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Blog Entry 7 of 17 It's keeping me awake
Sometimes the great books keep me up half the night; sometimes it's the best sellers. Lately, it's the politics.

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~somanybooks

Jane Fonda's "My Life So Far"

Contributed by: Irma Sturgell   on 10/27/2006

Whatever your reaction to Jane Fonda, it will be too bad if you skip her autobiography, "My Life so Far," because you think of her as Hanoi Jane, rather than a great actress or a woman of deep empathy, compassion and talent. The book isn't perfect, but then neither is the person. She admits her foibles, shares her regrets. A few passages are tiresome (the section about her marriage to Roger Vadim for example); some moments seem self-serving or naive, but this is her book, her life as she sees it. Why else write a book about your life if not to set your record straight?

I am listening to it as an audio book and am at the point in the narrative that deals with Henry Fonda's death. Shortly before this time, she and her father were making the movie "On Golden Pond," with Katherine Hepburn. The movie goes on to win an Oscar for both Hepburn and Hank Fonda. One of the most poignant moments in the making of the film is Jane's scene with her father, the character of Norman Thayer, when she tries to connect with him one last time. She takes this chance to connect as a daughter, rather than an actress, and touches his arm, unrehearsed. He is surprised, everything is rehearsed in his world, and before he looks away, she sees tears in his eyes. In this instant, she has cracked something deep inside him. He is a guarded man and this brief display of emotion moves her profoundly. All her life, she struggled to understand him, to win his love. Through this movie, she comes close and finally knows, he did the best he could, given who he was, and she accepts him. And that is the secret to understanding parents. They do the best they can but are never sure it is quite good enough. Yet, it is all they can do.

Do you know of a woman or man who decides to become a parent and takes a class to learn how to do it? I don't, unless they are adopting a child. I know people take art classes to learn how to paint; orienteering classes to find their way out of the woods; even motorcycle classes to learn how to stay astride an engine on two wheels at 80 mile per hour. But to become a parent? No. Not one mom or dad I know has ever raved about the great parenting class they took and recommended it because "The teacher is great! I learned so much and now I'm ready to have a baby."

So how can we expect parents to do it all right, all the time? What they do, they do out of love, not necessarily out of skill. They do it from a combination of their own upbringing, which began at least two generations before. They do it out of instinct. They do it out of fear. They do it out of regret. They do it out of naiveté or enthusiasm. Or maybe they do it out of a nose to the grindstone determination that moves them forward. They don't do it because of a certificate on the wall that says, "Hereby awarded to John and Mary for successful completion of Parenting 101. Go forth and multiply."

But kids don't know that. They think, because there is a class for everything, there must be a class for parents as well. In fact, I am guilty of telling my own kids, I learned it in parenting school when I made an unpopular rule. One of many lies, right along with the Easter Bunny, Santa and the tooth fairy. Or maybe we don't tell them anything, depending on what we're able to fabricate after a long day at the office, the salon, the restaurant or the classroom. So much of parenting depends on what is left over after the work week that puts food on the table, clothes on the body and a car in the garage. And we never know how it will come out until our children, unbidden, show us who they have become.

Our son showed me something about our parenting tonight at dinner. He was in line at Target; a woman of about 30 with her two children stood ahead of him. She was buying children's clothes and paying in cash. But as the items rang up, it became clear she didn't have enough money. She asked the cashier to first take this item back, ring it up again, then try that item and ring it up again. He felt her anxiety as she struggled to decide which of the items was most important. Maybe the jeans, the hooded sweatshirt, the pajamas or maybe, the Halloween costume for trick or treating on Tuesday? The children were getting restless, the cashier was doing her best to remember how to treat customers, and our son was waiting, feeling for this mom and her two kids.

But the two women, standing behind him in line were feeling something else. They became visibly annoyed and voiced that annoyance just loudly enough to be heard by the cashier, the cash strapped mother, and my son.

"People should count their money BEFORE they get in line." Then, with a snicker, "Can't she use a credit card and get this over with?" knowing full well if the woman had a credit card, she wouldn't be in this fix. And finally, to the cashier, "Excuse me. Will you get someone to open another line? This is apparently going to take awhile," delivered with the arrogance of self-righteousness.

My son, in sympathy for the woman with the kids, searched for something to say. Of course, the best lines come afterwards as in, "I should have said, hey, that could be you. It happens to all of us at some time or another."

When the two women asked him if he wanted to go ahead of them as the neighboring register opened, he responded with, "No, I'm fine right here." He was feeling his own kind of loyalty to this line.

And now, a day later at dinner, he shares the story with me. He is still frustrated that he didn't say something. He wonders what lesson the two kids learned from this; what the woman felt like. We share our feelings of impotence in the face of this kind of rudeness and ponder what moves people to inflict their personal annoyance or rage so spontaneously whenever the spirit moves them. What makes them think this is ok? Jane Fonda probably wondered the same thing many times as she was maligned for her politics.

"She's probably doing the best she can with her life, her kids," he said, "Why couldn't those women just leave her alone and wait?"

And in this little story, I feel great. I feel like the mother of the year! Yes, it could be his genes, his babysitters, his teachers or his friends that nurtured this depth of understanding. But it could also be that my husband and I got this part right. It could be that we taught him, whether directly or by example, how to be a human being capable of empathy; we did the best we could and he is passing it on by what he does.

What's the connection to Jane Fonda's, "My Life So Far?" The thin thread that reminds me, we are so very much all alike. We just want to know we did good, that we connect as human beings. And, we want to keep the critics at bay. We want to soften the blows of those who would expect more than we can give. It is the small moments that make up the story of a life and bravo to those who have the courage to tell them and by that telling, offer up something we can think about in the checkout line.


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Irma Sturgell

Centennial , CO

Irma Sturgell has posted 17 blog entries and 2 comments since joining on 4/13/2006. Irma Sturgell 's average blog rating is 5.
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