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.

Helicopter Parent, Guilty as Charged

My baby birds have left the nest. I mean this literally. The baby bluebirds that hatched just before July 4^th weekend at our summer house are now off and on their own. On Monday I observed a bit of avian behavior that I have totally anthropomorphized. But I’m sure my interpretation is right.

My day began with my husband pointing out two juvenile bluebirds hanging out on the clothesline. Without the binoculars, they looked like fairly nondescript birds of a certain size, what a neighbor of mine calls “generic brown birds.” But through the glasses we could see what the bird books describe “telltale signs of blue in the wings and tail feathers.”

Their habits and mannerisms enabled identification, too. Just like mom and dad, the juveniles waited nonchalantly on the clothesline and then, spotting an insect, flew down, found their prey, and then resumed their clothesline stance. This continued for about a half hour. Then they flew off.

Soon after, mommy bluebird appeared with a big bug in her beak and waited on the clothesline. She looked here; she looked there; but no children appeared. Finally she dropped the insect and called—we rarely hear the bluebird call or song—but to no avail. The juveniles did not come. She spotted another insect, returned to the line, looked around, dropped it, called, and so on. This went on for fifteen, twenty minutes.

Well, I thought, the baby bluebirds are self-sufficient now, with a rush of a mother’s insight. However, mommy’s hormones are keeping her in mommy-mode. I told my husband I suspected she would keep up this behavior for at most another day until something clicked off in her birdbrain. And thus it happened.

We’ve now entered the weeks of the year when we don’t see much of the bluebirds, unless they do a second nesting. Our bluebirds' first nesting was so delayed this year—big fights with the swallows over nest boxes—that I’d wager this is a one-nest summer. Where exactly these birds go during this period has always remained a mystery. Perhaps as the weather gets warmer they fly a bit north. Or maybe they’re just hanging out in the woods, because come the end of August they’ll be back. Now, we’ve never “tagged” them, so we can’t be sure it’s the same ones year after year. But bluebirds are monogamous and tend to repeat behaviors. They’re also quite territorial, which may explain why we’ve never had two bluebird nests at the same time, although we have five nest boxes, yet our neighbors also have bluebirds. In the fall (and in the spring) we’ll see up to five or six birds, both male and female, at the same time, but by nesting time, we see only a pair.

If I sound hovering and over-involved with a bird species here, let me quickly assure you that I hover pretty intensely over my own young adult children, and I have in fact been intently involved at every stage of their lives. Although the pejorative term “helicopter parent” is fairly recent, Baby Boomers certainly exhibited the same traits twenty years ago that today’s authors describe, and, in fact, the term was first thrown at Baby Boomers. We had fewer options than today’s young parents when it came to classes and afterschool activities in the early years (Gymboree was only beginning, “Mommy and Me” classes only offered at a few forward-thinking Ys), but moms of today’s 16- and 17-year-olds are no less intense than I and the other parents in my cohort. We signed our kids up for SAT prep courses, read through the huge college books, drove (and flew!) to tens of colleges (even when the supposed prospective student was having a tantrum and wouldn’t get out of the car).

Many experts are making a decent living dressing down the over-involved parent. Just google “helicopter parent” and to view an impressive list of the CNN segments featuring talking heads from high schools and colleges bemoaning parent over-involvement. On the other hand, Lisa Belkin who writes the “Motherlode” blog for The New York Times, jumped to their defense (or at least defending the non-extreme version) a few months ago. (See http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/in-defense-of-helicopter-parents/), although, being a good journalist she also mentioned the arguments of social psychologist Susan Newman, the author of Nobody’s Baby Now: Reinventing Your Adult Relationship With Your Mother and Father, who believes involved parents are doing their children a disservice. (But let me digress a moment and make a distinction: Lisa Belkin is a top tier journalist, Susan Newman is about a fourth tier expert.)

Yes, writing your child’s college essays is a no-no (though reading them and making suggestions, if your child asks is a yes-yes, in my book). I also think that many parents are too pushy about making sure their child is exposed to things that are supposed to make them smarter or more self-assured.

But I will defend any parent who shows interest in his or her child’s activities and feelings. I am a big believer in “family dinner.” “We have to have family dinner so you won’t do drugs,” I anxiously told my children for many years. It was supposed to be a quasi-joke, but I had done research and written on the topic and firmly believed that important parent/child bonds are cemented over the evening meal. (Although it’s the time together that’s crucial, I continue to wonder if the ritual of “breaking bread” also solidifies some kind of primordial family-making imprint in our genes.)

My children have matured into pretty independent souls and are quite responsible—most of the time. But I’m still their mother. I may be in the middle of a meeting when I’ll get a text that reads, “I just threw up. Should I call in sick?” My reaction? The meeting stops. I’ve always made it clear that within reason I will take a phone call or message from my family no matter what’s going on at work. The converse side is that now that my children (and husband) are rational adults, I tell them when I would prefer not to be interrupted and will ignore a phone call, IM or text unless they signal it’s urgent.

Still, in a lot of ways I’m still like that mommy bluebird with the insect in her mouth, waiting to cater to the needs of her children. Today my son called—did we have an extra microwave. Yes, in fact we do, having just replaced a counter-top model with an over-the-stove one, and he can certainly have it. And, speaking of food, my two young grown-ups still go grocery shopping in my refrigerator and cabinets, something I aid and abet by buying special items I know they like before they visit.

Sometimes, when I’m annoyed, I’ll grouse that they’re spoiled; ergo I spoiled them. But, as I firmly believe, you can’t spoil a child with love, even when that child is an adult. So, again, I will argue that involving oneself in a child’s life—even an adult child—has great benefits. You have to find the right balance, of course. For instance, it’s OK for a young adult to call his or her parents freaking out over something. It’s even OK for that parent to offer to come rescue the child because in my experience, and the experience of others who parent like I do, most of the time they just need you to know that they’re having a hard time, and then they can end up handling things. “Don’t you want to know why I’m never going to play the violin again,” my friend’s professional musician daughter exploded from 3,000 miles away when my friend begged off the call because she had company. My friend did indeed call her back a few hours later, listened to about an hour’s worth of rants and raves. But three years later, Emily is still a violinist. So let them vent.

But adult children sometimes need actual parental hands-on help, and expecting the kid to “tough it out” would be nonsensical or cruel. A friend of mine, for instance, recently took a day off from work to spend time with her daughter, who lives in another city about a two-hour train ride away, because the almost-fiancé had just dumped the girl. Over email. The poor young woman was a wreck—we all know how heartbreak goes, and sometimes a mother’s physical shoulder can be healing. Another friend similarly took a few days off to be with her son who needed minor surgery. Sure, one of his competent (medical student, even) friends could have helped him get back from the hospital and made sure he followed the doctor’s orders and cooked him meals and so forth—but what’s a mother for anyway?

We have to believe our children are like those “juvenile” bluebirds, able to support themselves and catch their own worms. So when an adult child tells you to bug off—the same is true for an adolescent—you bug off (unless you really feel your child is in danger. Then the rules change, but that’s another blog for another day). Bugging off isn’t easy. I probably am more upset than my daughter that her boyfriend’s new apartment is six subway stops, instead of six blocks, away. She told me to quit worrying, that everything is OK. So I have to believe her, and I’m lucky to have a blog where I can obsess about this. (Who will walk her home from the subway now at night? I could go on.)

I’ll probably helicopter away for a long time. I could shrug my shoulders and say my “birdbrain” hasn’t gotten the message. Except I really think I’m doing what’s best for my adult children—and what’s best for me.