Don't Gel Too Soon

To Letty and Marlo with Thanks: My Free to Be Grandson

My grandson Nate turned two yesterday.  He loves music.  And, a child of his era, music video.  We are avid watchers of Free to Be...You and Me clips. 

 

This morning, this song, and the others, ran on a loop in my mind as I walked passed strollers and playgrounds in the park.   Not for the first time, I was overcome with gratitude to the two of you and the others who brought these songs to what is literally now generations of children.  It was a major factor in our home when our boys were little; it was even the school play at their elementary school.  Now it belongs to their children.  And, I suspect, those who follow.

It's become my go-to baby present to young families who don't already know it - and sometimes to those who do.  And, within a few bars Glad to Have a Friend Like You or When We Grow Up, can bring me to tears.  

It's everything we wished for our kids when they were little - all of us; it's a myriad of memories of all the hours we spent loving, dancing to and singing these wonderful songs as they became part of us.

And so I presume, for all the moms and dads, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers  and teachers and friends -- to thank you one more time, as I enter the third year of the second generation in our family to be "free to be."  

Glad to have a friend like you!

 

 

 

Where Have You Been, Cindy?

This is Nate.  He was born in December of 2011.  He isn't really the reason I haven't been writing; my old job took care of that.  I was so obsessed with the work that I let the writing go.

As you may have guessed, this little guy is our first grandson. I wish I could describe how it feels.  I used to look at people who'd ask me "WHEN are they going to have children?" as if it were an urgent event as if they were nuts. AND really intrusive.  My answer was always "When they're ready."   

I'd stick with that.  No one but a mom and dad can decide when they're ready for kids.  But I CAN tell you that all the amazement and delight, pride and emotion, is real.  And wonderful.

The best part is watching your child, and his wife, being beautiful parents.  It's great to have a good job and a PHd and all that and between them they have two of the former and one of the latter, but to reveal themselves to be gentle, caring, magnificent, patient, joyful and loving with their son ... that's the best!

I'm sure that this return will involve a great deal of grandparently meditation but given the state of our country right now (can you say War on Women?) I'm sure there will be many of my old topics too.  It's good to be back.

Unplugged for Shabbat: Something the "Cool" People Want Too. Wow.

Are you unplugged?  It's Friday morning and soon Shabbat will be here.  I'll light the candles and we'll go to friends for dinner and tomorrow to services and to lunch (I'm bringing part of it).  Later we're going to another home to be part of what they call a "shabbat hangout" where the kids all play and the parents (and their older friends, like us) talk, and study and enjoy the peace of 24 hours of an unplugged, non-electric, non-driving, non-cooking,  non-working life.* 

We started living this way five years ago, as I've often documented here (I dare you to read this one about observant Judaism and Patti Smith), and now it seems that others -- many of them cool hipster digital types, -- are looking to do the same.  Take a look.

Over these years I've struggled with keeping kosher, with the role of women, and with much else.  But there are moments of such beauty and meaning that I find myself spinning - knowing why I'm here and wondering at the same time.

I've always been Progressive; worked in the anti-war movement and the McCarthy campaign - and was in Chicago at the 1968 convention, and when I first found observant Judaism and Shabbat, it felt counterintuitive.  Too many rules.  Sometimes it still does.

But the reason why Unplugged is so great is that when you start, you think Shabbat will be what you hate.  No more errands or Saturday manicures or movies.  No phone calls or emails or web wandering. 

And then you unplug.  And even if - as I suspect will be true for many -  you don't go the way we went and adopt (almost) the entire package, you find the peace of what Josh Foer, in the video, calls this "ancient" idea, and are grateful for it.  And for the people around you -- IRL -- close, and easy and at peace.

*OK I admit it.  I'm really glad the health care vote is on Sunday; if it had been on Saturday it would have been a real pain.

On the Arrival of a First Child: Thirty-five Years Ago

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Two years ago I wrote this piece to honor the pending birth of a friend's child.  It's about the first days after the birth of a first child.  Yesterday marked the 35th anniversary of that birth - so, one more time, here's the memory - with gratitude and love.

What an emotional shock it has been to write this.  I need to start with that; the feelings, years later, are still there.

What an emotional shock it has been to write this.  I need to start with that; the feelings, years later, are still there.

Since this baby shower is for one of my favorite bloggers, and friends, I'm grateful to be part of it.  Our task is to share those lovely early moments with our brand new children.  That's why I've added this - which may be the most perfect photo I own because it says just what we all know.  The connection of a mother and newborn is so complete that it's almost impossible - even with writers as remarkable as this community -- to describe.  At least I can't find words that say what I know this photo says.

This is actually my second son, very soon after he arrived.  He's 28 now and more extraordinary than even I, proud mama, could have imagined that cold November day in Roosevelt hospital in 1979.  He and his brother both started off with beautiful souls though.  They are beautiful still. 

When I think of those early days, it isn't all the getting up at night (although it could be) and it isn't that I had so much trouble nursing that I needed to supplement (although it could be) and it isn't the absolutely perfect terror that I might do them harm that accompanied the first days of their lives (although it certainly, indubitably could be.)

