parents – Don't Gel Too Soon

Big Birthday Memory #15: John Kennedy, Barack Obama, 2 Inaugurations and 2 Generations of Dreamers

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from May 8, 2014

I seem to be living in the Way Back Machine this year. Lots of memories of 1968 and even 1963. Now as January 20, 2009 approaches, yet another looms. January 20, certainly, but in 1961.

See that crowd? Somewhere, way in the back, probably at least a block beyond, stand an almost-fifteen-year-old girl and her mother. Fresh off an overnight train from Pittsburgh, having arrived at Union Station in time to watch the Army flame-throwers melt a blizzard’s worth of snow on the streets of the inaugural route, they make their way to their parade seats: in the bleachers, way down near the Treasure Building.

I spent most of 1960 besotted with John Kennedy. And Jackie. And Caroline. And all the other Kennedys who came with them. Most of my lunch money went to bus fare as, after school, I shuttled back and forth “to town” to volunteer in the local JFK headquarters. I even had a scrapbook of clippings about Kennedy and his family.

So. My parents surprised me with these two parade tickets. My mom and I took the overnight train and arrived
around dawn Inauguration morning. We couldn’t get into the swearing-in itself, of course, so we went to a bar that served breakfast (at least that’s how I remember it) and watched the speech on their TV, then made our way along the snowy sidewalks to our seats, arriving in time to watch the new president and his wife roll by, to see his Honor Guard, the last time it would be comprised solely of white men (since Kennedy ordered their integration soon after,) in time to see the floats and the Cabinet members and the bands and the batons.

It was very cold. We had no thermos, no blankets, nothing extra, and my mom, God bless her, never insisted that we go in for a break, never complained or made me feel anything but thrilled. Which I was. As the parade drew to a close, and the light faded, we stumbled down the bleachers, half-frozen, and walked the few blocks to the White House fence. I stood there, as close to the fence as I am now to my keyboard, and watched our new president enter the White House for the first time as Commander-in-Chief.

That was half a century ago. I can’t say it feels like yesterday, but it remains a formidable and cherished memory. It was also a defining lesson on how to be a parent; it took enormous love and respect to decide to do this for me. I was such a kid – they could have treated my devotion like a rock star crush; so young, they could have decided I would “appreciate it more” next time. (Of course there was no next time.) Instead, they gave me what really was the lifetime gift of being a part of history. And showed me that my political commitment had value – enough value to merit such an adventure.

Who’s to say if I would have ended up an activist (I did)- and then a journalist (I did) – without those memories. If I would have continued to act within the system rather than try to destroy it. (I did) If I would have been the mom who took kids to Europe, brought them along on news assignments to Inaugurations and royal weddings and green room visits with the Mets (Yup, I did.) I had learned to honor the interests and dreams of my children the way my parents had honored my own. So it’s hard for me to tell parents now to stay home.

My good friend, the wise and gifted PunditMom, advises “those with little children” to skip it, and since strollers and backpacks are banned for security reasons, I’m sure she’s right. But if you’ve got a dreamer in your house, a young adult who has become a true citizen because of this election, I’d try to come. After all, he’s their guy. What he does will touch their lives far more than it will ours. Being part of this beginning may determine their willingness to accept the tough sacrifices he asks of them – at least that – and probably, also help to build their roles as citizens – as Americans – for the rest of their lives. Oh — and will tell them that, despite curfews and learner’s permits, parental limit-setting and screaming battles, their parents see them as thinking, wise and effective people who will, as our new President promised them, help to change

Big Birthday Memory #2: Home and Heartache

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from December 4, 2006.

Yeah, we’re home – and as usual it’s like walking into an electric fan. We landed, unpacked, did laundry, slept (until 3AM) then Rick went back to the airport for a fund-raising trip to California. I’m working on several major projects and wanting to organize for when the boys come home for the holidays. Grocery lists and activity planning in addition to many hours of business obligations.

Lots on my mind. Today a friend told me about the last conversation she had with her father and I was ambushed by a deluge of memories. It’s tough to come to terms with the loss of a parent. Both of mine have been gone for years and there isn’t a day I don’t think of them — and, often, wish I could ask them something – or tell them something — or just feel their love again. I haven’t felt this way in a long time and it surprised me. I just wasn’t expecting the intensity.

I once sent my dad the lyrics to a Judy Collins song about her father. It’s a wonderful evocation of the love between fathers and daughters and the bitter-sweet realization that one’s life will exceed that of a beloved parent. It’s what they’d wish for us but it’s complicated. Anyway there wasn’t a moment of my life when I doubted the love for and faith in me felt by both my parents.

There were also circumstances in my life that led me, in my memory at least, to be less attentive than I wanted to be. I think it will haunt me forever- times when finances or my own parental responsibilities kept me from visits; times when I let my dad tell me not to come because he didn’t want us to “see him like this.” — all those things we all wish we’d done differently. I am beginning to think that this is a real issue for me and one I’ve got to get some clarity about.

