On Saturday afternoon, I watched Marley and Me on pay-per-view in the solitude of my bedroom. It took about four hours to watch the movie what with the many interruptions of phone calls as well as questions from my husband and son that ran the gamut from “where do we keep three-way bulbs” to “have you seen my sandals?” But here’s the thing – I don’t go to movie theaters – one of my [many] idiosyncrasies, so tolerance (not always evident) for interruptions has to be practiced. This idiosyncrasy is likely spawned from the 1960’s when I came home from school, turned on the uncomplicated seven-channel-choice television, and watched an afternoon movie. A Summer Place, Splendor in the Grass, Love With the Proper Stranger, Light in the Piazza – those were some of my favorites. Boy and girl fall in love, something happens to tear them apart, they end up together. The End. Those two hours were my private time, my drug of choice: propped up on pillows, some sort of snack, and a box of tissues for those scenes where I wept (and no one could see me). I still hear my mother’s voice trailing behind me as I headed into my room, cautioning me – “Don’t spoil your dinner!” and “Remember! You have homework!” and I reassuring her sufficiently until she gave up, and then closing my bedroom door, immersed in a film – until the credits ran and her voice called me to the table. She must have watched the clock…
Watching movies alone is a habit I haven’t been able to shake – much to the dismay of my husband who, despite his knowledge of this oddity, still asks if I want to watch a movie with him. He knows that theaters are out of the question as a proposition. And no, I’m not a germaphobe. It would probably take years of analysis to figure out the “why” of this practice, and turn out to be something bizarre steeped in my subconscious. But it makes me happy. And it’s easier for me to emote privately, get swept away in the plot… feeling as though I’m in the movie, not just watching.
As a teen, I saw Love Story twelve times: The first with a boyfriend (great date movie) and the next eleven at the Trans Lux – alone. Probably the last time I was in a movie theater. Not really: I went with a bunch of girlfriends to see Under the Tuscan Sun, sat by myself in a delightful single seat on the “other” side of the theater from them and sufficiently antagonized them all. They have all since recovered, though none have asked me to the movies.
Marley and Me hit me hard on many levels: not the least of which was the evolution of a marriage and John Grogan’s professional epiphany. For the last two weeks, I blogged about items in the news, thinking that maybe it was time to cater more to the masses, board the media bandwagon – albeit about topics that resonated deeply with me, although not in keeping with the typical style and content of this blog. I thought it was about time to increase those “hits” on the graphical link that magically reports the number of people logging onto my site – and sure enough the numbers spiraled upwards as the subject matter lent itself to the tabloid stuff that gets those who google by newsworthy subject.
It was my son who unwittingly suggested I watch Marley and Me – because I am writer, not knowing that in the last two weeks I made a departure from what I typically write. Well, a brick came through the window, landing at my feet, yet giving me enough pause to startle and realize this was the meaning of a close call. Rarely is subtly a force in my life. Marley and Me’s author John Grogan has three major things going for him in addition to talent: An editor who serendipitously gave him the opportunity to write a column (on a much smaller scale, much like the way this blog began as a column well over a decade ago on a “snow day” when I needed to fill the front page of my newspaper’s lifestyles section), a spouse who supported him and saved every one of his columns (Mark doesn’t save my columns, but he is more often than not my muse, supporter, and critic), and finally, the realization that his column about his family – not the least of whom was Marley – was what he did best. Despite a longing to report hard hitting news for the front page of The New York Times, Grogan’s column was what came from his heart, felt satisfying and right – and what his readership loved. That his column became a best-selling book is a dream come true…and in his case, I feel, well-deserved.
And so John Grogan became my inspiration and my conscience: Writing about what’s in the headlines isn’t writing what I know and feel – which is key as it was for John Grogan who sat on a veritable treasure for years as he kept looking elsewhere, searching for that hard-hitting reporter that wasn’t really in his soul. He took a close look at subtleties that might otherwise escape us. Realizing that it’s the details, the nuances, the exchanges that give us insights into ourselves and the world around us – but we have to look carefully.
In the end, regardless of what we do, what our work entails, being true to ourselves and others is essential as we define success. As someone posted on facebook by an unknown author, “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”
Archive for August, 2009
Who really knows exactly what happened in the Sanford marriage? Probably only that hapless fly on the wall. According to both Mark and Jenny Sanford, difficulties were brewing long before the governor’s emotional and public meltdown.
