Depression – Don't Gel Too Soon

Aunts and Cousins: Great Memories and an Uncertain Future

Sunday night both boys, their wives and kids came for dinner. We won’t all be together for Thanksgiving; one son and his two kids will be with his wife and her family; we’ll be with our other daughter-in-law’s family. So Sunday was special, and it was a lovely evening.

Afterward, for some reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Thanksgivings when we were kids. It was always at our house: my parents, my mom’s sisters and their husbands, my grandmother and “the cousins.” There were 9 of us, six girls (I was the oldest) and three boys. My Aunt Bettie, her husband, two sons and a daughter lived in Cleveland; the rest of us were all local, so when the Cleveland Cousins showed up, it was a big deal.

There was a kids table of course. Nobody, not even bossy me, was in a hurry to move to the old folks’ territory. We were having too much fun. In addition to everything else (including games of “Murder” and “Sardines” and lots of running around outside) we planned and performed little dramas every year. I doubt they were very good, but everyone clapped and we had fun.

I wonder about so much now, though: the covert sisterly conversations in my parents’ bedroom, my grandmother (that’s her in the picture), whom I thought had gotten mean but was apparently losing her sight and trying to hide it, the lovely uncle and the wild one, and the impact of the Depression on the sisters and their men. There’s so much of that time that I’d love to see with my grown up eyes: about raising kids and being a grandparent of course, but even more, about what WWII and the Depression had done to them. After all, as I watch events unfold, it’s scary to think how close we are to leaving our kids and theirs to face similar harshness.

I wrote this about them back in 2007, when the last sister died:

In some ways, they were the lucky ones; all three sisters and my father and uncles — were able, on scholarships, to go to college. All three marriages, despite tensions and tough times, survived with a real friendship between spouses for most of their lives. Each had three children who were smart, interesting, and self-sufficient. Even so, the bounty of choices they gave to us was so much more than they had had themselves. The young women in this photograph, and their husbands, never had the luxury of dropping out of school to campaign for Eugene McCarthy or majoring in music or theater or spending years doing trauma medicine a couple of months a year to pay for a life of mountain climbing and exploration. There was no give, no leeway, in the lives of those whom the Depression and the war that ended it – had stamped forever.

I’d give anything to hear it all now. All of it.

I hope we, and our kids, have the guts to be as courageous — and tenacious, as they were.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck and Roman Holiday: a Political Lesson? No, Really.

It was a fairy tale about a princess on a journey. Doing her duty, kind of like Diana (but, since she was played by Audrey Hepburn, even classier,) she came to Rome, after Athens, London and Paris, to conclude her mission.

But she was young and beautiful and sick of receptions and parades. And so, in the middle of the night, she snuck out the embassy window and ventured across the Piazza di Spagna and into the Roman night.

If you know this movie at all, you remember with sweet nostalgia the way you felt the first time you saw it. The princess asleep near the Trevi Fountain on the Roman equivalent of a park bench is awakened, like Sleeping Beauty, by reporter Joe Bradley, played by Gregory Peck. ( If the film has a flaw, it’s that we know some of what will happen once we see him there. He’s a good guy and that’s who he plays. He is Atticus Finch, after all.)
The film was released in 1953, right in the middle of the 1950’s. Written by Dalton Trumbo, “Roman Holiday” was credited to a “front” named Ian McLellan Hunter, because Trumbo, blacklisted as a member of the Hollywood Ten, wasn’t permitted to write for movies any longer. It’s one of the darkest chapters in Hollywood history, very much a part of the image of the decade and a sad facet of a beloved film that won three Oscars and introduced the world to Audrey Hepburn.
There’s something else though. The people in this film behave well. There are things that they want, desperately, but there are principals at stake, and they honor them. When Peck meets Hepburn, he doesn’t recognize her but lets her crash at his apartment. Once he figures out who she is, he knows this “runaway” could be the story of his life. Even so, after a brief, idyllic tour of the city, (SPOILER ALERT) she honors her responsibilities and returns to her royal duties, and of course, he never writes the story. It was very much an artifact of the
“Greatest Generation” ideals, manifested with such courage during
WWII and very much the flip side of the jaundiced (and just as accurate) Mad Men view of the 50’s. Duty and honor trump romance and ambition.

