age – Don't Gel Too Soon

Playing With the Big Boys: Bruce Springsteen’s New Drummer and the Rest of Us

Does the young drummer in this photo look familiar? He's definitely not Bruce's long-time drummer The Mighty Max Weinberg. He is, however, a Weinberg, Max's son Jay.. I learned about this from my own son, who IM'd

"Did you know that Max Weinberg's son is now the drummer for the E Street Band? It's a great story – little coverage. Seriously – he is 18 and no one has picked up that an ageless band now has an 18-year-old on drums."

He's right. It's a wonderful story, for many reasons. Just because it is, first of all. But also because all parents love it when their kids go into the family business; at least I think they do. That's not all, though. To be fair, Jay is only going to tour with them when his dad has to stay in LA to help launch the new Conan O'Brien Tonight Show. Even so, there's something lovely about Bruce calling and inviting him to join the band. Anyone who's ever watched a sound check or read about Bruce knows he's got high standards; this was NOT a sentimental decision. Jay can play the drums.

So why do I love this? A demonstration of that kind of trust by a national legend close to three times his age is pretty impressive. The idea of two generations on stage together as peers is an example of something that's been important to me for years: alliances across generations in all manner of venues.

I've been writing both here and on SVMoms about the tensions between Boomers and Millennials. There is a growing stress between us. Just a month ago I heard a young political social media genius – a serious one – mock the Boomers who claimed they helped to end the Vietnam War. "Dead soldiers ended the war, not you guys." he said with determination. Permutations of that attitude abound; although perhaps less so in families where parenting was respectful and strong and included a history of those times and a modest explanation of what we were trying to do.

President Obama, whose attitudes and capabilities I admire, tends to imply that it's time to ditch, at the least, a lot of the rhetoric and style of that time. I don't disagree. All that I want is for those of us in my generation and the younger people whose core values we share to be free to travel across the boundaries of style and execution to be allies and friends rather than adversaries. That kind of sharing emerges from respect in both directions, from engaging younger people more as peers than acoytes. That's what the Obama campaign did, and look what happened.

I've been fortunate, because of my relationship with my sons, because I've worked in the Internet world for ten years — so much with younger people, and because I am part of a community full of young families, to be able to do the same. But the divisions are growing for many of us, and they're sad.

So when Bruce, who has so often spoken for so many, crosses two-thirds of his life to, at 60+, add an 18-year-old drummer to his band, it's an example and a message for which I am grateful. No one who knows his music would ever think he would add a drummer to send a message; he takes his music, and his fans, too seriously for that. He is, however, reminding us all that, 18 or 80 – talent, music, dreams, ideas, faith or fun, the walls need not be so high. Whether it's campaigning for a candidate, working for women's rights, writing a poem, cooking a meal, building a house, growing tomatoes or making music, we are all pooer for the walls we build, and richer for the gifts we share.

CHARMED, AGAIN. AND PROBABLY NOT FOR THE LAST TIME

NOTICE: YOU MAY NEED INSULIN TO READ THIS – IT IS REALLY SAPPY — CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED

Right now, I’m crying. Not just teary, crying. Right now, the third time I’ve been to this moment. It’s so embarrassing that until I complete this post I don’t even know if I’ll ever let you see it. Why such emotion on a sunny day so close to my birthday? Over a television show? The final epsiode of one that went off the air in 2006. One that’s about witches?

If, like me, you never paid much attention to CHARMED, appearing on the now-defunct and youth-oriented WB – about three sisters who are witches and who have witchy powers including, when acting together with the “power of three”, to best Ultimate Evil (I know, I know), let me tell you a bit about them. I’ve written about them before – when I first found them two years ago and again almost a year ago, after a wedding whose ritual reminded me of theirs, even though in theirs families gather from across the divide between living and dead. As I wrote then:

On my favorite guilty pleasure, Charmed, rituals of birth and marriage are attended not only by those who share the lives and loves of the Halliwell sisters (yeah they’re witches and their story spent 8 TV seasons enchanting us all) but also by those who came before. They summon, “through space and time” all members of “the Halliwell line.” Surrounded by these translucent figures of past
generations, today’s Halliwells celebrate marriages and new arrivals. Those fully and those ephemerally present conclude together “blessed be.”

What does this have to do with Jewish weddings — or any other terrestrial weddings for that matter? A lot. Eight years on the air, the longest running show with female leads, it dealt often with travel through time and space and dominions never imagined. But when really important events arose, all the magic was supplanted by a single, simple spell that basically –well — brought the family together.

I just looked the show up on Wikipedia and discovered that it went off the air on my 60th birthday – having run from October 7, 1998 to May 21, 2006. My
husband, when he’s in psychiatrist mode, talks about “anniversary reactions” – when we experience deep feelings but can’t quite figure out where they come from. Sometimes, they have to do with the occurrence of anniversaries we haven’t even noticed have arrived. In this case, though, I didn’t know the year the show ended, much less the date. In fact, I was in Paris with my family to celebrate this 60th birthday landmark on that day and didn’t even notice the demise of the long-running series. In fact, I first discovered it, in re-runs, airing as I worked in my office. I used it to keep me company (believe it or not, it’s on four hours a day – two in the morning and two in the afternoon.) Didn’t know a thing about the show or its success.

I got an earful from one of my sons when I asked though, who claimed that the show caused plenty of fights with his (then) girlfriend. Apparently, it was on at the same time as the Simpsons and every week was a negotiation.

But for me it’s somehow more than that. These three sisters, and their powers, are deeply moving. Their battles and solidarity, their humor and courage, their conviction that they could literally save the world from evil (p.s., they did) all resonated in a very weird way. Still do.

