Losing my voice

When I heard the newscaster say that today is March 13^th, what immediately came into my head was that March 13^th was, to the best of my memory, the date in 1965 on which I had my Bat Mitzvah. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I confirmed that March 13^th, 1965 was in fact a Saturday. In the more traditional branches of Judaism, girls celebrate at 12 rather than 13 (the age boys celebrate) and the celebration may or may not be in the context of a formal religious service. But I grew up in a Reform Jewish temple, so my celebration was at the Saturday morning Sabbath service, and I read from the Torah. What I primarily remember about that occasion was that in the few days preceding the event, I completely lost my voice. I recall waking up that Saturday morning with my family gathered around my bed, waiting for me to speak. Once I was able to say “good morning,” my mother did not allow me to speak again until my voice was needed in the service. As I recall, my performance went off without a glitch. Looking back, it seems reasonably obvious to me that my muteness was more likely a bad case of nervousness than laryngitis. It was the one and only time in my life that this happened, although I am sure there have been countless times in my life that people around me have wished I could not talk.

I still struggle with reading, but I can listen. The other day I listened to an interview with Brigid Schulte, author of the new book Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time.

Here is the interview (warning: it is about 30 minutes long, which is, according to the book title, time that no one has):

http://www.wnyc.org/story/not-enough-hours-in-the-day-we-all-feel-a-little-overwhelmed/

And here is a brief review on Google:

Brigid Schulte has baked cupcakes until 2am. She has carried her BlackBerry on school field trips, hyperventilating with fear that she would be fired, then gone back to work until 4am after her children were in bed. Her refrigerator is broken, her To Do list never seems to get any shorter, and the laundry pile in the upstairs hallway often looms waist-high...She is not proud of this. And she worries that, though she tells her nine-year-old daughter that she can be anything she wants when she grows up, she is already beginning to think the cost is too high: that it is simply not possible, as a woman, to be anything you want to be, have a family, and still have time to breathe. So when Brigid met an eminent sociologist who studies time, and he told her that she enjoyed thirty hours of leisure each week, she thought her head was going to pop off. Overwhelmed is a funny, eye-opening and urgent book about burning our candles at both ends and in the middle. It is a book about busy-ness and the near-impossibility of pressing the 'pause' button on life. Exploring everything from the wiring of the female brain to male/female income distribution to the current state of gender equality in the workplace and home, Overwhelmed is a map of the stresses - individual, historical, biological and societal - that have ripped working mothers' leisure to shreds, and a quest for how it might be possible for them to put the pieces back together.

I think a lot about this as I watch our daughters and sons-in-law navigate parenthood while trying to build and maintain professional and social lives and pursue personal interests. It certainly has not gotten any easier for this new generation than it was for us. I still regret that we did not provide more structured extracurricular activities for our girls such as music lessons. We all had busy schedules, between our two demanding careers and the very long day in Jewish day school, which made such commitments quite challenging.  This aspect of family life certainly seems to be continuing into the next generation.

We did manage to carve out a little time this week to see a movie, “Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me.” The film traces her early career, her lifelong struggle with diabetes, and the premature loss of her husband to brain cancer when they were in their late fifties. The most endearing part of this portrait is the present, as she deals with the health problems and memory deficits of aging while maintaining her sense of humor and upbeat view of the world. It was an enjoyable and endearing film.

The cold weather has returned, so I will not be leaving the house today. But we plan to head back to Sharon tomorrow, and they seem to be predicting nicer and somewhat warmer weather for the weekend, so it will be nice to be able to get outside a bit.

Take care, all!

Love,

Rebecca