baby boom – Don't Gel Too Soon

Big Birthday Memory #17: They Will Campaign Against Us Until We’re All Dead – and Maybe After

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from July 9, 2008

From the day Richard Nixon was nominated in 1968 until Tuesday afternoon, forty years later, when John McCain began running this “Love” commercial, Republicans have been running against us. All of us who share a history of opposing the Vietnam war and working to elect an anti-war president. Against everything we ever were, believed, dreamed, voted for, marched against, volunteered to change, spoke about, created, sang, wrote, painted, sculpted or said to one another on the subway or the campus or anyplace else from preschool parent nights to Seders to the line at the supermarket.

How is it possible that what we tried to do is still the last best hope to elect a Republican? They used it against John Kerry. They used it against Max Cleland. They did it every time (well, almost) they were losing policy battles in the Clinton years. They called CSPAN and said unspeakable things. And now they are using the history of people my side of sixty to run against a man who was, if my math is right, seven years old during this notorious “summer of love” which – I might add, had nothing to do with those of us working to end the war. In fact, there were two strands of rebellion in those years. The Summer of Love/Woodstock folks and the political, anti-war activists.

At the 1967 National Student Association Convention in Maryland, I saw a room full of students boo Timothy Leary off the stage, literally. We didn’t want to “turn on, tune in, drop out” we wanted to organize against the war. The anti-war movement was not a party. I know that’s not a bulletin but it is so hard to see all of us reduced to a single mistaken stereotype. Those who chose to find a personal solution weren’t nuts; communes and home-made bread were a lot more immediate gratification than march after march, teach-in after teach-in, speech after speech. “If you’re goin’ to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” Tempting, romantic – and not us.

Even more painful is the fact that the cultural and political divide is still so intense that research (I assume) told the McCain guys that this commercial would work. That our patriotic, committed efforts to change our country’s path, and the cultural alienation that drove others toward the streets of San Francisco, combine to become a stronger motivator than all the desperate issues we face today, this side of those 40 years. Perhaps even worse, these Bush years have dismantled so many of the successes we did have, so that in addition to facing, yet again, this smear against the activism of 1968 (and I repeat, that wasforty years ago — longer than most of the bloggers I know have been alive) there’s the awareness of what we did that has been undone.

I need to say here that I grew up on the shores of the Monongehela River in Pittsburgh and my classmates were kids who mostly went into
the steel mills or the Army after high school. I knew plenty of supporters of the war. I went to prom and hung out at the Dairy Queen with them. But it never occurred to me to demonize them, to hold against them their definition of patriotism.

I’m not writing off or looking down upon those who did support the war; I’m saying that this cynical, craven abuse of the devotion of people on
both sides to the future of their country is reprehensible and precisely the kind of behavior that has broken the hearts of so many Americans, on those both sides of the political spectrum, who just want their candidates to lead us in hope for what our country can be, not defame others whose dreams aren’t quite the same as theirs.

Big Birthday Memory #13: Best Friends Forever

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from November 17, 2007.

There we are – Jane and me on her porch one summer during college. Friends since Brownies, we’ve always had a warm, respectful and sturdy relationship, interrupted by years at a time but never diminished. Recently she sent photos of a family reunion – her four kids and their spouses and all their kids. And some things she had written. Beautiful things. Especially about her parents. I knew them well; I spent so many Saturday nights at their house, even going to church with them in the morning. They never ate breakfast before Communion but Jane’s mom always insisted that I eat something even though I was going with them After all, I wasn’t taking Communion so why not?.

A “nice Jewish girl” in a mill town suburb (here I’m on the right and Jane on the left,)I had no Jewish friends; Jane, Catholic, was my dearest. What might have been a huge cultural gap was just a curiosity; differences in our lives but not in how we felt about one another. We’d always sworn to be at one another’s weddings; I’ll never forget her beautiful one in the cathedral at Notre Dame. Years later, when it was my turn, Jane was living in Dallas and already a mother; she just couldn’t make it.
Then, just days before our wedding, she called. “Do you still have room on that boat of yours?” (We got married on a boat.) “I have to keep our promise- I’m coming!” It was so great and meant so much. Just as she knew it would.
That was 36 years ago; almost twice the age we were when the top photo was taken. But it doesn’t matter. The blessing of shared memories — of remembering each other’s parents and the Girl Scout trip to New York and her first love, who died in Vietnam — and mine, who ran off, perpetually stoned, to Santa Barbara — those memories make her part of so much of who I was and who I’ve become. What a gift to me that the one whose friendship blessed me was so blessed herself – generous and fine — helping me to be what she knew I had to be when I wasn’t sure myself what that was…not at all.

Big Birthday Memory #11: Remembrance of Things Past – Tom Jones and So Much More

Albert Finney and Susannah York as Tom and his love Sophie

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from September 17, 2007.