This is the second time in the space of the 90 days or so I’ve had this blog that my dad has come up and he’s been gone since 1991. Somehow though I’m more at peace with the loss of him. I can summon memories that make me smile and I know that he had a profound and lovely effect on my sons, which adds to my own fond remembrances of him.

My mother, who died in 1998, haunts me though. I know things in her life frustrated her – and that she would have liked to do more in the world outside the house. My husband told both her and me that I was guilty that my arrival had pulled her out of a promising career but she insisted that that was HER choice and I should get over it. That she loved raising the three of us. I don’t doubt that she loved raising her daughters but I also think she needed more than she was able to get in life as a suburban mom. I don’t know – all I know is that I feel a need to be particularly helpful to elderly women on the street, or the bus, or the synagogue steps. As if I can do for her by doing for them. Agh. I don’t know. I’m going to bed to see if I can beat the last of the jet lag. This is too sad.

A Gift from Grown Sons

My sons are gifted givers of love. To their wives. To their sons. To us. The richness of this awareness is indescribable.

To watch a man, a son of yours, arrive home from work, lift his infant son and greet him with such easy confidence and comfort and tenderness, help his toddler handle his anger, joke with his wife, ask with deep concern “how is Dad feeling?” well – you can’t imagine. If you’re lucky, maybe you can.

To watch his brother conduct serious conversations with his one year old, read to him, laugh with him, unabashedly speak of his love for his wife and child and offer small acts of kindness to us – and to so many others – well – you can’t imagine. If you’re lucky, maybe you can.

I know many families share in these blessings. But I’m writing it now because I woke up this morning thinking this, feeling so full of gratitude you can’t imagine. If you’re lucky, maybe you can.

When the Children Become the Parents: After You…

Two new grandsons have joined our first (born almost three years ago); one is 6 days old, the other just over two weeks. They are beautiful and delicious; watching our sons with them is breathtaking.

With the birth of that first little boy, we became grandparents; he brought us a new identity. Just after the birth of the second of the three, though, the rabbi took us beyond that. With the birth of their children, our children have become ancestors, taking their places, as we had done, in the thousands of years of Jewish history.

I’ve written before about the special meaning of our “Biblical” lineage , especially since we can’t trace our personal ones very far back, but I’m saying something else here: look forward as well as back. There’s something compelling about the concept of one’s children becoming ancestors – something wonderful and profound.

Attachment Parents, Anxious Parents, Sanctimommies and Skinned Knees

This morning I helped to produce a conference on parenting and "over" parenting. It was designed to help anxious young parents who are often under pressure to be "better" and more attentive than their peers. They feed on each other and worry all the time, and in cases beyond my community (I don't see it here) they compete, sometimes with cruelty, to see who's the best.

If you're a "mommy blog" reader you'll see it all the time. One of my favorites is Liz Gumbinner, proprietor of Mom-101. She has a gentle, loving, yet often hilarious and almost always moving take on life as a parent. She also has a keen-eyed abhorrance for what she calls " Sanctimommies." She writes about them often, and their thoughtless comments and judgments. No matter how much we detest what they do, which is more often judgmental than well-meaning, they can get to us. They plant scary, painful doubts, especially when we are vulnerable.

I remember this torment so well. You don't want your child to feel bad. You don't want her to fall off the monkey bars. You certainly don't want him to be sad because he lost a T-Ball game and didn't get a medal or got a lower grade than the kid who sits next to him and didn't get a sticker on his paper. It's terrible. I think what's worse though is over-compensating to preserve delicate feelings.

And that's what much of this conference was aimed at. Speakers told parents that kids needed some autonomy, needed their own territory. That protecting them prevented them from learning how to solve problems and bounce back from the adversity that is part of life. They also made an interesting point that I think is controversial but tough to contradict. YES, moms and dads are both important, but dads have a different role. And mothers too often, in their frequent role as gatekeepers between the kids and daddy, set standards that are too squishy, not allowing the dads to find their own way to deal with their children.

This does not mean there is no overlap – nurturing dad and outward-facing mom. But both perspectives – female and male, have value. Many times as our kids grew up, my husband and I stopped one another from going too far in one way or the other. I wanted to send money to bail them out of a jam. My husband would remind me that if we ran to the rescue we were telling them that we didn't think they could take care of themselves. "If they really need help", he'd say, "they'll ask for it."

Other times he'd go nuclear in the punishment department or refuse permission for something perfectly acceptable because he didn't think first. That was my cue to step in and moderate things. I often thought sadly of friends raising kids alone, without this valuable balance.

