Wait wait don't tell me

An out-of-town friend sends me something in a big, square, orange envelope. Thinking 60th birthday party, I tear into the card, and start to weigh how to get to Atlanta. Terry has a big, beautiful, Martha Stewart house, and gobs of sumptuous, Southern hospitality. Ac-tu-ally, as I whisk on my reading glasses, I'm hoping the party is at her summer house in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which is closer and more William Sonoma.

But. No. The round card which slides deftly out of the envelope is a birth announcement, one given to extreme detailing: little plaid ribbons, a baby picture, oodles of artful shapes and papers layered in complimentary colors.

I do the math: Terry is over 60, hardly a new mother. So--Oh. It seems that Terry's daughter, Laura--not Terry--has had a child, her first. And so this must be-- a grandchild announcement?

I look disbelievingly back at the envelope. Sure enough, it's from Terry, nor Laura. And it arrived, no kidding, with a vanity stamp of the baby, who, judging from the its little red, swollen face, is just hours from the womb. Terry writes, "....and this is what lies ahead of us all."



Me, I tend to shirk from perky platitudes. Grandmotherhood may or may not lay ahead , but I swear on a stack of Ms. magazines, I'll pass on this second-round, send-around ritual.

My cynicism-slash-envy continues: And did Terry have one of the newest cultural perversions, the grandmother shower?



I recall the day a white-haired friend's friend announced that her quilting group was giving her a shower, in anticipation of her first grandchild. I actually had to cup my mouth with my hand to hold back a stream of mocking, jesting astonishment. "It's so helpful," she went on, oblivious to my gaff, "because of all the equipment you'd have to buy, all over again."

What's it gonna take for me to get through these years, with babyboomer after babyboomer going over the top? What I know so far is that being shown pictures of new grandchildren requires forced enthusiasm. It demands a certain degree of robust ooh-ing and ah-ing...



...and then excuses about your own kids and what they haven't yet produced. As if some YIELD were required of them.



I hang on to the card for weeks, either to torture myself, or as a totem to ward against babyboomer excesses--you choose. But of course I don't show it around. I can't risk the reactions of girlfriends. They may want to call Terry and get the name of the card company, or go 'You know, I haven't told anyone yet, but-----

It takes time

Look what turned up in a google search of 'mess management specialist,' the navy term for steward until 2004 (now it's Culinary Specialist). I was not randomly surfing the Web. Every now and then I tend to throw up terms that might yield some new information about Filipino Navymen, a favorite topic.

In an ironic and temporary role reversal, the picture shows us an officer waiting on a Filipino mess attendant (19th century to 1942) cum steward (1942 to 1973) cum mess management specialist (1973 to 2003) cum culinary specialist. As 98 year-old Ulpiano Santo reminded me when I interviewed him for a chapter I was writing, 'The title has changed, but the job is the same.'

I also serve. It was a triply pre-ordained job. My grandfather, as mess attendant, was a servant until 1935, a little under one-third of his life. That he became a waiter after his Naval career made things worse; at least in the service he wore a distinguished uniform.

I have inherited the tendency to wait on people. Being a female of course heightened my susceptibility to that disease, and the model from my mother's fifties-style wife-ing did not nothing to counteract my grandfather's legacy. As a Southern woman, she always waited on my father, who also demanded it of her.

Running up to my sixties I know this: If I don't stop serving, I'll do it automatically for the rest of my life. This will take an effort tantamount to re-programming my brain, or learning a new language. For example, just now I took a call from my hairdresser about a client of his, a friend of a friend of mine. 'Is T. still alive? he asked. 'Would you check? I have her down from Friday at 3:00, and I don't really want to call her cell phone to ask her, if she's like, dying.' 'Sure,' I answer.

Will I surely get to heaven faster for this kind of generosity?

No. Will it mean 30 minutes of my time, and stirred up emotions listening to T.'s story from her friend? Yes. What would I rather be doing with that 30 minutes: checking out the winter ballet lesson schedule, and the diving lessons offered this weekend.

My project for 2008 will be to less for people who are at the periphery of my life, and maintain my connections to those I love, and the countries I love (US, PI, Rwanda).


And if anyone in that close circle needs more of me for a bit, I will borrow that time from someone else, not simply stretch myself thin.

By the time you're 59, the tendency to simply rest on your laurels is huge. Why not take a protracted number of days self-congratulating, and then spend the rest of your life, relaxing?

