Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Where's My Touchstone?

Sunday, after our mani-pedis, my daughter and I were walking down Amsterdam Avenue and I saw a familiar face. "David Shack!" I said. He turned around, his eyes betraying puzzlement: he couldn't quite place me. "Linda Bernstein," I said. "Barbara's sister."


Then came his exclamation and kiss on the cheek and big hug.


He gestured to Ariel. "And this, I suppose, is your daughter?" (Well, who else would she be? But I always find this a terrific compliment.)


"Ariel," I responded, "David was your Aunt Barbara's chemistry lab partner in high school."


"I thought you were at least going to say 'Columbia,'" Ariel responded, laughing.


"Oh, that too. David went on to Columbia when Barbara went to Barnard and they stayed friends."


Then David and I had a brief conversation about what we were doing and what my sister is doing. I mentioned that she had been in New York a year ago for the 40th anniversary of the Columbia riots. (I digress for a second: How come everyone is doing 40th anniversaries? Is it that people are getting so old we're afraid we won't be around for the 50th? Or we'll just be 10 years older, thus grayer, fatter, spottier, in other words, look a lot worse?) David wasn't at all surprised when I told him my sister had reconnected with a Columbia SDS leader--someone who had been on the lam for a bit. He remembered this man hiding out in his apartment for a bit at one time and having the thought, "what am I doing?" David was never really political. He wasn't taking a risk for this man-on-the-run out of conviction; David is simply a really nice guy.


My sister was always very political in a way that I am not. I mean, I'm passionate about politics. I drive some people I know (i.e. my husband) crazy with my obsession with the news. I vote in every election, even school board. I work for candidates. Blah, blah. But no political involvement I have had is so pivotal in my life as my sister's participation in the Columbia events of 1968 is to her. She continues with reunions and gatherings where people dissect the meaning of everything that happened then and interpret the present in light of their conclusions. To my sister, occupying Hamilton Hall (then an administration building for the college) and being kicked out by the black protestors (who had a different agenda) and then occupying the university administration building, Low Library--I remember when she told me that the phrase "liberate a building" meant to take it over--is still a major event in the scheme of things. This short episode defines her.


I have no such event in my life, I think. This past spring, while involved in preparations for my college class's 35th reunion, I believed that my four years of college had defined me. And, in a way they did. I came to New York to go to college, and I am a complete New Yorker (though I do long for New England and still fantasize about living in a Brookline, MA). College introduced me to . . . well, ham and cheese sandwiches. The things people I know first encountered in college, like opera or art, I had known about before since I had parents who pushed culture. I can't say I discovered "food" in college because I was lucky when I could afford pizza from V&T's. A month after the reunion, I was already much less hepped up on the experience.


I didn't go to Woodstock. Nobody had a car that could be wisked away to what every parent who was paying attention knew would be an event rife with sex and drugs. So forget that as a life-defining experience. I also didn't get to see the Beatles in Shea Stadium, something some friends still manage to get into a conversation, especially when meeting new people. Yes, it is impressive that 40 years ago they saw something that changed the world as we knew it. (But, sour grapes?, they couldn't hear. No one could.)


If anything, having children was my life-altering event. I know that with my little ones about, I was less shy than I had been. Mothers need to be assertive, with their kids, of course, but also with the rest of the world. We run interference. Much of this ability to confront has stayed with me. But my children are adults now, and my relationship with them has changed. I'll still go out on a limb--if I'm at a party and there's a person there who could possibily help either of my kids on his or her career path, you can bet I'm chatting that person up before too long. My children's moods also have an uncanny ability to affect mine. They're flying high; I'm right in the clouds with them. When they're low, I, well, cry sometimes. But is being a mother my identity? No longer, sad to say.


Speaking of my kids, when my son was a teen, he lamented that his generation was boring and had no touchstones. He was so jealous of his dad, who had been active in the civil rights movement, and my involvement in the anti-war movement. (He still prefers the music of the Baby Boomers to that of his own Gen Y.) Then we had the last election, with Gen Y pushing the Obama revolution. Although he supported Hillary until the nomination (for once my whole family agreed on something political!), he became an avid Obama-ite, and worked really hard. His reward was spending election night in Richmond, VA, with a friend who was an actual paid Obama campaigner, and participating in a spontaneous parade of joy that erupted on the main drag of the former capital of the Confederacy.

My daughter has found her ground in the pro-gay-marriage movement. I'm not sure how this evolved. I think it grew from her friendships with gays during high school and college, but she has a well-developed sense of fair and unfair (after all, she's been practicing making this distinction since she was about two-years-old; just ask her brother). To her, it's unfair that gays can't be legally married. It's unfair that gays can overtly serve in the military. Actually, her arguments are much more cogent than that, but I think her conviction does rest on her sense of what's right and what's wrong.

So here I am, a total Baby Boomer--and yet I seem to lack a critical piece of Generation B-Squared identity. There's nothing I immediately grab from my pocket to validate my participation in world-changing. Yes, I missed Woodstock. But I went to lots of rock concerts (Rolling Stones two times, Grateful Dead at the Filmore East four or five times). I came to Barnard too late to take over university buildings, and I was much to young to be at the Democratic party protests in Chicago when those kids getting hit on the head started chanting, "The whole world's watching." (It still sends chills up my spine.) I did participate in many protests: the big anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. in the fall of 1969, for one. It was a truly amazing experience. And it was probably part of a world-changing movement because to this day I believe that protests helped end that war. But I don't feel it altered my life so much.

So where's my touchstone? Perhaps it's just gone dark for a bit, waiting to be rediscovered as I do my bit to get a health care bill passed. Maybe I don't have one. Maybe I don't need one.

What's your experience with this? Can you point to some event (or series of events) that occurred during the seminal Baby Boomer years and say, "yes, that's it. That made me who I am today?"

Let me know. Maybe I'll tag along.