OK I know. The world is ending, the climate is cooking, the economy is crashing and God only knows what else is happening in the "real world." Even so - Twitter and Facebook and all points in between are so so sad. This break up is just not fair. Susan Sarandon and I are the same age and I once spent time with her (well, twice but both times in an elevator in our building where friends of hers lived and we DID talk...) and in some crazy way felt more in common with her than with most shiny people. The politics of course didn't hurt either. And Bob Roberts may be my favorite political movie and so Bush-prophetic.
Because of all that, I too feel a floating sadness - nothing heart=wrenching - just sad. These two have always done what they believed and made us all happy. And they deserve to be happy too. Whatever it takes to get there.
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.
I can't believe I missed it! Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the first United States draft lottery drawing, Every young man my age and many older and younger waited in front of their TVs with sweaty palms and pounding hearts (I'm not kidding) as the numbers came out of the barrel. And those in this photo were the "old white guys" who did it. The one drawing the number is Republican House Armed Serviced Chairman Alexander Pirnie (R-NY) and the man to his right is the (then) despised Chairman of the Selective Service (the Draft) General Lewis Hershey.
OH and one more thing: just beyond that camera, over to the left, was me. Sitting with a telephone and reading each drawn number to the CBS News studio where the number was then posted on the screen. Each number was a birthday, and the order in which they were drawn determined the likelihood that the men in the list would be drafted and, most likely, go to Vietnam. First birthday drawn - lottery number 1. Last birthday drawn - lottery number 365.
As I read the numbers into the phone, I was reading death warrants. Of men my own age. And I knew it.
Every number, every birthday, could be someone I knew - an old boyfriend, a cousin, someone's brother, a high school classmate, a teacher, another someone's son. The war was real in a way it hadn't been before, even though there had always been a draft. Up until the lottery, college students and graduate students were deferred and so were married men. In fact, there were more than a few weddings to keep boyfriends home.
Many of these rules, which were, after all, based on class since there were so many more white middle class men in college than other groups, were wiped out when the lottery began.
That meant that on a theoretical level, I should have been proud. My country was spreading the risk, spreading the pain - and even if I opposed the war, I knew that others were not being asked to fight it for me and my peers anymore. Those we loved were also at risk. All I felt though was fear, and anger, and despair. Which is probably not a bad way to feel when loved ones are about to be drafted to go fight in a "dirty little war" in Vietnam.
So today, after the President's speech last night, I wonder. We know the military prefers a volunteer military even with all the re-deployments and disruptions. It's building a "military class" in our country of people who know things we don't - won't learn. And they're proud to be there, scared or not. It's effective. But is it fair? Is it even productive, when it insulates so many of us from an imminent sense of loss? When we never have to fear the husband in a wheel chair, the son whose PTSD will not fade and, worst of all, that dreaded knock at the door,
Thanksgiving always makes me think of the people who are missing.
By now that's almost an entire generation: my parents, aunts, uncles
and grandparents. We all came together at our house. As the oldest
cousin, I got to help in the kitchen and set the table. Sounds lame but
it felt very grownup. Not that that lasted for long. Over the years
we went from three to six to nine cousins, producing plays to perform
after dinner, playing Sardines and Murder, telling secrets and wreaking
civilized havoc.
My favorite memory, though, was time with the sisters: my mom and my aunts.
One lived nearby but the other came with her family from Cleveland so
when they were all together they wanted to talk. They'd sit in my
parents' room for ages; they let me hang around too. In a way, all of
us gathered on the bed those afternoons, and later in the kitchen after
dinner, washing dishes, is women passing along stories and traditions, preserving the wisdom of
the tribe.
I had no idea then of the value of those times. It
wasn't just being treated like "one of the girls," it was the sisterly
warmth, the laughter and sudden emotion, eye welling up, when one aunt
spoke of living so far from "home." Now, probably 50 years later, I
can see her leaning against the wall, her sisters looking toward her
with understanding sympathy. I can hear them talking about their
parents, my grandparents, one difficult, both disappointed with their
lives. For a little while, the burden of worry lifted a bit as they
shared it.
They were part of what is literally another world;
hats and gloves, scars from the Depression, government service during
World War II, an abiding sense of appropriateness. Like Betty Draper,
they left careers to stay "home with the kids." Their lives were so
different from ours, constrained and regulated -- lives that many
daughters went to work to insure against.
What we forget is
that, even then, there was sisterhood. Maybe it wasn't as powerful and
certainly it wasn't as organized, but for me it still modeled a
solidarity, loyalty and love of the company of women that I still
cherish. And it's so exciting to see us all now, taking that example
along with the many farther afield, to enhance our larger community -
still a family of sisters - from one end of the Internet to - well - to
the whole wide world.
