lot of melodrama, I was in a synagogue in Vienna EXACTLY one week before it was bombed.  I had my young son in his stroller.  That next week, a mother died throwing herself on top of her child - in his stroller.  So there's more to hanging around a famous Jewish neighborhood that candlesticks and shwarma.

One more thing.  It looks as if, again, like the Lower East Side, gentrification may complete the job that first persecution and then upward mobility began.  Last year, a story appeared in AFP - the French wire service, with the headline: "Paris Jewish quarter fights tourism, commerce in battle for soul."  Fashion retailers and other high-end businesses want to be in what is now the "cool" neighborhood and let some of that cache rub off on them.  The Jews?  Well they're fighting to keep their institutions and to remain a distinct community, but there's no guarantee they'll succeed.  Until then, the Marais, in addition to great coats, shoes, bags and jewelry, remains the "Jewish neighborhood."  So get there while you can.

Paris is a Movable Feast - and We Are Making the Most of It

Ernest Hemingway is pretty passe these days, but in his wonderful memoir of his time in Paris, he wrote something that returns to me every time I'm here "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast."  And so it is.  Right here it's going to rain, and the sky is far more grey-blue forbidding than I could get the camera to record, and it's around 4 PM and we've been walking since 10 AM this morning.  And we haven't really done anything - not in the way tourists go into museums and enrich themselves.  For us these streets, and the Seine, and the beautiful old buildings and boulevards - well, they're the richest of all.

It's pouring rain on the bookstores of Boulevard St. Michel on the Left Bank near the Sorbonne, but that doesn't stop the book shoppers. Paris is a city of readers, one where great writers have been held as heroes and mourned by the city - and much of the entire nation when they died. There are many restaurants and cafes on the Left Bank, which had been home not only to Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach but also to Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre and so many others. They are crammed with people all the time - whether it's the Deux Magots or the Brasserie Lipp or Cafe de Flore because these places have an enormous literary history and those who visit here know that these are the places to visit even if they've never read The Second Sex or The Sun Also Rises or even The Great Gatsby.

Or maybe they just know, like these two troubadours, that Paris, when you're young, (or, hopefully, any other age) is still a gift. So many have already written better words about the indelible impact of this lovely place; I'm really just here to agree with them.

It's Pretty Different for an American in Europe With President Obama in the White House

At the big Paris flea market, Marche aux Puces St-Ouen de Clignancourt, which takes up several city blocks, this portrait was among the items for sale. I've seen people reading Dreams from My Father on the Metro (seriously, the guy next to me, honest) and everyone wants to talk about him. What a difference!

One of the Many Reasons to Love Christopher Wren: St. Paul's Cathedral

It's late and I'm tired from a probably too-long walk and probably too much work. So I'll leave you with this picture of the wonderful St. Paul's Cathedral, taken from the very center of the Millenium Pedestrian Bridge  that crosses the river from the Tate Modern to this old masterpiece and the bustling legal community close by.

Brick Lane in the Real World - Things Have Changed in London

You can see it there - the street name in English and,  I think, Bengali - the street brought to life in Monica Ali's wonderful book.  Brick Lane was a sensation, well reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, as well it should have been.  Reading it, a reader not only felt the feelings, but also heard the voices and smelled the cooking smells of a crowded immigrant neighborhood in London's East End.Well we went there today, expecting to see the veiled women, street food and crowded food markets that orient us in a neighborhood like the one we lived in as we read Brick Lane.  But the book was published six years ago.   And Nazneen, her sad husband, lover and daughters have surely moved on.  

Gentrification has arrived - as surely as this old shop will soon be transformed into a web-connected, foam and half-caf coffee joint.  As we walked the streets today, they were full of cool people in multiple earrings, tight skits, hip tee shirts and modern demeanor, and with the goods to satisfy them.  Revealing, low cut short skirted dresses, funky feathered jewelry, pork pie hats and weird purses hung from stalls in side markets and on the Lane itself.  Music was bluegrass and Hendrix and newer than that  -- nothing remotely ethnic.  There are lots of curry and other ethnic restaurants but they have wine lists and chic fonts for their menus.  And there are liquor stores.

I'm not sure precisely why I'm telling you this except to remind us to be grateful for gifts like this wonderful novel.  Things have surely changed here on Brick Lane, but thanks to Monica Ali, her ear, her eyes and, especially, her heart and empathy and imagination, we have a lovely document of life as it was here just a decade ago.  This immigrant literature, whether it's Ali, or Lahiri or Henry Roth or Saul Bellow or Amy Tan or Betty Smith, provides historical scrapbooks as communities shift, or are displaced.  So it's nothing new; it's just so dramatic to arrive on the Tube at a place so recently real to me and to see it, already, well past the point it lives in in my mind.