The Road to Islington

I was recently chatting with two women at the college where I work.  One is a professor of Anthropology, the other an English professor.  I run the Foundation.  Quite by chance, we discovered that the three of us had lived in Islington, London.  Different times, different circumstances.  We plan to meet at a wine bar in a couple of weeks to share our stories.

So, it got me thinking.  How did I, a Connecticut-born, Jewish-Quaker child who grew up in Australia, end up living in Islington?  It was a circuitous journey to be sure.  Here’s some things you need to know.  My parents were radicals during the McCarthy era.  They thought protest and independent views were what America was all about, including believing in some of the premises of Communism, especially “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”  Many of their friends were called up to testify in the House of Un-American Activities.  My mother hated capitalism, although she wished my father was rich.  He, on the other hand clung to the American dream and believed that he would ‘make it rich’! He never did, although as a loving, good person he was a Nobel prizewinner.  They were in terrible debt, so I guess they both really bought into the American dream.  I have vivid memories of my parents hiding in the bedroom as we answered the door to debt collectors come to repossess couches, tv sets and other furniture they couldn’t afford.  We were trained early on to say, “My parents are not home.”  It bought them more time but made me cautious about money and debt.  They were adventurous, too, so Australia became the perfect choice to drag their four resentful children.  Despite the fact that we were Jewish, the Australian government, desperate for white people, paid our passage on a freighter and living expenses for the first few months in a migrant hostel until my father found a job.  Which was lucky because my father only had $43 in his pocket when we arrived in Sydney.  And that’s another story.

And so I went to secondary school and uni in Sydney.  After earning my BA with Honors in Sociology, I was offered the opportunity to continue straight to a doctorate.  Suffocating in the small town atmosphere of Sydney in the 70s, I chose to get a job, save money and see the world.  That decision changed the trajectory of my life.  Right out of uni, I was hired for nine months as a ‘Research Officer’ for the Commonwealth Inquiry into Poverty in Australia.  A big title for a little graduate.  I produced a final report,

 

saved money, and was therefore free to travel.

First stop, Israel, where my parents and baby sister had immigrated four years earlier. (Longer story. Separate blog.)  Although my relationship with my mother was filled with buried minefields, I missed them all terribly.  But after a month in Israel, I felt I would lose my mind if I lingered and so flew to London.  No plan.  No job.  No place to live.  I was 22.

I lived in London for four years during which time I had some tempestuous relationships, worked in a school for severely disabled children, and earned a Master’s from the London School of Economics.  I remember being cold, depressed and poor. Half of that time was spent in Islington.

When I first arrived, I madly scoured Time Out for a place to live, and found a room in someone else’s apartment.  I moved in, and proceeded to look every day in The Guardian for jobs.  I found an ad for a social worker attached to a school for severely mentally disabled children, applied and was hired.  During the six months it took for my work permit to come through I traveled.  I met my Aussie traveling partner through an ad.  She was as strong and independent as I was petite and weak.  We were an odd couple indeed.  We ended up hitch-hiking around Europe, staying in St. Andre, France, then on to Spain, Morocco, and back to France, where I fell in love with a Dutchman.  The Dutchman and I ended up living together in London after my work permit came through. 



 

At home in Islington

In London in those days, and probably still, flats were passed on from generation to generation.  No one moved, no new flats were built.  We finally found one that was partially underground and barely saw the light of day.  It smelled moldy and was always, always dark.  I would dream I was lying on Bondi Beach and wake up in a terrible sweat because there was no air circulating.  We kept the lights on all day.

When my Dutchman’s friends offered to let us rent the first floor of their 2-story house, which they were planning to remodel, we leaped at the opportunity.  It was on Upper Street in Islington, and above ground. 

It was two unconnected rooms, a small toilet and a hallway.  No kitchen.  No shower.  No bathtub.  Knowing it would be remodeled shortly, we put a temporary hot plate in the front room, along with a rickety old table, a few chairs and an old couch and baptized it a kitchen, dining room and living room.  We named the second room a bedroom which we shared with mice, rats and spiders.  We used the tiny sink in the tiny bathroom for cooking, brushing our teeth, and sponging ourselves.  When we wanted to take a shower or bath, we scheduled it with the family upstairs.  There were six of them and two of us.  They had priority.  We put coins in the water heater and waited, naked and shivering for the water to heat up.  The family kept promising the remodel, but in the two years we lived there, it didn’t happen. 

