Family – Page 3 – Don't Gel Too Soon

MARRIAGE, TRADITION AND MY MOTHER’S WEDDING RING

This is the hand of my soon-to-be daughter-in-law. The ring on her finger is 65 years old. At least. I know this because it was my mother’s wedding ring, which she wore until she died, and which I have worn ever since. And now, another generation of our family will wear it as a wedding ring. It’s a joy for me and symbolic of so much: continuity, Amy’s acceptance of us as part of her life, her respect for Josh’s origins, and, as she readily acknowledges, a love of tradition and history.

When your child decides to get married; it’s a big deal. New configurations must be established as two families converge: new sensibilities, new rituals and traditions. More important than all of that though is the wish, the hope, the prayer, that these two people, one of whom you have loved with your whole heart since he entered the world and one you have learned to love — that they will find happiness, the strength to weather inevitable storms, a continuation of the laughter and friendship they so clearly share, of the closeness each feels with siblings and parents, and as much joy as can be apportioned to them.

Seeing this ring, part of my own family since before I was, moving forward in this way, means all those things, stands for everything eternal that we seek and sometimes find. It’s a gift beyond measure to me and to the family we’ve been and the one we, and they, are still becoming.

SO LONG TIM. ALL THE NICE THINGS WE’VE BEEN SAYING ABOUT YOU WERE TRUE – AND IT’S NOT FAIR – NOT AT ALL

I worked at NBC News, at the TODAY SHOW for nine years, and for much of that time, I was lucky enough to work with Tim Russert. The picture on the left was one of the few I could find that showed that great, mischievous expression that meant we were going to have fun so even if it’s not a DC kind of photo, it’s the one I like best.

I first met Tim when he still worked with Mario Cuomo., on the Democratic Convention floor in 1984 when Cuomo electrified the crowd and I chased Tim, whom I’d never met, half way out to the parking lot to get a promise that the Governor would be on the show the next day. He was psyched, hyped and way too busy but he was also adorable and very sweet as we worked to get things organized.

So when he came to NBC and went to work on getting the Vatican to let us come and do a week of shows in Rome, including time with the Pope, I watched Tim play it out. He worked with Cardinal Kroll in Philadelphia and with one of his colleagues who worked in the Vatican and somehow we got our on-the-air mass with Pope John Paul II and a Philadelphia Catholic school boys choir sang on the TODAY SHOW. Who but Tim would have made that happen?

There’s not much I can say that hasn’t been said; I couldn’t write sooner because my kids were visiting for the weekend and I wasn’t being very bloggy. But as the news broke, my younger son called from the airport. He was really sad. I’d forgotten how lovely Tim was to Dan, who was around 6 when they met. Treated him like a cool guy, gave him an NBC baseball cap that I think he still has, teased him guy to guy. When I went over to deliver our bassinet after Luke arrived Dan came along and this new daddy still had time for a bit of a conversation with a six year old. AND to show us a tape of Willard Scott announcing Luke’s birth on the show.

All week people have been talking about Tim’s love of politics. That was true; and he mined every subtle message and decision for meaning and impact. But he had another quality that was even more valuable in a journalist: a contagious enthusiasm for living that made each story part of a grand adventure. He brought everyone in his orbit along with him — sharing energy and laughter, competition that was fierce but never mean and a real belief in both the fun and the importance of journalism in a democracy.

I moved to LA and we mostly lost touch – although he did send a Meet the Press baseball cap in response to a note I sent him. It made me feel remembered – as it was meant to. It was the kind of gesture that’s been in the stories people have been telling all week — it’s just that this one’s mine. And since I’m not one of the rock stars who have been telling these stories all week, just someone he worked with, I’m hoping it will demonstrate the genuine niceness of this guy. Really.

There’s a wake tomorrow and I’m going to try to go. I’m betting that there will be a mob scene there but I’d just like to show respect for a moment or two. I’ve seen so many of us writing about this very sad thing; I’ll say a bit of a goodbye for all of us.

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.

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY: ROBERT FROST, YEAR’S END, AND FAMILIES

Nothing ever stays still, does it? I remember a Robert Frost poem we read in high school – Nothing Gold Can Stay:

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower,

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

As this year draws to a close, I’m so aware of the rocky ride between joy and pain that life brings us. Children succeed and are happy; suffer, argue, question and, as adults, make huge decisions whose consequences are no longer our business. Others we love face illness, work stresses and moments of spiritual angst. And we ourselves struggle. With our own pain. With the knowledge that the best times — the gold — never last and must be cherished for the time we have them. And with the realization that the job of parent includes a form of built-in obsolescence, that rescuing, even those we love, is not always a gift to those we try to help.

I’m still learning how to be the mother of grown men. They have been and continue to be a joy to me but the best gift I can give them, struggle to give them, is to be available but never more than that. I’ve done pretty well, but in moments when I worry – health issues, love issues, work issues, life-changing issues – I have to hold my breath and hope. To remember that over the years we’ve provided one another with many moments of "something gold" and that now, as their parents have, they must pass through their own moments of sublime and ridiculous, gold and dross.

