Oct 12, 2012
Like 66% of the country, I am a fan of Michelle Obama. My enthusiasm is extreme, however, and there’s a reason for this. In October, 2008 I had my first knee replacement surgery. For weeks afterward, I lay on the couch, heavily drugged. Twice a day I did excruciating exercises, but other than that I spent the time reading, sleeping, crocheting, sleeping, and surfing the Web on Joe’s laptop.
Already a fan of Barack and Michelle, I began reading everything I could about the campaign. And then I found a website devoted entirely to Michelle’s wardrobe. click Only the Oxycodone can account for my fascination. I pored over the pictures, read the descriptions, clicked on links to the designers.
Image from Mrs. O blog
You’d have to see the way I dress to know how peculiar this all was. I have several pairs of baggy pants, a drawerful of beloved t-shirts and half a dozen printed rayon shirts from Goodwill in my closet. These, with strangely-painted shoes, make up the bulk of my wardrobe. click I also have four long cotton dresses from Deva, identical but for color, which I wear for dress-up, sometimes embellishing them with a scarf. click But Michelle inspired me. For a brief period I added a wide belt and a costume jewelry brooch, two of her signature accessories, to my dresses.
Shirts and shoes
I had my second knee replaced in March, 2009, and my fascination with Michelle was revived. One afternoon, drugged and with nothing better to do, I made an intricate collage on a blank greeting card. It was a woman attired like me and Michelle (dress, belt, brooch), leaning on a candy-striped cane like mine. I wrote an enthusiastic note, expressing my admiration, and saying among other things that the collage was inspired by her, and Malia and Sasha might enjoy guessing the images I had cut up to make it.
I’m quite certain the card was promptly sent to the Secret Service for their Dangerous Loonies” file. But at the time I was sure her staff would select it to show to Michelle, and she would reply with an invitation for me and Amanda to visit her – she and I could have tea while Amanda and Sasha played in the new White House playground. Strangely, it didn’t happen.
Michelle and the girls on the playground – I haven’t been invited yet. Image:commons.wikimedia.org
Several years have passed. Like many lefties, I have been dismayed by some of Obama’s actions (drone warfare is unforgiveable), but I remain a fan. And Michelle has never disappointed me. I no longer check on the fashion website every week to see what she’s wearing, but I read anything I run across.
A few weeks ago Michelle Obama came to Gainesville for a political rally at the O’Connell Center, a sports arena.
That night I picked Amanda up after cheerleading at Girls Place and she said, “Grandma, Michelle Obama came to Girls Place and I wasn’t there!” I hardly believed her, but I went on line, and sure enough, the Gainesville Sun had 37 photos of Michelle Obama at Girls Place, mostly dancing with the younger girls to that inimitable song, Toody Tot.
Image: Rod C. Witzel The Gainesville Sun click
I was devastated. Girls Place is the most wonderful place you can imagine, full of love and empowerment, focused on “at risk” girls, mostly lower-income minorities. click Amanda goes there every day after school – she’s been going since kindergarten. But she had come straight home from school that one day, because she had two scheduled activities, and wouldn’t have time to finish her homework at Girls Place.
I was surprised by how upset I was. I’m usually good at letting go of what can’t be helped. But it really bothered me that MICHELLE OBAMA CAME TO GIRLS PLACE AND AMANDA WASN’T THERE! Then my friend Patti suggested I write a note telling her what had happened and asking if she would send a picture to Amanda.
So I did. This one was less manic than the collage card. I enclosed two absolutely irresistible photos of Amanda in Maine. I hope this note will not join the other in the Secret Service file, but will yield a photo and a note to Amanda signed by my very favorite First Lady.
Sep 28, 2012
“So, do you have big plans for the weekend?”
A nineteen-year-old cashier at Publix asked me the question as she tallied up my vegetables. I had never seen her before. I was taken aback.
“Uh, I’m a pretty private person,” hoping she would get my meaning
IMAGE FROM ENVIROMOM.COM
The bag boy chimed in. I’d never seen him either.
