Star Wars – Don't Gel Too Soon

Leia and Rey: The Ancient Grief of Women, Turned on its Head

One of the most important scenes in The Force Awakens does not appear anywhere on the Web – not as a film clip or a screen shot or even a publicity still. I know why, I think. Its power rests largely in its unexpected, heartbreaking, surprise. You know what it is: that desperate, grieving embrace between General Leia Organa and the pilot-scavenger Rey.

Since time began, women have mourned the loss of loved ones in battle. Since time began we’ve stayed at home waiting, worrying: Penelope, Catelyn Stark, Mrs. Miniver, Sisera‘s mother, the women of WWI

Through the window she looked forth, and wailed,
The mother of Sisera, through the lattice:
“Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why are the hoofbeats of his chariots so delayed?” — The song of Deborah, Judges 5: 24-31 s

“[I] wondered if he was looking up at that same moon, far away, and thinking of me as I was thinking of him.”— Vera Brittain (Chronicle of Youth: The War Diary, 1913-1917)

But these two brave warriors, forced into battles that would steal their loved ones — their grief is different. It is the grief of fellow soldiers, not docile ladies-in-waiting. It is also a passing of the torch – literally and figuratively – between two powerful, wise women: one a grand figure from the last generation, the other an emerging power in the present one.

The loss of Han Solo, lover of one, father figure to the other, at the hands of Kylo Ren, his (and Leia’s) own son, and the near death of Ren himself in his battle with Rey, brought a grief shared by two warriors at opposite ends of the war against the Dark Side. Despite the pain of loss – and near loss – Leia comforts – and seeks the comfort of — of a younger version of herself. The battle between Rey and Kylo Ren in no way inhibits the joining of their pain and loss. It’s similar to the reality male soldiers have described so often: the loss of a beloved buddy in battle.

For women though, that loss has usually been at a distance, learned of and mourned far after the death itself. Now, just after the United States military has granted women soldiers access to the same combat duties and responsibilities as their brothers, and even as it portrays the generational legacy, the Star Wars tale depicts the same parity. These preservers of The Force fully share it all as, now, do our own soldiers – and equally know loss as battlefield comrades. Consider this, too:

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity. — Dwight David Eisenhower, 1946

Bruce Springsteen and Thunder Road

Bruce Springsteen – TV Shows – Full Episode Video – Reality TV Shows

I couldn’t sleep and at 2AM, this, Bruce Springsteen on Storytellers, was my reward. The first time I heard this song, I cried. Grown up, near 30 with a baby and far from those front porches, I was transported. The power of the song hasn’t faded.

Anyway, here’s what he said about it:

So this was my big invitation, to my audience, to myself, to anybody that was interested. My invitation to a long and earthly — very earthly — journey, hopefully in the company of someone you love, people you love and in search of a home you can feel a part of. Good luck.

Thanks Bruce.

I meant to write about Star Wars, but then The Boss walked in. Tomorrow maybe.

Sons and Brothers — and Star Wars

“I was raised to do one thing but I’ve got nothing to fight for.” — Finn – a Storm Trooper*

My sons are 40 and 36 and they’re going to Star Wars opening night together. It took some avid site refreshing and one wildly committed wife as deputy but they have tickets. I love knowing that they like each other enough to share this. The first films hijacked our family – much to our delight.

There was lots of stuff, of course. We had action figures and Death Star Space Stations, Landspeeders, Tie Fighters, Millennium Falcons, Light Sabers, Lego versions and about a billion little weapons all over the floor of their room. All the time. It was wonderful watching the two of them and their friends imagining all sorts of adventures as the toys carried them into battles between good and evil.

Once when he was around ten, I asked my older son, what he really wanted to do when he was older. He replied, with growing agitation, “I want…. I want…. I want to fight The Empire!

And there it is. Deep inside the battles and light shows and Yoda-isms is the simple truth that informs most wonderful stories: a battle fought for honor, justice, family, love, or even peace.

Is it any wonder why that nearly 40 years later, the fever has reemerged, the joy and anticipation like new?

