Tag Archives: Life

The Triumph of Love: A Talk With Author Wendy Swallow

12 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Love, Monday Morning Q & A, Relationships and Family Life, Remarriage, Second Weddings

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Several months after John and I became engaged, I was assisting a journalist at the New York Times with a story—part of my regular duties as director of communications for the music conservatory where I worked. During our e-mail exchange, I mentioned that I was getting remarried, relocating to Virginia, and would soon be leaving my job. She wrote back to wish me luck and tell me about a book that crossed her desk when she was an editor at the Times Book Review. She found it “extremely interesting and well written,” she wrote, and sent me a link that led me to Wendy Swallow’s The Triumph of Love Over Experience: A Memoir of Remarriage. Something told me to read it—most likely the voice inside my head suggesting that after a quarter century of marriage and seven post-divorce years on my own, advice from a person who had been in the trenches might be useful. Deeply in love, John and I share a common sense of how to be in the world and of the world—with the same values, faith, and politics—and we operate from the same zone of trust and honesty. We’ve always been able to communicate easily and openly about our relationship. Still, advice from an expert is always welcome, and I was curious to see how someone else navigated the waters we were about to enter. I should mention that Wendy and her second husband each had two sons when they remarried—all of them teenagers.


THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE OVER EXPERIENCE: A Memoir of Remarriage
By Wendy Swallow
296 pp. Hyperion.

Her book was a comfort to me, a survival guide, user’s manual, and road map all in one. I have recommended it countless times—and not just to second couples—anyone in a relationship will benefit from reading it. Regular followers of this blog already know that I’ve cited Wendy’s wisdom before. One of my favorite quotes appears on the “Secrets to a Happy Relationship” page, which you can find at the top of the blog. When I began formulating the editorial objectives for The Midlife Second Wife, I determined that mine would not be the only voice you would hear; a section devoted to interviews with experts was therefore essential. Wendy Swallow is the first person to whom I reached out. I’m pleased and honored that she agreed to do this interview. Here is an edited transcript of our conversation, which took place on Thursday, December 1, 2011:

Wendy, thanks so much for participating in this interview. I’ve been looking forward to our conversation for some time. So have some of my readers. One of them sent me this e-mail:

I’m not in midlife … and not a second wife, but I’m having thoughts and fears of a second marriage. I’m 43 and said that I would never remarry, but I have recently found someone who I would consider marrying and I’m scared as hell!

Based on the research you did for your memoir of remarriage—and based on your own happy experience—what do you say to people who are genuinely frightened by the prospect of “stepping off the cliff and hoping to be able to fly?”

Those fears need to be taken seriously. That doesn’t mean you give in to them, but you listen to them and examine them. You have to trust your gut on this stuff, but you also have to really believe strongly—and the research bears this out—that the people who do best in a remarriage are those who have really worked to process what happened in their first marriage and their divorce, and who have grown from those experiences. That means perhaps going into counseling, accepting your role in what did not go well in your former relationship and where those problems lay, and in your ongoing relationship with your ex—even if the person that you left seems mostly to blame for the marriage’s failure from your perspective. Everybody has to look at how they contributed to the marriage not working out—even going so far as to ask why you married that person in the first place. This is especially true if you have children. I believe strongly in this. I don’t think it’s an easy process to go through. But if you want to grow and be able to marry again, this is an important piece of the puzzle. You have to keep those lessons in front of you. Researchers find that people who do not do well in remarriage never really learned the lessons of their first failed marriage. The statistics for second marriages succeeding are not great. And for those who remarry a third time, the odds that that marriage won’t work increase, and they go up for each subsequent remarriage.

I know. The numbers are pretty grim. Your reminder that we learn the lessons from our past experiences is critically important. What other conscious decisions must a couple make, and what actions must they take, for their second marriage to have a shot at success?

One of the things Charlie and I told each other early on was this: “I just want to be clear: I’m not rescuing you.” We were mostly talking to ourselves. We married our first spouses because we wanted to help them be more stable in the world. After my marriage ended, it ultimately became more important to me that I be really stable and happy in my single, divorced life. I knew this for myself, but I wasn’t sure that Charlie saw that.

There’s a moment in the book where I write about how we went to counseling with a minister. At the very first session, she managed to surface the whole issue of money, because we had a wealth disparity in our relationship. It wasn’t a bad thing—we didn’t think that money was something we’d have to spend a lot of time worrying about. But we had slightly different attitudes to this disparity in our relationship—we had two alien cultures coming together—and we recognized that it could create challenges in the future. It took—it always takes—compromise and communication to work those things out, so having these counseling sessions helped us; even if you think you know what you’re doing, a little premarital counseling can go a long way.

I want to return to the topic of compromise, but first I have to say something about premarital counseling. In our case, that train had left the station; that’s why I was so glad to read your book. How risky is it to take on a second marriage without going through couples’ therapy first? What advice do you have for those who are leaving it to their own devices?

I do think there’s a lot of good literature out there, and many excellent books that deal with stepfamilies, so there are a lot of resources. You can get counseling in various ways. A wise, good friend can be helpful. Definitely you have to talk to each other.

Before I left my first husband, I remember talking to a friend who remarried. I asked him what worked in his second marriage that didn’t work in his first. He said that when he married his second wife, he told her, “If you have a problem with something I’m doing, tell me right away. Don’t let it snowball.” That was their mantra.

I really thought about that. If you establish that you can talk about the difficult issues together early, then that’s good.