Romantics might argue that he really did find his soul mate in Maria Belen Chapur and finally got to a breaking point where neither his marriage nor his political career mattered as much as the woman he truly loved. Publicists and campaign managers who were looking forward to his 2012 run for the presidential nomination might contend that putting romance aside instead of shooting himself in the political aspirations would have been wiser. Religious zealots might say he betrayed God and the Bible and succumbed to temptation. Constituents may feel he betrayed his country (well, certainly the state of South Carolina). Some women might say he’s just a cad and how dare he do that to his wife and family. Some men might say that the governor had good reason. Some might say boys will be boys. For sure, many of us would agree that their four young sons are about to come from a broken home, and two people who thought they could make a dream come true woke up to a grim reality for whatever the reasons.
Jenny seems to have said a lot of different things in the last month or so since all this has gone down. To her credit, she moved out of the governor’s mansion – kids in tow. I applauded her for that: for me, I couldn’t understand how Silda Spitzer and Diane McGreevy stood by their husbands in their roles as political wives: What message were they sending to our daughters, never mind to all women who were deceived? Their husbands didn’t betray the political wife/first lady of the state – they betrayed the women they married years before.
I applauded Jenny for the brave move to pack up the kids and move to their beach house on Sullivan’s Island until the Vogue spread hit the stands: My visceral reaction was that she was putting herself and her kids back in the media spotlight just as the sad scenario was fading into the landscape. I questioned how she could say she wanted her family to heal, wanted to protect her children, and stated that her move wasn’t an impetuous act, but rather one considered with a great deal of thought and care. Admirable with a touch of gravitas until her intimate revelations in Vogue: that the two never had a spark between them even in the beginning – “we were never madly in love, but compatible and good friends” – to me, that sounds like a bad recipe for a marriage. Jenny goes on to say that her husband’s extramarital relationship with Maria was an addiction, an obsession, a mid-life crisis. That’s where I began to get more confused, and questioned her motives: If parenting is so important to her, why reveal details of their last 20 years let alone the last year?
Mark Sanford was no better. In his most public apology, also rife with way too much information, he apologized not only to his wife and children but to his staff, constituents and friends: As his wife, I would not have wanted to be lumped in with everyone else. As his wife, I would have preferred he said it was a private matter. To make matters worse for both his wife and sons, he made it quite clear that his relationship was far from a fling: He was in love with Maria. A love that started as a “deep deep friendship” and became “much more than just sex.” She was, in fact, his soul mate.
For those “women scorned” who are not solicited by Vogue, what do we do to retrieve our self-esteem, and get over the humiliation of our husband’s infidelity? Given her husband’s (mind you, not the governor’s, but her husband’s) televised confession, my confusion began to lift. I‘m thinking now that Jenny’s Vogue spread was the equivalent of Carrie Underwood’s hit line “I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights:” Rage with dignity.
And waffling again, I think of Mark Sanford who, by his own admission, was a repeat offender when it came to marital fidelity. He said he’d “crossed the line” before – but this time it was different. Another hit song? “I fooled around and fell in love?” Does this make him human or a cad? Should he have held himself to higher standards since he was a governor and a presidential wannabe? Or should he and Jenny have dissolved their marriage years before regardless of political goals? Or, based upon Jenny’s statement that their marriage was never one of passion, did they both sell their souls to the devil only to find the price was untenable both personally and politically? Can we not have divorced governors, senators, and presidents? Does America really love redemption that much? Would America rather have a bad marriage in The White House than no marriage at all?
A psychiatrist once told me two things when it comes to marriage: No one ever completely heals from infidelity and each spouse has their own true version of the truth. As an outsider, the only component I question in the Sanford marriage (disclaimer: of which I really have no knowledge) is whether or not, in that passionless beginning as told according to Jenny Sanford, they both knew some place in their souls that they were doomed from the start. And, at the end of the day, does the American public really have to know what goes on in and out of a politician’s bedroom and marriage? Isn’t it bad enough for just the couple, the kids, and the extended family?
Between his confession and her Vogue glam piece, I’m wondering what purpose either public performance really serves either of them.
If only the dead could speak. Instead, as in the case of Diane Schuler who killed eight people including herself on the Taconic Parkway last weekend, the living are speaking for her. Clearly, they didn’t know all of her. They say what people frequently say when interviewed after a tragedy, “She was a lovely woman. A devoted wife and mother. A wonderful aunt.” Perhaps all those definitions of her are true. Perhaps it was what she harbored inside, what she didn’t tell them, what she was afraid to confront in herself that ended in disaster. What perhaps she didn’t even know about herself.