There’s an old saying that "you’re never happier than your least happy child." I struggle not to allow that to be true. The best gift I can give our boys – and for that matter my husband as well – is to separate, to trust them in their journeys and crises, joys and troubles. To love them, listen to them, and respect them enough to allow them to live their own golden moments and mourn their loss – hopefully with enough experience over the years to understand that even as a moment of joy departs, another is forming just around the bend.

LAST OF THE LEAVES, LAST OF NABLOPOMO, HARRY CHAPIN AND LIFE

I can see this out my office window. In a couple of months it will be silvery with snow. Months after that, long after these last end-of-autumn leaves have fallen, new ones will bud in their place, and there will be a riot of color once again — this time with blossoms.

I titled a post a few months ago "ALL MY LIFE’S A CIRCLE, SUNRISE TO SUNDOWN" as I wrote about a beautiful Bar Mitzvah. For some reason, I’m feeling that way today. Listen to Harry Chapin’s wonderful words:
All my life’s a circle
Sunrise and sundown
Moon rolls through the night time
Till daybreak comes around
All my life’s a circle
Still I wonder why
Season spinning ’round again
Years keep rolling by.

Seems like I’ve been here before
Can’t remember when
I got this funny feeling
We’ll all be together again
No straight lines make up my life
All my roads have bends
No clear cut beginnings
So far no dead ends.
CHORUS
I’ve met you a thousand times
I guess you’ve done the same
Then we lose each other
It’s like a children’s game
But now I find you here again
The thought comes to my mind
Our love is like a circle
Let’s go ’round one more time.

All my life’s a circle
Sunrise and sundown
Moon rolls through the night time
Till daybreak comes around
All my life’s a circle
Still I wonder why
Season spinning ’round again
Years keep rolling by.

Beautiful, no? Tomorrow it will be December – NABLOPOMO will be over for another year and the year itself as fast approaching its final days. We’ve been through health scares and crises, major adventures and small pleasures, moving and rewarding family time and some times not so great. So I guess that’s why I’m kind of weepy, having loved the release of daily writing and aware of how fragile is life — and love — and laughter, ready to "go ’round one more time."

Here’s the song:

Have a good weekend.

NABLOPOMO GRADUATION DAY MINUS ONE

So here’s what I know so far:

Everyone loves COSTCO. Yesterday’s post garnered a ton of traffic; I was frankly amazed. Of all the things I’ve written about, from Vietnam to Jewish funerals to East Berlin to my kids to Bruce Springsteen, this is the one that hit something. Not sure what but it’s kind of interesting, no?
Writing every day is definitely good for you. Hard, but good.
As I’ve continued to write, I’ve discovered both a capacity to be honest and a certainty that there are things I will never write about. Those things belong to others, people I love to whom they happened. They belong to them.
When you’re writing but you’re beyond tired, you should wrap up your document and go to bed. Which is what I’m going to do now. Tomorrow we’ll celebrate graduation day together. G’nite

JUST A WORD OR TWO FROM SAN FRANCISCO

It’s almost Shabbos and I have to be quick – I’ll write more tomorrow. This city is so remarkable in its diversity of people, ideas and lifestyles. Our kids thrive in the variety and we’re enjoying seeing them in their element. We got back so late though that that’s all I can write for now. More after Shabbos – tomorrow’s post, like this one, will go up automatically on a timer.

ISN’T THAT THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE?

We leave for San Francisco in the morning, I’m not packed, I have a class tonight and an appointment in 15 minutes. So this is a shortie. I’m so excited to see our kids and, as usual, nervous in advance. Last year I wrote a post called "I Don’t Want To Be a Turkey on Thanksgiving." Sort of the same feelings this year; being considerate of adult kids and their autonomy NOT from things you might do on purpose – those I can control. It’s the stuff that can happen by accident and end up being an issue that I always worry about.
If there’s anything I’m thankful for it’s the gift of these two young men who have grown into such fine people. Even from all the way across the country, they bless my days. Makes Thanksgiving mean a whole lot.

JERUSALEM DIARY 2.0: DAY TWELVE TEL AVIV DAY TWO

Breakfast in our little cafe surrounded by locals with dogs and newspapers. This is a wonderful neighborhood – the kind people move into until those who created it have to go someplace else because it’s become too expensive. You can see it happening all around us. But it’s fun for now and the Mediterranean is literally five or six blocks away.

On our way out we passed this noodle stand — I guess these people want fresh ones for Shabbat soup

These kids in the Carmel Market are canvassing to get people to sign up as organ donors. In Israel it is still difficult to convince people to participate because of Halachic rules about burial. Much has been done to change the rules, but the squeamishness has not abated. They were charming kids, and very committed to this issue – and they had quite a stack of cards of new registrants to the organ bank here.

It’s almost Shabbat so my post for tomorrow is written and ready; this is the last one from here. I’m hoping we can go tonight to the beach for the drums that welcome Shabbat then to our friends for Shabbat dinner.

MASH NOTE TO MOM-101 – YET ANOTHER PERFECT POST

The woman in the picture just posted one of the loveliest meditations on family I’ve read. Since I write them frequently, I’m almost envious, but since it’s Liz that’s not possible. Read it. I promise my next post will NOT be about somebody else’s post. This was just too good to keep quiet about.