“Oh, I can tell she’s the kind that goes with the flow, aren’t you ma’am?”
“Well, as I said, I’m a pretty private person.”
I walked out stunned, and all the way home I thought of what I coulda shoulda said.
‘I’m having a triple bypass.’
‘I’m planning to assassinate [any one of various political candidates].’ That one would lead to complications.
‘I’m going to eat potatoes, broccoli and carrots and curl up with People magazine.’ (Yes, I bought People. Gabby Douglas was on the cover. I’m embarrassed to admit they can also get me with Michelle Obama or the British Royal Family.)
GABRIELLE DOUGLAS ON UNEVEN BARS AT 2012 LONDON OLYMPICS
Apart from the intrusiveness of the question, it poses another problem. My memory isn’t so good, and besides, I’m apt to be wool-gathering as I wait for my groceries. When yanked back and forced to think about my weekend, it’s quite a struggle. ‘What am I doing this weekend? Let’s see. There’s riding lessons, and Girls Place volleyball try-outs. I thought we’d go to church. Wasn’t there something else? I thought there was something else. Hope I wrote it down.’
NOT AT GIRLS PLACE: DANIELLE SCOTT-BARR – 2012 LONDON OLYMPICS
When I answer the phone and it’s my step-daughter she says, “Hi Liz, what’s up.” And I’m stumped. I suppose there’s a stock reply to this, but I don’t know what it is, so I scramble to compose a status report. “Oh, I’m just sitting on the couch and staring.” “Nothing much, just about to do laundry.” The boring bleakness of my report brings me down.
I’m used to “How do you do?” “How are you?” I know that the response is “Fine, thank you,” though it feels odd and dishonest to say it when I’m in trouble. I think maybe young people felt that traditional greeting had lost all meaning, and they wanted to be friendlier, so they came up with this.
My sister Luli tells me that at her grocery store the clerks are required to ask, “How has your day been going so far?” They clearly do it grudgingly. She went to the manager and complained that it was NOT a good idea, and he told her glumly that the directive came from higher up.
I’m on Twitter because a literary agent recommended it, but I’m hopelessly out of date. I’m not interested in the private life of total strangers (except the royal family) and I don’t want total strangers inquiring into mine.
THE ROYAL FAMILY – AM I BEHIND THE TIMES?
Manners differ, not only across cultures, but across generations. And manners are artificial. Within broad bounds, polite is whatever contemporary culture says it is. If enough people no longer return phone calls, those of us who leave voice mails must just learn to text. If the new standard greeting is going to be ‘Do you have plans for the weekend?’ or ‘How’s your day going so far?’ I suppose I’ll have to learn the standard and meaningless response.
Still, I’m allowed to grumble to my sister and friends about the astonishing rudeness of the younger generation. And once you start doing that, you are well on your way to curmudgeonhood, a status I confess I find appealing.
I suspect the Inuit people don’t really put their aging parents on an ice floe to drift off and die. But if I am hopelessly and happily out of date, it may be time for me to go with the floe.
IMAGE FROM COLLECTIONSCANADA.GC.CA
Sep 13, 2012
The first time I married I was twenty-one. I married a French-Canadian man I had known eight days, and I became Mme. Lessard. The second time I married I was fifty-two. I married a man I had known four years, and I remained Elizabeth McCulloch.
The first marriage lasted fifteen months, until I moved from Montreal back to Ann Arbor with our 3-month-old son. I delayed getting a divorce to protect myself from another impulsive marriage. But when I finished college and applied for law school I wanted my own name. So I filed for divorce and a name change.
By that time I was a full-force feminist. I wasn’t going to give up my husband’s name and take back my father’s. Instead, I took a name from my late mother’s side. I remembered her telling me that her grandmother McCulloch was a suffragist. With all those syllables, Elizabeth McCulloch sounds strong and determined, a name not to be ignored. So I changed my name, and Elizabeth McCulloch I have been ever since.