Very early on, our kids got into this habit that we worried about at first: drinking milkshakes at 10 at night and watching South Park in the kitchen. At first Charlie and I hung around, but then we realized they had more fun without us there. So we started taking our dog out for a long walk while they had their time together. It was perfectly natural; we didn’t like South Park. We’d leave the house with the dog for those long walks, and that was when we could talk without people hearing us or wondering why we were huddled together and whispering. We were both working full-time and running all over D.C. with these kids to play practice, SAT prep—we had very little downtime with each other—so those walks were very helpful in giving us a chance to download. His boys would bring their issues to him, mine to me; kids communicate with their own parents, mostly. Sometimes there were things I needed to know, and I wanted to anticipate what level of support was required of me.

That’s a great example of using every opportunity to keep the lines of dialogue open. Let’s get back to the subject of compromise. It’s undoubtedly important, but is there such a thing as too much compromise?

I think you have to trust your gut. You might agree to compromise on something but it doesn’t sit right with you. Trusting your gut has two actions:

1. Listening to your inner feelings, and assessing those feelings. How fair are they?

2. Acknowledging that there may be something you either need to bring back or learn to deal with. Which is it?

It’s not enough to listen to your gut—you must assess your feelings. Let your rational, less emotional brain think about it. Once you’ve done that, ask yourself what you really think will be different after your compromise—what outcome are you looking for?

There’s a famous moment in our family when we all learned a lot about compromise. My youngest stepson, Sam (the second-youngest of the boys) was advocating for a cell phone; he went to a school that was farther from home than the others. We worried about the cost of four cell phones, thinking that if we got one for Sam, we’d have to get phones for all four boys, as they were close in age. It begged the question: Who is ready for something, and who isn’t?

Each boy got his own computer when they started high school; before that, they had to share. And they would be taking their computers to college. We thought we were being fair and equitable. But after much discussion about the cell phone, Sam turned to us and said, “Can no one be special anymore?”

The truth is, each boy was different and had different needs, but we were trying to homogenize everyone. Benjamin called it “the kindergarten effect.” When we all moved in together, I had a cubby for each boy, color-coded toothbrushes and towels. The boys saw it as infantilizing. The house would have run more smoothly if the Wendy-scheme had worked, but the boys weren’t in that place.

Sometimes you set out with a plan that you think is fair and equitable, but life is a lot messier than that. The boys picked up on the fact that we wanted to be fair and equitable—and they appreciated it—but we were also able to articulate that within the family, some had specific needs.

The lesson is, compromise is a double-edged sword. Sometimes an imposition of the will of one person over the other has to be negotiated.

Here’s another compromise-related question, and a timely one, with Christmas only two weeks away: How do you handle the holidays?

In the early days we had a little trouble, because although Charlie and I tried to organize things well in advance, not all parties involved were planners—they would do things at the last minute, or not consult with us, so the matter of who was even going to be with us was often up in the air.

We did okay, though. One of the things we decided early on was that because our kids were teenagers, we were not going to pretend to make a happy family out of the six of us just because we were cohabitating. Both our sets of boys spent time with their other parents. Both of us had joint custody, which was nice. Sometimes we just had his kids, sometimes just mine, sometimes all four, sometimes nobody. We’d have four different alternatives in a two-week period. My older sister, who is a minister, says, when something is stressful:

“I’m trying to hold this lightly.”

This Christmas we’re expecting to have all four boys together for the first time in four years; all four of them without other people. We’re still waiting for word on the fourth and hope we get him. But we’re “trying to hold it lightly.” If it doesn’t work, it’s not the end of the world.

I learned from my first marriage that the good moments in life are not necessarily going to happen on a designated day. Many wonderful moments take place on completely average days.

The other thing is, we really didn’t want the kids to feel the stress of two families on the holidays, so we would accept that the kids were happy with the parent they were with. We’d have a night two weeks into December where we did something special together, like decorate the tree. We learned to get very flexible.

People get into trouble when they have a preset romantic notion of how something should look, whether it’s marriage, or what a holiday is supposed to look like. Life is way more variable. What is precious in life is not a perfectly decorated tree with all people in their seats at the table. Life can be messy.We’ve had holidays where we didn’t even put lights on the tree. It just has to be good enough as it is.

Whatever it is, Charlie will always say, “Let’s make this fun.”

Our first Thanksgiving in a restaurant was kind of sad for me; it wasn’t with my big family. Charlie found this cool restaurant and we were seated way up high. It was a lovely experience, but partly it was because he said “Let’s just make this a really cool event they’ll always remember.

One day we were trying to choose a movie to rent, deciding which one would be the most fun. The boys said, “Let’s do several movies!” It wasn’t what I had in mind, but I took Charlie’s line and asked myself: “Is there some way to have fun here?

Compromise again, which takes negotiating. Pro and Con lists are great tools for that—especially for working through big decisions. For a couple about to get remarried, what in your view are the top three things that should appear on the Pro side of their ledger? And what top three items on the Con side of the list suggest trouble ahead?

On the Pro side, I think that these must be at the top of the list:

1. Both parties need to be tolerant, patient, mature, and capable of self-examination.

In my first marriage, I didn’t understand how mature I had to be in the world. In my second marriage, I learned, partly from working for many years, that there’s something about the business world that enables most people to deal with people even if they don’t like them. A lot of the attributes about how we behave outside of the family can help us be better members of our own family. I don’t think I should give voice to all of my angry moments. I do a lot of waiting, so I don’t feel so strongly about the issue and can then address it with my more mature self.

2. Each person needs to be truly loving. They have to really love each other—love all of each other—the whole ball of wax.

None of us are perfect. We will all disappoint each other at times. But who is really there for me? And who am I really there for? Charlie and I didn’t get married for three years; we didn’t make any rash movements. I had worked so hard to recover from my first marriage that it took my brain time to catch up with my heart in order to accept him with all of his baggage. I knew that it was going to take time. Research bears this out: Rapid remarriage is dicier statistically than thoughtful, careful remarriage.

I knew that there was a whole process that Charlie had to go through—that he and his ex had to go through—without me coming in.