Once again, I’m struck with admiration for the people of these times. Yes the 50’s did terrible damage and made it difficult to be eccentric or rebellious or even creative. But films like this one, or Now Voyager and similar films of the 40’s, sentimental as they may be, remind us of what else these people were. They’d lived through the Depression and the war and they had an elevated sense of responsibility. As we watch much of our government (and some of the rest of us) disintegrate into partisanship and self-interest, it makes a lot more sense than it did when we rose up against it all in the 1960’s. Doesn’t it?

Introducing Tuesday Tours: Random Worthy Blog Posts

Welcome to Tuesday Tours. There's so much good stuff out in the Blog Universe; we all have our blog readers filled with those we love. It's tough to keep up though, so until further notice, I'll be offering Tuesday tours of some of my own frequent favorites.

One of my favorite bloggers, Pundit Mom, offers posts at two ends of the spectrum as the week begins. Both are worth reading. The first: advice to the Obamas about the neighborhood around Sidwell Friends School. It's just fun. The second is a serious post with a serious question: When is it right to tell an airline official that a passenger is making you nervous
?

Concerned about what's going on in Israel? Check back daily at Writes Like She Talks, where Jill Zimon has her finger on what's up all over the Web. Here's a sample.

The wise Maria Niles is looking to figure out all those generation labels like X and Boomer and Millennial — and what they mean (and what the heck her own is.)

Also "generationally speaking," you know that all last year I wrote comparing 1968 and 2008. Well, Time Goes By columnist Saul Friedman has done me one (actually two) better, writing of lessons from his own iconic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Obama's point of reference, Abraham Lincoln.

Beth Kanter is a legend. Rightfully so. So when she offers 52 ways for Non-profits to use social media efficiently as a New Year's gift to her readers, I'm figuring that at least some of them can help the rest of us too.

Two of my favorite moms have something special too: I'm late on this one, but Her Bad Mother's description of a willful three-year-old (it's long so wait until you have time) is priceless. Some kids are just strong strong little people.

Also, Woulda Coulda Shoulda's Mir Kamin celebrated her son's last single-digit birthday with a wonderful hymn to a newly-nine-year-old. She never misses, that one.

Finally, this one – because the happy family in the photo is mine.

OUR TOUGH ECONOMY: OK, I ADMIT IT, IT SCARES ME

I don't know about you but I'm really getting scared. Although we've gone from a two-wage-earner family to one student and one consultant whose income is unpredictable, that's not the issue. It's the sense of vulnerability that just won't quit. I wake up and see overseas markets sinking each day and knowing that ours will follow, listen to layoff numbers of a size that I don't think I've imagined, much less seen before, remember the hard time all my high school classmates went through during the big steel strikes, and worry.

Bill Clinton used to talk all the time about Americans who "work hard and play by the rules." Well guess who's getting hosed now? A good friend of mine, a widow, has lost 50% of her 401K and she's in her early 60s so there isn't all that much time to recoup before she starts to need it. For many, medical expenses as they aged were supposed to be cushioned by savings; now each expense is a real economic violation. Friends in service businesses like dog walking, the guy who cuts my hair and relies on mall walk-in business that's not appearing, all the small, non-urgent elements that are the underpinnings of an economy — they're rickety and that's scary. Forget about the auto industry – that's almost too big to get your head around. But a young mother running a pet care business so she has more time for her family, a deli owner, a home childcare center, an occupational therapist or piano teacher or online yarn entrepreneur — a new college grad with no job prospects, an independent consultant like me — we're vulnerable.

My anger at George Bush and the past eight years has grown geometrically in the midst of all this. Remember the ant and the grasshopper? Well Bush, who ran as a sturdy, sensible ant, has squandered all the reserve that might have helped us weather parts of this crisis. He's put us so far in debt that we are a bad example and object of rage, disappointment and distrust. In yet another element of the disdain in which we're held, our profligate, self-indulgent conduct of both war and economic policy has left us in tatters with not nearly enough resources to take care of ourselves without enormous pain and sacrifice. I've been out of work. I've been in debt. We've climbed back from two separate crises, one of our own making, one not, and moved ourselves to a place where we have a little equilibrium. That's a vulnerable asset, and we're going to have to struggle to protect it. But we're so much luckier than others.