In the courtroom it only takes a moment to change your name. In reality, it takes years. At first you don’t recognize it. A law professor calls the roll. There is a silence, and then you say, “Oh, that’s me.” You sign your name and absent-mindedly use the old one, the way you write the wrong year on a check in January.
It was a few years after the divorce that I learned I had chosen the wrong grandmother. Chambliss was the suffragist. McCulloch was the daughter of the Confederacy who hid in a cave and ate rats during the siege of Vicksburg. No slouch, certainly, but I would not knowingly have named myself for a Confederate hero.
CIVILIANS UNDER FIRE AT VICKSBURG. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
FRANCIS MILLET’S PAINTING OF FOURTH MINNESOTA INFANTRY REGIMENT ENTERING VICKSBURG. MINNESOTA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS
click
By the time I discovered my mistake, however, the name was mine. It had blended into the new woman I was becoming. I still struggled with self-doubt, and was still a chameleon in love, coloring myself to match each man. But at home I was the only decider, and at work I had to assert my client’s cause. I was learning enough about a particular piece of the world – poor people in the justice system – to hold my own with the opinionated and knowledgeable men of my family.
Name changes run in my family. My father rejected his father’s surname and took his mother’s, changing from Jacobs to Eder. My nephew did the same, going from Eder to Garcia. My sister Luli changed from Eder to Gray, my mother’s maiden name.
When we adopted our granddaughter Amanda she was eight. We didn’t think she should or would want to change her name, but on the other hand, we didn’t want her to feel we were unwilling to share names with her. With great delicacy, we told her that the adoption judge could change her name if she wanted him to. She didn’t hesitate. “I want him to name me Jasmine Victoria Barnhill.” We get the straight-face medal for not laughing. We explained that she can take that name when she is eighteen, but in the adoption she could only choose our names. She decided to keep her name.
I began writing fiction years ago, and thought I would use the pseudonym Elizabeth Gladly, a name inspired by Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Jolley. That way I could protect my privacy from the hordes of fans who would want to follow my every move, and I could write honestly without jeopardizing my professional standing. But when I retired, I didn’t have to think about professional standing anymore, and I’ve long since given up fantasies of hordes of fans.
My husband Joe married Elizabeth McCulloch. I don’t recall discussing it; I don’t think it ever occurred to him that I would change my name. We get junk mail addressed to Joseph McCulloch or Elizabeth Jackson. But people who know us know our names.
We tempt the fates if we say never, but I believe I’ll never change my name again. It is part of me the way food and drink, the air we breathe and the life we live become part of us. I am Elizabeth McCulloch.
Aug 31, 2012
It’s been just over a year since the first post on The Feminist Grandma. Please give me an anniversary gift: urge three friends to take a look.
In August we went to Maine to celebrate my brother’s 80th and my nephew’s 50th birthday. Twenty-five years ago my brother Richard, a writer, and his wife Esther, a painter, bought a house on an island fifteen miles off the coast of Maine. Over the years four of their children have bought houses on the same island. It is an island of about 1300 year-round residents, mostly lobstering families. In the summer the population swells with artists and a few tourists. Richard and Esther spend the whole summer there, and their children coordinate so they have at least a week when they are all there, and the young cousins can hang out together.
The trip from Florida is long and complex. We spent the night in Jacksonville to catch an early flight to Boston, then drove five hours to Rockland, Maine, where we took an hour-long ferry ride to the island.
We arrived on Monday afternoon on the 4:30 ferry. The weather was hot, with bright blue skies. We left on Sunday morning on the 10:30 ferry. The island was fog-bound. Above our heads, the foghorn blasted every two minutes. We weren’t five minutes out when the island had completely disappeared, as though our week there were a magical time removed from our lives.