3. Your kids have to be in a place where they will be able to cope with your remarriage.

Charlie and I did not move in together before we married—not for moral or religious reasons, but because I was not going to ask my children to be at the kitchen table with a stranger every morning unless I was sure that this was a permanent thing. And his kids were really not ready; it was a little harder for them when it did happen because their parents’ divorce was more recent.

Not all kids are going to be ready for their parents to remarry. I know marriages that have sort of gone forward without everyone at the table. It’s not that they won’t be successful; it’s just that things will be tougher. It can be painful. I’ve watched a couple of families whose kids went into battle mode. Our own kids did not need to make us unhappy; they were very relieved that their parents were happier once they remarried.

Now, for the Con side …

1. Any impulsive behaviors

One example of an impulsive behavior would be getting together when it is motivated by something other than “this is the smart thing to do.” One thing I found in my research is that women are more likely to remarry partly to solve financial problems. Many women come out of a divorce living a more reduced life, and they struggle significantly. Women are somewhat motivated by financial concerns; who can blame them? But if that is the main motivation, that’s a problem.

Another impulsive behavior is getting married in the first blush of love before you know who somebody is—acting impulsively towards remarriage rather than thinking it out carefully and taking the time to know who you’re marrying. When you remarry, it’s not just the person you’re marrying; it’s their larger family. It’s their baggage. It’s their divorce.

2. Wrangling over property and money from early on in the relationship

We’ve all heard stories of someone who married a person who dictated everything, including where they will live, because the person they are marrying is very established in their lives and their career. If one party is having to give up everything and the other is not giving up anything, that’s destabilizing. It makes you wonder why they’re not compromising. One area where this comes up in a big way, even subconsciously, is property.

When the kids and I moved into Charlie’s house (partly for financial reasons) there were advantages. It was closer to my job. We would be only two blocks from my ex, which was a huge boon for my kids. But it was their house. When we moved my stuff in, I put it all in the living room, then I asked for a shelf or two. We worked it all out, negotiating so that decisions weren’t made automatically and arbitrarily. If one person in a proposed remarriage is unwilling to compromise on some of this stuff, that’s a problem.

The issue of property is interesting. When I was interviewing people for my book, I met one couple that fought because the husband needed a home office and he took away his young step-daughter’s playroom. By the time I’d met them, she was a grown woman who no longer lived at home, but she still hadn’t forgiven him. It’s all about territoriality. People identify certain things, rooms, and buildings with different stages in their lives.

3. The person you remarry doesn’t share your basic values and integrity

Here’s another thing I learned from my divorce. My ex and I had less trouble deciding about how to deal with our kids afterward because he’s trustworthy. He had issues, but trust was never one of them. He never once missed a support payment. He never stood the boys up. We shared the same values on education and on who the boys would become. We shared the same religious life. We shared the basic values.

If either party lacks integrity, then there’s going to be a lot more distrust in a marriage, and trust is the most important thing. You have to really know a person to know if they’ve got a spotty trust history.

Wendy, you’ve written a book about divorce and a book about remarriage. Do you have any plans for a third book about relationships?  

I never really meant to write a memoir to begin with, and then I wrote two even though I thought I shouldn’t write one until I was 80 and my parents were gone. I don’t think I’ll write another book about relationships; I’m not really sure I have anything more to add to the literature at this point. I’ve just spent four years writing my first novel. I’m working with my agent, and hoping it will be published in the next year or so. Part of me wants to do more non-fiction. We now live in Nevada half of the year, and I’ve become very interested in climate change, especially as it relates to the West. When my kids were young, I had all sorts of story ideas in my head about families and kids with issues. Maybe if I ever have grandkids …

You’ve now been remarried for ten years. What would you tell your younger self if you could travel back in time to the eve of your wedding?

It would be to have confidence. I’d say, “Trust yourself and trust Charlie, because it’s all gonna be fine. You’ve made an excellent choice. Trust it and rejoice in it.” 

Wendy Swallow is an author and journalist who recently retired as an emeritus professor of journalism after nearly 20 years of teaching at American University in Washington, D.C.  She started her career as a reporter and editor on the financial desk of the Washington Post, covering the savings and loan crisis, local business, and regional environmental issues.  In academia, she researched and wrote about advertiser pressure on newspaper coverage and the influence of new technology on journalism.  More recently, she has turned to writing about family issues.  She has published two books with Hyperion, Breaking Apart: A Memoir of Divorce (2001) and The Triumph of Love Over Experience:  A Memoir of Remarriage (2005).  In addition to many newspapers, her work has appeared in MORE, Washingtonian, Ladies’ Home Journal, Readers’ Digest, Parenting, The National Journal, Washington Journalism Review, Journalism Quarterly, Journalism Educator, Newspaper Research Journal, and Extra!  She is currently working on an historical novel and divides her time between homes in Reno, Nevada, and Washington, D.C.  She and her husband Charles Shepard have four grown sons.

To the Middle and Beyond! (What Will We Do with Longevity?)

28 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in Midpoints, The Healthy Life

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All right, it’s time for a reality check. Unless I live to be 110, I’m technically past my midlife shelf life—so far over the rainbow as to be nearly under it. (But what was I going to call this blog, anyway? The Over-the-Hill Second Wife? The Old Second Wife? To Infinity and Beyond with the Midlife Second Wife? These are hardly euphonious, and the first two less than complimentary.) I was reminded—painfully—of the disparity between my chronological age (55) and a more accurate midpoint (say, 40 or so), this morning while catching up on my local newspaper reading. The Richmond Times-Dispatch runs a monthly column, “Viva the Vital!” by a boomer named Matt Thornhill; he’s president of the Boomer Project, based here in my adopted hometown. The Boomer Project provides advice and information about our robust demographic to organizations and corporations. For example, did you know that we Boomers and our elders spend $3.5 trillion dollars annually on goods and services? But back to Thornhill and his Thanksgiving Day column. He started things off with a quote by comedienne Rosanne Barr, who said: “C’mon, I ain’t living to age 106, so I am waaay past the halfway point.”

