Archive for the ‘Relationships’ Category

5/5/14, Mother’s Day

Posted on May 5, 2014

Hi Everyone,

This Sunday will be Mother’s Day, which merits some mention, as it is a very special day. Like so many holidays, there can be a bittersweet quality to it. We’ve all had a mother, though some of us may no longer have a mother present with us. And particularly for someone young who has lost their mother, it can be an anguishing reminder of a loved one no longer here. And there are some women who want to be mothers, or wanted to be, and were unable to achieve it for whatever reason, and accepting that fate is a huge challenge for some women, and finding other ways to include children in their lives. And some may still be trying, and are agonizing, wondering if it will ever happen for them. And to complicate matters further, stories are legion about how difficult mother/child relations can be, particularly mother/daughter relations, which unfortunately can be a mine field. So although it seems like a benign, wonderful day, it can be a complicated holiday too. One can end up focusing on the mother one wishes one had, but never did.

I have been very blessed to have many children, 7 children I gave birth to, and 2 stepsons I love like my own sons, so Mother’s Day has always been a BIG deal for us. But even in the happiest, biggest families, there are aspects of Mother’s Day that can be challenging or painful. I lost one son when he was 19, and he is greatly missed on every day, every holiday, and Mother’s Day too. I have wonderful goofy photographs of his last Mother’s Day with us, when he was being silly (as he often was) and made us all laugh. I took a photograph of all the children, and he put on dark glasses and made funny faces. We had a wonderful day, and four months later he was gone, and is sorely missed on Mother’s Day every year. Our Mother’s Days were always wonderful when the kids were little and everyone was at home. I was decked out with macaroni necklaces until I could barely see over them, and Kleenex boxes they decorated for me, and pencil holders made out of soup cans that I still have on my desk today, and cherish. My office is full of the treasures my children made me, handprints and decorated plates, drawings, and jewelry boxes covered in glitter. My computer table is one my youngest son made me out of wood he painted when he was 8.  They were such wonderful times, and everyone made a big effort to come home once they were in college. And eventually, life caught up to us all. Several of my children moved to other cities for their work. I stop in New York to celebrate an early Mother’s Day with two of my daughters every year, and another of my daughters who lives away flies to San Francisco for the weekend without fail. And my two youngest children always spend the day with me. Of the oldest ones, one comes home on some years, the others don’t. I’m grateful that they still come home for Christmas and Thanksgiving, so I can’t insist or complain about Mother’s Day. But it’s different when kids grow up. Lots of things are different then, and you have to adapt to grown up Mother’s Days, even though at first it was hard. I was so spoiled by having all my children with me for so many years, that the transition to their lives as adults is challenging at times. » read more »

4/28/14, Betrayals

Posted on April 28, 2014

Hi Everyone,

I hope life is treating you well!!

I spoke to a friend recently, and I was so distressed by what she told me. She is a lovely, decent, honorable, hard working young woman (and I’ve known her for many years, in business and personally), who was trying to start a business with a friend. She sunk a lot of money into it for her, and she works hard for it and supports a family. And she discovered that the friend, her best friend apparently, took her money, and started the business in secret behind her back, betrayed her, and cut her out. She is now out the money, and just as bad, and sometimes worse, she was double crossed and betrayed by her best friend. When I saw her she was hurt, sad, angry, stunned, shocked.

I’ve been there, and maybe you have too. There is no worse feeling than being betrayed by someone you trust, whether a spouse, a parent, a child, a co-worker, a boss, a friend. And it happens every day. No one wants to live their life in paranoia, believing that evil is lurking around every bend. And for most of us we trust our friends and family, the people we do business with, or employ, or who employ us. Which makes it all the worse when we discover that they weren’t honorable, were frankly dishonest and ripped us off. There are many, many books written these days about sociopaths, who are often hard to detect and play a good game. They prey on honorable, honest, decent people, because if you are, you just don’t expect someone to be dishonest with you and rip you off. And even if they do, if you’re an honorable person, you respond to the betrayal with reason and moderation—-not with the vehemence another sociopath would. I think bad people pick their victims carefully. But it’s so unfortunate it has to happen at all. And it makes you feel heartsick when it happens, for the loss of the friend, as well as whatever they took from you dishonestly, whether it’s a business, money, an opportunity, or even a man. How many times do you hear of a best friend cheating with someone’s husband? It happens too often and is such a rotten thing (for both of them) to do. » read more »

4/21/14, Courage

Posted on April 21, 2014

Hi Everyone,

I hope you’ve had a good week, that you had a warm family Passover or Easter, or are just having a nice Spring if neither of those religious holidays are part of your life. Religiously, and just philosophically, I have always loved what Easter represents, not the crucifixion, but the resurrection. A renewal, a rebirth, a healing from the challenges we live through, rising from the ashes. It’s about hope that we will survive our difficulties and things will get better again. Whatever one’s religion, or none, it’s a comforting thought.