LOBSTER BOATS DISAPPEARING IN THE FOG
With no cell phone service or email, no TV or electronic devices for the kids, it was magic. We swam in the quarries, cold clear water that tasted clean enough to drink. We explored rocky tide pools. We kayaked in coves with fog hiding the open ocean, staying close to the shore to ensure we would find the way back. An osprey flew toward us, calling to distract us from its mate in a high nest.
SUNSET SWIMMING IN THE QUARRY
There are seven cousins including Amanda, ranging in age from three to fourteen. (The eighth cousin is married with twin babies of her own; they’ll undoubtedly join the gang when they’re older.) The five older cousins run in a pack, moving from house to house, supervised by one couple or another. Amanda had three sleep-overs with the only other girl. On our final night Joe and I took them all out to dinner. The children sat by themselves at a table by the window. Amanda had her first whole lobster, which she demolished with glee; Joe and I sat with Don and Doris, my oldest brother and his wife, and our own lobsters.
We celebrated the birthdays with two family parties. Friday evening Ben and his husband Scott had a cocktail party at their rented A-frame on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The children disappeared up the cliff, and soon seven-year-old Gus returned crying. The big kids had run off and left him. There was a rumor that the test for inclusion was to define “puberty.” Amanda certainly knows what puberty is.
THE BIG KIDS RETURN FROM THE CLIFF
The next night there was a big party at the house that Michael and Fleeka and their two boys share with Luke and his daughter. Richard and Michael had crowns decked with ribbons and wildflowers. We sat in a row to watch the 2012 Family Olympic Games.
Amanda won the sack race. Then she and my niece Claire tied their ankles together and doggedly practiced running with three legs. But at Ready, Set, Go they hopped a few yards and fell laughing on top of each other. The suitcase relay was chaotic as teams kept mixing up their vests and hats. I took part in the rolling-down-the-hill race, and spun so fast I was sure I must be winning. But I arrived last at the finish line, and lay for a moment until the world stopped spinning.
NOT DEAD, MERELY RESTING
I was very proud of myself to have participated and survived, but the real star of the hill roll was three-year-old Gabe, who rolled in circles like a little grub, and kept on rolling long after his rivals had crossed the finish line.
After the games, the ribs were just beginning to cook, so we saved them for dessert after the cake, and made do with burgers and dogs, salads and chips. When the mosquitos arrived, we went inside.
The children and several adults crowded into the playroom to rehearse the play, adapted by Maria, the oldest daughter, from The Wind in the Willows. Most of us were ducks, with cardboard beaks and tails, waddling and waggling in a line through the living room, down the hall, back through the playroom to the living room again. Mole and Toad and Ratty had recitations, and as each said, “Heads down, tails up,” we ducks all complied. Gabe was the star again, with a particularly fetching tail waggle.
THIS IS HOW WE FELT IN MAINE. E.H. SHEPHERD’S ILLUSTRATION FOR THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
After the play it was time for cake and presents. A spice cake, a chocolate layer cake with whipped cream frosting, and then gifts and homemade cards. A huge bag of potato chips and a leather-bound Bible for Richard. Smelly cheese for Michael, and a print from one of the local artists, to be selected by him. Don and Doris brought books for all the children – a beautiful book about horses for Amanda.
The guitar came out, and we sang while Amanda played tom-tom. Then we danced to a mix tape put together by my nephew Jamie, and Amanda was able to strut her quite astounding stuff. No sleepover that night; we bundled her back to the motel to get some rest.
Last spring we took Amanda to her friend’s birthday party. When we arrived a couple of hours later to pick her up, the mother urged us to stay: “We haven’t done the pinata yet, or opened the presents.” The children played in an inflatable pool with a hose and water balloons, smashed the pinata, and squabbled over the candy. We sat under the portable canopy, shelter from the fierce sun, with the other grown-ups, eating hamburgers and watermelon, drinking tea and beer.
