Families, Tribes, Whatever ... We All Need Them

Dedicated to Brian C. Kevic

When I was in my mid-twenties I read A Different Woman by Jane Howard. It really affected me. Now I barely remember it, but it was the first (the only?) time I wrote a fan letter to an author. Somewhere I still have the South Carolina picture postcard from Jane Howard wishing me well.

Wishing me well. Years later, I can look back and know that I did well, in part from something I learned from A Different Woman. Forty years later what I remember from Jane Howard is learning the Yiddish word “mishpocha.” According to one definition mishpocha is an “entire family network or relatives by blood or marriage (and sometimes close friends).” The term stuck with me then and stays with me today. But, when I read the book I was new to Washington, DC, and very much alone and on my own.

A West Coast transplant, I needed people who were more than friends or as good friend Louise Malone would say, I needed an “anchor.” Long before I got into aviation, I knew I couldn’t fly solo. I needed people, people who could substitute or who were nearly family.

On the surface, I was independent and self sufficient, but I needed that feeling of belonging. You know, the saying about family being people who have to take you in. I wanted to be taken in. I think Louise saw through my many excuses, reasons, artifices for why I needed taking in. But she took me without question.

I was fortunate. I found not one but two Maryland mishpochas. I had invites to family gatherings, holiday meals, birthdays, vacations and more. I contributed in my way. I took baby pictures, wedding photos, schlepped a projector and 16mm movies to the mountains, and became famous for my southern fried chicken (secret: buttermilk) and my pecan pie (secret: talk it up).

I had surrogate siblings, parent figures, cousins and more. With no nieces or nephews from my siblings, as my mishpocha sisters and brothers married and started families, I got to be an honorary aunt.

That is indeed an honor.

All the while, part of me knew I was always navigating a firm and fine line between being guest and family, but, boy, did my heart soar when weeks before her death one mishpocha matriarch introduced me as daughter.

Forty years in to learning the word, mishpochas are on my mind. Last week, I visited the 93-year-old matriarch and patriarch of one of my near clans. This week, an almost nephew from the other clan died suddenly. I was on the to-call list.

I grieve the loss of a gentle man who I well remember as the sweet boy in my early photographs of family gatherings in the cabin near the Appalachian Trail.  I still miss his father’s hearty laugh and fondness for my pecan pie.

Mishpochas have enriched my life. After marrying and having children of our own, mishpochas gave our daughters near cousins, almost aunts, Dutch and non-Dutch uncles, and a feeling of community and belonging that is so missing from our modern fractured and fragmented lives.

As Jane Howard put it, “Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family:  Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”

Yes, you do. Yes, I do. Thank you, Maryland mishpochas.

"Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May"

“Isn’t it amazing the memories that are triggered when you go back?”

That’s what one friend wrote on Facebook after I posted a photo of my childhood home in Lexington, Va. My family didn’t live at 23 University Place long (1960 – 1962), but it was long enough to pack in some pivotal pre-adolescent memories.

We lived at the end of a row of seven faculty houses. There were no streets to cross, no fences to fence off neighbors, and there were lots of kids. Best of all, my best friend lives just four houses away. The store with actual penny candy was even closer.

Our houses looked up a sloping hill – our communal playground – to Washington and Lee’s gorgeous Greek Rival campus.

My father never had such an easy – and pretty – commute.

The expansive “front yard” provided one big and safe playground for our games, real and imagined.

The best part of the house:  the front porch. Orson Welles gave Charles Foster Kane a sled. My “Rosebud” was the porch swing.

Years later, of our home in Arlington, Va., my husband would say that, “We bought a porch with a house attached.”

One of our early purchases in Arlington, in between diaper runs, was a porch swing. It’s where I swung infants. It’s where my husband had his “total honesty” porch chats with our girls. It’s where we entertained neighbors on Friday nights for end-of-week cocktails. And it's where I posed for my Google profile photo.

This week on a trip with our younger daughter to Washington, DC, to see friends and Major League Baseball (Go Nationals!) I saw my childhood home and our daughters' childhood home on successive days. The similarities are uncanny. The house my husband and I purchased one quarter of a century after my family left Lexington is a close relative to what is now Washington and Lee's Office of Financial Aid.

Was the 1987 purchase decision location, location, location as the real estate folks say? Or was it the porch and my desire to provide warm and nurturing experiences for our family?

My husband is right. It was the porch. The Arlington house with its porch and swing would be our home for 26 years. My hope is that it brought our daughters their own “Rosebud” memories.

Both houses are full of rosebuds for me. 

What's a Mother To Do?

I’m all for motorcycle safety regulations. After all, I worked for the National Transportation Safety Board before I retired last year. I know how many motorcyclists die and suffer serious injuries each year.

But, I am not in favor of restricting a woman’s reproductive rights and that’s what Republican lawmakers did in North Carolina last summer. They slipped abortion restrictions into a measure on motorcycle safety.

