Category: Baby Boom

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

Dan and Cindy

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.

So Long Mr. Salinger, and Thanks

Salinger book  All I wanted when I was a kid was to be Franny Glass.  To be part of the Glass family, intellectual, quirky, and with lists of beautiful quotes on a poster board on the back of their bedroom door.  They were sad and weird and wonderful.

And now, today, we lose their creator, most beloved for Holden Caulfield, the eternally adolescent hero of Catcher in the Rye.  Holden is worthy of every affectionate word written about him, and his palpable pain is familiar to those who’ve journeyed through the teen years, but the Glasses — well  — they were a different kind of lovely.

They are all the children of one man, and he died today.  I wish I could tell you what it felt like to read Catcher in the Rye at 13.  I can remember where I was sitting as I read it – how I felt – and the deep sadness that accompanied Holden’s story.   It must have been traumatic though, because later, when my son and I read it together, I was shocked to learn that Holden’s brother had died.  I had jammed that fact someplace hard to reach, which means it was even more disturbing than I remember.  Reading it with my own child was a beautiful experience to share with a young man of deep compassion and great sensibility – a memory I cherish.  So Salinger gave me that, too.

(I’m not mentioning Joyce Maynard here.  She had a right – but sheesh!)  And I really don’t have much to say about the quiet recluse in the hills of New Hampshire.    Farewell to him, yes, but also to yet another connection to the days when I was young – and more like Holden than like women of a Certain Age.  The passions, the pain, the poetic anger at people for not being what we expect them to be and the desperate longing to rescue the imperiled and the lost.

Anyway,
I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of
rye and all.  Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big,
I mean – except me.  And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy
cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go
over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re
going I have to come out from somewhere and <span>catch</span> them.  That’s all I do all day.  I’d just be the
catcher in the rye and all.  I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing
I’d really like to be.”

I guess those who don’t dream of being the catcher long
to be the one who is caught.  And those longings don’t go away whether you’re 13 or
63 (right – I first read it FIFTY years ago!)  Imagine.  No, it
doesn’t go away, but your perspective changes.  The loveliness of that
kind of protecting — or being protected – it isn’t around much in the real
world.  All the more reason to be grateful for the rare observer who can remind us of its sweetness, and of what we are capable of aspiring to.

And grateful I am.  For Franny and Zooey and Seymour and all their craziness and for Holden, what he gave me then, and what I remember, even today.

Conan versus Jay: Yet Another Generation Gap (see SNL)

What do you watch at 11:30?  Are you even up?  The Daily Show is over, but there’s still Steven Colbert.  Or are you sucked away from basic cable to join one of the Established Hosts on those antiquated broadcast networks?  And if you are, which one?   The answer to that question probably depends on how old you are.

Last week’s Saturday Night Live  included this imaginary Larry King Show, mocking, as both hosts have, the ham-handed dismissal of the younger Conan to honor expensive contract obligations made to the older Leno.  For many of us, this is simple: Jay Leno is old and grouchy (well not as old as I am but still…) and O’Brien younger, more creative and definitely holder of the “younger, cooler, hipper” mandate.  (Yes I know there’s David Letterman (and George Lopez) but for now let’s think about NBC.)

Younger viewers have been up late watching Conan for years – after many of the rest of us had gone to bed – and they know and like his ironic, goofy, smart persona.  The Harvard-educated O’Brien, (who wrote for the university’s humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon,) and served as a long-time writer for Saturday Night live and later for The Simpson’s, is a perfect 21st Century personality. 

Leno, on the other hand, is a real 20th Century man.  He came up through comedy clubs and Tonight Show appearances and is a car collector and motorcycle freak.  His humor is less subtle and, somehow, although less arch than Conan it’s also less friendly.  Mostly though, it’s old-school.  In my view, it’s for the dwindling older audience and not for the emerging majority of TV viewers (and of Americans) born well after we Boomers had finished college.  

It’s funny, but as much as I loathe the idea of age discrimination, I also see this decision as a symptom of a generational division visible in the women’s movement, in life on the Web and in the politics that brought out so many younger voters for Barack Obama and then betrayed them with posturing and partisanship.