During that time, I worked with the parents of the severely handicapped children.  Armed only with a BA and 9 months of research experience, I was clueless.  My sociology thesis had been on the ‘streaming’ of primary school kids (i.e. putting kids in A, B, C, or D streams for their entire primary school career based on how smart or dumb they were determined to be at six), and its detrimental effect on young children. My first professional job was studying voluntary organizations in Australia and whether they were making a difference in the poverty level of their clients. I knew nothing of the sorrows of parents with severely handicapped children.  I did end up producing, with a colleague, a pamphlet for the parents that told them point by point their rights. 

 

With support from my wonderful boss at the school for the disabled, I enrolled in the London School of Economics to get my Masters in Social Work, on a full scholarship.  Thank you Alda Hoskings!  I wish I had told you back then what a great mentor you were to me but I was young and ignorant.  You died shortly after I moved to Los Angeles.

As a social work student intern, my placement was at the Islington Area Office that dealt with the daily catastrophes of the locals’ lives.  Islington at that time was a working class neighborhood.  As a student intern I was supposedly supervised, but arrived in court alone to argue for taking a client’s children away from her.  Her two girls had complained to me that she never fed them.  They said they wanted to be taken away from her because she was always drunk, and they hated her violent boyfriend.  I prevailed in court, just 23 years old.  A month later, my supervisor sent me to visit the mother, alone.  She threw a lamp at me, and at the time, I felt she was justified.  Now, I’m not so sure.

I spent a lot of time at various pubs with the social worker team, where we debriefed daily. 

After work, I shopped for groceries at a variety of little market stands (there being no ‘supermarkets’ per se) and schlepped back groceries by bus.  My boyfriend and I ate out as often as we could afford it, mostly Indian food, since ‘bubble and squeak’, meat pies, and fish and chips wore very thin, very fast.  I remember Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee in 1977.  We waved as the Queen was driven by Upper Street, right past our un-remodeled kitchen/dining room/living room.    

 

 

 

First day at LSE, I met a young man on a motorbike with whom I ended up having a wild affair. He was Winston Churchill’s nephew.  Seriously.  My relationship with my Dutchman was over.

I studied social work and economics at LSE with Professor Jalna Hanmer (who is still alive and still a radical theorist).  At LSE, I bonded with the Irish, Scots and Welsh students.  Professor Hanmer was American so I paid close attention to everything she said.  The way she explained the inequities in our society stuck with me all these decades later.  I told her that I wanted to return (having been absent for 16 years) to the land of my birth.  She said “having an MSW is a highly regarded degree in America and will help you to find a job.”  I earned my MSW and moved to Los Angeles.  I got a job within three months of my arrival.  Thank you Jalna!

The rest, as they say, is another blog. 

Facing Old Age Head On

 

They say that growing old is not for sissies.  It’s true.  When you are young, you leap out of bed in the morning, fly into the bathroom and toss your full head of hair out of your unlined face, brush your teeth, pull on a tee-shirt and jeans and you are ready to do battle.  These days, you stretch your legs toward the pillow before gingerly stepping out of bed, so that your heels won’t hurt so much.  You do further stretches in the bathroom so that your torso and neck won’t hurt so much.  And then, you look in the mirror and see—well, your hair. 

Here’s the thing you need to understand.  I always had good hair.  Dark brown, thick, wavy tendrils down to my waist from age 12 to early 20s.  People, mostly men, but sometimes women, too, would stop to compliment me (or my hair) as I walked around Sydney, Australia where I grew up.  It seemed like a big deal to them and so it became a very big deal to me.  I felt my hair distracted onlookers from my acned skin, which may not have been as bad as it felt.   Nevertheless, my hair was my shield.  I made sure it covered at least two-thirds of my face.  My hair gave me the confidence to feel ‘attractive’. 

During the late 70s, I stretched my hair on an ironing board, which by then reached my waist, and ironed it straight.  By the late 80s, when I was living in LA, my acting coach (yes, I was a wannabe actress) told me that with my hair I had limited my options and I should consider cutting it. 