I guess this is just a meditation on parenting in the 21st Century. It's painful to see wonderful parents whose instincts are sound and who love their kids get tangled up in these issues, and it was wonderful to watch the dialog today and the passions in the conversations that continued over lunch and will go forward in several after-sessions. In fact, it was very Web 2.0. The speakers may have set things off, but now they're working with one another, strengthening not only their families but also the community around them.

John Kennedy, Barack Obama, 2 Inaugurations and 2 Generations of Dreamers

I seem to be living in the WayBack Machine this year. Lots of memories of 1968 and even 1963. Now as January 20, 2009 approaches, yet another looms. January 20, certainly, but in 1961.

For My Friends with Young Children, or My Annual Post-Thanksgiving Meditation

Here's the thing. My children live far away, one six hours to the west and the other, with his fiance, six hours to the east. We've been together for Thanksgiving week – all of us – hanging out, cooking, touring around DC, running errands and just being — and being thankful. It's always special when the whole family is together; it seemed so natural when the boys were little and now it's a treat. I cooked a million meals with them banging around in the kitchen. Now it's a precious thing when I make turkey meatloaf with my younger son. I watch him, an accomplished cook, chop like a pro, listen as he reassures me that this new thing will taste great, laugh with him, trade recipes. I rode around in cars, subways, buses with them all the time, and, along with their dad, dragged them into a million stores from grocery to toys to clothing to antiques. Now it's the pleasure of serious shopping at Ikea with my older son and his fiance, getting to be around while they choose a sofa. Seeing what a fine woman she is, watching them seamlessly making decisions together, measuring, taking photos, laughing, planning. It feels great to see them launching themselves so well together and makes it OK that much of their life is lived far from us. That's how it is.

I know though, that when kids are little, schlepping them in and out of car seats and strollers, keeping them occupied while you try to cook, keeping little hands out of the Ikea toy bins, mediating murderous sibling battles, keeping a home running while keeping kids in line – it's a lot. I remember. It doesn't matter whether you work outside your home or stay home with your family; either way there's so much to handle. I kept thinking about that as I wandered around Washington with these adults who are also, forever, my children, reminding myself how long it would be before we would all do it together again. Reminding myself that it's a credit to us that our kids are self-sufficient, productive and wonderfully decent, funny, loving men — and how blessed we are that they chose to come to us for the holiday — and that it's right, and good, that they have their own lives and homes and futures.

But though that's true, I wanted to tell you about this because it goes so fast. All the cliches are true. Turn around and they're grown. That doesn't mean it isn't hard to keep things going now, it just means that those days will be gone, sooner than you think.

My youngest is approaching 30. My oldest is getting married. They have money market accounts and careers and fiances and plans and even some gray hairs. They teach me more than I teach them (although that was always true.) They are, like those of you reading this, grown ups, and my husband and I have our own rich and happy life together. But it still can be, for those few moments of farewell at the end of each visit, desperately painful, on both sides.

As we drove to the airport last night, I (sort of) joked that I had to hook my iPod up to the car radio so that, when I was sad after leaving them off, I could blast Bruce, or Great Big Sea to make me feel a little better. When we arrived at the departure entrance, I got out of the car to help unload the bags. My son the chef was still in the front seat of the car. I was worried that a cop would throw me out of the parking place so I went toward the door to ask what he was doing. He turned around. "You iPod's all hooked up" he said, and reached out to give me a hug goodbye.

HEY MACY’S – ON THIS THANKSGIVING, THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES

When our kids were little we used to take them, in the freezing Manhattan November, to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. For the twenty years we lived in New York, from Josh in a carrier on Rick’s back, to Josh on his shoulders and Dan in a Snugli, to the two boys worming their way past the grown-ups to stand in the front of the crowd at 75th and Broadway, to the years we went to our friends’ house overlooking Central Park West on Thanksgiving eve and watched them blow up the balloons — all the years of Columbus Avenue cocoa and popcorn, we were there. When they got older, the boys went together without us; the two of them joining the crowds (the TODAY SHOW just told me that this year there are 3.5 million people along the parade route) with the finesse of New York kids. I cherish those memories; I know they liked it but I don’t think as much as I loved watching them respond to the balloons and the music and the colors and the crowds.

If I weren’t in San Francisco without all our albums I’d scan a photo of the kids waving from the top of a newspaper vending machine, or on their dad’s shoulders, or looking up at the balloons with such magical wonder that I can’t describe it. But we’re here and no such photos inhabit my laptop, so I leave it to your imagination.

We left Manhattan for LA in 1992 and I haven’t been to a Thanksgiving parade since. I don’t even recognize all the balloons. Central Park West belongs to other parents and kids now; nobody who’s only seen it on TV can imagine the excitement, the smells, the noise, the freeeeezing cold and thrill of watching their kids wave to Big Bird and Bob IN PERSON!!!! I’ll always have a deep affection for Macy’s and the gift of that annual celebration of family, joy and, yes, thanks. Nobody can give a gift better than the gift of memories and they certainly have done that. Every single year.