I first thought about all this when I saw an interview with the gifted and admired Dick Ebersol, long an icon of sports coverage who has led NBC Sports for many years and presided over several Olympics seasons on the air.  In the Huffington Post, he called Conan’s Tonight show a “spectacular failure.”  In his long career, in addition to sports, Ebersol was an executive in charge of the TODAY SHOW (full disclosure, I worked for him – and happily) and of Saturday Night Live so he’s no slouch.  But it seems that seven months, preceded by a failing Leno show with ratings so bad the affiliates, bleeding audience for the local news that followed Leno, demanded a change, was hardly the best audience-builder for Conan, whose show followed that news.  More than all of that though, Ebersol is far from the days when he had his finger on the pulse of the emerging audience, the Gen Xers and Millennials and those younger than they are.  They want something different, something cooler, something more like — Conan.

I’ve written about, and been on panels about, the generational divide.  The economic crisis has only exacerbated it as young people consider the disappearing Social Security benefits and their own futures in a world where job security and benefits is hazy history.  They’re mad at the Boomers, blame us for more than we’re responsible for and often have no idea what we really accomplished in the 60’s and 70’s — for the better.   Events like this one, however superficial and entertainment-based, are just another example of the disregard in which they are too often held.  NBC will pay for that — in the PR game it already has (did you see the Golden Globes?) and, I fear, in a larger sense, so will the rest of us “older” Americans.  We should be listening to them about more than product preferences and if we don’t, we’ll be sorry.

Meryl Streep and “It’s Complicated” – As If We Didn’t Know That

Itscomplicated_4_1024

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 – Don’t Gel’s Best of 2009 & Happy New Year: 2008, 1968, Our Country’s Journey, and Mine. Oh, and Thanks to Barack Obama for Turning on the Lights

New Hampshire Primary Election night
I came of age in 1968 (that's me on the right – New Hampshire election night.)  A civil rights idealist and anti-war activist, I was formed by the horrible events, remarkable activism and leadership of that critical year.  Forty years later, mostly because of Barack Obama, lost threads of memory emerged – all year long.  I'm very grateful for the opportunity to reconsider those times through the lens of this remarkable election.  Together they tell a story, or at least part of one, and I thought you might like to take this journey with me one more time as we move toward inaugurating the first black President of the United States, elected in the first real "Internet election"; abetted in great measure by a generation that seems, in many ways, a better, "new and improved" version of my own.

I'm going to start at the end though – the coming Inauguration, because I attended that of another "rock star" – John Kennedy, nearly fifty years ago – and all that came after was born that day.  The rest is in order and I think I'm going to ** my favorites. 

**The charismatic Robert Kennedy and first-comer Eugene McCarthy fought for the nomination in 1968.  When McCarthy shocked everyone with his March near-win in New Hampshire (that's the photo at the top), Lyndon Johnson pulled out,  guaranteeing that his Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey, would win the nomination and lose the election.  In 2008 the battle was between two equally disparate Democrats: Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. Having lived through the first disaster, I was horrified by the possibility of a second.  It would be too much to suffer that kind of heartbreak again.

**The spring and summer brought the assassinations of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy.  I was with Senator McCarthy, in San Francisco the night Dr. King died; in LA that night Robert Kennedy was killed.  I was young, traumatized and in the middle of history.

That same summer, Senator Obama accepted the Democratic nomination on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's great "I have a dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963.  Again, the person I was reached out to the woman I have become.  Again, two points in history merged.

Meanwhile, throughout the year, the McCain campaign tried, often through Sarah Palin, to re-ignite the smoldering culture wars.

For the first time since 1968, since I had been a journalist for much of the time in between and done no campaigning or petition signing or much else that would be partisan activity, I went canvassing in Virginia
with friends, including a four-year-old who added enormous to each trip
and enchanted quite a few fence-sitters.  Each trip was an adventure, always interesting, often moving.

**Of course, Election Night meant a great deal to all of us, but for me, Obama's speech in Grant Park, where my friends had been beaten and bloodied in 1968, was a perfect "exorcism" of those indelible memories.

Toward the end of the year, Judith Warner wrote about her efforts to explain the election to her kids – and so did I.

One more thing.  A year-ender trip to London and Vienna once again reminded me, as the Obama Berlin trip had done, how much Europe has longed for the America that stood for decency and hope.  Barack Obama was named the first-ever Times of London Man of the Year.

So here we are.  I'm not sure if I'll ever have the gift of so many
reasons to remember gigantic events of the past, but this year
certainly provided plenty.  It was a wonder and a privilege.  My hope
now is that, as we move forward, the hope we've all sensed over these
past months will morph into a real sense of mission and purpose.  That
is what will take all this promise and, as we Americans have done so
many times, use it to move us forward to the place we long to, and need
to be.