He didn’t say that I looked like a 60s Italian hippie, but I did.  It is so clear in the headshots on which I spent hundreds of dollars.  In my mind, I was quite British with a touch of educated Australian, but there was the proof in black and white.  Italian American.  Or Jewish.  No callbacks.

After much anguish, I found a Lebanese hairdresser in North Hollywood who cut it so that it just graced my shoulders. 

I looked even more Italian.

During the late 90s, I had it colored and highlighted to hide the grey.  And all that time, imperceptibly through the 2000’s, it thinned.  I noticed it in photos and was horrified.  My new friends and colleagues, who had no idea what I had lost, said how photogenic I was. Those who saw photos of me in my youth asked who that was.  I tried to comfort myself with the fact that I still had more hair than most women had ever had. 

So, here’s the thing.  I spend a lot of money these days on my hair.  But who am I actually fooling?  Maybe no one.  Maybe everyone.  But it’s amazing the things I have done.  There was the Rogaine for Men I purchased on the advice of my dermatologist.  I paid a fortune for it, took it home and then studied the side effects, which ranged from acne, to facial hair growth, increased hair loss, swelling of the face, blurred vision, dizziness, fast or irregular heartbeat, and rapid weight gain.  Oh my God!  I could die from this product.  Or worse, I could be bald, fat, with a beard and acne.  I quickly threw it away and, to this day, have never used it. 

Meanwhile, my hairdresser, an adventuress into the world of hair, found a product called X-fusion, a magnetized powder that covered the bald spaces on your scalp.  I loved it.  I called it “shake and bake” and used it after every hair wash.  My hairdresser also found a little fake bang piece that I could clip on and cover with my real hair.  No one seemed to know.  But it was hard to clip in and when the real wind blew it separated my fake bangs from my real bangs, so that I ended up walking with my hand over my forehead.  I watched carefully to see if any of my colleagues or friends were staring strangely at my forehead, never sure.  It was not a perfect solution.

Then one day my fearless hairdresser found a new thing.  Real hair.  An attachment.  Easy to put on.  Almost impossible to detect.  Many actors use them, she told me.  It cost mucho bucks but I went ahead and ordered it.  Here’s the thing.  I haven’t told anyone.  Not my husband, friends or colleagues.  Only my hairdresser knows.  And now, you.  My hairdresser colored it to match my already colored hair.

I love it.  It never turns grey.  It makes my hair appear thicker.  It looks real.  Hey, it is real.  Just not mine.  I wonder who the person was who sold it.  I hope she had so much hair that it left her head with barely a ripple.  I understand she is from India.  I fantasized that the money she got represented a year’s worth of salary, giving her time to stabilize her poor finances.  But when I googled it, I see this: 

“ 2006 the Daily Mail reported how in the hills of Tirupati, in India, a Hindu temple has become the second richest religious site in the world- due mostly to its sale of human hair . . .  every day, up to 4,000 women visit the temple to take part in a religious ceremony, called tonsuring, during which they shave off their hair as a sacrifice to the god Vishnu. These women believe that taking part in the ceremony is a sign that they are willing to give up their pride and vanity, and to thank the gods or ask them for health and happiness in the future- but what they don't know is they are also making a lot of money for those who run the temple. After the ceremony all the hair that is collected is combed, sorted into lengths and dyed before being shipped to Western countries to sell as wigs and hair extensions. So while we see our extensions as a great way to give us a beauty boost and make us feel great . . . there is in fact a much bigger human story behind every lock of hair.”

I may not have purchased this if I knew.  I am so, so sorry.  But whoever you are, wherever you are—my great thanks to you.  I pray you made money, but if you didn’t, I hope you are not suffering now.

One of my work colleagues said this to me on the first day I wore it.  This exactly.  “Your hair looks so healthy.  It’s really great.  What did you do?”  Without hesitation, I said: “Well, my hairdresser is trying new things.” “It’s working,” she said.  Since then, many others have commented, “I’m not sure what you’ve done to your hair, but I like it.”  And I just laugh because I have somewhat tricked old age. 