Ouch. Thanks, Rosanne. Thanks, Matt. No, really—thanks. Because this got me thinking—always a good exercise when writing a blog.

Many of us in our 50s and 60s don’t feel old. Do we? And if we’re careful and follow all of the good advice out there, Thornhill reminds us that thanks to the miracle of modern medicine and technologies, the new normal is such that we could very well live—and live well—into our 80s and beyond. And if such is the case, we’ve got a good 20 to 30 years to fill.

It’s nice to have the extra time. But what are we going to do with it?

Thornhill writes that he and his colleagues at the Boomer Project “believe that boomers are going to fulfill their ‘promise’ as a generation by individually living out their own personal promise or agenda.” You might recall that ours is the generation that intended to change the status quo in the 1960s. Thornhill quotes Tom Brokaw, who famously chronicled our generational predecessors in The Greatest Generation. Apparently Brokaw thinks that we baby boomers squandered our opportunity to make a lasting, positive difference in the world.

I’m happy to read that Thornhill disagrees with Brokaw’s assessment. And here’s where we can take up the challenge. If you believe, as Thornhill does, that we still have the opportunity, in the next 20 years, to apply “our collective wisdom and experience from our ever-increasing trips around the sun, [then] our legacy as a generation is in front of us.” We can effect positive change on “companies, organizations, governments, each other and other generations,” as long as we “live our promise.” And Thornhill believes that it is our personal promises, as boomers, that will make the difference; he predicts that most of them will be outwardly focused.

What is your promise—to yourself, your family, your community? I’ve already made one or two—and I should mention that these are nothing like New Year’s resolutions. When the opportunity is appropriate, I’ll share my promise on the blog. But I would love to know what the boomers among you think:

Did we, as a generation, blow our chance to leave a lasting and positive legacy? Or is the best, as Frank Sinatra sang, yet to come?

Still Life With Bone Scan

27 Sunday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Life Poetic

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Négatif

Image via Wikipedia

Still Life with Bone Scan

She is smaller than
before.
Tomorrow
she’ll be smaller still,
aging into herself,
erasing her self.

The doctor’s
at the door,
in his hands, an analog
of her.
It’s smaller still—
this negative image,
this paper doll—
her skull coyly tilted
to one side, defenseless,
her arms stretched wide.

Hiding, the tumor—
benign but not benevolent—
in what he called
“a symbiotic kinship
with the brain.”

How far removed, this
milky miniature, this flattened
pattern of a mother?
How far removed
from she who strode
through rooms in
Sicilian joy or aggravation,

who posed on the DeSoto’s hood—
perfectly manicured and coiffed—
an elegant arm draped
over my father’s shoulder,
smiling at the camera?

Sorrowful mother,
small amid the chalky sheets,
(the wires translating
each heartbeat onto a screen,
yet another analog)

the fact of her life
as lines on a graph.

Over the River and Up I-95: A Thanksgiving Journey

23 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Relationships and Family Life

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After ten hours, 500 miles, and four rest stops—with Sandy, our Cavalier King Charles spaniel alternating between a perch at the back of our RAV IV and my lap—John and I arrived safely in Ohio. We’re staying with my son and his lovely Jenny, whom we haven’t seen since May. It feels wonderful to be here. The kids cooked us a delicious pasta dinner, and we walked all three dogs (they have two) by Lake Erie, across the street from where they live. The air was crisp, and the clear sky was full of stars.

Tomorrow will be the first time John’s sons and mine will be together since our wedding 15 months ago. It’s late, and we’re all tired, so this will be all I have time to write tonight.

Happy Thanksgiving, one and all!

Where’s Home for the Holidays When You’re Divorced?

21 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in Food for Thought, Relationships and Family Life

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The turkey I prepared in 2010, when my stepsons celebrated an early Christmas with us.

When my first marriage ended, the day before Thanksgiving in 2003, I took a deep breath upon returning from court and began meal preparations for my first major holiday on my own. I set myself (and my raw nerves) to the comforting task of marinating pears for a compote, then started on the bread-sage stuffing. Why? Because for as long as I can recall, I’ve cooked elaborate dinners for the holidays.

During my first marriage, our family shared hosting duties for the holidays, but the times when it wasn’t my turn didn’t mean I was off the hook. I contributed side dishes and desserts to the groaning board so the burden of cooking an entire meal wasn’t borne by the host. That, however, was all in the past. My son would join me, and my cousin, for my first post-divorce Thanksgiving. That was it. Taking the smallest turkey I’d ever roasted out of the oven, I marveled at its lightness. And cried.

One month later, at Christmas, I said goodbye to all that and performed a variation on the theme. My cousin brought her nephew, my son came with his girlfriend at the time, and I rounded out the rest of the table with a young violinist from the Ukraine, who was studying at the conservatory where I worked. She brought her mother along. And, for the first time in my entire life, turkey was not featured on the table. Instead I prepared a standing rib roast from one of Ina Garten‘s Barefoot Contessa cookbooks.

This was my new family dynamic, and the start of a new tradition.

It can’t have been easy for my son, who at the time was in his early 20s. He was now required to divide all of his holidays in two; the first half of the day was spent with his father, the latter half with me. Those mornings and early afternoons dragged on so! It seemed strange to be alone in the house on a holiday. I probably hugged him far too long and far too tightly when he arrived. But so it went, each year, until the year I remarried.