Not gonna happen. Without deliberate action, my destiny for the next three decades, laid down by the patterns of my ancestors, is either golf, farming, alcoholism, or becoming a chef. A few of those choices are easily paired.



Golf and alcohol are great partners, now that Beer Girls circulate on every nice course.




And, of course, farming goes with cooking. Unfortunately I'm married to a man who has hired a garden service for a postage-stamp sized lawn. Picture us negotiating about whose turn it is to till the back 40.

No, the trick is to stick the laurel in a a closet, and keep striving for More Laurels, until you die.

Last week, I had a laurel. A book, for which I contributed two large chapters and one small one, was published. In Our Uncles' Words is not gonna win the Pulitzer. It's a well-executed, , honorable, community-written compilation of the oral histories of 35 Filipinos who served in the U.S. Navy, most of them as servants.

I elbowed my way into this project in 2004, to enact a 20-year goal. One Sunday afternoon in 1984, I made a vow as I left a darkened movie theatre shaken and moved. While watching "Field of Dreams," the voice of my deceased grandfather sounded. 'Write,' he said. 'Write about me, and the men like me.'

Insert big bolt of lightening here. The mission he handed me was enacted on and off for over two decades, deferred by motherhood, a psychotherapy career, and sheer avoidance.

Finally, after reading 1000 pages of interviews, and spending hundreds of hours in libraries, I wrote the history of Filipino Navymen, anchored by the stories of the men themselves. They talked about being servants, about racism, about shame.
What did it take to accomplish those chapters? Turning persistence into obsession. Being an outsider. Risking rejection. Picking up the phone to call strangers. Getting on planes to attend workshops alone. Ignoring doubts that my writing might not be published, or be wrong. Curtailing servitude.

What's it gonna take to keep going on this next writing project, which will be bigger and riskier? See above.

THE WEEK IN REVIEW March 11, 2007

On Monday, I decided to write about the death of families. That little mood darkener began when I read a NYT piece about new mothers in Hollywood .

It seems that many of the affluent are turning to neo-fascist ‘baby coaches’ for ideas on parenting. These coaches are taking the place of grandparents or older sisters, and are being paid handsomely for what the elders in the family used to do for free: gently guide and support the next generations in how to care for the children you love. The title of the article also suggests that parents need help 'simulating' love when their children are driving them crazy.

HOLLYWOOD's HOTTEST BABY COACHES TEACH INDUSTRY PARENTS HOW TO MORE ACCURATELY SIMULATE LOVE

http://defamer.com/hollywood/culture/hollywoods-hottest-baby-coaches-teach-industry-parents-how-to-more-accurately-simulate-love-241757.php


No one, with the occasional exception of my neighbor and friend Beth across the street, ever calls me for advice about child-rearing. My children are grown, but childless. My only niece with kids lives in California. Any advice I have for my own kids is usually politely declined.

So I have this freedom to do other things in my almost-sixties. Try my hand at a new career. Write to my heart’s content. Watch over my parents and elderly aunts. Research my family history. Garden. Donate my time as a psychologist to Rwanda.

And do crazy things. On Tuesday, I"m waiting in my car for a light to turn green, when crazy hits. A dastardly cold day of routines lays ahead: the gym, a tedious writing assignment, a hair appointment.

I spin the wheel sharply on Main and State, drive toward my office, jump on the Internet and cell phone, and decide to surprise visit my parents on Hilton Head Island. I must fly today; a snow storm is dumping over Wisconsin and will arrive by evening.

To move this quickly depends on how completely I can resist the scolding voice that says, ‘this is entirely nuts’ and how efficiently I can pack a suitcase.

Mission accomplished on both counts. The plane touches down about 6:30, and my parents’ good friends meet me at the airport. By 7:00, I’m looking at the ocean. Haw uncrazy is that?

For five days, I’m turning the pages of a virtual family album, revisiting places we romped with our boys. True, it’s hard to separate nostalgia from the pure sensual pleasures of a place like this, but on Day One, I’m already vowing to return with Rob, and asking us what’s it gonna take to spend regular time here.

That my parents have been visitors to the island since 1966—40 years—is part of the draw. And it’s my parents, ages 84 and 86, who are the most interesting part of this trip. To begin with, they have way more fun than anyone in the whole family.

