fierce attachments

a mother-daughter blog about the fierce attachments in our lives… title inspired by Vivian Gornick's wonderful memoir
December 6, 2011

conversations with drivers

by caitlin meredith

elpasoborder

I could write a whole book about my conversations with drivers. Most of them have been in long, pot-holed sections of bandit roads in Sub-Saharan Africa sitting shotgun as my local driver expertly navigated a Land Cruiser between the ditches on either side of the road. A lot of funny, tragic, harrowing, familiar and confusing stories are exchanged on those drives. Like the Kenyan-Somali driver Tigania who complained about dividing the cabbages evenly between his three wives on market days. Was he supposed to give each wife the same number, or dole out according to how many children each had? As you can imagine, each wife had an opinion that correlated with her child count. Being completely out of my realm of practical experience, that one really stumped me. Like anyone who has ever taken a taxi in Manhattan can attest, conversations with professional drivers often give you more of a sense of place than any of the monuments or attractions you visit. The same thing happened to me last week in El Paso.

I went to El Paso to research a student media project at the University of Texas that covers the U.S.-Mexico border called Borderzine. I knew I’d be talking to a lot of journalism professors and students about the border, but I was curious about how “normal” people thought about it. It seemed like a big deal to me, living on the border. All of the news reports we get in Austin are about how dangerous it is, but maybe, like many over-sensationalized stories in the media, it was no big deal. Read the rest of this entry »

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December 4, 2011

how to beat the holiday blues: be nimble

by nikki meredith

via Terry Vine/CORBIS

There is a saying in Italian: Natale con i tuoi, Pasqua con qui vuoi . Which means: Christmas with your family, but Easter with whomever you want! My parents weren’t Italian but they subscribed to this notion. The one and only time I dared to spend Christmas away from them was my honeymoon and they never quite forgave me for it. As a result, I vowed that, with my kids, I would never make spending any holiday with me compulsory.  In the beginning it was because I didn’t want to burden them. Later it was because I didn’t want to be so wedded to one way of celebrating the holidays that I’d be crushed if it didn’t work out. I do have a tradition, however, and it’s to be forever nimble on holidays. And I think it’s a tradition that might work for others.

I have a friend who was depressed for most of the weeks leading up to Christmas last year because her adult son and his wife decided to take their kids and join some friends of theirs in Hawaii for Christmas. Taking Grandma and Grandpa apparently wasn’t an option – either because they wanted a break from the old folks or because no one could afford the extra plane tickets. My friend and her husband are on a fixed income; their son’s wife is currently unemployed so the only way they could manage the trip was to cobble together a package of frequent flier miles and to trade their home in Marin County for a condo in Oahu.   “Christmas has always been at our house,” my friend said, “that’s our family tradition.” I felt sad for her but that always is a problem. There is no always in this life. People move, they divorce, they die, they decide they prefer palm trees to redwood trees on Christmas. Read the rest of this entry »

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November 20, 2011

advice for giving a gift to your husband or wife: DON’T

by nikki meredith

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The heart of the giver makes the gift dear and precious. ~ Martin Luther

I once had a fiction writing teacher who said, “It’s hard to say anything definitive about adultery.” I thought that was the wisest thing anyone ever said about anything. (Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in adultery but where would fiction be without it?)   But this isn’t about adultery. This is about gifts and I want to say, “It’s hard to say anything definitive about gift-giving.”

Let me start with the person in my life for whom it should be the easiest to buy gifts: my husband. Read the rest of this entry »

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November 13, 2011

why I will never read Chris Mathews’ new book Jack Kennedy: “Elusive Hero”

by nikki meredith

Chris Mathews on The Daily Show

I’m tempted to say I won’t read Chris Mathews’ new book, Jack Kennedy: The Elusive Hero because Mathews fawns and fawning is not a quality I desire in a biographer. If you don’t watch his show Hardball on MSNBC regularly, it might surprise you to learn that the in-your-face, swashbuckling, braggart is a world class fawner. Since Kennedy is a hero of his, I can’t help believing the book is chalk full of fawning.

I’m also tempted to say that I won’t read it because I question whether the book is totally truthful. One example: Mathews is taking credit for a scoop that isn’t a scoop. On Jay Leno the other night he said he had discovered that the origin of the famous quote: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” was not JFK himself nor Teddy White, Kennedy’s speechwriter who everyone had heretofore believed wrote it. The originator of the quote was the headmaster at Choate, the boarding school Kennedy attended.  (He had implored young Jack and his cohorts to: “Ask not what Choate can do for you, ask what you can do for Choate.”)

But it wasn’t a scoop. Read the rest of this entry »

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November 10, 2011

imaginary friends and neighbors

by caitlin meredith

A few weeks ago I developed an intense attachment to a couple that lives in the neighborhood. It happened very quickly, the way some of the best friendships do. It was immediately clear how much we had in common – everything from our favorite kind of organic tea to the poetry of a lesser known writer. Having this kind of chemistry can be bittersweet – on the one hand you can’t believe your luck to stumble upon a kindred spirit (two in this case!) but on the other you regret all the time wasted not knowing each other already. The memories that could have been made! They’ve lived four blocks down from me for a while now, and yet we’d never crossed paths before. Sadly, I got to know them on their moving day, which sucks.

Another thing that sucks? They never existed.