We were the only non-family and the only non-blacks, and everyone tried to make us welcome. I talked knee replacements with the grandmas and aunts, and Connecticut winters with a boy who was heading to college up north. The birthday cake was a work of art, made by a 16-year-old cousin who has mastered fondant – a beach scene with umbrellas and clown-fish and bright blue fondant ocean. When we left, I told the mother and grandmother that it was the nicest children’s birthday party I had ever been to: “You can’t rent family at the Party Store.” I went home grieving for Amanda, who yearns for black family gatherings.
PARTY FAVORS, GAMES, AND MORE…BUT YOU CAN’T RENT FAMILY AT THE PARTY STORE
Amanda is in an odd and challenging situation, a black girl who began her life in tough poverty, raised now by old white people who have more than enough. Who knows how long Joe and I will last? I want her to have plenty of family when we’re gone
Now she has three families. There is her mother’s family. She rarely sees her mother, but I keep her in touch with Grandma Cookie and her maternal aunt and cousins. There is Joe’s family – grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. She sees them often, and the love is mutual. And there is my family, who welcomed her into the pack of cousins as though she had always been there.
A wise woman I know says “All families are multi-cultural.” I want Amanda to see many places and many ways of living. Exposed to so many different worlds, maybe she will never feel she belongs anywhere. But if all goes well, she will understand that she belongs everywhere.
THANKS TO JOSEPH S. JACKSON FOR THE PHOTOS FROM MAINE (and for making all the travel arrangements!)
Jul 27, 2012
Discreet. I like that word. In my mind I still partly live in my mother’s world of short white gloves, hats and stockings, a world which was starting to crumble just as I was old enough to enter it.
I used to be very averse to exposing my private life to the world. That has changed since I began blogging, and I’m not sure why. For a long time I was embarrassed to let anyone know what I was really thinking. The Voice of The Fathers was VERY strong in me, condemning a lot of what I did and thought, and I’ve always half-agreed with them. Of course it wasn’t The Fathers, it was my father.
ME AND MY FATHER, 1987
Now I write posts about fuck-me shoes and crude adolescent behavior on trains. I’m no longer embarrassed by my body – I”ve posted pictures of myself exercising in my underpants, and in a wetsuit like a fat black sausage. Below you’ll see me happily lumpy in a bathing suit. At 65 I believe I’ve earned my lumps.
A friend tells me that to write memoir effectively you must be fearless. But I am not fearless. I may seem to be baring my soul, or at least my past and my thighs, but I don’t write about my deepest sorrows or biggest regrets. I don’t write about the thoughts and deeds I’m most ashamed of, not for lack of material, but precisely because I am ashamed.
I am more careful now about other people’s privacy than about my own. When I write about friends or family I usually clear the piece with them. None of them has ever objected to anything I say, probably because I am still bound by ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.’
I am particularly concerned about Amanda’s privacy. I keep her worries, fears, and misdemeanors to myself. I avoid writing much detail about her life, except the sunny innocuous parts.
I recently posted two pictures of Amanda as a toddler; you couldn’t connect them to the nine-year-old she is now. I am leery of putting up contemporary pictures. I also have an ill-informed fear of the internet, and what might happen to a photo of her there, as though a stranger would track her down and harm her. I know there are real dangers to children on the internet, but I suspect the ones I fear are not real. Still, the Grandma in me yearns to share with the world the adorableness of this child. So at the end of this post I’ve put up a few more baby pictures.
In fiction I have always felt obliged to make up characters. I feel I’m cheating if I merely disguise someone I know. After I finished my third novel I wondered whether I would be a better writer if I were willing to go deeper inside myself. I created a character based on me, though the scenes and details were imaginary. But I found I loathed her.
I would not venture to defend any of these opinions, nor apply them to the work of other writers. Indeed, I don’t believe they rise to the level of opinion; instead, they remain in the warm, murky waters of feeling. They are mine, and I share them with you without any attempt to persuade.
Jul 13, 2012
This is a tribute to my dear husband Joe, who is father and grandfather to Amanda. We married when I was 51 and he was 40; we never expected to raise a child together.
