Marilyn Monroe Redux

Several years ago, Charlotte and I created some Nike ads that struck a nerve with a lot of people. Female people. Male people. Children as young as 12 and women as old as 82.

We'd like to offer up a revision to the original, revised to speak to the numerals we feel measured by now, the road signs that tell us how far we’ve come, another year another year, like the marks a doomed prisoner makes on his cell walls. Isn’t that supposed to be a good thing, this being alive? Shouldn’t the more digits we add up give us some sort of prize, some sort of Yay Rah, you’ve gone past Go again, here’s a little reward? Isn’t living the point to this whole mad existence? But it’s not, you know it’s not, not here in Ever-Younger-Me-Me-Me-America. Why do we cringe or lie instead of accept and ask for more, please? Anti-aging. Anti-changing. Anti-living. We’re crazy, completely nuts if we think we can turn back time, break all the clocks. God, can’t we ever grow up.

And so, without further ado...the text should now read:

A WOMAN IS OFTEN MEASURED
BY THE THINGS SHE CAN’T CONTROL.
SHE IS MEASURED BY THE AGE OF HER SKIN AND HER FLESH,
WHAT FALLS TOO FAR OR HANGS TOO LOW,
BY THE DECADES SHE HAS SEEN INSTEAD OF
THE DECADES STILL TO GO.
SHE IS MEASURED BY NUMERALS AND MILE MARKERS,
BY 21 AND 39 AND 55,
BY QUANTITY NOT QUALITY,
BY ALL THE OUTSIDE THINGS THAT DON’T EVER ADD UP
TO WHO SHE IS ON THE INSIDE.
AND SO IF A WOMAN IS TO MEASURED,
LET HER BE MEASURED BY THE THINGS SHE CAN CONTROL,
BY WHO SHE IS AND WHO SHE IS STILL TRYING TO BECOME.
BECAUSE AS EVERY WOMAN KNOWS,
NUMBERS ARE ONLY STATISTICS.
AND STATISTICS LIE.

For my father.

Last week, I flew from my home in Italy back to the United States to help my brother tend to my father. This is a trip I have imagined making many times, and one which I have always dreaded. It was, in a sense, inevitable, but that didn't diminish my fear of it.

My father is not old by his family’s genetic standards, but age has hit him. Something has happened to him, and he is no longer the same. Not strong. Not always coherent. Maybe not always understanding of what’s going on around him. It’s hard to tell. His world is much smaller now, more closed, defined by the limitation of his own movements and the struggles both to comprehend and to respond. The doctors were utterly unenlightening in their diagnosis. “One of many possible forms of rapid onset dementia,” they said, then they added little else besides, “He can never go home again.” So independence and mental acuity have been replaced by utter dependence and a mental cloud, which blocks articulate conversation but lets the rays of love and sweetness flow freely. He is not himself, yet he is utterly himself. And his strange way of speaking is often more accurate than reality: At one point in the hospital he said, “When did we get to this country? When did we pass through customs?”

And I, well, I’m struggling with all of this. How can I feel ripe when the fruits of my own father are falling from the tree? How do I give to children on one side and to aging parents on the other without depleting my own resources? How do I contain all these emotions, register all the sadness, and still find joy?

I asked my brother, “Do you feel older or younger now?” And he answered without hesitation and a deep sigh, “Older.” I said I felt both. Older, because we are next in line. (This is just the fact, ma’am.) Younger, because, damn it, compared to my father, I am young. I am still vital and free and mobile. I am still capable of acting according to my wishes and of saying what those wishes are. And younger because, despite all the unanswered questions about what it means and how do I do it, I am—somehow—doing it. I am living it. I am giving at both ends and all around. And miraculously, there is something left of me, and she is—believe it or not—thankful for something she can’t name and singing because her voice must sing.

Life is life until it isn’t anymore. My father isn’t dead; he’s alive. He's not all there, but I haven't lost him. Not yet. And despite his state, there is still a will to go on and to live each day, and there is joy there. When he rolls into his bed at night, he chuckles, as if to congratulate himself, or merely because he finds it all amusing.

There is a lesson there, and without doubt, a gift to me, if I will only take it and hold it close. —Charlotte

Ripeness. Another take.

Ripeness is
what falls away with ease.
Not only the heavy apple,
the pear,
but also the dried brown strands
of autumn iris from their core.

To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.

And however sharply
you are tested -
this sorrow, that great love -
it too will leave on that clean knife.

—Jane Hirshfield

The 2008 Ticket

On November 5, 2005, Maureen Dowd wrote: “I've said it before and I'll say it again: Men are simply not biologically suited to hold higher office. The Bush administration has proved that once and for all.” She goes on to rip apart the current powers that be, using terms and phrases that are often reserved for women. Example: “These guys can't be bothered to run the country. They are too obsessed with frivolous stuff, like fashion and whether they look fat.”

