Facebook: Middle School for Grownups

Most of my friends on Facebook share my feelings about politics.

Several of them don’t.  Among these, two stand out.

One is a man I have known for over twenty years.  He was one of my first writing teachers.  I think he’s pretty brilliant.  I do not get his politics At All.

Once, years ago, at a writing retreat, I jokingly made reference to a political issue about which I knew we disagreed.  He looked at me imploringly and said, “Please let’s not talk about it.”  I understood that he did not want to fight with me.  I didn’t joke about it anymore.

Recently, this man posted something about President Obama as a response to something I had written.  I posted back, “Love you.  We’ll just have to agree to disagree.”  And he respected me and said nothing further.

The other person I want to write about is someone I’ve never met.  It’s funny that we’re even Facebook friends, since our lives are about as different as two Americans’ lives can be.  But we became online friends after his daughter starred in the trailer for my book PRETTIEST DOLL (Clarion 2012) http://www.amazon.com/Prettiest-Doll-Gina-Willner-Pardo/dp/0547681704

This man disagrees with just about every political opinion I hold.  But what I love—what I find meaningful about our virtual friendship—is that we’ve actually had extended conversations (via Facebook) about things that are hot buttons for both of us.  These conversations have been civil, even friendly.  That’s a rarity in today’s world.

The reason I’m writing about all this on a blog supposedly devoted to writing, books, and my life as a middle-aged woman is that I am working on a manuscript that takes place in a middle school.  Middle school, as we adults know, is a dreadful, dreadful place, and I was trying to catalog the reasons for this.

 

The usual things came immediately to mind: kids have one foot in the adult world and the other in a child’s, their voices are changing, they’re getting their periods, their skin is bad, their hormones are misfiring.  Everyone’s basically a hot mess, and there’s a lot of homework.  Just thinking about it makes me sick.

But the really bad thing—the worst thing—about middle school is that you only talk to your friends (which, this being middle school, you’re lucky to have).  There isn’t a whole lot of inter-clique mingling.  The athletic boys hang out with each other at lunch; they don’t have much to say to the Theater kids or the smart boys or the boys who go their own way or haven’t figured out just who they are yet.  Or the boys who want desperately to belong somewhere and, whatever the reason, don’t.

That is what is so dreadful about middle school.  That is what tears at my heart when I think about it.

This morning it occurred to me that many of us adults have re-created our own grownup version of middle school for ourselves.  We hang out with people who share our beliefs.  We whisper about the people who don’t, or make fun of them, or tell other people how stupid they are for believing what they believe. 

It’s kind of crummy, actually.

I’m not going to stop posting memes about how dangerous “the other side” is, or how they make up facts, or are delusional, or misinformed, or just plain wrong. 

But my two Facebook friendships have made me realize a couple of things.  One is that I have to keep in mind that “the other side” is made up of people I like and respect.  Would I say nasty things to their faces, in person?  Nope.  I would not.

The other thing I’m going to remember is that having a substantive conversation with someone who sees the world differently from the way I see it is far more satisfying, and ultimately more fun, that sharing funny memes.

Even the one about the idiots who think Girl Scout Cookies promote lesbianism.

On Being Eighty

A few days ago, my daughter and I were browsing in a used-book store.  She pulled a book off the shelves, thumbed through it, and then handed it to me.  “This is something you would like,” she said.  “It looks sad.”

The book was a novel, EMILY, ALONE, by Stewart O’Nan (Viking, 2011), and it wasn’t sad, or at least, it wasn’t to me.  It is a lovely character study, a meditation on growing old with grace.  I found myself riveted.

The book is told entirely from the point of view of Emily, an eighty-year-old woman, recently widowed, who lives alone in Pittsburgh.  Emily’s days are quiet, occupied with reading, puzzles, classical music, the care of her dog, and occasional outings with her sister-in-law Arlene.  She waits expectantly for calls from her adult children, for warmer months, so she can indulge her passion for gardening, for family reunions held every year.