My new husband had taken a job in Virginia, and I was now living nearly 500 miles from where I grew up and lived my entire life—and 500 miles from my son. Whereas holidays had presented a mere logistical inconvenience, now the geographical stakes were raised to challenging heights. Would I be able to spend at least one holiday with him? And what of my husband’s sons? How and when would we see them? The oldest is in graduate school in Illinois; the youngest had just started college in Ohio.

As it turned out, I wasn’t able to see my son at all that first year after our move. His work schedule simply didn’t allow him enough time off to make the trip. I cannot tell you how that rocked me. Things fared a bit better with the other boys; they drove to Virginia the second week of December to have an early Christmas with us. But again, what orbits they had to navigate! The eldest and his girlfriend drove from Illinois to Ohio to spend time with his mother and brother. Then, with his brother in tow, he drove from Ohio to Virginia. Then it was back around and up to Ohio to drop his brother off, and westward to St. Louis, so his girlfriend could see her family. And back to Illinois. It was like a 1930s movie, where a map of the United States with moving, dotted arrows illustrated a character’s travel progression from Point A to Point Whatever. The mind reels.

Last year, John and I decided that it was our turn to give the kids a break and do the driving. We left for Ohio early in the morning the day before Thanksgiving. Once there, we stayed with my son and his girlfriend. John’s sons joined us the next day, and we all enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner together in a suburb of Cleveland. In a restaurant. For Thanksgiving.

That took some getting used to. Never in my life had I set foot in a restaurant on a major holiday; it went against every cooking and baking gene in my body. I had always felt nothing but sadness for Ralphie and his family in A Christmas Story, forced to eat Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant after the Bumpus hounds devoured their turkey.

The meal was traditional enough and tasty enough, I suppose. But that was hardly the point. The goal was to be together: one scattered family gathered for a few brief hours around a table laden with food that might (or might not) allow us (allow me?) to pretend we were in the old homestead, however new that homestead might be.

It was more than enough that we were together and healthy.

It’s true, as the old song says, that there’s no place like home for the holidays. But when you create a new family, and circumstances toss your family hither and yon with no viable base of operations, it helps to remember another song—one that can serve to brighten your thoughts with a clarity that allows comfort and joy to shine through:

Home is where the heart is.

Marlo & Me—Act I

18 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in Relationships and Family Life, The Cultured Life, The Writing Life, Well-Dressed

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“COMPLICATED HAIR”

Had fashions in the late 1960s been otherwise, I would not have the strength of character that I possess today. I was born with complicated hair—thick, unmanageable, impossibly curly hair. And not the good kind of curly, either—the Andie McDowell/Julianna Margulies-kind of curly—just coarse and wiry and frizzy hair. This frizzled look would be en vogue today, when stylists spend considerable time crafting the look for runway models—a look that used to send me reeling in horror from the bathroom mirror. No, mine was the era of Carnaby Street, Twiggy, and the Summer of Love, and I had complicated hair. The fashion at the time was either cropped short, like the iconic pixie cut Vidal Sassoon created for Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, or long, sleek, and straight, like Jean Shrimpton or Julie Christie—all blondes, I might add. Relief came for a little dark-haired girl in the form of a beautiful brunette named Marlo Thomas, who, in the landmark television series That Girl, wore her straight glossy hair in a flip with bangs. The fact that Marlo was Italian and Lebanese, just like me, and had a father with whom I’d been photographed earlier in the decade, clinched the deal. She—that girl!—would be my role model. God knows, I needed one. I had complicated hair.

Credit: Marlo Thomas' Facebook page

“You have to suffer to be beautiful.”

That’s my godmother, “Aunt Fannie,” speaking. It’s 1968, and I’m in the seventh grade at St. Mary’s School in Elyria, Ohio. We’re having our class pictures taken in a few days, and my parents have driven me to her house to have my hair done.

Perhaps I should explain.

Aunt Fannie was a licensed beautician. (That’s what they called hair stylists in those days.) My godfather, Uncle Bill, was a gifted carpenter, and although he was not a professional contractor, he built their lovely ranch home in a rural part of Elyria from the ground up, and turned one of their basement rooms into a hair salon for my godmother. My father drove my mother there to have her hair done each week, and I was always in tow. With school-picture day looming, I begged and pleaded with my parents to let Aunt Fannie cut my hair so that I would have bangs and a flip, just like That Girl.

I finally wore them down. It wasn’t long before I was seated in the chair that swiveled around like a carnival ride. Aunt Fannie’s fingers wielded the silver scissors like some magician’s wand—snip! snip! snip! I had been turned away from the mirror the entire time, and couldn’t wait to see my idol’s impeccable hairdo in place of my tangled Medusa mane. When she spun me around, I was shocked.

I looked awful.

None of us had really taken my thick frizz into account when calibrating the outcome of my longed-for flip hairdo with bangs. The flip flopped, and I looked like a Labradoodle.

An Australian male Labradoodle at 9 month of age.I hesitate to say this, because you’ll think that I spent my entire childhood in tears, but I have to tell you that I cried. Not a full-throated cry—just a whimper, with a steady stream running down my cheeks.

“Isn’t–isn’t there anything you can do?” I asked my godmother, sniffling. Flat irons had not yet been invented. She thought a moment, then brightened.

“We can straighten it!”

My father, who had been watching television in the other room, walked by just in time to hear this. “Not if I have anything to say about it!” he thundered. “She has beautiful hair. You never should have cut it in the first place.”

“But George, look at her,” my mother said. “She can’t go around looking like this!”

“I can’t go around looking like this, Daddy.” I thought he should know where I stood on the matter.