If you're trying to get out of the heady debt so many Americans were seduced into, there's no room for a layoff or slowdown. If you need a job to keep your Green Card, if you need holiday work to pay for SATs and college applications, if you're retired and fear for your savings, if you need summer jobs to stay off the streets, if your kids need extra educational intervention, this mess is going to land on you. And that's only if it doesn't get so bad that the photo at the top of this post is a reality once again.

Clearly I'm not the only one thinking about the Great Depression. This TIME cover, which will certainly be a classic, evokes a famous photo of FDR in its picture of President-Elect Obama. "The New New Deal" it says. Hoping, pleading almost, that the inspiring, calm and competent Roosevelt will be channeled in this new President, along with a great portion of Abraham Lincoln. Clearly, the evocation of presidential icons from both parties reflects the comprehension of the scope and magnitude of the issues we face – and the urgency surrounding them. Just as clearly, I'm not the only one who's worried. AND I keep adding to this as news breaks – now the Dow is below 8,000. I think I just need to shut up and post.

BARACK OBAMA, JUDITH WARNER, EXPLAINING HISTORY TO KIDS: MRS. HAMER AND JACKIE ROBINSON

A dear friend sent me this New York Time column by the sometimes controversial Judith Warner. In it, Warner muses about the cosmic change we all know came last Tuesday, and her young daughters’ seeming inability to understand the magnitude of what has happened.

“Look,” we said, pointing to the headline “Racial Barrier Falls.” “This is huge.”

We labored to make them understand that their world — art that day,
and orchestra, and Baked Potato Bar at lunch — had irrevocably changed.

But how can you understand change when you’ve only known one way of being?

They were happy because we were happy. They rose to the occasion in
that bemused way children do when adults tell them what they should
feel. They were glad to be rid of George W. Bush and to be saved – for
now – from the specter of Sarah Palin.

Of course one of the reasons for this is that, for younger people, unless they’re well-briefed, it is less of an earthquake. They know we believe that they are part of something wonderful, but they don’t know as viscerally as we do the terribleness that came before. It was easier, 30 years ago, with my own children. They went to a pretty progressive elementary school where Martin Luther King Day was a cornerstone of the winter curriculum. In the first grade they learned about the kid across the street who wouldn’t play with him, and of the pain that caused. They watched Eyes on the Prize more than once in class. When we settled on annual giving, their vote was for the United Negro College Fund. Their babysitter told them stories about not being able to go into Virginia smoke shops to buy a candy bar, about the scary cruelty that was her childhood. It came from someone they knew. It wasn’t history, it was their friend’s life.

But they’re a generation or more older than Warner’s girls and, growing up in Manhattan they knew more, and heard more, from people for whom it was more immediate. There are fewer of those people now, as Selma and Montgomery fade farther into history. It will take more work, more commitment by schools as well as parents, to help these small people understand what has happened. Work worth doing though, I think.

As I’ve thought about this, I’ve recalled that my parents never completely described to me the impact of the Depression on their lives. They were, I later learned, enormously affected but there really wasn’t a way to explain it – at least for them. They had suffered too much. It drove me to study Depression history in college, when much of what I’d wondered about became clear. That was a sad landmark instead of a proud one, but it’s also about troubled experiences difficult to communicate. A challenge either met or avoided.

I agree that one way to help younger people understand the wonder of what has happened is just as Warner described it. Let them be “happy because we’re happy.” Explain as best we can. Personally though, I’m not against a little indoctrination: the story of Dr. King’s lost playmate, or Jackie Robinson or Fannie Lou Hamer or Rosa Parks (there’s a kids’ song “When Rosa Parks Sat Down, the Whole World Stood Up”) or Charlayne Hunter-Gault. And the question I used so often: “How do you think you would feel if that happened to you?” From the known to the unknown, the familiar to the unfamiliar, just like any other lesson. Allow the natural compassion of a loving child to emerge, and their sense of justice and wonder will not be far behind.