The book is interesting for several reasons.  I was amazed that a man had written it.  I did not for one moment doubt Emily’s voice, her way of looking at the world.   It is one thing for a male dramatist or a short-story writer to craft a well-drawn heroine, but it is quite another for a male novelist to inhabit a female character so artfully and so completely.  The fact that she is eighty makes the accomplishment yet more notable.  O’Nan (who is younger than I) captures beautifully the rhythms of aging—life slowing and shrinking—as well as Emily’s dignified submission to them.

The story dwells less on death than one might expect, even though death is all around.  Emily thinks often of those she has lost.  Still, there is forward motion, however slow.  But it is a story without the devices we have come to expect in modern novels.  There are no car crashes (of any significance), no brutal crimes, no life-shattering revelations, no epiphanies to speak of.   Ultimately, we are told the story of a woman who, even within the constraints of a life winding down, manages to change and grow.

I read the book expecting to see my mother in Emily, but, surprisingly, I didn’t.  Before dementia began ravaging her mind, my mother was not as introspective as Emily.  She was more adventurous and less preoccupied with the past (at least as far as I know).  She had little use for friends, no patience for crosswords.  She did not care for the neediness of dogs.

Instead, I saw myself in Emily: a woman who takes comfort in books and music and the company of friends and family.  I hope I do not end up as alone as Emily feels herself to be.  But maybe I can muster some of her grace.  That would be something.

When you’re my daughter’s age, you can’t imagine being eighty.  I can’t really imagine it, either, but I know it’s coming.  (At least, I hope it’s coming.)  I don’t know what my life will look like then, but EMILY, ALONE underscores that the things I value—good health for me and those I love, a well-functioning brain, books and music and a friend or two—are reasonable things to hope for.  Can you take spin classes when you’re eighty?  That would be nice, too.

Update on My Mother, and Some Sad News

My mother—93 years old and suffering from dementia—is being much nicer to me these days.  I think that’s because she has finally forgotten that I took her car away two years ago this month.  She looks forward to my weekly visit, and to our drives through neighborhoods in which she used to live and which she no longer remembers.  She enjoys the stories I tell her about her own life. 

Here are some other things I noticed last Friday:

--When I escort my mother from her apartment to my car and back, we hold hands.  I always extend my hand to her and say, “Can we hold hands?” (I know, I know, “May we hold hands?”, but who says that?), and she always takes it and tells me how she holds hands with my ex-husband when he visits her.  I do it because she is very unsteady on her feet—last week she fell in her apartment—but I don’t think she knows that.  I don’t ever remember holding hands with her, not even when I was a child.  Her hands are slim, with long fingers and beautifully manicured nails.  (The caregivers take her to the salon, where someone named Henry does them for her.  “I love that Henry,” Mom always says.)  She does not have arthritic knuckles, a fact that amazes me.

--She is almost unable to articulate a complete sentence.  When we drive past houses she likes, she whispers, “Lordy” or “Vey iz mir.”  “Vey iz mir” is one of my mother’s traditional expressions; she said it all the time when I was growing up.  “Lordy” is something new.  I have no idea why she says it.  I’ve asked her caregivers, and it’s not something either of them says.  Every time she says it, I have the same thought: that the woman I am driving around isn’t really my mother but someone who is simulating her and doing a bad job of it.

--She loves trees.  She can be brought to near-ecstatic exclamations at the sight of a tall redwood or a robust, spreading oak.  Sometimes she calls them her “friends,” which is weird and lovely and sad all at the same time. “They must be so old!” she says in wonder. 

--When we look at nice houses, she often says, “So much money!”  Since she married my father in 1950, she has enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle, but her Depression-era roots (daughter of non-English-speaking Hungarian immigrants who died when she was five, a childhood spent in a [wonderful] Jewish orphanage) are in there somewhere.  Her tone when she talks about people with money is admiring and derisive at the same time.  She is not aware of how much money it is costing to keep her in her home with ‘round-the-clock care.  She is also not aware that her credit card can’t be used anymore.  “Can I fill up your tank?” she always asks, and I always smile and say, “No.  But thank you.”