I’m only a bit player in this assembled group of three couples who converge on Hilton Head Island every year from the north and south to vacation together. It's a golf-and-cards- centric affair. Alongside, they talk in a steady stream, re-telling stories: the day Joanne gave my father fish bait for lunch, where Carol slept one vacation (the closet), whatever happened to the one good German restaurant in Grand Rapids(gone). "Memory--" my mother said when I shook my head at all these stories, "Memory is all we've got."

Mixed in were health reports (“I had my prostate seated, didn’t you?”), updates on grandchildren (“the skates alone cost $800"), and patterings about the war, golf courses they love and hate, recipes, computers, stocks, lawn mowers, colonoscopies.

One side benefit: at age 59, I like how young I feel around these septuagenarians and octogenarians, different, say, than walking into either of my son's work offices.


With these old friends in a lovely resort, my parents are as happy as I’ve seen them. Again: as happy as I’ve ever seen them. Sure, I get their attention, and they are very loving and sweet to me, but they’re here to bask in these some long friendships, not to be parents.

And that was the interesting part. Returning from a shopping trip as an entourage of three women, we encountered a fairly young woman trying to stay up with three small children making a way lay for the beach, red and green plastic buckets banging on their swim suits.

The mother--or was it the nannny-- in large sunglasses and ponytail was trying to look serene in her quickening footsteps. I was well down memory lane, thinking of the bulky back and forth trips to the beach with our guys, getting a little teary.

My mother’s childless friend Joanne was already wistful—“Aren’t they darling!”

But my mother dumped cold water over our sentimentality: “Yeah, and then she’ll have to bathe them, and feed them, and get them to sleep, and do their laundry. I don’t miss those days.”

A hard pill to swallow, but watching my parents playing with their friends, being all chatty and lively and happy, led me to wonder really how much they relished parenting, as opposed to having children. Those are different verbs, as the Hollywood coaches undoubtedly understand.





While I have no doubt that they loved us, and never ‘simulated love,’ they may not have had the rock-hard stomach for parenting. When I got a head cold on this trip, my mother went into action: ‘You need Vitamin C and E/a decongestant/rest/more water/a nap.’ My father, watching me doze on the couch, strode over a put his hand on my head, to check on my temperature. I know full well that not being non-well makes both of my parents sick with worry.

Okay, HOllywood, I'm chastened: maybe some parents WILL benefit from the kind of coaching you're handing out to film stars. If they don’t have the stomach for all the upset and worry that comes with raising kids, and if the older generation isn’t available to help with sleepless nights, emergency room trips, finicky eaters, failing grades, back-talk, car accidents, and DUIs, coaches are better than bad parenting.

If this is what it's gonna take to raise the next generation, sign me up. My fee is negotiable. Oh, and I don't do nights, weekends and holidays.

The Week in Review March 2 2007

A week of mid-course corrections, like the stock market crash of Tuesday. But let’s not dwell.

Let’s start with Helen Mirren. First, did you catch her full-length glam shot on the cover of last week's New York Times Sunday Magazine: the stark grey disheveled hair, the very tiny waist, the bold black chiffon dress? Then, Barbara Walter’s pre-Oscar interview, where we see movie shots of nearly naked Helen, 45 films to her credit, including this last one, The Queen, coming JUST when she’d given up on acclaim. You...are my hero, Helen.



But am I really ready to toss in the towel on my Great Book just to trigger a Letting Go And It Will Come mechanism? By Monday night there Helen was onstage , clutching the Oscar, and her purse. A woman after my own heart, someone who truly not only understands the past-prime yearnings of women, but likes to have her purse RIGHT THERE. If you're gawking at the Oscar, don't miss the lovely bag: it's pressed into her left armpit.



Still sexy, probably botoxed, but still practical after all these years: what if she needs her hankie? Okay, what’s it gonna take…

On to Tuesday: it’s gonna take Weight Watchers. I secretly like the little ritual of trying to find my card in the assaultive INACTIVE LIFETIME MEMBER box. The same people are still inactive with me: Judy Pannas, Lydia Patten, their cards nestled around me, Pat Pasick.



Inactive is the whole problem, of course, coupled with Nestle’s chocolate raisinettes, Nabisco saltines with Olivio spread, Baker’s Toll House cookie dough, and Grafton Farm cheddar cheese, the really aged variety. I like this particular Weight Watcher meeting site on the edge of a working class city. The women are neither shy about their weight problems, nor about talking.