The tension in the air was palpable. My parents exchanged words. Aunt Fannie busied herself by rearranging her hair clip drawer. I escaped upstairs to soothe my nerves with a tall glass of 7-Up. When I came back down, the charged atmosphere had eased. I’ll never know who convinced him—my mother or Aunt Fannie—but my father had backed down. Aunt Fannie was mixing the chemicals that would solve the crisis and turn me into “That Girl” for my school pictures.

“This stuff stinks!” I cried when she began stirring the mixture near me. And when she started combing the goop through my hair, my eyes began to water—and not from tears. “It burns!”

“You have to suffer to be beautiful,” she replied sagely.

I don’t remember how long I sat in that chair. It seemed like months. But I finally was directed to the shampoo bowl, and felt the cool relief of water soothe away the stinging, rotten-egg smell of the straightener. Aunt Fannie washed and conditioned my hair and combed it through. I was entranced! When I touched it, it felt smooth and sleek; I had never experienced such a sensation in relation to my own hair before. My head looked smaller, too. It wasn’t my hair anymore; it wasn’t me. It was better. New and improved, as the commercials used to say.

Aunt Fannie set my hair in rollers and sat me under the dryer, where I perused the latest movie magazines. When I was dry—cheeks red and hot from the heated air, rolled hair crisp to the touch—Aunt Fannie set me back in the swivel chair, where she began unpinning the rollers, vigorously brushing out my new hair.

It gleamed. It shined. I had never seen anything like it. She sprayed hairspray all over me—the air was thick with it. I sneezed and coughed. But I looked beautiful.

You have to suffer to be beautiful.

And you are! Look at that girl!

To be continued …

A Tale of Two Deaths: Losing My Mother to Alzheimer’s—Part I

14 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in Relationships and Family Life, The Healthy Life, Transitions

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A note to readers: This post was honored by BlogHer, the Women’s Publishing Network, with a Voice of the Year award for 2012. I have since retitled it and it will appear as Part One of Have You Met My Daughter? My Mother, Her Alzheimer’s, and Me in an e-book anthology jointly published by BlogHer and Open Road Media. I am working to complete Have You Met My Daughter? and will post forthcoming essays, in serial form, on this blog.

A person with dementia (or Alzheimer’s Disease) suffers two deaths. The first death occurs when you discover the illness taking hold, erasing the vivacious mind and the vital spirit of the person you once knew. The second death is when the physical body expires. For these reasons, a bereaved person who loses a loved one—first to dementia, later to death—grieves twice. And although much has been written about mid-lifers—the so-called “sandwich generation“—who are caught between caring for ill or elderly parents while still raising children, perhaps there is room in the literature for one more account. This November, to mark National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month and National Family Caregivers’ Month—and in honor of my mother—I am beginning to write a series of essays about how I loved my mother and how I lost her—not once, but twice.

“Have you met my daughter?”

This was the question my mother, who had impeccable manners, regularly posed to co-workers or acquaintances when introducing me to them for the first time.

“Have you met my daughter?”

This was the question my mother regularly posed to the women seated with her at a table in the secured-wing of the assisted living facility where I regularly visited her. Without fail, each and every time I entered the room, she would ask these same women:

“Have you met my daughter?”

There was, of course, tremendous solace in the fact that despite her illness, my mother did recognize me as her daughter. Nevertheless, it was heartbreaking to see how her memory, her very sense of self, had deteriorated.

The signs had been there for a while; it just took time for me to connect the dots. My mother had always been what used to be called “high-strung.” She suffered from panic attacks, and was fearful of many things, including learning how to drive after my father died.

She had also always been something of an pack-rat. Today, there is a name for this: compulsive hoarding. But at the time when I was grappling with this issue in terms of my own mother, I did not know it was an illness for which there might be a treatment; I simply put it down to another of my mother’s eccentricities. I would clear out as much of the clutter as she would permit (there remained piles that I was forbidden to touch), and a week or so later, my efforts were obliterated. It was not at all unlike Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain.

After several years of this, the hoarding had gotten so out of control that I began to fear for my mother’s safety. I was able to convince her that she needed help; she allowed me to hire a cleaning woman to do her laundry, dust, vacuum the floor, and keep the bathroom and kitchen clean.

It was ultimately the cleaning woman—or, more to the point, the existence of the cleaning woman—which brought home to me the awful realization that something was far more seriously wrong with Mom than eccentric hoarding.

She and the cleaning woman didn’t hit it off, largely because Mom did not like anyone else touching her things. The woman, goodhearted and a good worker, called me to complain about what she could see was a losing battle. I was struggling over how to handle the situation when it resolved itself. Mom called me late one night in a real panic; I needed to come over at once. There was a terrible problem.

When I arrived, she pointed to a hole in the dining-room window screen—no more than two inches in diameter.

“That woman you hired is stealing from me,” she said in a tremulous voice tinged with outrage. “Do you see that? That’s how she’s getting in. She’s sneaking in, crawling in through that hole.”

To be continued …

NOTE: The Alzheimer’s Association is not responsible for information or advice provided by others, including information on websites that link to Association sites and on third party sites to which the Association links. Please direct any questions to weblink@alz.org.

Secrets of a Successful Marriage: Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue

04 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in Relationships and Family Life, Remarriage

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Marlo Thomas—award-winning actress, author, activist, producer, philanthropist, and social media maven, and Phil Donahue—pioneering television talk-show host, Emmy Award-winner, and writer, put a whole new spin on “meeting cute” when Thomas was a guest on The Phil Donahue Show in 1977. Romantic sparks flew, and wedding bells ensued three years later. It was Thomas’ first marriage and Donahue’s second, effectively making her a midlife second wife. Thirty-one years later, they are still married. What are their secrets for a happy marriage?