But I dream about this poor woman who visited the temple one day.  Perhaps she went to that temple to thank the gods for all of the small fortunes that came to her family.  Her first born son has a job now in an American call center in Delhi. Her husband is still working as a cook in a restaurant.  And her 2 daughters are healthy.  They are poor but most days can afford 3 meals. 

But then I look up life expectancy in India today.  It is 27 years old.  My poor donor may already be dead.

It has happened:  I have joined the vast society of women with too much time and money on their hands.  But by now, you realize, I am trapped.  I can never not wear this “extension” because the contrast would be so noticeable.  I understand now why my very beautiful cousin began extensive surgery.  She was probably complimented all of her life on how beautiful she was, and when she started to get older and noticed the wrinkles in her 10x magnifying mirror, she didn’t want to let her fans down.  She only saw what she had lost.  Everyone else saw what she still had.  And so she went to the plastic surgeon and had just one thing done, and then another and another and another and another.  It ended up destroying her own natural beauty. 

To date, I have not had one single thing on my face or neck altered.  Only my hair.  Even though I notice the little lines from my nose to my lips, and crow’s feet around my eyes, and the worry lines on my forehead and the downfall of my neck.  They scare me in the 10X mirror, but when I look in regular mirrors, everything is a blessed blur.  Plus, I hate pain and I don’t have the income to afford extensive anything.  I admire how European women age with grace.  But how about those poor Hindu women?  Who is looking out for them?

It seems to me, and probably many other women, that others seem so happy when you look good.  They say things like “wow, you never age” even though you have documented every wrinkle in your 10X mirror.  You think, “if I look old, they won’t like me anymore.  They won’t want to look at me.  They won’t want to spend time with me.”  But how stupid is that?  But you, like everyone else, revel in beauty.  In art, in nature, and in other people’s visage.  Is that shallow?  Or is that natural?  I get that people’s inner beauty is transformative.  And that once you get to know someone, they become beautiful because of their soul.  And no one can buy an “attachment” to make their soul better.  Although, you can work on being more loving, less harsh towards others, forgiving, living in the moment, being kind to every living thing, handing more money out to the homeless, or better still, supporting the legislation that will build affordable housing in the inner cities . . . and so much more.

But back to me and my hair.  So here it is.  Out there now.  I am wearing a fake/real attachment.  It makes me feel good.  And I believe, it makes everyone else feel good.  So where’s the harm?  Well, it’s fake.  But isn’t my make-up fake?  My skin is not that even.  My eyes are not that dark.  My lips are not that moist.  Fake.  Isn’t that what art is all about?  Replicating nature.  Imitating life.  When I looked at the still life of some of the greats, the best thing was how close to the real beauty they came to portray.  Like Vermeer’s “Tulips in a Vase” at Norton Simon Museum, or the many paintings of Cezanne.  Were they frustrated with how far from the actual beauty their paintings came?   

You can take yourself too seriously as a work of art like my cousin did.  At the gym the other day, I watched a program, while pedaling on the bike, about plastic surgery gone wrong.  These women, who agreed to be on camera, went overboard with catastrophic results.  One of them said, “I just wanted to be perfect.”  And, as I was struggling to make ten minutes on the bike (which I am proud to say ended up being 20 minutes because I was sucked into the woman with the boob job gone awry with no problem lifting her tee-shirt to show us) I asked myself, “What is perfect?  Who defines it?  Is there even such a thing?” 

 

Sometimes I think that women who got a lot of attention in their younger years are the ones who have the most problems growing older.  Those others who suffered in their younger years roll gracefully into older age.  Maybe that is the Higher Power’s way of evening out the playing field.  And that, my friends, is a good thing.  

Why I Drive A Lexus

Here’s the thing about cars.  I didn’t even learn to drive until I was almost 30 and my first car, a 1967 Coupe de Ville, was 12 years old. 

I had an Australian boyfriend once who drove a TR6 that he was very proud of and was sure it was the reason he caught my eye.  But it wasn’t that at all.  He was tall, dark and handsome, like Rock Hudson.  Coincidentally, much later, it turned out he was also gay.  I didn’t even know what a TR6 was. 

My father had a Mini Moke when we lived in Sydney.  I don’t think they exist anymore.  Instead of proper doors, it had flaps that you snapped down.  