Some are pretty loud too, used to shouting at one another across an assembly line. One brassy woman, who’s clearly trimmed down, blasts out her list of great zero-point foods, like Rye-Krisp, which are no more than stacked brown paper towels from the grade-school sink area., left to dry overnight. Another woman, who's got a long way to go, rattles off the cheapest places to buy Campbells’ Encore Cream Soup (2 points per serving), and we’re all thinking, but cream soup?

Humbled in the company of co-food addicts, I clutch my little white envelope of Week One materials, happy again to be back among my people.



What’s it gonna take? Baby carrots, Weight Watcher Mini Choco-Crisp Bars, and lean lamb chops, and--sorry Lifetime Member Beth Kurlokowsky---but a different meeting. You've chosen to lead us wearing a cardigan with a huge snowman stenciled over your shrunken, unfatted left breast, and then you bragged about keeping food diaries for 10 years in your overflowing kitchen drawer.



Wednesday dawns, leaner and hungrier. The writing awaits, tapping its foot patiently while I take hours to record my food choices diligently, a clever ruse to avoid the writing.

I have lots of sheer, solid resistance against plugging away at the Rwanda Leadership book in my office. Writing with only My Silly Idea to drive me, and not some external deadline, is like erecting a building plank by plank, without much of a foundation or a roof, only a scratched out blueprint on a napkin to guide me.

What’s it gonna take? Getting to my office to write. Getting far away from the phone calls, the dog, the dishes in the sink, and my refrigerator companion.

But no way I’m getting to the office on Thursday. Rob has some rare, unstructured time on his hands, and turns to domestic matters all of a sudden. I’m like a happy puppy, unbelieving that he really wants to work on the budget, the garage, and trip planning, so excited that finally, FINALLY...



There goes three morning hours, topped off by rescuing an electrician working in the house. After three hours, he turns up in the kitchen doorway with the sure signs of a diabetic coma. His forehead is beading. “Sugar, sugar” is all he can say.

Bad timing. All we have for him are low-sugar, low-fat ginger snaps (1 one point each), which,I’m ashamed to say, I’m reluctant to part with…



Then there’s the freezing rain, and Dan is home with a cold for lunch, and that musters my motherhood. Since I stopped being a paid psychotherapist, I savor these moments at home. With few exceptions (late pregnancy, the boys’infancies and hospital stays), I have always had to parse my motherhood against the demands of my work life and the unending tasks of managing a house and home.

Now by mid-afternoons, I’m a stay at home mom, and unbelievably loving it. I really like being available for quick chats, a little TLC here and there, actually making dinner.

What’s it gonna take to keep that going? Remembering that, while I love my mother, I’m not my mother. I like being a parent and spouse much more than she did when we were growing up, god bless her nagging soul.

Maybe if she had had a gym and spa to go to... Today, Friday, some little enough bullshit switch went off, and I hustled into my gym clothes and went with Rob to the gym by 6:30, in the dark.

The early-morning exercisers, like the animal world’s nocturnal creatures, are an especially sinewy, driven group. They have slid silently from their lairs this morning in search of leanness, and, by 6:30, a full hour after the gym doors open, they’ve already devoured the elliptical machines, and sucked down a few bench presses. Some are smacking their lips for dessert, like a tasty round of spinning before it’s off to their marketing companies, or operating theatres, or courtrooms.



Still, even with their threatening, bulked-up bodies, I prefer this group to the 9-11 AM wealthy ex-wives of doctors toweling off after stretch-and-tone. These women have way too much time to talk, and know how to stretch a 45 minute focused workout into a two hour gab-fest.

But...there.. is.. another.. issue. I hate coming to the gym in mid-morning because I CAN come to the gym in mid-morning, because I’M NOT WORKING, and everyone there knows I'm not working. Otherwise, how could I be there after 9 o'clock?

The whole identity thing still smacks me upside the head, even six months after I stopped my paid job. At least at 6:30 AM, I can easily be mistaken for the enslaved , harried working woman I once was, and is still proud to have been.

What’s it gonna take to stop this little in-my-head dialogue? My favorite new internal intruder. ‘Buck up,’ she says. ‘ You ARE working, on writing, stupid. And who gives a flying f---what anyone thinks you’re doing, anyway?'

Besides, consider Helen Mirren. She’d easily be mistaken for a little grandma, especially in Hollywood, and instead she’s an ambitious professional with a limber libido. Let’s go, Helen. Where’s our purses...