Thomas, who has emerged as a formidable presence on the social media scene with a website on the Huffington Post, a Facebook fan page, and more than 19,000 followers on Twitter, recently interviewed her husband for Huff Post’s “Mondays With Marlo.” The premise for the live webcast is brilliant: Several days before a guest is to appear, Thomas invites people to submit questions via her social media sites and then, during the webcast, via a live comment stream. She curates and moderates the questions, presenting them to her guest. To my surprise, she read mine:

Marriage, especially remarriage, represents many things: the renaissance of romantic love, the renewal of hope, the reinvention of each partner. Phil, when you and Marlo got married, how do you think you influenced her reinvention? How did she influence yours?

Charmingly discomfited by this and other personal questions—Donahue is clearly far more comfortable fielding queries about his career, politics, and the Occupy Wall Street movement, for example—he nevertheless attempted a game answer. And Thomas joined in:

Phil: Well, Marlo wants this marriage to succeed. That is very obvious. …It’s really impressive. This is her first marriage, and she’s very proud of that.

Marlo: It’s my last marriage, too. And so how did we reinvent each other? Part of my reinvention was that I wanted to get married to someone. That was new.

Phil: Well, I’ve reinvented. I no longer leave the towel on the floor. I call at night if we’re separated: ‘Hi. You good? Okay.’ That was part of my rehabilitation.

So that’s easy enough to do, wouldn’t you say? Stay connected when apart, and don’t leave the dirty towels on the floor. And I love that Thomas said that her marriage to Donahue is her last marriage. But the secret to a long and happy marriage? That question came from a viewer named Florence. Here’s what they had to say in response:

Phil: Don’t think the worst of your spouse. In other words, I think we go to war not for what is true, but for what we think is true.…Don’t go to war for what you think your spouse is going to do.

Marlo: That’s such good advice, and I have to take it, too.Whenever I think I know exactly what you’re thinking I’m completely wrong. I do think that men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

“Don’t think the worst of your spouse.” It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But is it simple to implement?  It is so easy for us to jump to conclusions, or to allow old insecurities and fears to surface, and with them, old ways of interpreting information. Remember the baggage post from last month?

Let’s have someone else weigh in on this.

TIME magazine has called Byron Katie “a spiritual innovator for the new millennium.” A friend told me about her books several years ago. In Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life, Katie writes:

It’s not the problem that causes our suffering; it’s our thinking about the problem.

Our thinking. Thinking the worst of our spouse. Thinking that can spiral into problems greater than whatever is at hand. Turning that thinking around is the key to a long, happy, and successful marriage. That, staying connected, and not leaving the wet towels on the bathroom floor.

To view Marlo Thomas’ interview with her husband, Phil Donahue—her special guest on “Mondays With Marlo,” click here.

Take 2: I Blog, Therefore I Am

28 Friday Oct 2011

Posted by in Money Matters, The Writing Life

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MorgueFile Image

So many people have asked me why I started writing a blog that it made sense to include the query in TMSW’s Frequently Asked Questions. (You’ll see a link to FAQs at the top of this page.) It’s taken me until now, however, to drum up the courage to answer the question publicly. Like so many of the events of these past 14 months—my remarriage, my nominal retirement, my relocation—this blog represents my second act. If my life were a movie, this would be “Take 2.” And as long as I’m on a roll with the “re” prefix and the film metaphor, I guess I could call the act of starting a blog a rewrite. I am literally rewriting my career, and, in so doing, I am rewriting a substantial portion of the life I have yet to live. You see, I thought it would be easy to leave the great job that I had in Ohio and slide right into something comparable down here in Richmond—a swift, smooth, lateral move. I applied for several positions, was a finalist for two, and, for one of them, could have sworn I’d be bringing home a paycheck. I was wrong.

This is tough to admit, given the wonderful successes of my Ohio career—and even tougher to experience, especially in this economy. It was (here come those two leading letters again), rejection. And rejection hurts. I could speculate on whether it was my age, or the fact that I’m a newcomer-Yankee in a Southern, relationship-based town, that resulted in my rejection, but I’ve come to realize that none of that really matters now. This is the way things happened to shake out for me. What does matter is that I’d bloody well better get on with something, because the curtain is clearly going up on my second act and I’d better know my lines. I want to make the most of this—it’s an opportunity for (are you ready? am I?) reinvention. Also, there are bills to pay. And, if we’re lucky, real retirement to plan for.

L., a follower of the blog, commented earlier this month:

While I end my 25 years working for the same company which is closing and laid off everyone recently-my last day will be Friday – it has been entertaining to read your blogs each day with some funny happy things to distract me from the next chapter that I will be facing , finding a new job! So congratulations to you.

It’s tough out there for many of us. It hurts to hear of yet another person out of a job. John and I have our own personal experience with this, which I’ll share, with his blessing, in a future post. At this juncture, it might be helpful for L. and others to know that there are some amazing and smart books, blogs, and websites here on the other side of the looking glass. I’ve discovered most of these since starting TMSW, and have been bookmarking and list-making like mad for the time when I’ll have the time to give them all a careful perusal. For now, here’s a non-comprehensive list:

Websites
Second Act, an online destination published by Entrepreneur Media
AARP, The Magazine
The Legacy Project: Lessons for Living from the Wisest Americans
Marlo Thomas (Yes. That Girl. Author, Actress, Producer, Philanthropist. She’s Free to Be … in Social Media, and you can find her on the Huffington Post.)

Books and Writers
Kerry Hannon, Author of What’s Next? Follow Your Passion and Find Your Dream Job
Bruce Frankel, Author of What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life?
Marci Alboher, Author of One Person/Multiple Careers
Michelle V. Rafter, Journalist
Denise Kiernan, Journalist and Producer

As for what L. wrote about finding entertainment in the “funny happy” things on my blog? Well, this particular post, maybe not so much. It’s not feeling like a real knee-slapper to me. But that’s life, no? There are dark corners; sometimes we try to find the funny and the happy to light our way out of them. Or sometimes we just start writing.