Nope.  Here's what I remember, and what I wish for the two of you and all you other moms and moms-in-waiting:  it's a cold winter night, maybe after about a week as the new parent of son number 1.  It's dark, but out the window you can see the boats going up and down the Hudson River (even though our windows leak so there's ice on our windows, on the inside.)  You hear a cry and struggle out of bed, grab a robe, go retrieve this new little person from his crib, change him and move with him to the bentwood rocking chair (of course there's a rocking chair) facing the window.  And you hold him in your arms and you feed him.  The dark envelops you, the dim skyline across the river in New Jersey is the only light you have, except for the tiny pinpoints of light on the tug boats and barges as they make their way.  And it's silent.  Not a sound.  And, with this new life in your arms, you rock gently back and forth.  The gift of peace of those nights in the rocker was so intense that as I write this, I can feel it. If I let myself, I could cry.

I remember watching my mother with each infant - can still see her face as she responded to them,  thinking to myself then "Oh.  This must be the way she was with me.  How beautiful.  How beautiful."

And I remember this.  My parents came to us very soon after our first son was born, helped put the crib together, celebrated with us.  Late one night, as I stood with our baby in my arms, my dad walked into the room. Looking at the two of us, in perfect peace, he said to me  "NOW do you understand?"  Of course I did.

Legendary Game Fable Previews #3 (ulterior motive, but you know that)

YES the first person on this video is one of my brilliantly talented, lovely sons.

Meryl Streep and "It's Complicated" - As If We Didn't Know That

My posts seem to run in bunches.  After two meditations on marriage in the past month, here I am again.

It's all Meryl Streep's fault.  If you know what it feels like when your kids run off together when you thought you were all going to dinner, or to struggle to remain your own person in a long marriage  -- whether it ends or it doesn't, or just to be married for a long time and build a family with a partner - you know this story.

We went with another couple also married 38 years.  It's hard to describe the shared recognition, the warmth we all felt at the familiar moments on the screen - the rare family dinners with our adult children, continuing to learn and grow - together or apart, watching the accomplishments and weddings and occasional rages of each kid, accepting the fact that we've entered that part of life where they're on their own - and so are we.  Children grow up and earn their own lives, careers begin to ebb, and those of us who are blessed spend those years with one another.  Or, if we must, search for and find someone else to ease the way.

It was all there, gentle, funny, loving and true.  Like looking in a mirror.  Oh - and lest you wonder whether a movie about a 50-something (or maybe 60) couple recovering from a divorce - in the torrent of high-profile films and stars, it's in the top five for the holidays.  It may be complicated, but loving it isn't complicated at all.

Repost - Best of Don't Gel 2009: Loving London

That old rascal Samuel Johnson told us that when we were tired of London, we'd be tired of life.  I know it's summer when any city is inviting but this week is cool and bright and breezy and London is full of British school groups and kids from everywhere else too, and we have an apartment right in the middle of Covent Garden (well NOT the market, God forbid, just the neighborhood) and our older son and his new wife are only 40 minutes away and we have friends here, too.  So how could we be tired?

What you see here is the view from Waterloo Bridge (and yes that's St. Paul's Cathedral in the background.)  This morning I went out and walked all along the Embankment, over where the trees are, then crossed a bridge just out of view on the right and returned via South Bank, London's wonderful (relatively) new arts and museum area.  My entire walk was around three miles and I'm realizing that it's much easier to do the walking when there are new things to look at, not just the old neighborhood or, as lovely as it is, Rock Creek Park. 

The wonder of a great city is that it's always changing, that even the most trivial journey is full of surprises.  On my way home tonight I came across a group of teenagers - one of dozens of g The wonder of a great city is that it's always changing, that even the most trivial journey is full of surprises.  On my way home tonight I came across a group of teenagers - one of dozens of groups we've been seeing ever since we got here.  The reason they're all sitting on the sidewalk is that they're exchanging addresses and spelling them out - different nationalities, different spelling.  Kind of an EU photo.

Of course there's lots else going on here.  Huge waves of immigration, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, what looks to me to be an appalling amount of youthful alcohol consumption and unemployment all take their toll.  There's something about the place despite those issues though.  The day after the 2005 subway bombing that killed 52 people, Londoners got back on the train and went to work.  They did that all during the Blitz as much of the rest of the world watched them face down Hitler almost alone.

Cities are supposed to change.  That's what makes them exciting.  Even so, London has seen more than its share: waves of immigration that have transformed it, an early history of wars and fires and plagues, contemporary royal scandals and of course the "troubles" between Belfast and the rest of Ireland and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.   After all, who would have believed before it arrived to help celebrate the Millennium, that there would be a ferris wheel right in the center of town?  They call it the London Eye to make it sound fancy but it's still a ferris wheel, here in same town that has a real live queen living in a real live palace?  It's pretty amazing.

I'm thinking that while we're here I can try to get past some of what I've written here and learn a bit of what it's like to truly live here.  It's got to be different from wandering around with no need to be on time or face the traffic or crowded mass transit and infinite numbers of tourists and, incidentally, deal with what appears to be an enormous amount of alcohol consumption - especially by men.  I'm hoping to keep you posted as I make my way.  I hope you'll come along.

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.

Sisters and Aunts and Daughters and Nieces and Holidays

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.

Cross-posted at BlogHer

So You Say You're Married, Eh?

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