It is with gratitude that one watches a child find joy in a story or a song, from Little Bear to Harry Potter. But Star Wars — well, that’s not just a wonderful tale, it’s the gift of a dream – something to fight for connected to the best parts of each of us, of hope, and courage and love. I’m grateful that it exists and that my grown kids still love it and I’m really really grateful that the person each wants to revisit that world with is his very own brother.

*A trained warrior desperate to escape his past, Finn is plunged into adventure as his conscience drives him down a heroic, but dangerous, path.” From the Official Star Wars Databank

WHO EVER THOUGHT RAISING SONS WOULD BE SO GREAT!

NOTE: This is another 2008 virtual baby shower post – to Julie Westerbeck Marsh when her first son appeared.

OK so I grew up with sisters. And I went to a women’s college. And most of my life I’ve worked in offices with more women than men (amazing, no?) So, when I was pregnant I was terrified at the idea of having boys. They were so strange — so noisy — I just had no idea what was coming. Except that what was coming was Josh. And then Dan. And it turned out that — hang on sisters — boys are a blast, great company, luuuhhhv their moms and — boys are easier! I know this because I’ve watched my friends raising daughters and the tensions are fierce. Girls and their mothers — boys and their dads. Not easy.

But let’s get back to basics. Little boys run around a lot and make noise. They jump off things. They ride the dog around and fall off and hit their heads and need stitches. They, later, seem to be trying to kill each other much of the time. And before I go any further – let me tell you that there’s an old shrink saying that therapists never believe that babies are born with personalities until they have their second child. This is also true with many women regarding gender differences – it hits you once they show up. My kids are feminists and very good to the women in their lives as far as I can tell – but they are men and they were boys and that is not like being a girl. Nope.

I have great memories from when they were little – stomping around singing Free to Be and Da Doo Ron Ron Ron and The Garden Song and Abiyoyo, skiing down black diamond slopes and going to Yankee Stadium to see Billy Joel and Carnegie Hall to see Pete Seeger and Madison Square Garden to see Sesame Street on Ice and being dragged to an infinite number of Police Academy and other disgusting movies.

And I lived in alien space much of the time. Some of our hit toys (ie things I would NEVER have had in my house if there were not these strange male creatures inhabiting the premises — and pre-video game age of course):
One of those Radio Shack electronics build-your-own thingy kits that make bells ring and bulbs light up if you hook them up correctly.
Legos
Anything aviationary
Anything Star Wars
Anything GI Joe
Voltron
Weird wrestling stuff (boy did I fight that one!)
Folk music (that’s my fault though)
Baseball cards (and proudly, I did NOT throw them out)
Stuffed animals
Ernie

No Mary Poppins books (I tried) but I did get to read all The Great Brain and Ralph S Mouse and Timothy Goes to School and a gazillion baseball player bios.

There’s serious stuff to having sons, of course. We have to be sure, no matter how much we love hanging around with them, that they get enough alone time with their dads or some other male figure. And wave bravely as they off together on a Sunday (also your day off after all) without you. We have to accept and celebrate the guy stuff.

Just like girls, but differently, we have to let them know we think they can take care of themselves – enable independence at each landmark, if we think they can handle it, even when we really want to help. It’s so easy, with a boy, to want to remain more connected than is useful for them as they grow. At certain points they may pull back for a while, when they need to untangle. We have to let them and respect the struggle

With regard to respect for women – I am deeply impressed with my sons’ perspectives. I hope that being honest and respecting their developing attitudes, helped. I never threw a Playboy out of our house but I made it very clear how I felt about them in the (brief) period they were around. Anything like that, of which I (or my husband) disapproved, had to come out of their allowance. They had to put their money on the line – and I think that helped more than locking it all out of the house and pretending they weren’t interested. It also helped us understand where their heads were. Although that is easier for boys because they are, honestly, more straightforward.

Of course none of what I write here applies to all boys. Much of it may apply to plenty of girls. But it was my experience and in a kind of stream of consciousness baby shower kind of way it’s what rose to the top. The bottom line though, is that even though it’s scary if you’ve lived in a world of women, as I had, they are just wonderful. Most of all, because I know Julie, from reading your blog for so long, you would be a great mother to any child with whom you were blessed, this kid is in for a great life. And where advice is concerned, I say take it only as far as your gifted mother gut takes you. Where the two collide, trust yourself. Girl, boy or android, that way your little one will always be in the right hands.