I am sure that helped with the cost, my father being the sole supporter of a wife and five kids.










Long before that, when we were still in New York, he had a VW Kombi with a back, a back back, and a back back back.  The four kids would fight over who sat where.  The further back you sat, the more nauseous you became, so clearly, the back back back was for the losers of all coin tosses.  Beyond that, I knew nothing about cars. 

 

When I returned to the USA as an adult, and married my husband, who, coincidentally also once had a TR6 but was totally not gay, I started to get a bit spoiled.  Just before we got married, I traded in my Coupe de Ville for an orange VW Bug, more in keeping with my political leanings.  After we were married, he talked me into my first new car.  It was an American car, a Plymouth Reliant.  We both got one and quickly renamed it ‘Plymouth Unreliant.’ 

 

It was the last American car we had for years.  Today though, my husband drives a Ford.  We both feel good about that.

But back to Lexus.  It was not even on my radar screen before I got my job at Glendale Community College.  I was not into prestige/luxury cars.  In fact that was a big turn-off for me.  Remember, my parents were Communist leaning Quaker/Jews.  Snob stuff never did it for me.  I thought designer labels gave you washing instructions for your shirt, skirt or whatever.

The first thing I remember about Lexus was when I went through the Glendale Chamber of Commerce Leadership Training, which I totally loved.  This was a few months into my new job as Executive Director of the Foundation that raised money for the local community college.  During the training, we explored all the nooks and crannies of Glendale, and met some of the outstanding leaders.  One of them was Johnny Harrison at the Lexus of Glendale dealership.  He already had a reputation for helping the Glendale school district with innovative programs that raised an amazing amount of money.  Like his carwash program.  The schools got all these coupons that they could sell for $15 each, cars were washed at the Lexus of Glendale dealership (any car) and Johnny would donate the entire amount back to the school of your choice in Glendale.  That program raised over $1M for the Glendale Unified School District. 

I wished he were connected to Glendale Community College, but somehow, we were not on his radar screen.  Until, one day, two and a half years ago, during an event on the college campus that matched high school students with adult mentors in a variety of professions.  I decided to be a mentor that year and in my little group was  . . . Johnny Harrison of Lexus of Glendale.

I immediately made a bee-line for him and told him I had met him several years before in the Leadership of Glendale group.  I told him how impressed I was with everything he was doing for Glendale schools, and how I wished we could get him involved here at the college.  Well, he said, he had tried a few years back and gave up because of a poor response.  I looked back at him, horrified that he had tried to connect but had been rebuffed.  I told him that I never knew that but would love to connect Lexus and the College.  He seemed enthusiastic.  I followed up immediately, turning up the next week for a pre-arranged meeting in his office at Lexus of Glendale with my board President and the Sports Information Director at the College. 

Two and a half years later Johnny introduced the carwash program to raise money for our Athletic Department.  He also helped to make our Golf event in 2013 the best in five years, and this year, 2014, the best EVER!  He donated our top auction items:  Golfing for two at Pebble Beach, and a real 1916 Model-T Ford.  He underwrote our online auction.  He even purchased several online and live auction items himself.

So, you can understand, when I realized I had three more years to buy out my current car, an Infinity (which by the way does nothing to help the Glendale community)  that I jumped at the opportunity to take advantage of the great deals Lexus of Glendale was offering that  4th of July.

My experience at the dealership was better than any car dealership I’ve ever been to:  well-trained staff, no heavy pushing, very helpful, very Lexus.

And now, parked in our garage, is my brand new leased 2014 hybrid ES Sedan.  The fact that it’s a hybrid makes me feel a lot better about going up a bit.  But that gets me the whole Lexus experience, plus rewarding a philanthropic company that excels in helping its local community.  Hey, it’s a work thing!  Seriously.  In fundraising, they say that people give to people they like.   It also, of course, has to be a cause they believe in.  I really like Johnny and his commitment to philanthropy.  But, in all honesty, I also like the car.  It rides like a dream.  I get to experience a beautiful piece of artistry—a Lexus hybrid.  And it goes 650 miles on a tank of gas.  Who can argue with that? 

 

Think of all the money I will be saving on gas!

