Don't Gel Too Soon

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.

RePost: Best of Don't Gel 2009 - The End of the Berlin Wall: Twenty Years Ago

This is the Brandenburg Gate in the center of Berlin. The first time I saw it, in 1974, there was a wall built right through it. 

Here's a photo of it then, from the Hotel Adlon website.  The hotel stood, from 1907 to 1945, when it was decimated by a fire, just to the left of the Gate.  It was the stopping place for world leaders and socialites and was rebuilt shortly after the Wall fell. 

Because Berlin has such a dramatic history, it was always exciting to be there -- maybe more so while the wall remained.

 I remember especially coming through Checkpoint Charlie (that's it on the left) on a dark fall day (Americans were allowed to visit for the day after going through this scary border station and having cars and packages searched) and, as we approached the Gate, seeing an old man standing, looking over into the West.  In his hands, clasped behind his back, was a rosary.  Not so popular in communist East Berlin.  I recall thinking immediately "Oh.  His daughter is getting married in the West today and he can't go, and he's standing there, thinking about her, praying for her."  Berlin in those times lent itself to imagining such things.  The drama was palpable.

The first time we went to Berlin after the wall fell, I remember, it was pouring.   Oblivious to the weather, we walked back and forth beneath the lovely arches in the now-open gate, kind of giddy at what it meant to the people of Berlin and all those who care about freedom and, I guess, redemption.  For despite what happened in Berlin during the war (and we've studied it extensively and spoken both with survivors and those involved in the rebuilding of the Jewish community) the Wall caused immeasurable suffering and was a diabolical slash through the heart of the city and every one of its people.

I've written about Berlin before: from its playgrounds to its grim Communist years.  We go there often.  It seems to pull us back, its intellectual energy and re-emerging Jewish community irresistible. Once, when we'd taken our kids there while the Wall remained, one son, around 5, bought a stuffed wool pig and told everyone he "got it out of jail."    

Here's one last photo - of two buildings: one redone and the other still old and rickety, in the very cool neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, which is in the old "East Berlin" and now, last I heard, had the highest childbirth rate in Germany and was home to artists, writers, musicians and fashionably cool people who don't have to work.  What you see stands for it all:  the struggle to renew, still only partly complete.

Happy New Year: Jib Jab Does it Best

What else is there to say?   Except "Hope next year is better!"

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Art Imitates Life and Dr. Horrible's Nemesis Is an Author!

I'm not sure who's on first, which chicken chased which egg or even how to tell you about this.  See this book cover?  It's a real book - and Entertainment Weekly says it isn't even bad.  But the author - well, the author isn't real!!!  He's a character on an ABC TV program called - guess what --- Castle! 

Played by Dr. Horrible's own Biggest Enemy Captain Hammer -- aka Nathan Fillion - he's a debonair, wealthy mystery writer with an actress mother and a typically New-York-wise daughter with whom he has a refreshingly healthy relationship  (Mom too, actually.) 

So there's nothing wrong with the show; it's slight, sweet and kind of funny although it could certainly be better written.  In fact, from the reviews I've read, it might be better if Richard Castle (who remember, doesn't exist - really) wrote the scripts as well as his books. 

Yes books because apparently this is the first of many.  And you can get it on Kindle and Castle even has a brief (equally fictitious) bio on Amazon "Richard Castle is the author of numerous bestsellers, including the critically acclaimed Derrick Storm series. His first novel, In a Hail of Bullets, published while he was still in college, received the Nom DePlume Society's prestigious Tom Straw Award for Mystery Literature. Castle currently lives in Manhattan with his daughter and mother, both of whom infuse his life with humor and inspiration."

Got that?  Fillion/Captain Hammer (this guy) also plays a fictitious writer on a lightweight TV show and somebody - whose name isn't anyplace and as far as I can determine hasn't played anyone (other than a ghostwriter) has written a novel in his name.

This isn't a scandal or a crime - it's just so damned funny.  Fillion seems like a fine fellow and Castle is certainly likable enough.  But it's hard to get books published these days - especially fiction. 

So all you struggling writers out there -- now you know how to sell your novel.  Make it into a TV show and your literary career is assured.

As my mom used to say, "Only in America!"

Oh No! Say It Isn't So!!

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.

Lovely, Silent, Beautiful Snow

Obviously because of the Sabbath I couldn't take pix of the storm during the day but ti's still coming down and looks just wonderful.  We haven't confronted the shoveling yet; walked through it this morning  - silent and lovely.  Enjoy these two; if I get outside to take more I'll add them.

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.

I Don't Know Why but This Just Makes Me Happy

 

Planned Parenthood is offering them on pre-order.  It's enough to make you move to VA, no?

Thanks to the one and only PunditMom for tweeting this.

Is There a Draft in Here? Should There Be a Draft?

 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, 

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