--Another thing about looking at houses:  At least five or six times on any given drive, she will say about a particular house, “That one’s empty.  No one lives there.”  I always laugh and say, “Yes, they do, Mom.”  But she is adamant.  “Why do you think no one lives there?” I ask sometimes.  She peers out the window.  “No one’s in there,” she says, certain.

--Twice, she said, “I love my grandsons.”  And I (who seemingly cannot-CANNOT-stop trying to make her see the world as it really is) said, “One grandson and one granddaughter, Mom.”  “No,” she said stubbornly.  “Two grandsons.” 

--For the first time in two years, my mother said "I love you" without my having to say it first.  Also: she seems to know who I am, but she can't bring my name to mind.  A year ago, I would have wondered if she was saying "I love you" reflexively, without really knowing--knowing--who I am.  Now I don't wonder.  I just accept her statement with love and gratitude. 

*

I have more to write, but I just received a phone call from my daughter: her grandfather—my ex-father-in-law—just passed away, after a few months of illness.  He and my mother were great friends, despite her insistence on calling him “Fonzie.”  (His real name was Gonzalo, but he went by Gonzy, a name my mother just could not remember, even before she became ill.)  His illness was abrupt and immediately devastating, as opposed to my mother’s, which is incremental and slow.  I wonder, Which way would I prefer to go?  And honestly, I do not know.

What I do know is that he went with supreme grace and dignity.  And that I will have to tell my mother tonight, and the news will make her sad. 

Change

This morning, driving home from spin class, I heard “Beauty and the Beast” on the radio and I didn’t cry.

Here’s why this is noteworthy to me:

When my son was in the fourth grade, he played the Beast in a school production.  He got the part mainly because he was tall and also because the director loved him.  He did not get the part because of his voice.  (The director told me, “He sings in the key of H.”)  Still, when it came time to sing the big song, he pulled it off.  And for years, every time I heard that song on the radio, I burst into tears.  Not because it’s THAT kind of song—even though it is—but because it reminded me of the boy he was:

Here we are at about that time: me rockin' the Howard Stern look, him being his wonderful self.

 

Last night I talked to my son on the phone.  He is crazy-busy with a new job and with helping his girlfriend start her business.  We talked about his nana, who has dementia and didn’t recognize him at dinner a few nights ago.  And about his grandpa, who is dying with supreme dignity in New York.  He has become a person whose advice I seek, a man I look up to.  I carry the little boy he was in my heart, but it’s not who takes my call once every two weeks.  And somehow, after many years, this has become okay with me.

Next week, my daughter and her boyfriend are going to Ireland, and I’m almost completely okay with it.

They are going to be hiking through tiny towns without phone access.  It will be raining.  They won’t have much access to the Internet.  I’m fine, except at three o’clock in the morning, when I’m not fine about anything.

When my kids were young, I couldn’t imagine that they would ever be able to cross the street by themselves, or drive a car, or drink alcohol, or talk to strangers.  And now, they live independent lives and I go to sleep every night not knowing where they are or what they’re doing.  And somehow, we’re all getting by.

I know this doesn’t sound like a big deal to a lot of people.  But maybe a few parents will appreciate knowing what I wish I’d known ten years ago: that one day, the hurt of their leaving will fade; that you will always miss them, but not as desperately as before; that gradually, your life will take on new contours, shift to a different shape, and you will be able to rejoice in it.

You won’t forget the way it used to be.  But remembering won’t make you cry as much.

Rage and Fear and Weariness

In this blog, I try to write about subjects that affect or relate, directly or indirectly, to my life as a writer of books for children.

But today I feel compelled to write about something I always swore I wouldn’t touch. 

Two days ago, yet another gunman with serious mental-health problems walked into yet another public space and started shooting.  By the time he was finished, he and twelve other people were dead, and many more were injured.

I am weary and heartsick.  And furious.  And terrified.  Most of us are, aren’t we?  I’m sure I’m not writing anything inflammatory or controversial here.  Aren’t we all just bloody tired of this?