The one word that has been floating around as broadcast journalists interview her widower, her family, the family lawyer and the private investigator is “logic.” It makes no sense, they all say. Her family disputes the blood alcohol and marijuana levels in her system. They contend she wasn’t a drinker. The admit she smoked a little pot now and then. And still, they say it makes no sense. Finally, this morning, Meredith Viera, pointed out that “logic” may not be a contender here when it comes to explanation. Point in fact: this was neither a logical act nor a logical situation. Whether born out of alcohol or madness, it was patently irrational.
As a life coach, I am cautioned not to even dip a toe into the psychological realm. And I don’t. Ethically and morally, I can’t. The purpose of coaching is to take the client forward by helping them to establish self-awareness thereby confronting the demons and gremlins that are holding them back, preventing them from living better and more satisfying lives. There are times, however, when my gut screams out – and I will say what my gut feels. Instinct, once you’ve developed a relationship with a client, is essential and powerful. The client tells me if my gut is incorrect. I must admit, so far my gut has served me and my clients well.
In the case of Diane Schuler, my gut is screaming that the woman was not a closeted drinker or alcoholic, but a woman who was grappling with severe depression – finally destroyed by undiagnosed, unnoticed, and well-hidden mental illness? Unfortunately, mental illness still carries a stigma.
The press often drives the story. In this case, they have pre-determined that we have another epidemic on our hands – that of the “Secret Mommy Drinker.” The Today Show went so far as to have a Diane Schuler near look alike (in my estimation) on the air this morning, confessing her secret alcohol abuse: She would drink during the day, and come night fall when her husband got home, drink wine with him and he just thought it was her first drink of the day. Sure, there are closeted drinkers, pot smokers, cocaine users, pill poppers, and the maritally unfaithful out there. This isn’t news. But why take a tragedy now and spin it into yet another “profile” that will give the media fodder for voyeuristic news until this story fades back into the landscape?
Andrea Yates, for example, was the loving Texas mother who drowned her five children in June 2001. She had a history of depression, was taking medication, and was in therapy. Her depression seemed to increase with the birth of each child and was profound after the fourth child’s birth. She thought she was a “bad mother.” No one around her – not her extended family, her husband, her doctor – recognized the depths of Andrea’s depression and illness.
Is it possible that Diane Schuler was hiding her illness until she swigged enough alcohol from that open bottle found in her van that allowed her inhibitions to give way and end what was an extraordinary pain?
I have often contended that mothers can be an invisible lot. Biologically and socially we remain the ones on whom children – and husbands – depend. We have little room for error, and much of what we do goes unnoticed and taken for granted. As enlightened as we think we are as a society, we’re not. Speak to any mother who holds down a job and she’ll tell you that she’s the one who typically shuttles the kids back and forth, makes the meals, does the laundry, does the grocery shopping, know the kids’ schedules, speaks to the teachers…the list goes on and on. Anne Tyler describes this condition with perfection in Ladder of Years as Delia Grinstead vanishes one day as the family takes their annual beach vacation. Once Delia’s husband and teen age children realize she’s gone, they can barely give her vital statistics to the police – arguing over the color of her eyes, her height, her weight. Delia, unlike Andrea Yates and Diane Schuler, simply walked away from that which was overwhelming her.
Is it possible that Diane Schuler wasn’t hiding a drinking problem, but hiding a problem that became so painful she ended it all, able to carry through her only way out of the pain by blinding herself with pot and alcohol? Everyone’s question is “but why did she take the children with her?” Perhaps because the irrational doesn’t account for logic. In the same way that Andrea Yates, a self-described “bad” mother could have simply left her children and walked away.
There is no reasonable answer for the irrational.
As a culture and society, we accept those with medical disorders that might result in tunnel vision – another buzz word used to describe Schuler’s state as she drove the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway. Witnesses who called 911 reported she was honking her horn, tailgating and flashing her headlights – was that a cry for help or rage? What is the reason her family and our society eschews mental illness as an explanation? Diane Schuler’s family is intent upon finding a medical reason for her actions: What if the reason is that mental illness is just as viable an explanation for behavior that unwittingly ends up in a disaster?
My gut tells me that Diane Schuler was overwhelmed, sickened and ultimately strangled by demons so powerful they swallowed her, leaving her in madness, perhaps even unaware that her children and three nieces were the unwitting victims of the demons as well.