I just had a wonderful weekend before that, in LA with one of my daughters, to celebrate her birthday. We had a great time, and I always have fun with her in LA. I loved it!!! And as I left LA, she gave me some magazines to flip through on my trip home. And I had a great time browsing through Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Time Magazine, W, Town and Country. I love looking at the fashions, and reading articles that interest me. I wasn’t expecting to find one in Vogue that struck a real chord with me, I was having too much fun looking at the clothes. And then I found one about a fascinating woman. It was an article about an apparently famous political journalist in the l950’s, named Dorothy Thompson. I probably should know about her, or have heard about her, but I don’t know of her. She was greatly respected and apparently in 1939 was named by Time Magazine one of the two most influential women in America, along with Eleanor Roosevelt. She ran a foreign news bureau in Berlin, and apparently stood up to Adolf Hitler, and wrote a book about him, which got her expelled from Germany. From everything the article in Vogue’s Nostalgia section said, she sounded like an amazing, admirable woman. A trail blazer in a major way, at a time when few women worked, most were in the home, and she was apparently a devoted mother and grandmother as well. They mentioned her in Vogue because apparently in the 50’s, she complained that she had nothing decent to wear, and was a size 20. (They commented that in those days a size 12 was considered slim). And apparently Vogue did a whole article at the time, based on putting a wardrobe together for her with half a dozen looks, in her size. But the woman who wrote the article I read went on to say how she had always admired her, and what a gutsy woman Thompson was. It made me think of actresses we admire from those days, who were gutsy too, or appeared to be, Barbara Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell, Katherine Hepburn, women who spoke their minds and had big personalities. Clearly, Dorothy Thompson was not just acting a part, but was the real deal, and just reading about her, I admired her too. The writer said that reading about her had given her courage in her own life, which made me think too. » read more »

2/17/14, Personally

Posted on February 17, 2014

Hi Everyone,

I hope your week is off to a good start. And your year, since the year is still young and just beginning. Mine has been a slice of life so far, some good stuff, and not so good stuff. Last year ended on a mixed note too, an anonymous death threat, which was unpleasant, and the best New Year’s Eve I’ve ever had, spent with my kids, which was truly wonderful. And on New Year’s Day, I got the news that I am going to be given the Legion of Honor award in France (it’s being ‘knighted’ with a beautiful medal), which is a Big Deal, and a great honor. There have been a few minor bumps since the new year started, some hurt feelings occasionally, and the local SF press ran a series of nasty articles about me, complaining that I have a high hedge around my house there, and making nasty personal comments about me. I guess they think that sells papers, but it wasn’t true or nice, and being human it hurt my feelings. Over the years, I have noticed that sometimes when good things happen to us (a new man, a marriage or new romance, a new baby, or wonderful new job), it doesn’t always inspire delight in others, but often inspires jealousy. Jealousy is something to be careful of in life. It’s disappointing and upsetting when it’s focused on you, and a good thing to try to avoid!!!

Thinking about all that today, I was reminded of one of my own failings, or character flaws. I take things personally. It’s so easy for people to say, “It’s not personal, but…..” which then becomes a license to say something really awful to you that decks you and hits you right in the gut. Or “it’s not personal, it’s business” when you get fired or don’t get the raise or opportunity you know you deserve. Or sometimes even a friend can do something thoughtless, and even if not meant that way, it seems so personal. And I have a tendency to take things personally. As a mother, an employer, and even as a woman, it’s easy to get blamed for things unfairly. And all my life, when people have done or said something unkind to me, I take it personally—–without thinking that maybe it has nothing to do with me, that that person may just be limited and not have much to give, or that something else is going on in their life. Without looking any further, I get my feelings hurt. It’s something I still work on, to broaden my vision and realize that maybe it isn’t personal at all. But it sure feels like it at times. And hate mail, death threats, and some of the less pleasant things that come with fame aren’t personal either. They are just the expressions of some crazy who doesn’t even know you. But at times, it all FEELS personal. Especially when attacks or disappointments come from people you know, or love. But even then, it may not be personal at all. » read more »

2/10/14, Mixed Blessing

Posted on February 10, 2014

Hi everyone, well here it is again. Valentine’s Day. The very words bring back an avalanche of memories, not all of them pleasant. Although there were a few great ones. The father of 8 of my children proposed to me the day before Valentine’s Day, that was a GREAT Valentine’s Day. The best ever. And there were romances that provided some lovely Valentine’s Days, and my marriages, and then there has been a gray area about it since. More than any other day of the year, Valentine’s Day is a day that says you MUST be in a couple, or have someone madly in love with you, drooling at your feet, or sweeping you off your feet. It would be lovely to get all dressed up and go to a romantic dinner, to have someone wine and dine you, and enjoy that incredible feeling of being madly in love.Or better yet, getting proposed to on Valentine’s Day. What could be better than that? True love.

