What to do

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

Okay, I promise not to belabor twerking or the ill-advised young woman whose pursuit of being noticed led to unfortunate behavior choices. She’s hardly the first to do so. The flaming crashes of such beings have become so prevalent that we are nearly inured to them. Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton -- the most long-lived references are punch lines. The first two of these youngsters evidenced some talent, which is not true of the third, but all seemed possessed by a demon, forcing them to seek fame, and when that palled or wasn’t available, simple notoriety.

I think, “poor things” and “where are their mothers?” Where were the women in their young lives who could teach them to recognize their worth?From whom could they have learned that a woman’s behavior is a window onto how she values herself?

Is the problem in this culture today that fewer women are comfortable with or want to take on the role of elder? In a society that seems to worship unalloyed youth, where is the benefit, the respect, in being less quick, less shapely, less attractive -- in a word, older?

Can’t you remember your grandmother looking like a grandmother and not like the women in ads for drugs to correct erectile dysfunction? Perhaps because they were born in Europe, my grandmothers didn’t wear tight jeans and tee shirts or pastel track suits; they dressed like Maurice Sendak’s grandmother bear in Little Bear’s Visit. 

When they faced no longer being generally regarded as sexually attractive -- which feels like anonymity after years on the “meat market” -- there was a recognized and esteemed place for them in society: the old, wise, woman. She may not have been the Delphic Oracle, but my grandmother was wise simply for having lived longer, and we listened to and valued her perspectives accordingly.

Youth is wonderful, but by nature usually self-absorbed. The task of the young is to learn, and some of the most important things we need to learn come through just having lived. And we are helped through that by having a guide, someone to look out for us, or, short of that, models to see and perhaps emulate. 

Don’t we need to re-establish the role of older, wiser, woman -- not only for our own self-respect, but also to protect these young women, before they twerk themselves into humiliation?

Dear diary

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

Have you ever picked up an old diary and cringed at what you wrote? I remember doing that when I was probably 13, looking back at what I wrote when I was 10 and someone had given me a diary for my birthday. (I can’t remember if I tore it up or burned it.) Even when I was 10, I soon tired of writing my daily thoughts; they were too boring, even for me, the person writing them.

So I never developed the journaling habit. I know it’s a large part of developmental workshops, creative exploration, self-healing. But I just can’t do it, can’t bring myself to write about myself every day. My life is quieter now, but even in the midst of lots of activity, I never thought to chronicle it.

I’m sure lack of discipline is one reason. (It’s a good justification for not doing just about anything, don’t you think?) Another is that I didn’t think there was anything unique about it; it was just me, you know?

I guess that feeling is the opposite of what we in this country are seeing now -- all kinds of Americans acting as if they deserve everyone’s attention. On television there are the reality shows -- whether the topic is surviving or baking or designing dresses or buying them. Tell me -- why should we care?

Then there is what happens on the Internet. How did that tool for communications become the exhibitionist’s dream-come-true? People tell us they’re having soup for lunch or what groceries they bought. I wonder: who’s the audience, who could possibly be interested?

Have we somehow morphed the American ideal of equality, so revolutionary in a world of stratified societies, into the mistake of insisting that everyone is equal in talent or intelligence or beauty? And worse, we seem to have twisted the measure of a person’s worth into how much screen time she gets -- whether it’s a movie screen, a television screen, or a computer monitor.

Maybe it’s time to call “Cut!”

Once upon a time

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

Now that I’m reading to my grandson, I’m mindful of what books I heard and read as a child -- and wondering how they affected me and whether I’d feel the same way about them now.

Here’s an example. In Aesop’s (and La Fontaine’s) fable, The Ants and the Grasshopper, the grasshopper sang all summer while the ants were gathering food, and in the winter, when the cold, hungry grasshopper asked the ants for food, they told him to dance to keep warm. Essentially, they slammed the door in his face.

As a child I knew we were supposed to appreciate the moral lesson of the virtues of hard work and the dangers of not planning for the future. But I thought the ants were rude, arrogant, selfish, and either totally without appreciation for the arts or envious of the grasshopper’s joie de vivre (though I didn’t know it was called that). That’s pretty much how I still feel.

I never cared for fairy tales as a child, not because they were gruesome -- and some certainly were -- but because they just didn’t hold my interest. (Maybe that’s why I can’t seem to write fiction.) I read the Greek myths instead, which had equally scary or alarming features -- but those were never the important part of the story. As a child reader, I used my judgment and discretion in what I took away from fables or myths, poems or stories. And I think the freedom to do that is critical to the developing brain.

For some years now, so many of the popular stories (or the videos that replace stories) geared to children have been devoid of most anything unpleasant, or subtle, or artistic, or truly funny. How you ever watched Barney, the purple “dinosaur” with capped teeth? One could, I think, get diabetes from it -- except it’s all saccharine instead of real sugar.

