Category: Culture

STEP-BY-STEP WITH A WORLD-CLASS SONGWRITER

Carol Bayer Sager (you know, the songwriter*) and AlAnon – in the same blog. It turns out she’s been going to meetings for years — and in this post on fearlessness she describes how it has helped her deal with the fears and phobias that emerged from her tough childhood.

As she quotes the slogans and lessons of this amazing organization, I recognize the power of this support program for those with alcoholics or addicts in their lives.  It IS about fearlessness, and about ending the ridiculous urge to control everything — mostly to keep things safe because so much of life with an addict is so chaotic.  If the program were not described as one "of attraction, not promotion" I would write lots more about it but respect for the privacy of others and the effectiveness of the low key love and fellowship the program offers demonstrate the wisdom of this non-evangelizing attitude.

Anyone who knows Jenn Satterwaite’s amazing Mommy Needs Coffee knows the power of addiction and of 12 step programs; I’m sure there are dozens of similar blogs that I don’t know about.  It’s so funny, too, because so often I’ll see people acting the way that I used to (and still do, in moments of "relapse") and think "boy, they should go to a meeting."  Of course, it only works if you choose it on your own – but when it works – boy does it work.

This paragraph is being written later – I actually just came from a meeting.  It always amazes me how much pain is gathered in the room of an AlAnon meeting – and how much help people are to one another just be being there.  I am a bit shy about writing in specifics but I’m all with Carol Bayer S – It’s a real gift.

*Songs by Carol Bayer Sager include: Blueberry Pie", "My One True Friend Don’t Cry Out Loud, Through the Eyes of Love,  Nobody Does It Better That’s What Friends Are For,  It’s My Turn

WHOSE LIFE IS IT, ANYWAY? (PART 2)

I just found the ultimate wise woman post for how to deal with a teenager.  Respectfully.  Apportion responsibility gradually.  Etc.  It dealt with something I posted here a couple of days ago about blogging and our kids.  And their privacy.  And just who owns whose life?  Everyone loves Grace Davis anyway, but this was just such a great thing.  Take a look.

When I worked at iVillage Robert Schwebel, who is still their resident child psychologist and a wonderful man, told me he sees successful child rearing as "the gradual transfer of power."  Doesn’t that make perfect sense?  And what Grace did, with such, well, grace, was to transfer, to her daughter, power over her own story and respect for her privacy.  I’m just so impressed.

WHOSE LIFE IS IT, ANYWAY?

At BlogHer there was a great debate among the “mommy bloggers” about how much to reveal about one’s children.  Much of what was best in my career (as well as, of course, my private life) came from my kids – literally.  They’re why I finally wrote a book [for kids.] They’re why I got interested in kids’ books and began writing book reviews for the New York Times and Washington Post and eventually served as early children’s book editor at Amazon.  They’re the reason I did some of my best TV pieces – about kids learning to ski, learning disabilities, etc.  You get the idea.  BUT

Once they were over 7 or so I always asked before I mentioned them in anything I wrote.  I kind of felt that it was my gig and they had their own lives.  Now this is a problem.  Michael Chabon says:

“Telling the truth, when the truth matters most, is almost always a frightening prospect. If a writer doesn’t give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves; if she doesn’t court disapproval, reproach and general wrath, whether of friends, family, or party apparatchiks; if the writer submits his work to an internal censor long before anyone else can get their hands on it, the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth.

He’s right I think – I can feel myself hanging back when those “other people’s secrets” begin to emerge — and if affects my writing.  It’s true even of the most innocent things: something really lovely was said to me this week by one of my kids but it would expose HIM and I can’t do it.
Granted, most moms who blog have far younger kids than my adult sons but it’s an interesting question.  Any thoughts?

Whatever we think about this though it gave me an excuse to share one of my favorite Michael Chabon quotes. (of very very many…)

TRY TO REMEMBER — THE FANTASTICKS, JERRY ORBACH, THE INTERNET AND ME

OK – so I should be used to it by now.  I’ve been — as I often say, a walking demographic Baby Boomer as long as I can remember.  But on this morning after the re-opening of THE FANTASTICKS*  – which ran off-Broadway for 42 years, I read "adults 55+ adapting online."  Of course they are — sooner or later whatever I’m doing becomes part of a generational wave.

Don’t worry – there IS a connection.

I saw THE FANTASTICKS  with my college room mate and her mother during fall vacation of my freshman year.  That was 1964 – four years after it opened.  At the end, all of 18, I was crying so hard that the woman sitting next to me – probably 25 or s0 – handed me the rose her date must have given her at dinner.  I kept it on the wall of my room for years. 

El Gallo — the irresistible seducer  and originator of the "hurt’ without which "the heart is hollow" —  was first played by Jerry Orbach.  [hear him sing Try to Remember here.]  I met him when I was close to 50 – and told him I’d seen the show when I was 18.  His face just changed – not a trace of Lennie Briscoe but a combination of affection, nostalgia and pleasure.  We spoke a bit more and then I apologized for approaching him at a reception and acting like a groupie.  He replied "You saw the Fantasticks when you were EIGHTEEN!  That wasn’t an interruption that was a pleasure."  So I guess the story had the same impact on the cast that it had on girls like me.  "Please God please," the young girl ("the girl") cries out – "don’t let me be NORMAL!"  That was me alright.  Please let me be singular – not like the others! 

Well it hasn’t turned out that way.  Whatever I come to, my peers hit within a year or so.  It made me a great talk show producer – never a visionary too far ahead to be relevant, just enough ahead to know what story to do next.  I guess that’s why I accommodated to my role as close enough to normal but with an edge — rather than the downtown woman I had once wished to be.

I knew about this headlong Boomer journey online because my older son, in the industry, had read a similar study.  Last weekend I told him that I seemed to be getting a lot more online consulting work and his theory was that companies need boomer consultants more because more "civilian" boomers are finally hitting the web.  I always knew we would; the tribe that is the baby boom loves to be connected.  The web was a perfect home for us.  Just like THE FANTASTICKS.

*OK Feminist friends, there’s an element of sexism in this original fairy tale (they’ve rewritten the only really troubling song) but I have chosen to ignore it.  It just can’t trump the wonder and poetry.