KEEP YOUR OAR IN THE WATER

My own mother’s words loomed large before I got pregnant, “do the things you want to do before you get married and have babies.”  And it was great advice.  By the time I gave birth to our first child, I had climbed the ladder in the marketing world, traveled and lived overseas.  My dream was to write a book and although I had cranked out a few measly chapters when we returned from a year in China, I didn’t have the JK Rowling in me to do it in between a full time job and my newly married life.

 

A mere two years later, our son was born into a time of personal transition.  My husband was leaving the security of the legal world and the moneyed track to be a broadcast journalist.  If I’d had any desire to stay home with this new baby, it was snuffed out by our new economic reality.  We qualified for food stamps in the state of California.

 

Moving around the country to bigger TV markets, having another baby, keeping my freelance writing and marketing business stoked was an enormous juggling act.   There were many times I envied the Moms who played tennis and lunched, the ones who didn’t feel the weight of financial contribution.  But mostly I loved my life.  I was energized and appreciated by forces outside the home.  I liked what I did and I moved among a slipstream of disparate and engaging female friends.  Before motherhood, I hadn’t thought a lot about whether or not I’d be a stay-at-home mother or try to work, there were no pre-conceived notions.  My role just kept evolving amidst the backdrop of our family and a larger picture.  I had no real master plan.

Today I sense a polite backlash among the present generation of young women who have watched their Moms buckle under the duel pressures of jobs and motherhood. They have shrewdly observed that the “sharing” of household duties by working parents still skews more like 70-30 in the most equal of unions. There is an often-unarticulated criticism, a whisper about the generation of mothers who came before who put careers first and motherhood on hold, stressed by the reality that you can’t have it all. At least not all at once.

It’s hard for younger women today to understand and appreciate the jackhammering that was done by previous female pioneers to even get to this point, the luxury and ability of women to choose.  The striving for equal pay and management positions seems so very quaint now, so “Mad Men” and yet it was not so long ago.  I still remember marching in a boss’s office my heart thumping, to tell him I’d discovered my male colleague, with the very same job and tenure, made $10,000 more than me.  I got a raise.  

Many young women think of “feminism” as a radical, cleaving and dirty word.  All that militarist bra-burning.  Yet it was that stridency, the elbowing and the path paving that allowed women today to expect to sit on boards and run for office, to go into space or attain a high rank in the military.  If you want to make a revolution you have to break a few eggs, said Chairman Mao.  Sometimes you get an omelet. 

My young daughters instantly fathomed the solution to the head-scratching riddle during my childhood about the injured child admitted to the ER.  The doctor, who was not his father, recused himself from operating because it was his son.  Q:  What is the relationship between the doctor and the boy?  A: She is his mother.

Photo by CATHRINE WHITE

Few people got that answer correct in the 1970’s.  And yet today it’s a quaint and dated joke.  For all of the glass ceiling busters and groundbreakers, the throwbacks and the backlash, motherhood and career have moved slightly off the combative “either-or” arena and have mellowed into a “what’s right for me?” choice.

Young women today tell me they will not delay childbearing.  They have seen too many women wake up at 40 wearing the “I forgot to have kids” sandwich board. And I hold my tongue.  There is no cookie-cutter approach to any of this, no one-size fits all.  And when those young women have children who leave the home and they yearn for a reinvention, trying to explain the two-decade gap in their resume to a prospective employer can be disheartening.  The mothers of my older children’s friends confide that the empty nest has brought a search for meaning, an internal ransacking of who they are now and a need to re-purpose that is soul-searching and often stressful.

On a recent episode of CBS’s “The Good Wife,” a young law associate shame-facedly reveals she is addressing wedding invitations at work and discloses that she is engaged, newly pregnant and quitting the firm to become a wife and mother. 

“But you can do both, you don’t have to give up the law,” says the older, wiser, now single Alicia Florick, who has returned to the workforce after her husband’s Spitzer-like public infidelities are revealed.  “But I love my fiancé,” is the young ingénue’s doe-eyed answer. 

A priceless expression crosses the face of the older, experienced woman who has learned the importance of being able to care for not only herself, but also her children.  It is one I recognize on my own face as I think about my once bright naiveté, the beauty of that expectation that we can nudge life in the direction we wish by just applying a little will power and positive thinking.   And how we hope it will.  And yet the young lawyer has not allowed for the possibility that the child she is carrying might not grow to term or be healthy, that her fiancé might not always love her or be able to provide for her.  It is the great divide between 20 something and 40 plus, the canyon between innocence and experience.