OBAMA’S VICTORY GARDEN – EXORCISING DAYS OF RAGE

Grant Park 1968 – in the heart of Chicago. Grant Park — where my friends and I were gassed and beaten – terrified and abused – during the Democratic Convention in 1968. Grant Park – haunted by so much.

Here’s how I remembered it on the 40th anniversary this summer:

I wonder if you can imagine what it felt like to be 22 years old, totally idealistic and what they call “a true believer” and to see policemen behave like that. To see Chicago Mayor Richard Daley call the first Jewish Senator, Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, a “kike” (you had to read his lips – there was no audio but it was pretty clear) and to see your friends, and colleagues, and some-time beloveds with black eyes and bleeding scalps. To be dragged by a Secret Service agent from your place next to Senator McCarthy by the collar of your dress as he addressed the demonstrators, battered, bruised and angry. To see everything you’d worked for and believed in decimated in the class, generational and political warfare.

Why does this matter, you ask? Because, this moment – 40 years later — as Barack Obama assumed the leadership of our country with such an elegant speech, informed and supported in part by the values, and people, who fought, bled and wept through those awful days and by a majority of those as young now as we were then and just as committed to the vision they’ve been offered and by an enormous, excited turnout, black and white, — he did so on this same site, in the shadow of the Hilton where we put all the kids with broken heads — and tried to keep the tear gas out of our eyes. We’ve been haunted by that time for so long, and as far as I can tell, this was an exorcism. As I heard a commentator say this morning: “The culture wars are over. The Vietnam War is over.” And not a moment too soon.

What’s happening is far larger of course. Yesterday morning we voted in our lovely DC neighborhood, middle class, well-kept, bikes and an excellent walk-to-it elementary school, so of course
there was a long line waiting to vote in a riot of autumn color. We stood for two hours even though Washington would clearly choose Obama, (and did so with 92% of our votes.) Each individual vote
wasn’t urgently needed. Instead, it was the need to cast the vote that
was urgent.

Diverse in age and history, largely African-American, our community stood
together, talking, laughing, meeting new friends in front of or behind us
in line. People had their kids with them, called grown kids on the phone from line and waved at late-arriving neighbors. It was one of those moments where you feel history all around you, and a remarkable privilege to be voting in such company, who’ve worked through all the years of discord to maintain a civil, multicultural community. A bonus.

Beyond this landmark day, though, the next months are going to be tough. As the new White House staff, cabinet and administration form, all this free-floating joy will take on concrete forms that remind us of the huge challenges and risks that face us. There will be things that disappoint us, and things that make us mad. The reality that caused people to elect this man will descend upon us in a relentless economic, social, military and persona avalanche and we may be hard-pressed to remember the joy we felt last night; the promise that has so engaged us.

When that happens, I will think of the older African-American man who called out “shalom” to us in the canvassing orientation when he saw my friend’s yarmulke, of the excited first-voters — just 18 or newly naturalized — whom we met as we walked through one Virginia housing complex after another, of our four-year-old door-bell-ringer beside himself over “Obama” and asking everyone from the supermarket checker to his teachers to vote for him, of my sons last night calling and texting literally across a continent and an ocean, of the day I was electrified by the broadcast of Martin Luther King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, of the fact that 66% of under-30 voters, so long detached and cynical*, voted for Obama, and, finally, of the distance we have to go – and won’t — unless we work together to resolve each challenge and, perhaps more importantly, each disagreement.

This is a great day. And a scary one. And now, as our new president-elect prepares to do his part, we have to resolve to do ours: to work through those disappointments and disagreements, to accept the call to contribute and to sacrifice and, as he and Abraham Lincoln before him asked us, to heed to the “better angels of of our nature.” They’re there – and we’re going to need them. If they can show up, and Barack Obama can show up, so can we.

* (speaking of younger voters): A friend of my sons (a third son, really) sent me this from one of his favorite blogs. It’s just so sweet.

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