SHARING FRIENDS, BUILDING BRIDGES

These two little guys, Josiah (in the closet) and Noah (in the doorway) just met each other. That didn’t bother them, of course. Five minutes after they met, which was about ten after seven this morning, they had each grabbed a push toy and taken off down the hall, leaving their moms to get to know each other.

Josiah’s mom, Anna, is very dear to me. Once our neighbors, she and her husband moved back home to Atlanta once this sweet young man arrived. They’ve got great family and childhood connections here in the land of the peaches so it’s only fair, but we miss them like crazy. I’ve loved having this trip to see their new house and the life they’ve built here because seeing it and knowing it’s right for them makes it a little easier that it’s not near us.

Noah (now don’t get confused – I mean Noah in the picture though Josiah’s father is also named Noah) is the son of my friend Liza – also a blogger and good, good friend. I introduced the two moms; I don’t seem capable of not doing such “you two should REALLY know each other” matchmaking, and it made me so happy to be with them and their boys. Somehow it’s easier to be far from them if they’re near each other.

I’m supposed to be the wise older friend but I’ve mourned Anna, Noah and Josiah’s departure almost daily – happy for them and so so sad at their absence from our old movie weekends and quick last-minute meals. We’re wealthy in our friendships and deeply grateful for the families who have become part of ours, but loving one friend doesn’t mean you don’t miss another one. So it was a real joy to be with them and to know I’m leaving them richer for having met one another. See you soon my sisters.

Teach Your Children Well

Much of what I enjoy about other blogs, particularly "mommy" ones, is the sense of irony that is so different from my own sentimental view of parenthood. Brutally honest and often painful, they reveal wounds and issues I don’t think I could talk about on line. Loving mothers and beautiful writers, women like Liz at Mom 101, Mir at WouldaCouldaShoulda, Kristen at Motherhood Uncensored and Jenn at Mommy Needs Coffee are all gutsy beyond measure in their honesty. Mocha Momma Kelly, Liza from Lizawashere and BeenThere’s Cooper Munroe are just as honest but with a different tone – one more familiar to me. All perspectives are worthy, moving and wise.

Here’s one of the few times I really feel generational difference though. These bloggers are substantially younger than I am; I’m old enough to be the mother of most of them. I don’t feel that difference often, but today, with one of my boys gone already and the other leaving tomorrow, I just can’t get un-sugary.

The great gift of raising children is I am sure the most profound privilege life brings us. The pleasures are infinite. To my delighted surprise, they don’t stop when these tiny people emerge as full-blown adults, taking their places as productive, loving, principled men. The entire time they, and Josh’s girlfriend Amy, were here this week, was so great that I’m struck dumb with gratitude and love.

For an entire afternoon excavating six boxes of treasures from 20 boxes of childhood stuff — from broken Nintendos and the Jerry Garcia’s death issue of Newsweek to Double Dare sweatshirts and high school yearbooks, they worked, sorted, laughed, read aloud, complained, laughed some more, and got it all done despite my best efforts to help. I wish I could tell you what it felt like to see them laughing together over a first grade "book" Dan had written or once-treasured but minor value baseball cards, remembering the pleasures and joys of their lives.

Nobody’s life is perfect and our family certainly has had its share of pain, but there is a beautiful foundation that holds us up – draws us to one another and fills us with love. That’s corny. We have two sons who are funny and attractive and honorable and productive and considerate and who clearly love us. We are grateful. That’s corny too. I don’t know how to say that with any self-restraint or discipline – stylistic or otherwise.

I adore these young men even as I struggle to retain the distance they deserve (reasonably successful), welcome them when they want to be with us (easy as pie), shut up when they need to be someplace else( do my best), keep my mouth shut when I disagree (getting better all the time.) I am very proud of their self-reliance and accomplishments, their candor about obstacles in their lives, their incredible humor — they are both very funny, particularly when they are together — and their gentle, loving souls. They’ve accepted our newly religious lifetstyle with interest and respect. They are also very good to one another. I revel in their friendship, all the flying back and forth for concerts and birthdays, and great gifts they give one another.

In other words, I’m a corny, unoriginal mom. My sons have brought an unanticipated portion of joy and satisfaction, fun and admiration, adventure and idealism, into my life. And they love us. Stupid us. Despite all the mistakes and complications. I’d love to be able to be a bit ironic about it, to ditch what my kids call my "pink Cindy glasses" for a while just to see how I would sound, but it ain’t gonna happen. So I hope all my edgier colleagues will tolerate this gooey post and understand my inability, tonight, as the year winds down and this family visit winds with it, to say anything except "God I love my kids."