Yesterday I went to a birthday party. It was a serious birthday, a landmark, and even for a successful young mother with three kids, it had an impact. So what did her sweet husband do? He made her a present, with the help of his 5 year old son. I don't want to violate their privacy with a description; just know that it was something that only someone who knew her well could have given her.
It was quite moving to watch her open her gift; presented in the 12th year of their marriage. I kept thinking that I was already married for three years when she was born; that their journey still has such a long way to go and that we had learned so much in the years still before them.
We've been through chronic disease and heart disease, financial crisis and seven moves, two children, the loss of all four of our parents, extraordinary travel, deep friendships, huge lifestyle changes and daily complications. And every one of them added a brick to the house. Every child's birth, and birthday, and graduation and wedding; every torn knee, broken shoulder or opened heart -- all the things that make up a life -- they're what a marriage is made of.
Not very profound, but true. The power of a shared history is the foundation - or at least a foundation, of a good marriage, and it gets stronger with every day. That's all.
Except that those two on the left are celebrating their wedding, September 12, 1971. And I'm one of them
You may (or may not) have noticed my absence lately; I've been too slammed to sit down and write respectably. Even so I could not, in good conscience, skip my turn to offer the wisdom of so many of my favorite baby boom bloggers -- all part of the Blogging Boomers Blog Carnival. They range from Environmental activism to an old old joke. So here they are, in all their glory:
Barbara Weibel at Hole in the Donut produced a video to
show us the good work being done by the Peace River Wildlife Center in Punta
Gorda Florida, where they educate humans as well as rescuing animals.
There are a several posts dealing with aging this week, too.
The FDA is
concerned about the growing use of testosterone by anti-aging clinics seeking
to restore youthfulness to Baby Boomers and by the abuse of such drugs in
sports. SoBabyBoomer.com tells us that it's no surprise the FDA is being so vigilant.
Then LifeTwo
discusses recent study that has found that a woman is six times more likely to
be separated or divorcedsoon after a diagnosis of cancer or multiple
sclerosis than if a man in the relationship is the patient. In short women
stand behind their man but the opposite isn't true.
And what about those in business? For many small
businesses, cash flow is a constant issue. Andrea J. Stenberg at The Baby
Boomer Entrepreneur might have the answer for you when she asks Do customers
owe you money?
Meanwhile, over at Contemporary Retirement, Ann has a 10-step guide
to finding your passion:
And when you need some fashion therapy, the three-quarter length sleeve jacket is a gorgeous
addition to any wardrobe, but there’s a lot of confusion about what to wear
with it. The Glam gals have the answer at Fabulous after 40.
It wasn't that long ago - not really. Thousands of us singing "All we are saying, is give peace a chance" on the Mall in Washington. It all started when Sam Brown, David Hawk, David Mixner, Marge Sklenkar, John Gage and other peace luminaries, many of whom were veterans of the failed McCarthy and Kennedy campaigns, decided to call a "moratorium on the war in Vietnam" and ask everyone to come to Washington to support it. It was a great idea: a kind of strike against the war, but with manners.
And 250,000 came, followed by at least 500,000 exactly a month later, during the November Moratorium that followed. But on this day, a manageable and peaceful crew assembled. My memories of the day are scattered. I worked for CBS News by then and my job was to keep track of the march, marchers and plans for all the peace activity going on in the capital. There was plenty, in a wide spectrum of militancy and affect.
I wish I could describe for you some of the more radical "peace houses" I visited; collectives with tie died cloth covering the windows and mattresses on the floor - working for a much tougher way to oppose the war.
Organizers and participants in this march , though, slept in church basements and the homes of local people who made room for them. Everyone who lived in Washington didn't have a spare bed or couch - or inch of space on the floor. You know this, but just to remind you, listen to what the BBC says about that time "in context:
American combat troops had been fighting the Communist Viet Cong in Vietnam since 1965.
Some 45,000 Americans had already been killed by the end of 1969. Almost half a million US men and women were deployed in the conflict, and opposition to the war was growing.
The Moratorium for the first time brought out America's middle class and middle-aged voters, in large numbers. Other demonstrations followed in its wake.
I guess that song is what I remember most - that, and members of the Chicago 7, out on bail as they awaited trial, addressing the crowd and pulling off wigs to show how their jailers had cut off all their hair. For some reason, I can still see that - it felt to me like such a violation. A less than friendly observer asked me later "How did you like what they did to "your friends" huh? They weren't my friends; I barely knew them, but the question was a punch in the gut. So many things stood for other things then. Long hair on men meant rebellion and outlier.
Anyway, it's yet another 40 year anniversary and I didn't feel that I could let it go un-noted.
If you have never heard the Lennon song "Give Peace a Chance" here are John and Yoko singing it with a crew of friends during a peace "bed in" in, I believe, Amsterdam. Happy Anniversary
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.