As reported last July in the News & Observer, “The abortion legislation, Senate Bill 353, requires clinics that perform the procedure to meet standards similar to surgical centers. It also says health care providers can opt out of performing an abortion if it’s against their beliefs. And it would stop government insurance plans from paying for the procedure.”

North Carolina now has the dubious distinction of being recognized one of 2013’s nine worst states for reproductive rights.

Sen. Kay Hagan. V is for vote.

That’s not all that’s going on in North Carolina that affects women and families. When we moved to the Tar Heel State from Northern Virginia last summer, the drive seemed awfully short to be taking us all the way to Texas politics and sensibilities. (As a native Texan with a daughter living there, I pay attention.)

Let’s look at recent “accomplishments” in the North Carolina statehouse:

• Dramatically reduced funding for public education. How do you build a stronger future when you don’t invest in your children? In a state that used to be known for its commitment to public education, in less than six years state funding per student has dropped $653.
• Eliminated critical safety net programs. While 17 percent of North Carolinians live in poverty, more than one-third of households led by women live in poverty. As for single mothers with children under age five, that percentage jumps to more than half. And, yes, our state was one of 15 that refused Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
• Abolished the earned income tax credit, which provides crucial support to working mothers and families, not to mention making radical changes to voting rights.

As a woman (who happens to be way past childbearing age) and a mother of daughters, whom do I want between my daughters and their doctors?

Not Mike Huckabee. Not Thom Tillis. Not anyone.

What is it about some Republicans and women? Don’t these politicians have mothers, daughters, and sisters … or wives?

Why is it that they not only want to turn back the clock on women’s progress, they seem to be out to smash it?

This so-called “War on Women” has been accelerating for several years. 2013 was bad. 2011 was worse. As for 2014, the ACLU reports, “Legislators in 38 states have introduced more than 300 provisions seeking to limit women’s access to care this year.”

  

Here’s an important and frightening take on this "war" and women's health from one of the smartest and most articulate people I wish I knew:  Robert Reich. 

As for why all these attacks on the “fairer” sex, I have looked and looked.  Perhaps I am keying in the wrong search words in my Google quest, but I still don’t get it. Why all the legislation targeted against women, especially when, historically, more women vote than men?

And, gentle readers, if you understand or have any idea, please let me know. Write me or add a comment.

Here’s how Robert Reich explains it in a recent column about how the Republican Party is alienating Hispanics, women, and young people:

  

"How can a political party be so dumb as to piss off Hispanics, women, and young people? Because the core of its base is middle-aged white men – and it doesn’t seem to know how to satisfy its base without at the same time turning off everyone who’s not white, male, and middle-aged."

What’s a mother to do?

Vote.

Get involved.

If you need more inspiration, here’s what the late U.S. Senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms, said, “I do not intend to be pushed around by discourteous, demanding women.”

Yet, we women have a long tradition of being demanding, courteous and even stylish. That's how we got the vote and so much more.

Time Traveling

I’m juggling time lately. A week ago Sunday I arose at 4:00 a.m. EDT to catch a flight that would get me to Palm Springs in time to spend the day celebrating my sister’s 60^th birthday. We celebrated into the wee hours, or at least my wee hours.

Then, I spent the next several days in California not knowing the time, but with the desert’s distinctive light and landscape – and the company of my mother and siblings – I definitely knew where I was.

On returning to North Carolina, I came back into the less familiar. After crossing the continent, the approach to the Charlotte airport was not 40+ years familiar. Neither the Shenandoah Valley nor the Potomac River beckoned me. Pretty mountains and lakes, but what were they? Where were we?

I was flying into unfamiliar territory. Yet, I found my suitcase and car easily enough and drove home, or at least to where my anxious husband and dog waited.

We’ve been in our new home eight months; that’s almost enough time to bring a child to term. Why haven’t I come to terms with the move and why so much unease after a brief visit with my family?

For 40 years, every time I flew east from California I was returning to an immediate and well-worn pattern of work and friends. Eight months in, I am still working to fashion new roots, patterns, and friendships to help me find my Tar Heel moorings.

Last week, I slipped out of them, young and tenuous as they are, to travel in time and distance to see lifelong connections. The unfamiliar return to Charlotte and my feeling “at sixes and sevens” reminds me that it isn’t always easy to get rooted. Maybe I should take a cue from the garden – and realize that growing strong in new soil takes time and attention.

Yes, it does. I could also follow the advice of my new state’s motto, which is Esse quam videri – “To be, rather than to seem.”

That’s what I did after I got back. I watched baseball with my husband, canvassed for Sen. Kay Hagan, had the neighbors over to dinner, lunched with a new friend, and this morning spoke to a speechwriting class at Appalachian State University. That’s a lot of activity to help make my Tar Heel soil more fertile.

The state motto is from Cicero’s treatise “On Friendship.”  I need to be me.  In time, friends and feeling at home will come.