I’ve been a single mother and a married mother, and married is way better. Amanda has two parents to love and support her, with different views and personalities. We share the work. We figure out knotty problems together. Most of all, we rejoice together as we watch her grow.
A single mother’s mood controls the emotional weather at home. When she is angry or depressed, tired or stressed, the child has nowhere to turn.
With two parents, when one is angry, Amanda can go to the other for comfort. When one of us is in a conflict with Amanda that is heading downhill, the other steps in and takes over. Joe is brilliant at distracting her from her angry stubborn stance until she is ready to cool down and comply.
Joe and I balance each other. By nature I am a little too controlling and rigid, he is a little too loose and laissez faire. This certainly produces plenty of conversations, some of them loud. But with the benefit of both our perspectives, I let go of a thousand things that don’t really matter, and he supports me on those I feel strongly about. We confer on complicated issues of how to handle behavior. (We both believe rewards rather than punishment are the way to go with this child, but that’s WAY easier said than done!)
I do most of the practical work and logistics. I set up schedules and systems for behavior, chores, homework, bedtime routines. I arrange afterschool and summer programs. I’m usually the driver and cook, the nurse when she’s sick. I’m the protective one, the strict one. I do more parenting; Joe does more playing. He’s more fun than I am.
Since she was very young, Amanda has loved the beach. The first time we took her was a blustery, chilly day, but that didn’t stop them.
Since then he has taught her to make drip castles and ride the waves. Last weekend they rented a wave runner and went charging around in the ocean at Miami Beach. He let her hold the throttle.
When she was little they’d play toddler hide and seek. She’d hide in the sofa cushions, he’d call “Where’s Amanda?” And she’d pop out crying, “Here she is!”
They’d dance in the living room to Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and he’d spin her high in the air. She’s too big for that now, 55 inches and growing, but in May they went to the Girl Scouts’ Father-Daughter dance. She had a most spectacular magenta dress with spangles, jeweled sandals, and rhinestone earrings. Joe said, “You look beautiful. But I think there’s something missing.” He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a wrist corsage of pink roses.
Joe’s grandfather taught him to explore nature; his father taught him to sail. Now Amanda shares his love of rocks and fossils, and they sail Hobie Cats at Lake Wauberg. He loves Disney World and wild rides as much as she does; I stay home and enjoy the silence.
When she’s earned enough screen time they watch videos and share popcorn. They love monster, space alien, and adventure movies. They also love nature movies (especially when one piece of nature eats another piece of nature).
His favorite part of fathers’ day weekend was going to see Men in Black II, and wading in the creek with the dog and Amanda. She was particularly impressed when he ran into a banana spider’s web.
My own father was not a romper. I remember watermelon seed spitting contests. I remember my little hands inside his big ones as we washed up before lunch. He made up stories about a little girl, her doll, and two dragons. But mostly I remember him as distant, a little scary, someone to be avoided. If he announced it was time go for a walk or a drive, I knew I was in for a lecture.
Researchers believe that fathers play a key role in developing girls’ self-confidence and self-esteem. A strong relationship with their father can be a shield or antidote to all the possible toxicities of their young encounters with boys. (This is not to say that daughters raised by lesbians suffer; research also suggests that children of lesbian couples have stronger self-esteem and self-confidence than those of heterosexual couples.)
I began writing notes for this when I was at a five-day writers workshop in St. Simons Island, Georgia. When I asked Joe he never hesitated, “You should go.” He is the main cheerleader for my writing and genuinely happy when it goes well for me. So I had five days in a motel by myself, responsible for no one and nothing but me. I never had that with the other children until they were old enough for sleep-away camp.
I won’t claim that our life is nothing but hearts, flowers, hugs and smiles. The words killjoy and irresponsible have been heard once or twice. Sharing child-rearing and chores produces plenty of disagreements, and we have the occasional eye roll and mutter. But we always end by talking it over. We’ve both learned to listen. I know from experience that two heads and hearts are better than one.