Let me explain. Read the rest of this entry »

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November 7, 2011

mother-daughter relationships: then and now

by nikki meredith

Image via Couture Allure

Easter Sunday. I’m 10 years old.  While other families are attending Easter sunrise services at the Hollywood Bowl, my family is in my father’s Buick heading to Rand’s Roundup in Hollywood – a restaurant billed as an urban chuck wagon.    I’m clutching my Easter basket – my brother is 14 and too old for Easter baskets — but we are each holding a cellophane bag of foil-covered Sees chocolate eggs that my mother’s Jewish friend Rose gives us every Easter to celebrate our secular L.A. urban holiday.

My mother and I are wearing Easter bonnets —  plain straw hats to which she has attached fresh gardenias — and matching dresses. I love the dresses — delicate Swiss cotton in pale yellow with tiny pearl buttons down the front. I like being twins with my mother. I like my mother. That will change but I don’t know it yet. Read the rest of this entry »

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November 1, 2011

a different kind of mystery at the book festival

by caitlin meredith

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All of the post-menopausal women from a 30-mile radius had descended upon the Senate Chamber. The event? A panel discussion among four authors about women changing their lives at the halfway mark. It was called “Take Two: Women on a New Path” and the venue was the Texas Book Festival a couple weeks ago. Now, not every attendee was a post-menopausal woman – I was there, for instance – but that demographic was the clear majority. As the panelists were settling in front, stragglers continued to fill the peripheral seats in the auditorium. From my perch on the side-wall pews where the press corps usually sit during the legislative session, someone caught my eye. A youngish guy, alone, passed me to sit further down, closer to the front. I half smiled, wondering how long it would take for him to realize that he was in the wrong chamber – the Civil War session was in the House Chamber, not the Senate. Oh well, I thought, he’ll figure it out soon enough.

Then the panel started and the moderator introduced all of the authors, briefly describing their works. One by one she went down the line, highlighting their extraordinary paths, brave journeys and amazing work (throw in your own cliché here) as women, women authors and women authors writing about women and their women’s experiences and relationships. By this point there was no mistaking the fact that estrogen and ovaries were on display here – not just display, they were being banged over the audience’s head with a two by four. And yet, the guy remained in his seat. More than that – he was following the panel with rapt attention.  What the fuck? Read the rest of this entry »

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October 27, 2011

fierce attachments: difficult mothers and the daughters who love them

by nikki meredith

A few years ago I was at an all women dinner party and we started talking about our mothers. Because it’s Marin County — an area saturated with shrinks of all stripes —  there was a lot of shrinkish  vocabulary circulating the room.  At one point when I talked about my mother and my complicated relationship with her, one of the women said,  “She must have been a narcissist.” No, I said, she was not a narcissist and I tried to back up my claim with examples of her non-narcissistic behavior. Another woman opined that my mother must have had boundary issues. Yet another, diagnosed her as borderline. I changed the subject. These terms, as applied to someone I cared about, were not only off the mark, they were offensive.  Where, I thought, is a novelist when you need one?

And this brings me to Vivian Gornick and her book, Fierce Attachments, a memoir structured around her walks with her aged mother in New York City and after which we named this web site. Gornick is not a novelist and it is not a work of fiction – I’ll get to that issue in a minute — but if you’ve read it, try to imagine someone affixing Gornick’s mother – an exasperating woman who could be petty and narrow-minded but who was also smart, courageous, and funny – with a label from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.  Imagine how much of the power and the intensity would be lost. Read the rest of this entry »

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October 24, 2011

top ten things for guys to avoid in their online dating profiles

by caitlin meredith

Date me.

1. Don’t use a profile photo of yourself where it’s pretty clear you’re naked. As a general rule, wear a full set of clothes in the photos. Unless you want random late night Craigslist hookups. If that’s the case, then go right back to the bathroom and take a few more self-portraits.

2. Don’t include photos of you and another woman, even if it’s not your ex-partner. It makes a potential date look at the lady your arm is around more than you, and wonder what she knows that you don’t.

3. Don’t include photos of your kids, just like you wouldn’t introduce your kids to a woman on your first date. It looks creepy to bring kids into these sites. The online dating community is small – your ex-wife will find out and freak out. I say wait until you have individual communication before sharing photos of you and the kids.

4. Don’t use a profile photo that you took from the webcam on your computer as you sat in your cubicle. These are unflattering, depressing photos. Even if you have to pay a stranger, have a more natural photo outside of fluorescent lighting.

5. Don’t target an age range that you yourself don’t fit into. Even if you only want to date 25-year-olds, you can  just not respond to the messages and winks from women that you think are too old for you. Why? Because a 42-year-old guy looking for women between 18 and 35 looks like a total douchebag. Read the rest of this entry »

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October 18, 2011

did not disconnect: the permanence of an ex-spouse

by nikki meredith

Uncle Danny

I had an uncle Danny that I never met. He died before I was born but I saw photos of him in his Navy uniform. He was boyish and handsome and, to the extent that a child can mourn someone she never met, I mourned him. Or, to be precise, I mourned the idea of an uncle Danny. I decided that if I ever had a boy I would name him Danny.

Fast-forward 15 years: I’m pregnant and my then-husband and I are making lists of names for boys and girls. Actually, I didn’t have a list. I had only one name on my boy list. But my then-husband said he hated the name Daniel. Hated it.  Even if it’s after your dead uncle, you can’t lobby to saddle a boy with a name his father hates. Mildly objects to, maybe, but not hate.  I gave birth to a wonderful little boy and in the spirit of compromise that would augur a more promising marital future than we, in fact, had, we came up with a name we both liked. Read the rest of this entry »

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