The first time I ever heard Peter Paul and Mary I was 15 and spending the summer at a writing program at Exeter Academy - the first year they ever let "girls" into the school at all. I remember loving Blowin' in the Wind, If I Had a Hammer and of course, Puff. I remember visiting another student's home in Concord where her older brother, already in college, told me that the three were just "popularizers of Bob Dylan songs" and scornfully complaining that I should be listening to Dylan not them. (I didn't find Bob Dylan until later - junior year, I guess.) I thought he was nuts To me, Peter Paul and Mary were an introduction to music that was about things I cared about: civil rights, war, peace and love -- from a more political perspective.
From then on, through high school, into college and "out into the world" Peter Paul and Mary held a special place in my life. We seemed to cross paths often. We played their music all the time, of course. My sister and I saw them at a summer concert in Pittsburgh (my long-suffering mom driving us, of course.) I remember watching them sing at the 1963 March on Washington, and later seeing them at Wolf Trap with a blind date. And, most profoundly, I remember seeing them quite literally, save lives in Grant Park at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. Hordes of demonstrators were coming over a bridge into the part of the park right outside the Hilton. There had been trouble, lots of trouble, for at least days and this would be another terrible confrontation. Then, from nowhere, Peter, Paul and Mary started to sing. The demonstrators slowly converged around their platform, diverted from certain misery. It was quite a thing.
Here's what else I remember. Mary Travers herself, who died today. She was a powerful model: not just her deep, resonant voice but also her powerful, sure presence, on stage and off. She was brave and funny and looked amazing. We all knocked ourselves out trying to have straight hair like hers: ironed it, slept with it wrapped around orange juice cans. She was a powerful presence.
Of course, part of her power, and that of Peter and Paul was their commitment. Where they were needed, they came. Civil rights marches, peace marches, the McCarthy presidential campaign, even regional and local union struggles. It was a signal to the rest of us: if we can show up, so can you. And we did. As another friend wrote to me tonight: "I just saw the news story. Can't believe how much of our history was tied up with them."
Making my way out of my office, thinking about writing this, I started singing to myself: "Leavin' on a Jet Plane." But I couldnt finish. I was close to tears. It's happened so often this summer - icons of my life fading from view. Teddy Kennedy, Walter Cronkite, Robert McNamara, Don Hewitt, Ellie Greenwich, Patrick Swayze just yesterday, and now Mary. Each representing so many lives; so many memories.
I keep writing here because somehow I don't want to stop. This ought to do it, though. (The other guy is John Denver)
Does anybody not love Dirty Dancing? At least for the many of us who were the darling Frances "Baby" Houseman, the idealistic, embryonic 60's activist, Daddy's girl for her brains, not her looks, the film is a misty, wonderful time capsule. And so, it may be, in essence, a women's film - so romantic and sexy in a new-at-sex kind of way. But it wouldn't have worked without the sweet, gifted Patrick Swayze, who died today. Although as Johnny Castle he gave us a young man who tried to present a weary, streetwise persona, he also brought us a man as idealistic as the rich girl who fell for him. The perfect first lover. Swayze, with grace and generosity, was all that and more.
This was a class story and coming-of-age story and a Times They Are A-Changin' story, evocative in ways that are difficult to express. Baby, like us, was riding the cusp between the 50's end of the 60's and the Sixties that were to come. Her relationship with Johnny was the bridge between those times, and so he meant even more than his lovely self. I've always thought Swayze underestimated anyway but as I decided to write this I began to realize just how underestimated. Without the right Johnny, Frances would not have mattered.
I, at least, could look at her and know her future. Because it was mine. Like Baby I never hated my parents. Most of what I did that they wouldn't have liked, I hid. Defiance was never a goal because I loved my parents and they loved me. We just didn't see things like love and sex the same way so I decided just not to tell them. There were many other things we saw differently too, but they changed their minds because they listened to us as often as we changed ours by listening to them. We respected each other.
So I did all my overnight disappearing on campus and kept my mouth shut about it. And went home as the Cindy they knew -- more political and determined, but with no desire to blow up the neighborhood or leave the people I'd loved -- and still loved -- behind. Like Frances, I responded to the Civil Rights movement and President Kennedy and longed to be part of what was to come. Like Frances I had a "Johnny" though mine didn't dance.
Of course, Swayze went on to make Ghost, which I think was at least as successful and even more of a fairy tale. He appeared in gritty films like Road House and, as a tribute to his fellow dancers, many of whom died of AIDS, in drag in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. And which role we choose to remember most probably depends on gender, and even more on age.
But for me, gratitude for the gift of memory, of the same sense of romance, in a way, that Twilight offers another generation, that's tough to beat. And the gift, the reminder of the girl I remember and the hopes and dreams she took with her to college, that gift was from Patrick Swayze too.
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