And that is (one) answer to “Why the blog?” Here are some others:

  1. Because I’m not trained to do anything else, or at least no one has hired me to do what I was trained for.
  2. Because I love to write.
  3. Because I can write. And because sometimes I think that all I can do is write.
  4. Because it’s time to get serious about getting back to my writing dream.
  5. Because I still have so much to learn.
  6. Because I want to feel useful, and be of use to others.
  7. Because I want to contribute financially to our marriage and to our future.
  8. Because maybe something will come of this blogging business.
  9. Because sometimes it feels as though I’m on to something. Or maybe it’s just gas.
  10. Because … maybe … because maybe it’s my time.

The Man Who Wasn’t There: A 9/11 Remembrance

11 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by in Transitions

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Sept. 11, 2012—A note to the reader: I published this post last year in honor of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I would like to share it with you again, today, as we acknowledge another sadly inevitable milestone, and leave you with these words from the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay:

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

—From “Dirge Without Music”

Dedicated to those who died, and to those whose lives were changed forever.

Like many of you, I sat transfixed in front of the television today, watching the poignant ceremonies and tributes in New York City, in Washington, D.C., and in Shanksville, Penn., honoring the victims and heroes of September 11. Like many of you, I watched with a loved one, grateful that I was not alone with these heartrending images. Like many of you, I remain painfully aware of the thousands of loved ones who saw their lives forever altered during those brief, horrific hours ten years ago.

My heart goes out to these families. I cannot even begin to imagine the magnitude of their loss, the depths of their grief.

My husband and I also watched MSNBC’s playback of NBC’s live coverage of those terrifying moments when the world changed. We held hands tightly. My gaze remained fixed on the gaping hole in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. I could almost see the imprint left by the plane, a jagged, gaping black hole belching smoke.

My husband was to have been there.

At the time, of course, he was not my husband. At the time, I did not even know that he existed. I was still married to my first husband, he to his first wife.

Ten years ago, surrounded by colleagues and students, I watched the catastrophe unfold in real-time; someone had set up a television in the student lounge at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where I worked. I had no idea that less than 50 miles from where I stood, a man sat with his own colleagues, watching the same images, shaking his head in wonderment that he was alive.

These are the jolts of time and circumstance that leave me speechless, in awe of the powerful forces that alter our lives.

John has spent the majority of his career in commercial insurance, specifically, environmental insurance. From 1994 through 1998, he worked in the Cleveland office of AIG. It was while John was with AIG that he became friends with a New York-based AIG colleague, Jeffrey Gardner. John left AIG to become vice-president and managing director of Seneca Environmental Management, a division of Seneca Specialty Insurance Company. Jeffrey ultimately left AIG to join Marsh McLennan as an environmental insurance broker. At the time of the attacks on 9/11, Marsh McLennan had offices on eight floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Because John’s responsibilities at Seneca involved all aspects of national marketing and underwriting, he traveled frequently for work, often to meet with his clients—insurance brokers in cities all across the country. Jeffrey was now a client. At 8:30 on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, John had a meeting scheduled with Jeffrey in his office at the WTC.

Less than one week before their meeting, John telephoned Jeffrey to postpone. “I looked at my calendar and realized that we would both be at the same conference at San Antonio in a few weeks’ time, so I called Jeffrey and suggested that we put off our meeting until then. It is so vivid—I remember standing next to my desk and looking out the window on a clear Friday afternoon, with my phone in my hand as we spoke for the last time.”

At 8:46 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, 16 minutes after the originally scheduled time of John’s meeting with Jeffrey Gardner, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north side of the North Tower, between the 94th and 98th floors.

Jeffrey’s office at Marsh McLennan, where he was to have met with John, was on the 98th floor.

John watched the horror unfold from the safety of a third-floor office in Middleburg Heights, Ohio, with his colleagues. Here is his account:

I didn’t make the connection at first—that I would have been staring at the nose of the aircraft as it split the building.  All I could think of was the terror coursing through the veins of everyone in the building. I knew quite a few people in there and my brother, Brian, lived just across the river, in Brooklyn.  I heard about it on the car radio on my way to work; I lived just a few miles from the office, so I turned around to get a small TV from the house so those of us in the office could follow what was happening.  I returned with the TV and had plugged it in just after the second plane struck the South Tower. 

All seven of us were in the office, riveted to the TV. I turned to see one of my assistants, Elaine, staring at me.  Her face was ashen. She whispered, “You were supposed to be there.” Then, after a measured pause, she repeated the same words in a slightly more audible voice. It was then that I felt my stomach drive itself into my throat.  All of a sudden I could almost feel a part of myself in the office and a part of myself standing hopelessly somewhere among the mass hysteria that was unfolding. 

Just as I was coming to grips with the fact that I was safe, the first tower collapsed.  My own words came slowly this time: “I was supposed to be there. I was supposed to be there.” I could not take my eyes off what I was witnessing, knowing that my fate had placed me safely in a third-floor office in Northeast Ohio instead of in the unspeakable crosshairs of history. I would be able to come home and hug my sons, and they would still have a dad. 

Despite our inability to connect with home office for days, we eventually learned that all of our company people were accounted for. But had I not made that fateful call to change my plans for that day, there would have been one less name on the company roster.

The two beautiful waterfalls designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker that now soothe the scorched footprints of the Twin Towers at the Memorial site have a most philosophical name: “Reflecting Absence.” John and I plan to pay our respects, to look at the names etched in bronze on the memorial’s perimeters. We will pause when we get to Jeffrey Gardner’s. We will say a prayer for him and for his family. And we will reflect upon John’s absence from the World Trade Center on that fateful day.

 

 —Originally published on Sept. 11, 2011