But real life being what it is, that isn’t always the case. Sometimes a romance or marriage may have gone flat or ended, and sometimes for whatever reason, at some point, we all wind up spending Valentine’s Day alone. You can be a totally nice person, and even a very attractive one, and the right man or woman of the hour doesn’t materialize. And therein lies the challenge of this one very special day of the year. What do you do when you have no one to spend it with, when you’re all by yourself, have no one to spend the evening with, and no one has sent you candy or flowers, or a valentine? » read more »

12/23/13. Busy Days

Posted on December 23, 2013

Hi Everyone,

Whew….this is the week when every year I speed through 3 cities and 2 countries in the space of a few days, in order to get home for Christmas with my children. In theory, Christmas is a happy time of year, although sometimes we get so buried in the details of it, that we forget the bigger picture, the meaning of the holidays (if you believe in those meanings), and forget to be grateful for what we do have, rather than regretful or even resentful of what we don’t. I am always grateful to get home. The weather can be dicey in both Paris and New York in December, and I always worry about getting snowed in, in either city, and missing the holiday with my family entirely. And being too busy too much of the time, and usually working til the last minute, I worry that I might get sick, catch a flu and be unable to fly. And although I flirted with some kind of bug before I came home, nothing much came of it, so I was able to fly. I stop in New York on the way home for Christmas, to celebrate the birthday of one of my daughters who was born a week before Christmas. So I was happy to spend a day with her in New York on the way home, which is always a treat for me. And it was freezing in New York.

So laden like a beast of burden, with a suitcase full of gifts (which broke and exploded at the airport, but fortunately nothing got lost, but I had to replace the suitcase in New York), and my two dogs in their traveling bags, I boarded the plane in Paris, and whipped through New York, and got home in time for Christmas, and everything I need to do before. I pride myself on being a very organized person, and my whole family makes fun of me because I start Christmas shopping in August, but I have a lot of kids and people to buy presents for, so I like to get an early start, and hate the last minute rush. But no matter how organized I am, there are always people I have forgotten, things that don’t arrive, last minute requests from my kids, so I end up rushing as much as anyone else. » read more »

12/9/13, Ladies’ Lunch

Posted on December 9, 2013

Hi Everyone,

I hope December is off to a good start for you, with the drumbeat of the holidays approaching, the things we love about them, and the things that concern us. I’m still frantically looking for last minute gifts for my kids. It was a lot easier when new bicycles and special dolls were the order of the day!!! I was remembering the other day that we used to hide all their gifts in the basement (gifts for 9 kids!!), and would haul them all up four flights of stairs to the top floor of our house, after the kids went to sleep on Christmas eve. My husband and I would spend hours, dragging everything upstairs, and then assembling toys, playhouses, bikes. It was a lonnnggggggggg night with very little sleep, and it seemed like only minutes after we finally got to bed, when they’d all be awake , squealing with amazement and delight. It was a lot of work, but SOOOO much fun!!! It’s hard to reproduce that kind of excitement and innocence once they’re adults. We play a game after dinner now on Christmas eve, where everyone brings some small silly gifts to the table (as ridiculous as possible), and people get to choose them (I think you have to guess who brought the gift and if you guess right you get to keep it and get another turn, but future guessers get to steal the gift away from you if they want it and win their turn). It involves choosing, and then stealing a gift from the others. And it gets funnier and funnier as people steal totally absurd gifts from each other. The prize objects last year were a Chewbacca backpack that my youngest son refused to give up, and a monster hat my youngest daughter loved and kept stealing back until she got to keep it. We all laughed a lot and loved it. You find yourself doing battle over some crazy object you would never have wanted otherwise. I provided a book on swear words in several languages, which was highly prized!!! The lucky winner was then able to insult all of us in Russian and Japanese. It’s a funny game one of my daughters introduced to us a few years ago, and it’s a big hit. Although everyone is grown up now, we still leave out cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the reindeer (all of which disappears by morning), and I still write everyone a letter from Santa, which they find with their stocking in the morning. And last year Santa left me a letter too!! It’s sweet hanging onto our old traditions, no matter how grown up they are!!! It reminds us all of the simpler days when they were younger. » read more »

Homage to Marilyn Monroe, Life as an Object

Posted on November 18, 2013

Hi Everyone,

Sober thoughts today. Marilyn Monroe once said that once you are famous, you experience “Life as an Object”. What she was saying is that when you become famous, and are a public person, you cease to become a person in other people’s minds, and anything goes, you can be treated as an object or a thing, and they forget that you are actually a real live human being at the other end. It’s an interesting comment, and I have found it to be true, over the many years that I have been well known.