When I read the victims’ names in a news account yesterday, I noticed that many of them were in their fifties.  It took me aback.  Perhaps, post-Columbine and -Sandy Hook, I have now come to expect that children will always be among the murdered.

As the day went on, I found myself thinking about the middle-aged dead, how they went to work as usual, undoubtedly preoccupied with the minutiae of an unremarkable day, without the slightest inkling that they would never see their families again.  But something else was bothering me, something at the edge of my conscious thought.  At first I thought it was some degree of over-identification I might be feeling with the victims, many of whom were close to me in age.  But that wasn’t it.

It took me a while to figure it out.  It took me thinking of my own adult children to realize what was bothering me so much.

All those middle-age dead people are somebody’s babies.  Tonight, somebody’s elderly mother is remembering something no one else does: sleepless hours in a rocking chair in the middle of the night, rainy days re-reading The Cat in the Hat aloud until she thought her eyeballs would pop out of her head, hours spent pitching balls and braiding hair and correcting spelling and lying on the grass, pointing out the cloud that looked like Abraham Lincoln.  Her heart is blown apart as surely as if someone had fired a gun into her chest.  She will never again be able to laugh deeply or take a joyful breath.

I wish this would stop happening.  I wish everyone—gun owners and non-owners, Republicans and Democrats, hunters and vegetarians—would get together and figure out a way for the world to right itself. 

Because this isn’t working.  This isn’t what we’re supposed to be doing.

Rejuvenated

The walls of my office are painted.

It was an interesting week.  In my last post, I complained about being frustrated by my lack of sales, by the effort of writing books that no one seems to want to buy.

Then, when I had to spend every minute of every day of the last week painting, I found that writing was constantly on my mind.

For the first time in years, I fell asleep dreaming of dialogue.

 

When I woke up in the middle of the night, I put myself back to sleep plotting as-yet-unwritten novels.

 

I am re-reading The Stories of Mary Gordon (Anchor, 2007) and finding that a great writer’s voice is supremely motivating.  I have always known this to be true, but it has struck me anew.  Gordon, like Alice Munro, writes about small, domestic moments in ways that render them urgent and important.  I particularly enjoy the stories about adults told from a child’s point of view.

At any rate, I heartily recommend taking a break from the daily task of setting words to paper in order to create in one’s self a near-frantic urge to return to doing it.

Or maybe it’s just the fumes.

On Home Improvement and Distraction

Robert and I are about to embark on a home-improvement project.  We are going to paint my office and the adjoining bedroom (aka my now-adult daughter’s old room), remove the carpeting and have hardwood floors installed, and have more built-in bookshelves built.  The end result will be an office/library.  I’m excited to start.

But I have a theory.

My theory, developed after years of watching friends endure the agony of home improvement—entire families living in hotels, eating take-out food for months—is that people put themselves through this misery to distract themselves from other life problems.  The reason I think this is true is that many of the people I know who have done this didn’t much like their spouse or their job or their children before they started building a family room, and hated them after it was finished.  And then started on the kitchen.  I found it staggering and mystifying.

So, as is my wont, I’ve given our project a lot of thought.  Am I distracting myself from something unpleasant?  Do I prefer the discomfort and limbo of having my office torn apart to something else?

And here’s what I’ve come up with: 1) I really need to fix up my office, and 2) I hate my career right now.

Okay, “hate” is extreme.  I love writing books.  But I hate working on a manuscript for over a year and then finding out that no editors want to buy it.  I hate devising perky, chirpy 140-character sales promos for my books on Twitter in the hope that a few of my followers will actually want to buy them.  Most of all I hate making the switch from full-time writer to part-time writer /part-time entrepreneur.  I don’t want to be an entrepreneur.  (If I did, I would have put my MBA to good use during the eighties, when it was actually worth something.)

So yeah, in the spirit of brutal candor, I must admit that I am looking forward to the diversion that comes with matching paint chips and gesticulating madly at non-English-speaking carpenters.

On the bright side, the paint currently on my office walls is the color of an Ace bandage.  It will be nice to look at something else all day while I am writing and not selling anything.