Not to be too obscure here but think about this: Marcel Proust’s REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PASTwas inspired by the scent of one cookie (a fancy one called a Madeline.) Sense memory is a powerful thing.

I saw Tom Jones 44 years ago, with my high school “film club.” The club was just 6 seniors and our creative writing teacher. Our mill town high school wasn’t a culture haven but this young teacher was. He handwrote Irwin Shaw short stories onto “ditto sheets” because there was no budget for the books, started a literary magazine (I was the editor, naturally) took us to Shakespeare performances and — started the film club. At first we rented films (screened on a projector in his classroom) and then moved on to evening journeys “downtown” to local art houses. We saw LA STRADA and THE SEVENTH SEAL, SUNDAYS AND CYBELE and SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER — and TOM JONES. The films were so intelligent, so clearly different from the “movies” we saw on our own; the theaters served espresso andeveryone was smoking. How sophisticated we felt!

This morning as I watched this nearly half-century old film – still funny and charming even though the playful sexual innuendo recalls a more tender time, that 18-year-old girl I’d been came back – all of her. I didn’t know whether to be sad — miss all that I was then – all that’s changed — lost — or just plain passed – or to be grateful for the remarkable kaleidoscope of experiences that my life has been. From the adventure of a 36 year old marriage to the joy of raising two of the most spectacular young men on the planet to presences at royal weddings and presidential inaugurations, travel all over the world and great music experiences to a gentle childhood with talents acknowledged and appreciated to memorable private moments at weddings, bar mitzvahs, graduations and other celebrations with family and friends, a lot has contributed to the wiser woman I am today. I know there’s no way to live the life I’ve lived – or any other – without losing some of the shiny stuff of youth but even so it’s a shock when awareness of those losses lands on you in the middle of an unambiguously optimistic movie 44 years old.

Here’s what I think: there isn’t a person on the planet (despite Edith Piaf) who has no regrets. Recalling days that seem idyllic is a privilege – many haven’t got many to recall. Sadness about the joys of the past emerges only from an accumulated reservoir of happiness that is a blessing in itself. As Auntie Mame used to say“Life is a banquet, and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death.” My sisters and I swore we would live by that.

I’ve tried – and I’m still trying. That’s why this blog is called Don’t Gel Too Soon. Wherever that 18 year old film fiend has gone, parts of her are still part of me – informing and enlivening the person I’ve become. The real challenge in this portion of my life is to hang onto the enthusiasm and curiosity of those years – never freezing in place. The last line in Tom Jones, one of my favorite anywhere, was written by John Dryden – way before movies or even radio. It still works though, and I offer its wisdom for us all. “Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own; he who, secure within, can say, tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.”

Big Birthday Memory #10: Grey’s Anatomy, Bruce Springsteen, Memory and Me

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from April 23, 2007.

Research shows that I’m hardly alone in this, but I have a deep and abiding fear of disappearing into the fog that is Alzheimer’s disease. I’m approaching my 61st birthday, which, these days, is young. Horrible to contemplate, but NOT old. Actually even for the last generation it’s not much – my dad lived to be 78 and my mom 80. So even in WWII generation terms, I’d have a good crack at at least 20 more years. And when I think about dying I really worry more about the sadness of those I love than anything else. No one wants her life to be over, but unlike many of my friends, including those far younger, I’m not terrified.

Alzheimer’s is different though. If you read the statistics, the odds are pretty scary for all of us. Today the New York Times reports (actually I think a little late – if you don’t have Times Select try this story on amNewYork) on a new awareness program by the Alzheimer’s Association. Here’s the video(short.) That’s good.

It even includes Kate Burton, Meridith Grey’s mother (Grey’s Anatomy for those of you not (Grey’s Anatomy for those of you not addicted already.) Her character, in a series of almost unbearable episodes, suffered from Alzheimer’s. There is so much written about this disease and the risk to our nation’s future, one person at a time, but if the documents are to be believed research is far behind potential.

As usual it’s a question of money. And I know I should care about that. I guess I do. But what’s tougher for me is to face, almost daily, the small memory losses and forgetful moments of aging and not fear that they are all connected to the disease. People my age even joke about it – calling it “old timer’s” disease or “senior moments” but all it is is awful. To lose a word, see know the star of a classic film and not be able to retrieve the name, work a crossword puzzle (recommended to maintain brain “muscles” and besides I love them) and KNOW the missing word somewhere in your brain – but no place where you can get to it…. it’s all terrifying.

Think about it. Spouses who’ve shared years of generating memories suddenly seeing you lose yours; knowing daily that your access to those moments is disappearing. Children who’ve struggled to build strong and independent lives burdened with the emotional obligations created by a wasting disease in a parent. Friends self-conscious and uneasy on visits they know they should make – if they even have the strength to make them. Can you imagine anything worse – except the painful, protracted ending that cancer often brings?