The internet has de-personalized the connection between people. People exist in greater isolation, many work at home on their computers and no longer work at an office, where they see people every day and have to relate to them in a humane way. People do things like Facebook and chat rooms, where they collect thousands of ‘friends’, people they don’t know and will never meet, but they are connected through their computer in a ‘virtual’ way. People date on line or by text, they connect and disconnect, start ‘relationships’ and end them, all virtual and not real. Young women have talked to me about being proposed to by text or on line, and dumped just as quickly by text, with no human contact, no phone call, no sound of the other person’s voice. And at the most extreme end, kids and even some adults play video games which ‘kill’ the players virtually, and then shocking public crimes replicate those games and many real people die. I’m not of the old school that television corrupts our kids, or is the source of violence in America, but I do think that the lack of real human connection on these new ‘cyber’ opportunities has had a MAJOR impact on how people relate to each other, connect or don’t, how they behave, what they do, what they say, and they lose sight of the fact that there is a real live human being at the other end. It is something to think about. Sometimes it is better to simply pick up the phone and have a conversation, have an immediate exchange, rather than nuking someone and shooting off a sometimes vicious email in the heat of the moment, when all you have to do is write it and hit the Send button. No one hears the other person’s voice anymore, everything is conducted by email and text. » read more »

Happy Days

Posted on July 8, 2013

Hi Everyone,

What a treat I had this week, a throwback to another time in my life and total joy.

Although my kids had been to Euro Disney several times when they were younger, during our summers in France, I was always busy when we were in Paris, and used the treat of a trip to Euro Disney as a plan to keep them occupied for a fun day when I had grown up things to do. And when they were kids, we went to Disneyland in California every year and of course I went with them and we all loved it. But I had never been to Euro Disney here, and have not been to any of the Disney parks in about 15 years since my kids grew up. And I was thrilled when recently my Goddaughter’s father invited me to join her and her brother and sister for a day at Euro Disney, which they had never been to before either. It sounded like a huge amount of fun to me, with children who were going to discover it for the first time at ages 3, 6 and 9, the perfect age for all that joyful magic, Minnie, Mickey, Goofy, The Little Mermaid, Peter Pan, Aladdin, you can’t beat that. So with delight, I accepted the invitation, put it on my calendar in big letters, and waited for the day to come. And it came this week.

We set off at 9:30am, happily in a van big enough for the kids and adults, were at Euro Disney, less than an hour outside Paris, shortly after 10, and the fun began. I will admit that, much to my delight, 2 VIP guides had been arranged, and they made everything that happened that day easier for all of us. It may be an elitist way to enjoy Disneyland, but let’s face it with 3 little kids, summer crowds, and long lines at every ride, some help was greatly appreciated to shorten the lines, get in through back entrances at times, and take us on some short cuts across the park, two parks in fact, since Disney now has a second park there dedicated to movies and the old movie studios (with some scary rides thrown in that one of the kids and several of the adults loved—-I not being one of them. I am happiest on rides best suited for 6 year olds, and you’ll never find me on a roller coaster or some scary ride that plummets you from a great height toward the ground. I even skipped the Dumbo ride in Fantasyland because I don’t like heights. The three and six year olds and I loved all the same rides!! And the nine year old outclassed me by a mile.) » read more »

Dating Game

Posted on May 20, 2013

Hi Everyone,

As I told you a few days ago, I’ve been working hard, doing some editing, and catching up on some work (a LOT of work, it goes in phases, and sometimes I am swamped!!), and I took a break this week to have dinner with some young women I know, in their 30’s. I always find it interesting (and enjoyable too), to catch up on a particular group of people, or women, and to hear what their most prevalent concerns are, it kind of keeps me abreast of what’s happening in the world (my work/writing is very isolating, since I do it alone for weeks or months on end, alone in a quiet room). The young women I had dinner with were in their 30’s, from 30 to 39, and I have another good friend of my daughters’, also in her 30’s, whom I see frequently.   » read more »

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