Girls

I am a girl.  I am a daughter and a mother of girls.  I am also the grandmother of girls. I think I've been around girls enough to understand them.  On the other hand -

Watching  HBO's new series, "Girls," last night made me wonder if there's anything I can understand about the young ladies depicted in this highly acclaimed new series.  Are my advancing years also advancing me away from understanding what young women are facing in today's world? 

On a very basic level, I recognize these girls.  They are like my 24 year-old daughter's friends in many ways - the employment anxiety, the male-female anxiety, the social awkwardness.  But what I find difficult is the great soup of our society into which they must become an ingredient and, hopefully, a successful ingredient. 

Let's start with the social soup.  It looks like any convention about male-female relationships has deteriorated to the point that there is no convention.  You're either getting it or you're not, and the long term strategy or thinking around the coupling is not there or is distinctly troubled.  For example, Hannah's tryst just seems like sexual calisthenics she's enduring for what purpose?  pass the time?  They could just as easily be playing a board (bored) game.  Both these young people mistake what they're doing for a kind of intimacy, but the sad fact is that it is a cold and awkward exchange. 

One young woman is pregnant and there's no discussion about the father and he doesn't even figure into the dialogue.  She is so troubled and confused about this pregnancy that she misses her abortion appointment, leaving her three friends there to "celebrate" her abortion, waiting as she has another tryst only to discover that she has gotten her period and is therefore, not pregnant after all.

The only character I recognize is the young woman who is unhappily in a long term relationship with the wrong guy and beats him up about it regularly.  I saw this behavior in myself and see it in others who just don't have the maturity or experience to recognize the key flash points of good/bad relationships.

So, the show has me perplexed.  Is this the way it is now for young women?  Has it always been this way and the show's raw depiction has touched some reserve within me that doesn't want to see what a troubled environment my own daughter has to navigate?  I guess I can think of so many characters throughout history that probably have been endlessly dependent on parents, sexually active with all the attendant side effects (pregnancy, disease etc.), confused about life path, rudderless, seeking . . . seeking . . . seeking.  I know it's not just this generation of young people.

But, today's world where everything seems easier and harder is damned confusing to me, so how must it seem to young people at the beginning of their adult lives?  One of the characters on the show, a gynecologist examining Hannah for STDs, summed it up nicely for me after listening to Hannah's litany of fears about the possible results of her trysts - "You couldn't pay me enough to be 24 again."

Another Day Older

I've been sick as a dog for the past week, the week leading up to my birthday.  I don't believe my dog has ever been this sick.

So, I've had lot of time to contemplate everything from relationships to family to the past fifty years of film to the state of current television and finally, with some trepidation, to my future.  This upcoming year will be a big one for me.  I will be selling my house, living in a new place, living alone with Ernie.  Ernie's my almost 9 year-old beagle, who has known no other home and no other family in his life.  We are growing old together, I told him yesterday as he looked at me with his deep soulful brown eyes set in a face growing white with age.

So, a few reflections, if I may.  I am having a very quiet birthday this year by choice.  It may seem obvious that if one is ill, one doesn't party hardy.  However, I have been known to push my personal envelope at times when it's not always been the best thing for me, especially where my family is concerned.  I am a sucker for my daughters, my granddaughters and my dear parents.  That may be a pretty strong characterization, but I remind you that I am an only child so I have always assumed that I am responsible for family celebrations.  And I do love to see them happy.  But this birthday is not happening in any celebratory way this year because I just can't physically handle it.  And that's just the fact as plain as the nose on my face.  I have to go to work on Monday, so I lay in bed now to make that possible.  I will be taken for lunch by my younger daughter today and I will have dinner with friends tomorrow.  That's it. 

There are deeper issues that this brings up for me - my younger daughter's impending independence, my parents' path to greater dependence, and my continued life without my partner.  I don't think that life gets more complicated as we age.  We just have a different prism through which to view all the issues that we didn't have as young people. 