As I write this, random thoughts wander through my mind. Most dominant are lyrics from a Bruce Springsteen (of course) song.

I don’t wanna fade away, Oh I don’t wanna fade away, Tell me what can I do what can I say, Cause darlin’ I don’t wanna fade away.

Yeah it’s about the end of a love affair but it’s playing in my head as a kind of Alzheimer’s anthem so you have to listen too.

The other things are really corny but right now I think I need to be corny. This one is part of what we read at the beginning of our wedding almost 36 years ago: In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it. It’s from William Saroyan’s play The Time of Your Life.

The other is from Our Town. And I know it’s old fashioned and sentimental. But as I look this terror in the eye, I know it’s what I have to do to keep it at bay.

Emily: Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?–every, every minute?
Stage Manager: No. Saints and poets, maybe–they do some.

I guess the answer to all this is to aim for the saints and the angels. Nothing is going to prevent the future from happening; not faith, not love, not Hogwart’s magic, not even the miraculous gift of children. So each day I need to be as present as I can. Whatever happens it’s a blow against the unknown and a prayer of gratitude for the privilege of being present and aware.

Big Birthday Memory #9: Remembering JFK: 44 Years and 2 Days After the Kennedy Assassination

On the campaign trail. I would have given anything to be that kid.

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from November 24, 2007.

Thanksgiving Day was the 44th anniversary of the assassination of John Kennedy. I didn’t want that to be my holiday post, though, so I’m writing about it today.** I was a senior in high school when our vice-principal, Mr. Hall, a huge scary guy (and football coach) came onto the intercom and announced, his voice breaking, that President Kennedy had been shot, and had died. I remember standing up and just walking out of my creative writing class. No one stopped me – or any of the rest of us. We wandered the halls in tears, then went home, riding the school bus in tears. I remember the next morning, taking the car out and just driving around — running in to my friend Jack Cronin on his drugstore delivery route – and standing on McClellan Drive in his arms as we both wept. I remember, Jewish girl that I was, going to Mass at St. Elizabeth’s Church that Sunday just to be with the people of his faith. I cried for four days.

Years later, working on the TODAY SHOW 20th anniversary of the funeral, I remember all of it rushing back as we cut tape and realized as adults what a gift Jacqueline Kennedy had given the nation through the dignity and completeness of the funeral. I know that many younger people find the Kennedys a little bit of a joke, thanks partly to the Simpsons, but it’s not possible to describe the grief and trauma of those days. Or the gratitude we all felt for his presence — and the profound nature of the loss.

Though only 13, I had the great good fortune to attend the Kennedy Inauguration, traveling all night on the train with my mom to sit in the stands near the Treasure Building and watch the parade go by. We stood outside the White House at the end of the parade, in the last of the blizzard, and watched him walk into the White House for the first time as president. I’d seen the culmination of all the volunteer hours my 13-year-old self could eke out to go “down town” and stuff envelopes — to respond to the the call to help change the world.

It seems so pathetic now; the loss not only of JFK but of his brother, so beloved by my husband that he’s never been the same since 1968, the loss of Dr. King and Malcolm X, the trauma of Vietnam and all that followed, later of the shooting of John Lennon, even. It seemed that all we’d dreamed about and hoped for – worked for – was gone. How could we have been so romantic – so sure that we could bring change? Believed it again in 1967 and 68 as we worked and marched against the war, for Eugene McCarthy or Bobby Kennedy, for civil rights and for peace, for better education and environmental policies, for rights for women, gay Americans and so much more. Most of us haven’t stopped but the American media obsession with America’s loss of innocence emerges from the pain of those weeks.

Now, to me, even the idea of innocence seems a bit — well — innocent. In our case, innocence came largely from a combination of lack of experience and of knowledge. We didn’t know that we stood for the take over of Central American countries and the support of Franco and Salazar as well as the Marshall Plan and remarkable courage and commitment of World War II. We were too close to the WWII generation to have the historic separation that’s possible today. So was much of the rest of the world: in Europe, South America, Africa — all over the world — the Kennedys had won hearts and minds. It’s almost impossible to imagine in light of our standing in the world today. And that’s part of the grief too. Even though much of the anger at the US outside Iraq is based on a warped version of political correctness, we know the experience of riding from the glory of having “liberated” Europe through the Marshall Plan and the glory of the Kennedy outreach to the rest of the world. Personally and publicly, John Kennedy validated all that we wanted to see in ourselves – all that we wanted ourselves, and our country, to be. And today, despite all the revelations of the years since, 44 years and two days later, that’s still true.