My Writing Life

“If I could be born again, I would choose to come in a writer’s form.  Too many things these years have ached inside of me, living in bright bursts of painful contacts with people but never once on paper.  I live in the writers’ souls of others.”  Age 21

I kept a diary from about age 12 until almost 40 years old.  Handwritten.  Emotional.  Pages and pages.  Books and books.  Trying to make sense of love, loneliness and fear.  The usual.  I never thought of myself as a writer; merely someone who kept a diary and loved reading.  Writers were extraordinary beings who inhabited a realm the rest of us mere mortals could not enter.  I would fall in love with writers:  Dostoevsky at age 12, D.H. Lawrence at 13, Albert Camus at 16, and so on.  Most recently, I fell in love with James Salter who was a pilot in WWII before he began to write.
 

James Salter AKA Horowitz

I read one of his books by accident and then googled him, and found to my amazement that he was born a Horowitz, my maiden name.  I proceeded to read every book available on Kindle that he had ever written.  Recently, I mourned his death.  His writing was so vibrant and sexy but he will live forever for those of us lucky enough to discover him.  The legacy of all artists—immortality.

I documented my first flight away from Australia in the mid-1970s.  As it turned out, I was never to live there again, although I had no idea back then.

“It is happening.  I am flying to Israel.  How do we grasp the momentous things which happen to us?  The strangeness of being suspended, alone, quietly into the mysteriousness of the world.  To have just left behind a whole era—of my first struggles towards independence and womanhood. . . It would be so funny dying now with all this sophisticated French food on my lap.”  Age 24

Always, there was the constant questioning and insecurity about my own writing.  My own writing life.

“The strange thing about keeping a diary is the knowledge that it is only for yourself.  Knowing that even your style is nothing to attract comment.  I would so dearly love to be able to write. One thing I can’t quite work out about writing.  Does it mean that you have a more complex and beautiful soul if you can write well?  Or do you just have a special talent of being able to use words in a complex and beautiful way?  I rather suspect it is a combination of both.”  Age 26

In those days, I fell in love with men who claimed to be writers, although they talked about it more than they actually wrote.  I documented them in my diary.  I started a new diary when I met a new man.  “A new man, a new book.  Inspiration for my inner whisperings...”

Just before I turned 30, I met someone who was  “the culmination of all my men.  The quickness and artist’s soul of W, the glamor of X, the generosity of Y and the sensitivity of Z—and much more... He is so foreign to me, and yet I trust him.” Age 29

In my thirties I married this culminating man who freed my creativity, which included writing poetry, short stories and novels in between my full time job as a social worker and later a fundraiser.  We celebrated our 30^th Anniversary in September, 2015.

It didn’t happen all at once.  There was the push and pull of creating our own identities within the marriage.  Two strong-willed people not ever becoming one but becoming better versions of themselves.

One day, a few years into our marriage, my husband read something I had written and said that I was good.  I was shocked, of course, and obsessed about whether or not this was true.  Searching for finality, I took an extension course at UCLA for writers.  They would let me know for sure.  Was I good?  Or not good?

The UCLA instructor gave us this exercise with a one-line prompt.  Everyone else seemed polished and confident, and looked more writerly than I felt.  I watched them bow their heads and start a furious word attack.  I stared at my paper and hyperventilated.  What was I even doing here with real writers?  Now I would be found out.  Everyone continued writing except for me.  Finally, out of humiliation and fear, I began.  At the end of the half hour, the teacher asked who would like to read their works.  Hands shot up all over the room.  Not mine.  Nevertheless, he called on me, and I read in a trembling voice.  After class, the instructor told me that I was good.  I was shocked.  I didn’t understand why he said that.  Everyone else who had read his or her piece seemed so much more than I was.   

What made writing good?  I wanted to know, definitively.  Was I good or not?  I searched for more writing courses and discovered something called MFAs. (Masters of Fine Arts—Creative Writing)  USC had one.  So did Antioch Los Angeles.  I thought USC would be so cool and then discovered I would have to take a GPA exam, whatever that was, before they would admit me.  That seemed ridiculous, considering the fact that I already had a Masters from the London School of Economics.  What was their problem?  The truth was that I was afraid.  Besides having left America at age twelve and not knowing what a GPA was, I figured mathematics would be involved. 