Hence the tears. The final episode, as the post-show future unfolds, feels like my own life. Endings. Loving farewells. The (hopefully) gratification of recognizing a life at least partially well-lived. The kids and their kids and an idyllic togetherness among sisters and their husbands and their children and their destiny. A lot to hope for and, I guess, as my own life moves forward, something to cry about.

HOW OLD ARE YOU? WHO ARE YOU CALLING A ELDER?

We live in a community where many of our closest friends are well under 40 – several the ages of our sons. Because we are culturally united, age isn’t such a big deal, which is strange. I’ve always identified very strongly as a Baby Boomer. Born in the first year of the cohort, I cherish the experiences and adventures and acknowledge the shared rages and disappointments that bind us. Even so, I’m struggling with my place.

There’s a group of bloggers led by Ronni Bennett, a wonderful writer and observer, through her blog Time Goes By – and she’s working to build a community she terms "Elder Bloggers."

I hate it. Hate it. I admire Ronni; I’ve always been OK with where I stand in age and presence but this is tough. I can’t decide if I’m being immature and clinging to a world I don’t belong in or I just don’t have the same sensibility. I moved online in the early 90s, I read science fiction and love Harry Potter; I listen to all kinds of music; I cherish every experience. When my kids were little I often felt I had more in common with their teenage babysitters than with the parents of many of their friends.

It’s not that I deny my age — or my friends who are peers. Or my responsibilities. I’ve had a successful career raised great, honorable and capable kids. It’s that I cherish the energy, openness and curiosity of those whose lives are more ahead of them than behind. I remember maybe 20 years ago when a friend of mine was about to take her youngest son to college. Eyes welling up, she said something over lunch that day that still haunts me. "It used to be that everything in my life was about beginnings, now it seems that most of it is about endings." It was a devastating moment. I swore I would never feel like that.

It’s no battle really. It’s my nature to be curious — I have a short attention span and, as my blog header says, "There’s always more." Remaining open is easy. Realizing that it’s sometimes time to surrender some options is harder — even, or maybe especially, stupid ones like clothes. I have a "style." It took years to develop – not on purpose just by trial and error. Often, I was in the fashion moment. I went through the 80s in leggings and tunics and arm-loads of black rubber bracelets. Oh and Reebok high-tops and thick saggy socks. And that was at work!

One day though, you begin looking at those cool of-the-moment clothes with the thought "I wish I were young enough to wear those" instead of "wow how much is that one?" It’s never said out loud (or at least not by anyone you’d listen to) – you just kind of know it. A friend of mine with daughters says it happens to moms with girls much earlier because, as she put it "you don’t want to look like you’re competing.") I, however, resisted as long as I could, then surrendered (except for jewelry and shoes, of course.)

Music too. I was in the loop until hip hop, then got shoved pretty far into the margins. My kids send me music now – from Great Big Sea to Jack Johnson to Green Day and I’m grateful. But these days I don’t even know who many of the Top Ten folks are — and don’t care.

That doesn’t make me an elder though. Or a grown-up. Just a responsible adult, defined by nature and interests, not age. So Ronni – I’m with you with great admiration as you bring all of us together and continue to build the world’s coolest Boomer+ blogroll. But the title — the title — not for me my girl. At least……..not yet.

TRY TO REMEMBER — THE FANTASTICKS, JERRY ORBACH, THE INTERNET AND ME

OK – so I should be used to it by now. I’ve been — as I often say, a walking demographic Baby Boomer as long as I can remember. But on this morning after the re-opening of THE FANTASTICKS* – which ran off-Broadway for 42 years, I read "adults 55+ adapting online." Of course they are — sooner or later whatever I’m doing becomes part of a generational wave.

Don’t worry – there IS a connection.

I saw THE FANTASTICKS with my college room mate and her mother during fall vacation of my freshman year. That was 1964 – four years after it opened. At the end, all of 18, I was crying so hard that the woman sitting next to me – probably 25 or s0 – handed me the rose her date must have given her at dinner. I kept it on the wall of my room for years.

El Gallo — the irresistible seducer and originator of the "hurt’ without which "the heart is hollow" — was first played by Jerry Orbach. [hear him sing Try to Remember here.] I met him when I was close to 50 – and told him I’d seen the show when I was 18. His face just changed – not a trace of Lennie Briscoe but a combination of affection, nostalgia and pleasure. We spoke a bit more and then I apologized for approaching him at a reception and acting like a groupie. He replied "You saw the Fantasticks when you were EIGHTEEN! That wasn’t an interruption that was a pleasure." So I guess the story had the same impact on the cast that it had on girls like me. "Please God please," the young girl ("the girl") cries out – "don’t let me be NORMAL!" That was me alright. Please let me be singular – not like the others!

Well it hasn’t turned out that way. Whatever I come to, my peers hit within a year or so. It made me a great talk show producer – never a visionary too far ahead to be relevant, just enough ahead to know what story to do next. I guess that’s why I accommodated to my role as close enough to normal but with an edge — rather than the downtown woman I had once wished to be.

I knew about this headlong Boomer journey online because my older son, in the industry, had read a similar study. Last weekend I told him that I seemed to be getting a lot more online consulting work and his theory was that companies need boomer consultants more because more "civilian" boomers are finally hitting the web. I always knew we would; the tribe that is the baby boom loves to be connected. The web was a perfect home for us. Just like THE FANTASTICKS.

*OK Feminist friends, there’s an element of sexism in this original fairy tale (they’ve rewritten the only really troubling song) but I have chosen to ignore it. It just can’t trump the wonder and poetry.