The Weekly Standard simultaneously criticized her for caricaturing the men in office (not only in this editorial, but in all her editorials), but it’s a glaringly weak criticism when the fact of the matter is that it’s not terribly difficult to caricature people who make caricatures of themselves. She did the same to Clinton (which, of course, the Standard approved of). And she’ll do the same with whomever next occupies the seat. When and if he deserves it.

Excuse us. When and if he or SHE deserves it. And why not? we ask. For as Maureen concludes, “Women are affected by hormones only at times. Vice's hormones rage every day.”

Which brings us swiftly to our point. If women are not well suited to office because of their hormonally ruled natures, wouldn’t a post-menopausal woman be ideally suited to the job? Republican or Democrat aside, there are numerous still-fertile women and peri-menopausal women who would be just as well qualified as the current cast of characters (if not better). But how could we ever be sure—our persistent detractors would remind us—that PMS wouldn’t cause Ms. President to—to what? imagine WMDs? At least if she were over all that upsy downsy hormonal shifting, we could rest assured.

It's like this.

There's no going back. There's only going forward. Fasten your seatbelt. And enjoy the ride.

Image © Charlotte Moore 2005

Remember this:

We were going to write a blog about something else, but we forgot what we wanted to say. Sound familiar? In 1996 we learned the Italian word for seagull while on vacation on an island near Sicily, and in that instant we let go of calculus.

Billy Collins, America’s Poet Laureate in 2001, writes about it eloquently:But it’s not all about what gets lost by the roadside, is it? If our brain is a hard-drive, and its disk space is limited, then something is pushing these things out.

When we’re twenty, we’re all about ourselves. We’re about our careers. We’re about “me, me, me” and “my, my, my.” Granted, some people never grow out of this—sometimes, alas, entire societies don't grow out of it—but the idea is this: When you grow up—not old, but up—you gather another kind of information. About love, compassion. About raising children (your own and other people’s). About caring for the elderly. About keeping it all together, all the time. These aren’t skills you are born with. They are human behaviors that are learned over time. They don’t come with degrees, textbooks, or salaries attached. But they do comprise valuable learning, and they are richly rewarded.

This stuff, then, that takes over our gray matter (and the pink matter of our hearts) is well worth a few lost state capitals. You may not remember that love poem you once committed to memory, but at least now you understand a lot more about love.

So my wife, will she be like this forever?

A few weeks ago a man approached us at a book signing. He was a bear of a guy, big and a little Hemingway-esque, with the resigned look of someone who had eaten something disgusting but allegedly healthy. He handed one of us a copy of our book and said "I’d like you to autograph this for my wife." As we signed he said he’d really enjoyed the reading, he thought his wife would love the book, she’d been having a really hard time. And even though there’s nothing wrong with her suddenly she thinks there’s nothing, not one damn thing, right with her. He thanked us and turned to go, but then looked us right in the eyes and said "She loves me. And then she hates me. Tell me this will someday end." We’re grown up. We’re professional. We’ve seen it all. And yet we wanted to throw our arms around him and gush like fools and slobber all over his not-yet-gray Papa-ish beard for being, well, for being man

enough to ask a stranger for help over his menopausal wife. But we didn’t. We restrained ourselves and gushed later. Right then we just nodded and sagely replied Yes. Trust us. It won’t last forever. It just sometimes feels like forever. He looked so relieved. As if we were the Oracles of Menopausal Women. And then we wondered What if she stays like this a little too long? Because with Google the way it is, he could so easily find out where we live.

You=Your Story

Your face is your autobiography. And in any case, it is a story about change v. stasis. What you did v. what you didn’t do. What you felt. What you conquered. When you failed. When you figured it out.

A. The traces of requited and unrequited love. The signs that you lived your life in the sun instead of in a closet. Proof that you raised your eyebrows more than once in amazement, awe, disbelief; and that you lowered them, on occasion, in disapproval or merely to take a closer look. B. Cousins of A, these two little marks on either side of the bridge of the nose, belong to scrutiny. Caring. Listening attentively. Or watching history unfold. Trying to understand. Saying, if necessary, “No.” A genetic gift from your mother. C. The curve from the nostril to the edge of your lips. You smiled. You talked. You spoke your mind. And smiled some more. If you don’t like the way it looks, just keep smiling. That’s where it belongs. D. Tiny lines above the lips? Good girl. That means you do your share of kissing. E. Something under the mouth you don’t like? Don’t worry. It gives you gravitas. F. Laughter. Lots. Apparently. G. A little puffy? The ultimate sign that you’ve burned the candle at both ends, just because it shed such a lovely light.

The reading between the lines: Sorry, can’t reveal that here. Mysterious. Private. Not for prying eyes. Suffice it say, however, that without the lines, there’d be no “between.” Just a blank for all the world to see.