My high school mathematics teacher’s name was Mr. Scott.  I was sixteen, soon to be seventeen, but still counted on my fingers that I hid under my desk, ashamed that Mr. Scott would be disappointed.  I loved the class because, there, I could study his beautiful square hands as he explained all the various incomprehensible formulas to us.  I would furrow my brow in great concentration and nod occasionally so that he would think I was smart.  When he turned his back to write on the chalkboard, his shoulders were so strong and broad.  I marveled at the strength of him.  When he turned around to ask us questions, he would push a strand of sand-colored hair out of his Bondi Beach blue eyes and I felt a sharp pain straight through my under-developed but tender breasts to the thin walls of my heart.  The more I studied him, the less I understood about algebra and calculus. 



My mother ended up hiring a tutor that we could barely afford.  I don’t remember his name but he was a thousand years old.  Eventually, I passed, but barely.

I enrolled at Antioch because they gave me credit for my degrees and never asked me to take a silly exam.  It was creative writing, for God’s Sakes, not rocket science.  What could that have to do with mathematics?  Seriously.  There, I was sandwiched between the extreme young and much older folks.  I was excited but intimidated—probably a good combination to throw myself into the writing life.  Even if I was a pretend writer, I had made this huge commitment of time and money, which had to count. 

I just wanted to know if I was good; if I would make it in the world of writers.  But all I learned that I was better than some and not as good as others.  Slowly, I began to understand the real question:  What was I going to do with that knowledge and where would it take me?  We were told over and over again that everyone could learn to be better.  But could anyone learn to be great?  I doubted it.  I focused on ‘better’ and tried not to feel too shabby, or even worse, untalented. 

I entered the program with the whisper of a short story and left with 100 pages of a novel.  In addition, we were required to write a dissertation.  Mine turned out to be about mothers in literature and mine in life.

“I am still grappling with my flawed mother.  In many ways, she is the terrifying figure of my childhood, which also means that I am stuck in that hypervigilant place:  I am watchful and then full of hope, joyous and then crushed and furious.  And then it starts over again.  Will I ever be able to release my own unrealistic expectations of her?  I can’t help longing for that flawless mother even though I know she doesn’t exist even in good literature, where the best characters—the ones that endure—are imperfect, complex and interesting.  Admittedly, I never wanted an interesting mother, just an emotionally healthy one.  Though I am prepared for a not-so-happy ending, I am also hopeful that the journey I have undertaken through this paper has brought me new insights about my mother and myself.  Perhaps forgiveness is simply ‘having given up all hope of having a better past.’ (Lamott 210) But then the future, ah the future, is wide open.” Grappling with the Flawed Mother: In Life and Literature.  Lisa Horowitz Brooks. 2001

 One might argue that was my most important learning at Antioch.  My mother died several years ago, and now, when she visits me in my dreams, she’s a softer, kinder mother.  And I’m a better daughter.  The past is suddenly better.

Flush with my degree and newfound friends, I felt very writerly.  I even went to a writer’s retreat at Squaw Valley, where writers sold their wares to agents and publishers with the ‘pitch’.  There were so many bad writers there, with a few good ones sprinkled in between.  The pretense of the organizers was to help all writers to be successful.  The reality was to help a few really talented ones or commercial ones (neither of whom really needed the help) and let the rest of the poor schlubbs underwrite the entire operation.  Give them enough hope so that the leaders could keep paying their bills, even though they knew the odds were against the majority.  The whole thing made me nauseous.  I felt embarrassed and lost there, wondering which category I really fell into.  Going home was a relief. 

I was working at a job that frankly bored me.  I had been there too long and knew where all the bodies were buried.  I looked forward to rushing home every night to write.  I would stress over every extra minute of my under 12-mile mile commute—ranging from 30 to 95 minutes depending on the dysfunctionality of LA traffic.

Once home, after my shower and while I cooked dinner, I worked on my fledgling novel.  It grew and grew although I wasn’t sure where the flowers started and the weeds ended.  So I joined a local writers’ group to help me prune.  The leader had great instincts and I agreed with much of her critiques of the other writers. 