I recently lunched with a friend who’d been blind-sided by the economy, her husband’s job loss, depression and subsequent raiding of their savings.  She had left her job 22 years ago to raise the kids and was wondering now, in the midst of divorce, how she would pay the next tuition check.    She is an indomitable, resourceful woman and she will undoubtedly reconstitute herself in a new world order.   Our talk turned to raising our girls, the messages we would give them based on our life experiences and the choices they would inevitably make about partners and marriage, careers and kids.  How would each of our experiences as working and stay-at-home Moms shape their own visions for their lives?

“Keep your oar in the water somehow,” she said wistfully.  “That’s the advice I’m giving my daughter.”  And, thinking about my own life, I nodded my head in agreement.

A Young Musician Follows His Dreams

This weeks contribution from my sis Nancy.....

The Friday assembly at Rippowam Cisqua School was a full circle moment in our family. Alum and singer song-writer Collin McLoughlin returned to the place where he fist got up on a stage to sing. I can remember his role as "Tartan" the male lead in the school musical 14 years ago.

In those days, Collin was a frail fifth-grader, wearing a furry caveman costume which barely covered his scrawny shoulders. He belted out the songs with a high-pitched quaver and it was a lightning bolt moment for us as parents. His dad and I had never heard him sing before.

That was just the beginning. Collin addressed the Rippowam audience with a motivational speech about following dreams, a timely topic, since the bonus track on his newly released EP is called "Chasing Dreams." The day the new album (entitled "Stark Perspective") was released on iTunes, it was the second most downloaded in the singer songwriter category on the world charts.

Mr. Fonera, Collin's former Rippowam music teacher, was the first to put a guitar in his hands as part of the music program. He attended the Friday assembly and seemed to enjoy what must have been a satisfying "teacher moment."

Collin briefly outlined his personal "post-Ripp" journey, which took him through Wooster Academy, and then on to Colgate University. Although a philosophy major, he explained how writing and singing music enabled him to enter and win contests while at college.

"We started out doing 'crunk' rock," he told the kids. "It is distorted guitar and crazy heavy drums with rap singers and choruses, which are what I wrote and sang."

After a generous donor created a state of the are recording and broadcast facility at the college, members of his band, who were not considered part of the music department, gained access to the premises under cover of darkness when a sympathetic janitor, who was also a fan, let the group in to record and write music off hours.

Eventually, Collin was granted permission by the administration to use the new space and launched Broad Street Records, a Colgate-student run record label still in existence today. The label promotes and encourages all Colgate musicians to record and produce their own music, some of which was then broadcast on the college radio station and website.

"I wanted everyone to have a chance to be heard even if they weren't officially going into music as a career," said Collin, who found he loved managing the label.

The college asked for permission to utilize some of Collins original acoustic soundtracks for use on their website as background.

Winning student votes in a school competition earned their Colgate group, entitled, Nautical Young opening slots for popular artists on tour like Lupe Fiasco, Wale, and K'naan. When the group graduated, its members scattered to follow new career paths.

Collin launched a solo career, opening for and collaborating with popular artist on tour like Sam Adams, and spending the first summer playing shows in club settings like The Bitter End in New York City and Cafe Lina in Saratoga Springs.

Collin addressed the Rippowam students and spoke about finding a passion in life. He advised them to "try everything" saying that a school like Rippowam teaches students to place and equal value on arts and athletics.

Collin described how his very first guitar lesson, still a mandatory part of the Rippowam seventh grade music curriculum, was less than inspiring. "Why didn't you like it?" came the questions from Mr. Perry, Collin's former science teacher. "Learning the basic building blocks of guitar chords means you have to start with very simple songs. To get to the next level, you have to stick with it and practice." He added, " I was impatient. You can only play so much row row your boat before you just want to upgrade to something from the radio."

The six foot two musician stood with an acoustic guitar strung over his shoulders and said, "Its Friday and I remember what that means around here. How are you all doing?" In and effort to elict more volume from the audience he grinned saying, "You can do way better than that, lets hear more." And the students complied, hooting, clapping and shrieking.

Playing concerts in venues that include boarding schools and colleges, his bookings take him as far away as California, and have helped to amp up them demand for his new music. In the past he has written dance tracks and acoustic, electronic ballads, many of which he has sold to record labels like Ultra.

Collin closed the show by playing a sneak preview on a big screen of his cover video "Not Over You," which has since been released.

Each student left with a copy of the very first CD of songs Collin recorded, containing music produced when he was just a few years older than the Rippowam audience. It was Collin's way of sharing an earlier piece of himself and restating his message, "It is never too early to start following your own dreams."

Guest Blog by Nancy McLoughlin

So proud of my nephew! Vote for him in the Billboard Battle of The Bands! (Click below for the scoop..) Lee
http://www.billboard.com/features/northeast-battle-of-the-bands-2012-1006354752.story#/features/northeast-battle-of-the-bands-2012-1006354752.story