Don Draper, Dick Whitman, Peggy, Sally, Joan, Coke, Mad Men and Us

The farewell to Mad Men, at least on Monday’s morning news programs, was all about “the Coke commercial” (indeed a brilliant, brilliant presence in the episode) the 60’s, advertising, capitalism and a Don Draper not at all like the man he described to Peggy in this phone call:

“I messed everything up. I’m not the man you think I am…. I broke all my vows. I scandalized my child. I took another man’s name. and made nothing of it.”

or his physical transformation – messy hair, plaid shirt and jeans – that returned him, at least briefly, to the “Dick Whitman” he once was. Even his expressions were those of a country boy with a squint.

Joan faye peggy2 — Joan, Peggy and Faye in the elevator in especially poignant episode about the women of Mad Men

Preoccupation with “the commercial” overrode discussion of how important Mad Men has been to women: not only those who were teenagers as Don ascended and for whom so many scenes brought back memories of the scandalous neighborhood “divorcee,” of the Women’s Clubs and Garden Clubs and all the other “activities” suburban mothers created — but also for those who came after, for whom some of what they saw of women’s lives was just a relic but way too much was way too familiar.

Don Draper’s journey, from brothel to executive suite to Esalen, is very much that of America through the 60’s and beyond. It was a traumatic, scary, strange and exhilarating time, and whether you were there or you arrived later, it’s clear that Don’s misery and confusion mirrored what many of us, and, even more so, our parents felt every day.

Oh, and that Coke commercial? It was so perfect I laughed out loud as it appeared: all that we had hoped for and dreamed of, laid out in an air-brushed, multicultural, Benetton panorama. I don’t think we knew then how far we would be today – maybe forever – from that dream, but watching it now, it seems quaint how sentimental we were, even in our days of rage. Just like Don.

This Just In: The Longer You Live, the Older You Are!

Banksy seniors — Banksy’s view of older folk

They look like big insects with wheels, those people with walkers and canes. I pass so many of them on the streets. Every time, it gets scarier.

“That’s OK” I tell myself, “Lots of them are really obese, many are clearly far far older or looking it and some are obviously dealing with life-long disabilities. They need all those appliances. I don’t.” Even so, each time they pass I see, for the first time, not another species but a possible (perhaps inevitable) future.

We all age. Our grandsons are growing so fast; miss a week and they seem transformed. Our kids have somehow become men of 35 and almost 40! Younger people are more willing to reveal their resentment of those of us from the 60’s and 70’s. (“We’re just bitter because the media spent our formative years (well, the teen and college ones) calling us slackers and then our entire generation got known as a waste of space. It’s still mean about us! I think we are the hardest workers who will work until we drop dead.”)

I understand what that means, even though I disagree with much of it. I don’t mind the idea of aging; so far I’m pretty lucky in how I feel and what I can do and think and be. Even so, I know it all turns on an illness, or a fall, or a loss of strength or hearing or sight. I continue to see myself apart from those old people, but somewhere inside I know the truth. I can’t hide from it forever.

We all get old. We all change, sometimes decline and sometimes gain wisdom. Boomer or Millennial, Gen X or Y – all of us move along the continuum no matter how much we fight it. And no matter how long I sit here trying to finish this, I can’t find a way to make it any better.

Carrying our Burden: The Military and the Rest of Us

NOTE; From my archives (one of my first posts) August 8, 2006

The National Military Families Association is an old client of mine and today I'm meeting their former CEO for lunch. She and I had hoped to use her site and some of the "women's" content sites to begin to bridge the chasm between military and non-military families. Who if not the women would be capable of that? I had just read Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, a wonderful book about West Point and leadership so was particularly interested in removing the stereotypes and isolation suffered by the military in my formative, actively anti-war youth. We were unable to interest most of the women's sites into doing anything without payment though; it was quite sad.

When I think of 9/11 and of the Iraq War – and remember how my parents used to talk about the "GIs" and their position in the world during World War II, it's particularly unfortunate that we now have a "military class" that is separate from the rest of us in so many ways – and whose parents and children were also likely to be military — so much so that we're worlds apart. Today Oliver Stone told the Washington Post that he thought combat experience "softens you, if anything. It makes you more aware of human frailty and vulnerability. It doesn't make you a coward, but it does teach you. " Yet, as he noted in this interview, none of our current political leaders has any combat experience at all. I know we need to end this division, but I have two sons and what seems sensible in the abstract is horrifying in the concrete. I have many friends whose kids have gone to live in Israel, for example, and they seem to accept the fact of their sons' military obligation with equinimity but I don't know if I could. And I"m not sure if it's the scars of Vietnam and even more recent futile endeavors or rank selfishness on my part…. More later.

Blogging Boomers Carnival #122: Health, Travel, Books and Marriage

I'm a day late because I'm in London and time is mysterious still, but this week's Blogging Boomers, at Midlife Crisis Queen, is worth waiting for. From what to pack to how to stay healthy, it's got its usual menagerie of interesting stuff. Take a look and you'll see what I mean.

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.