I presented bits and pieces of my novel and got feedback.  Too much feedback.  Being a social worker by training, I like to make people whole.  Slowly, slowly, I began to write for the common denominator.  I got some accolades.  Applause.  But slowly, in a strangulated way, my novel took many detours and dead ends.  I tried to stay true to myself and sometimes rebelled against the group consensus and went the opposite way.  But wasn’t that still kowtowing to the group?  And was it really serving the story?  I could no longer tell.  

By the time I left, I wondered if the rewritten novel was really mine or the sum total of everyone in the group.  Or if that was a bad thing.  Wasn’t collaboration supposed to be good?  There were definitely benefits of being in a writers’ group: support to market your book, get an agent, not give up, work, work, work.  I, an overachiever, did it all.  Wrote the synopsis.  Polished the first few chapters to perfection.  Sent out the pitch letters to search for the agent.  Etc. Etc.  I received some polite interest and some polite rejections.  I recalled the many greats who had been rejected innumerable times and went on to achieve fortune and fame.  But still, I felt like an imposter. And disheartened.  I stopped reading other writers, afraid it would further dishearten me.

And then, a life change.  I got a new job.  Bigger than anything I had done before.  My heart was no longer in the ‘marketing myself’ business.  I quit the writing group and stopped writing.  Dead.  Full stop.  Nada. 

Yes, I had to write things for work.  And yes, it was a job that stretched me to capacity and used parts of myself I never knew I had.  And yes, I was relieved to put the marketing of that novel behind me.  Perhaps I did not have the temperament for rejection.  Perhaps I needed to focus on those activities that brought me accolades.  Like my job.  For which I was paid a very decent salary.  And felt happy every day.  And so I stopped writing.  Except for marketing materials for work, a newsletter for the service club I joined, and an occasional blog.  But I began to read voraciously on my Kindle.  I read dozens and dozens of writers.  When I found a great one, I read every book he or she had ever written.  I fell in love with many female writers amongst the men.  Ann Patchett.  Meg Wolitzer.  Alice Hoffman.  Amy Bloom.  Tara Ison and Alice Sebold (my Antioch mentors.) Donna Tartt.  Anais Nin.  Iris Murdock.  Janet Turner Hospital.  And many, many more.

Lately, I’ve begun writing non-fiction.  Takes a leap of faith to assume reality is interesting enough to not have to spin tales.  Although there is a certain amount of tale spinning even in memoir where one has to frame things, and the frame one choses is very personal, creative and subject to interpretation.  Just like our lives. 

Who knows what the future will hold?  I no longer stress about ‘being discovered’, or winning writing accolades.  Or being bad or good.  I am way too old.  Now writing feels personal.  A way to communicate with my loved ones.  A way to make sense of the world.  Because I know that all the tough stuff is yet to come.  Although I had a painful childhood and young adulthood, my thirties to now have been rather lovely.  That is certainly not everyone’s reality.  I read about all these dire scenarios of young people diagnosed with dreadful diseases, or people shot in the prime of their lives, or rape victims and on and on.  I have this theory, unproven, that the fact that I suffered so much in my younger years has earned me a reprieve during my middle/late years.  I keep waiting for the reprieve to end.  Because I understand that the longer one survives, the tougher the learning.  About sickness, and death.  About loss of too many things to document.  About becoming one of the invisible older women for whom men no longer rush to open doors, check you out in restaurants, and fall all over themselves to be your friend.  If they do rush over to you it is because they think you may fall on the uneven pavement, or keel over in the street.  Some respectful people (men and women) probably had stellar mothers whom they have elevated as saints and treat older women gently and kindly.  I could benefit from this in my final years.  I hope.  I pray. And then, I think, being smart and kind and very experienced might be valued.  Even if your hands are twisted with arthritis, and your neck hangs in pouches, not to mention your fallen breasts. 

But then I remember that I am not really so kind.  I am very private.  Very critical.  Very selective.  Kind of like my mother.  No one will really care if an old woman writes stuff.  Even if it's good.  Certainly not the agents or publishers, who will not have years of payouts to hope for.  So, now that I'm jaded, I am starting again to write about love, loneliness and fear.  Hey, cut me some slack.  I’m just an old broad.