I will say that this week has renewed by total respect and gratitude for great talent and art.  It breaks my heart that I had to miss Audra MacDonald at NJPAC last night 'cause it was just too much of a stretch for me.  But, I did get to watch two Fred Zinneman films back to back, "The Day of the Jackal" (1971) and "A Man For All Seasons" (1966).  Both these films have themes which resonate today and are brilliantly shot, acted and directed.  I also watched "Game Change" and rewatched "Capote."  That story will haunt me forever - from the pure evil of the predatory killers to the pure evil of the writer obsessed with his own need to get every last final detail about the story to complete his opus.  I think it is interesting to note, in the current year of celebrating the publication of "To Kill A Mockingbird" that the close relationship between Harper Lee and Capote (young Truman Capote was young Harper Lee's neighbor and inspired the character of "Dill") was inevitably damaged by their collaboration on "In Cold Blood."

I also watched so much good television.  My favorites: "Nurse Jackie" - Acting doesn't get much better than what Edie Falco is doing in this well-written show;  "The Big C" - I have huge admiration for this show's creators.  It holds a mirror to all human frailty and stupidity, and, by the way, also to bloggers (!) in this week's episode when Oliver Platt's character, recently recovered from a "near death" experience, remakes his life through a blog that reveals all personal details of his life and more pointedly, his wife's (the luminous Laura Linney), never taking into account the impact these revelations in public will have on his son.  Finally, "Modern Family" is good for whatever ails ya, my daughter says and I can't say it better than that.

So, as I experience this year's birthday, I will have a lot of time to think about what I need, how I need to move ahead in my life and who will join me.  I know that Ernie will hang in as long as his canine life expectancy and all the love we can give him will allow.

I recently took a life expectancy survey on a life insurance site.  It predicted that I will live another 24 years or so, providing no one kills me or my life doesn't end in some unpredictable way  . . .  So, as I lie here recuperating, I'm thinking about everything I want to do, see and mostly - be - during that time.  That's a way to celebrate, I think.

A Dream with Brad Pitt

 I was alone in my kitchen.   I was a younger girl still living with my parents, but they weren’t home.  As I worked over the sink, everything seemed to shift and then fall apart.  Then, suddenly the dishwasher fell through the floor into the basement. 

Suddenly, I was outside, looking and feeling wretched, when Brad Pitt and a friend (who was also a cute/handsome blond fellow) ambled over and began to hang out with me.  I showed them the destruction and they didn’t offer to help, but rather wanted to have fun.

My parents came home.  My father had had some kind of surgery, but he was nonetheless full of energy.  I showed him the mess and he immediately began to “fix up” the basement.  Outside of this dream, my father is someone who can never live with the ways things are, always rearranging rooms and furniture to make them better.

Brad and the blond fellow found him amusing.  He made a large tableau out of the junk and placed it in the yard facing the neighbors house.  “Hey (some name I can’t remember), how do you like this?"  The neighbor and his family were in their yard celebrating their son’s bar mitzvah.  All were in clown like, bright costumes. 

I showed my father how their basement was arranged since the door was open and we could see inside.  In a secretive manner, my father said that it was arranged as a bedroom since someone was living down there, seeming to indicate that there was divorce or some family problem.

I cavorted with Pitt and his friend, but Brad and I were falling in love.  I remarked at how amazing it was to me that he should find me.  I said that I’d always loved him but I’d never, in my wildest dreams (how ironic) thought I’d meet him, much less be in love with him.  We caressed and kissed.  I also made a point of saying that I thought his friend was very attractive and that I’d be attracted to him if Brad were not around.

Brad told me that in order to meet him, one had only to give him a business card.  So, as joke, I gave him my business card.  We laughed. 

There was some disturbance with people yelling at us and telling us to be quiet.  He yelled back, “Hey, don’t you know who I am?  I’m Brad Pitt.”  Then, I yelled, “and don’t you know that I’m Paula Maliandi, Executive Director of Marketing?”  (That’s what I said, though that never was and is not my current title.)

We all seemed to be bored and looking for something to do.   Brad and his friend were used to a much higher level of amenities than I could provide – my TV was old fashioned etc.  Suddenly I realized that my father had reorganized all my CDs in what seemed to be the frame of the old dishwasher.  This was no surprise to me since my father has always been obsessed with adaptive reuse, even when the reuse is illogical.  So the CDS were stacked horizontally going deep into the back of the dishwasher where the titles could not be seen.  I remarked at how typical that was of my father.

After that, the dream fades.  I wake up.  Brad goes away.  I am no longer a young girl living with my parents.