RePost – Don’t Gel’s Best of 2009: Pete, Bruce, Beyonce and Obama: the Changing of the Guard

Brucespringsteen_l

There they are: two of the cultural icons of my political life.  Pete Seeger, close to 90, peer and colleague of Woody Guthrie, creator of We Shall Overcome and Turn Turn Turn, of Abiyoyo and Sam the Whaler, leader of The Almanac Singers and the Weavers.  If there was a civil rights rally or a labor rally or an anti-war rally, he was there.

Beside him, Bruce Springsteen, a modern troubadour whose songs speak for many Americans whose opinions are never sought, whose voices are seldom heard.

As they stood together at the Lincoln Memorial in celebration of the Inauguration of Barack Obama, they represented, to me, all that I had believed and tried to help bring into being.  To many, though, they were “the ultimate in subtly old-left populism.” Speaking about the concert early Sunday before it began, I kept talking about Bruce.  A younger friend gently suggested that he was probably not the day’s headliner.  That would be Beyonce Knowles, she said.  I’m sure she’s right.

As one who was present the last time “the torch was passed to a new generation;” as a strongly defined Baby
Boomer, it’s painful to hear anchormen celebrate the fact that “there will never be another Baby Boom President.”  It’ s not that I mind the fact of that; it’s just painful that it seems to be something to celebrate.  So many of us have tried so to be productive agents of change, have spent our lives working either full or part of the time to see that our country offers more to the least powerful, demands quality education, justice and maybe, even peace.  So to hear Joe Scarborough revel in the fact that “16 horrible years of baby boomer presidents is over” really hurts.  All my adult life we’ve been tarred by the brush of the least attractive of us while the work of the rest of us went unnoticed.  For most campaigns, as I’ve written before, we were the secret weapon of the right.

So as exciting as all this is, especially for one who has supported Obama for so long, it’s also bittersweet because I feel the shadow of the disdain in which so many of us are held.  I really don’t know how to respond.  If I were to try, it might be by offering some of the words to Si Kahn‘s They All Sang Bread and Roses.  It’s better with the music, but it does the job.

They All Sang “Bread and Roses (Si Kahn, 1989,
1991)

The more I
study history,

The more I
seem to find

That in
every generation

There are
times just like that time

When folks
like you and me who thought

That they
were all alone

Within this
honored movement

Found a
home.

 

And ‘though
each generation fears

That it
will be the last,

Our
presence here is witness

To the
power of the past.

And just as
we have drawn our strength

From those
who now are gone,

Younger
hands will take our work

And carry
on.

 

 

 

Ellen Goodman Doesn’t Write there Anymore

GoodmanAs long as I've worked in media, which is a long time, Ellen Goodman's been there too.  Her Pulitzer-prize-winning column, originating in the Boston Globe, has been a beacon and a landmark and a treasure. 

And now it's ending.  No, nobody fired her, she still has a large audience and many adoring readers but she's decided to stop.  Here's part of what she said in her valedictory meditation on covering women in America – and I recommend you go read the entire thing:

My generation — WOMEN — thought the movement would advance on two
legs. With one, we'd kick down the doors closed to us. With the other,
we'd walk through, changing society for men and women.

It turned
out that it was easier to kick down the doors than to change society.
It was easier to fit into traditional male life patterns than to change
those patterns. We've had more luck winning the equal right to 70-hour
weeks than we've had selling the equal value of care-giving. We have
yet to solve the problem raised at the outset: Who will take care of
the family?

As a young mother and reporter, it did not occur to
me that my daughter would face the same conflicts of work and family.
Or, on the other hand, that my son-in-law would fully share those
conflicts. I did not expect that over two-thirds of mothers would be in
the work force before we had enough child care or sick pay.

Yes – those things are true.  My own sons expect (and one has) wives who keep their names and expect to remain in the workforce.  And yes, they still face issues of child care and equal pay and glass ceilings.  The sad thing is, they won't have the provocative, inspiring, funny and very gifted voice of Ellen Goodman to cheer them on.  Maybe she'll write another book though; if she does, I'll send a copy to each of them.

Oh No! Say It Isn’t So!!

Susa tim

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.

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

WEDDING Cindy-Rick-enlarged

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.