Rarely am I saddened when a celebrity, especially one I don’t know (said as if I know so many) dies, but I’m really sad about Paul Newman. He died yesterday at the age of 83, having lost his personal battle with cancer.
Although he’s nearly as old as my own grandparents, there was such a young spirit about him. Besides being a phenomenal actor, he was also an activist and had a warm heart. How could anyone resist old blue eyes?
Goodbye Paul Newman. I know the whole world will miss you.
On a weird note, I’m not sure how I missed the fact that the former president of my sorority house (my pledge and initiation year) is the senior advisor for McCain. She’s all over the airways right now. Perhaps it’s because I don’t watch television very often and have to wait for it all on YouTube.
That makes a few Pi Beta Phis in the news this year (my personal fave is the brilliant and beautiful Eyee Hsu, who did some fabulous Olympic corresponding from Bejing), but I have to say, when you’re a flaming liberal like me, the news of Nicolle Devinish (now Wallace) is just plain fun.
Nicolle Wallace was always a staunch republican, even in such a liberal place as U.C. Berkeley, where we all went to college. That’s one of the only things I remember about her (besides the fact that she frequently spent the night at the Zate house). As our president, she had political fortitude even then and a way of staying pleasantly neutral and cute.
Did I like her then? I think I did. Although she had a reputation for being phony, she was always sweet on the surface.
I cannot judge Nicolle Wallace as a person today. I haven’t seen her in over a decade. But as a political figure, I can only say I’m thoroughly unimpressed with her positions, although she definitely remains poised, yet strong, under pressure and delivers her lines eloquently. She usually makes McCain and Palin look as good as they could ever look, which isn’t great considering their myriad deficiencies, but not for a lack of effort on Nicolle’s part.
Oh, and she isn’t so nice to the media, of which I am a member.
However, like our President Bush, Mrs. Wallace can party. Was it I who held her hair back while she bowed to the porcelain gods after that college party?
I’ll never tell.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
Happy, Happy Birthday...Baby
On the East Coast, my daughter is now 6 and I have just over an hour until she turns 6 here on the Pacific Coast.
It is so cliché, but my how time flies.
This song from Mamma Mia makes me so mindful of it all, but it also makes me CRY CRY CRY...
And this one my dear friend played for me a few years ago, after her mother played it for her, and I still can't get through it without sobbing. Although I'm not a huge country fan, Martina McBride sings it so beautifully.
My firstborn and I had a little ritual tonight to say goodbye to 5. We had our last snuggle while she was 5, our last goodnight kiss and then a last 5 photo. Then we talked about how 5 will always be a part of her and that it isn’t really goodbye 5…just hello 6.
Less than a decade ago, I was such a different person. The rapid aging of my firstborn continually reminds me of how little time I have to get it right.
Not sure what “it” is, but I do have a constant yearning to get “it” right.
I remain in awe of the way the birth of this child transformed me. I was a feminist. Now I’m a new kind of feminist. I never believed I could stay home with children (How boring! How mindless!), and I never considered homeschooling (What wackos!), but now I spend the majority of my time finding ways to do both.
When I left medicine (and when medicine, in turn, left me), I felt like I’d go back. Medicine seemed the perfect combination of care giving and intellectualizing. But it is not that at all. While it is another topic, I know that what I do now is so much more important than what I thought I’d do then.
By virtue of my checkered past, many of my friends are physicians. Lately, by virtue of our age, many of those same friends are having children. They bear them while full of guilt for leaving their colleagues when they take blunted maternity leaves. They enjoy their babies a precious 6 weeks or 12 weeks or even 4 weeks before handing them off to spend much of their waking hours cared for by someone else (in the best cases, a relative) and it’s really hard. It’s heartbreaking.
As my daughter turns 6, I’m even more grateful that I have been so blessed to be able to provide for our family in such creative ways.
A few friends have given me such deep perspectives on life and the value of these children I’ve chosen to have, as have the children, of course. Really, there is nothing more important than raising them, nothing more precious than these moments that I am fortunate enough to share with them.
My daughter has taught me so much in her 6 short years. She truly has transformed me. As she grows, I miss every person I lose along the way. I will never hold that newborn again. I will never again watch her learn to walk. I will never again have to help her remember her ABCs. That baby is gone and if I think about it too much, it makes me profoundly sad.
Yet, I’m so excited to see who she is becoming. It’s hard to stay sad when there is so much to look forward to.
And each moment gone reminds me of how important it is to cherish every second...every silly tantrum, every funky desire, the 100,000th step...everything. These will be the stories we will share. This is the creation of our family history and our individual life histories. These moments -- each one of them -- create the person she will be regardless of which hat she eventually chooses to wear.
I asked her how the last 5 years have been and she said, “Really happy!”
I hope she always feels that way about her life.
I’m grateful for each moment of every day with her.
Happy birthday, Baby.
It is so cliché, but my how time flies.
This song from Mamma Mia makes me so mindful of it all, but it also makes me CRY CRY CRY...
And this one my dear friend played for me a few years ago, after her mother played it for her, and I still can't get through it without sobbing. Although I'm not a huge country fan, Martina McBride sings it so beautifully.
My firstborn and I had a little ritual tonight to say goodbye to 5. We had our last snuggle while she was 5, our last goodnight kiss and then a last 5 photo. Then we talked about how 5 will always be a part of her and that it isn’t really goodbye 5…just hello 6.
Less than a decade ago, I was such a different person. The rapid aging of my firstborn continually reminds me of how little time I have to get it right.
Not sure what “it” is, but I do have a constant yearning to get “it” right.
I remain in awe of the way the birth of this child transformed me. I was a feminist. Now I’m a new kind of feminist. I never believed I could stay home with children (How boring! How mindless!), and I never considered homeschooling (What wackos!), but now I spend the majority of my time finding ways to do both.
When I left medicine (and when medicine, in turn, left me), I felt like I’d go back. Medicine seemed the perfect combination of care giving and intellectualizing. But it is not that at all. While it is another topic, I know that what I do now is so much more important than what I thought I’d do then.
By virtue of my checkered past, many of my friends are physicians. Lately, by virtue of our age, many of those same friends are having children. They bear them while full of guilt for leaving their colleagues when they take blunted maternity leaves. They enjoy their babies a precious 6 weeks or 12 weeks or even 4 weeks before handing them off to spend much of their waking hours cared for by someone else (in the best cases, a relative) and it’s really hard. It’s heartbreaking.
As my daughter turns 6, I’m even more grateful that I have been so blessed to be able to provide for our family in such creative ways.
A few friends have given me such deep perspectives on life and the value of these children I’ve chosen to have, as have the children, of course. Really, there is nothing more important than raising them, nothing more precious than these moments that I am fortunate enough to share with them.
My daughter has taught me so much in her 6 short years. She truly has transformed me. As she grows, I miss every person I lose along the way. I will never hold that newborn again. I will never again watch her learn to walk. I will never again have to help her remember her ABCs. That baby is gone and if I think about it too much, it makes me profoundly sad.
Yet, I’m so excited to see who she is becoming. It’s hard to stay sad when there is so much to look forward to.
And each moment gone reminds me of how important it is to cherish every second...every silly tantrum, every funky desire, the 100,000th step...everything. These will be the stories we will share. This is the creation of our family history and our individual life histories. These moments -- each one of them -- create the person she will be regardless of which hat she eventually chooses to wear.
I asked her how the last 5 years have been and she said, “Really happy!”
I hope she always feels that way about her life.
I’m grateful for each moment of every day with her.
Happy birthday, Baby.
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