Why do the current makers of children’s entertainment, so much of which is branded “EDUCATIONAL,” assume that children are dim, with banal interests and no appreciation of quality? Watching these shows may well fulfill that prophecy of banality and dimness, as will having every thought predigested for them and served on a bed of “feel good” cliche. 

Kids understand; they get ideas, humor, contradictions. They are smart -- not in the annoying, smart-alecky way of sitcom kids, but with the essential smarts of figuring out the world. Stories should help them wonder, and trace cause-and-effect, and doubt, and find proof that satisfies them.  Of course we need to keep our children safe, but isn't part of that helping them stretch and expand their understanding of life? We wouldn't feed their bodies only pablum; why are we doing so with their minds?

And really, clever Brer Rabbit is so much more interesting than smarmy Elmo, don't you think?

What the world needs now

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

Our world at the moment is rather too yang, don’t you think? Rather too bright, hard, fast, dry, hot, and aggressive. It seems to me that we are in need of more yin to achieve balance. A bit more simplicity, humility, naturalness, quiet could help restore harmony.

Is this the realm of women? Is it our natural energy that is needed now? It seems to me that intuition, emotional creativity, peacefulness are lacking in our world, and women can, even must, provide them actively and openly. 

The female principle is missing from our culture. Not any of the versions sold to us -- ditzy, seductive, helpless, scheming -- but the actual power of internal wisdom and creation inherent in us. Women undergo transformation and renewal every month; is this physical rhythm an echo of the movement of the universe, of its transformation and renewal?

Ancient and modern mystics have said our planet right now is in a unique place in time, one that will allow for great change, a shift in vibrational frequencies -- and the heart is the transformer. In our culture so ruled by the head, can we bring our heart wisdom, our heart strength, to the forefront? 

The energy of the heart -- love -- is the greatest alchemist and magician of all.

The way it was

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

I come from a line of fierce women. 

My maternal grandmother left Silesia in southern Poland at age 16. She and a cousin traveled alone to America and she never went back. I never heard her speak about it. When her husband, my grandfather, talked nostalgically about his home village in southern Italy (which he did increasingly as he got older), my grandmother would say, “You like it so much? Go back,” while looking straight at him with her clear blue eyes.

I guess if you’re strong enough at 16 to leave everything you ever knew to sail across the world to a new country, you maybe haven’t much patience with wistful sentiment. My mother was the same; her feelings ran very deep, but she was not maudlin. And both my mother and her mother chafed against a life ruled by a man; both stood up with their husbands, and could stand up to them if needed.

Many of us my age were raised by bright, strong women who had few opportunities open to them. If a woman was very wealthy and wanted to be a doctor or executive or sculptor, she’d be labeled eccentric and most probably not marriageable. But she had access to money, so not having a husband was not the sentence to poverty, genteel or otherwise, that it would have been for most women.

Most of the women in America and the women I knew -- my mother and aunts, my mother-in-law and her sisters, mothers of my friends -- did not have the luxury of opportunities. They were expected to marry and become mothers. If they wanted or had to work, the jobs open to them were limited -- nurses, teachers (almost exclusively in elementary school), librarians, for those with more schooling; secretaries, seamstresses, file clerks, waitresses, for the rest.

What if you were brilliantly creative or organized or innovative, as so many of these women were, and you really could only be a homemaker -- or be a homemaker first and sit in a low-paying service job second? Wouldn’t you be frustrated? What would you do with that frustration?

I knew a woman who, in the 1950s, organized the women on her street into a neighborhood cooperative babysitting pool. She had a college degree, had trained as a phlebotomist (but I don’t think ever worked as one). She could have been the top administrator in a hospital; she had the skills, the temperament, the talent. But such jobs were not open to her.

My mother was a superb needleworker; there was no craft with thread or yarn that she couldn’t do, and do beautifully. But of all, her sewing was amazing and she had a flair for clothes, fabrics, colors and style. She could have been a fashion designer, but she would not even have been allowed to enroll in a professional fashion program.

My mother-in-law was her high school class valedictorian, graduated from nursing school with awards, and never worked as a nurse. She could have been a doctor, and a good one. But she got married, had six children plus three miscarriages, in the midst of which she took care of an ailing father-in-law and her husband’s younger brother. She was the model of a selfless woman. And she nearly never did a thing for herself. 

That word “selfless” troubles me. Being unselfish is good, even rewarding, but fully using your talents and skills is also rewarding -- and that reward was denied to my mother’s generation and generations of women before them.

The advances women have made in opening up opportunities are impressive, but not guaranteed. Our daughters are sitting in jobs their grandmothers could not have imagined. It took struggle to get to this point, struggle that I fear our younger women are forgetting. I want to say, “You may have gotten your job on your merits, but it was only open to you because, before you were born, women fought for it.”

We can’t afford to forget.