Making Babies

"Happy Birthday Sweetie. How are you?" a parent tells his/her daughter who has just turned thirty something. Daughter responds with "I want to have a baby." It's a common scenario. Behind the young woman's statement is the ticking of her biological clock. Like millions of other young women in their 30s in postindustrial America, including the three authors of Three Wishes, she has put career on the front burner, ahead of marriage and motherhood. But like Pam Ferdinand, one of the three authors of Three Wishes, they all share some version of Ferdinand's dream in her early 20s: "I had imagined myself in the future as a married mother with five children living on a farm in Vermont."

Journalists Carey Goldberg, Beth Jones and Ferdinand (GJF) have written a revealing and well integrated account of their respective journeys from being single successful professionals to married successful mothers -- and professionals. Along the way to their longed for destinations, they had to navigate a bunch of difficult shoals -- including kissing a bunch of frogs (if I may mix my metaphors).

Author Goldberg decided to try IVF at age 39 after she broke up with a cheating
boyfriend. Sometime after she successfully convinced a new one to become a father to a child, they broke up, she had the baby and then became involved with a third somewhat older fellow who said about Goldberg's daughter, "I don't love her yet, but I'm sure I will love her. That relationship too collapsed.

Jones conceived with her husband who reacted to the news of her pregnancy by saying, "This isn't the most convenient time," Then she miscarried, divorced and had an unplanned pregnancy with a boyfriend (who had a track record of numerous short-term relationships). "We'll figure this out," he said when she told him she was pregnant. "You just have to give me a little time." Then came a phone call from a genetic counselor, "I have your amnio results. . . . Beth, I'm sorry," and she aborted a Down Syndrome fetus. At one point, Goldberg gave her a vial of sperm that Goldberg had received from a sperm bank (which in the end neither of them needed.) The story goes on from there.

Ferdinand too took a while before she reached the promised land. For a while she was busy with a creep who described some vacation plans at one point, "come over with me and spend the first five days there. Then the guys [will] come [and you'll go home.] She too received the magic vial which in turn -- well, read the book.
In addition to the above problems, GJF also experience the threat of infertility and fear of familial rejection if they chose to use IVF.

One of several delightful features of Three Wishes is that it has some of the attributes of a mystery. The reader quickly becomes involved in their lives and determination to become pregnant. But this time the mystery is not who done it -- but who (as in which guy) will it ("it" as in get the woman pregnant)? And who will stick around?

For many women in GJF's predicament the ending is not a happy one. Many don't or can't take the chance of becoming single mothers. But for GJF themselves, it all works out in the end: children and husbands/fathers. Did I give away the ending? Don't worry. The book's mystery is in the process much more than in the ending(s).
Three Wishes inspires the reader to empathize with the authors' quest for parenthood and even cheer them on. One more thing -- although it might sound like a "woman's book," its scope is too big and too compelling for such narrow categorization. The book deserves a broad readership.

a tale of Zimbabwe

Has author Douglas Rogers increased the dangers facing his parents from Zimbabwe's Mugabe regime by writing about them in his compelling and remarkable book, The Last Resort? Given Rogers obvious intelligence, street smarts and first-hand familiarity with their situation, probably not. More likely the fame he has probably given them acts as a protective shield around the brave couple.

On one level, the subject of The Last Resort is Rogers's family. But the author, ordinarily a travel writer, has written one of those fascinating memoirs that tell a broad story that goes beyond what it looks like at first. Want to better understand what's going on in crazy Pres. Robert Mugabe was Zimbabwe, read Roger's book.

In many ways, the Rogers family symbolizes the experience of a large number of white farmers whose families settled long ago in the former Rhodesia. Despite how the repressive regime portrays its policy of appropriating white owned farms as land reform, that is not at all what it is. It's theft pure and simple which is not even benefiting the poor people. It is not at all simply a matter of white versus black. Most of the victims of Mugabe's repressive policies are black Africans who support his political opposition. True the Rogers were born into privilege, but they long ago accepted and perhaps even embraced black African rule.

When Mugabe first began his crackdown on Zimbabwe's white farmers, Rogers called his parents from the UK where he was then living.

"What's going on?" He asked his mother when she picked up the phone.

"Oh it's terrible, terrible!"

"What's happened?" He asked, his heart in his mouth.

"They lost."

"Who lost?"

"Why the cricket team."

It wasn't that Rogers' mother was unaware of what was going on. But she kept her perspective. As it happened, initially the Rogers got a pass from the appropriation policy; they own a resort, not a farm. But that didn't stop gangs of young toughs from riding up to their front door waving weapons in the air. In addition, through entirely extralegal manipulation, at one point Rogers' father finds out that his lost legal title to his land. But still they hang on.

Gradually, the Rogers' resort, having lost its tourist customers, metamorphized with part of it serving as a haven initially for white Zimbabweans who were forced off their land and part of it as a bar which attracted people from the nearest city. In addition, for part of the time some of the land was sublet by a man who ran what amounted to a bordello.

Along with plenty of scenes of high tension, Rogers provides a number of comic scenes in a gripping writing style that deserves a wide readership.

A Horse Story

The human experience is such that some people carve their own paths out of misery. In the case of Susan Richards, author of Saddled: How a Spirited Horse Reined Me in and Set Me Free, her way out of the alcoholism that threatened to destroy her was to love and care for a horse. Only several years after she stopped drinking did she join Alcoholics Anonymous.

Richards' drinking followed a disastrous childhood. A number of people in her family were alcoholics, her mother died when she was young, and soon afterward, her father abandoned her and her brother, leaving them unattended and alone. Only after three terrifying days did her grandmother’s chauffeur come and take the children to her house. Afterwards, Richards was shuffled around from one unloving relative to another.

Reading Saddled, I wondered about Richards’ focus on a horse and her penchant for divining what the horse thinks. I was reminded of the Tom Hank’s film, Castaway. In the film, a plane crash survivor on a small deserted island developed a dependency on “Wilson” a volleyball that also washed ashore, that the Hank’s character anthropomorphized, and on which he painted a face. I suggest that this strange relationship somewhat parallels that of Richards and her horse. In both cases, desperate people reach out to find a way out of their loneliness.

Part of the reason for the success of books like Richards’ (and films like Castaway) is how they plumb the depths of a condition that few of us can completely avoid. This is the secret of Wizard of Oz, in which a wicked witch and her simian minions threaten poor Dorothy to her very core. In Richards’ case, the villains include her mean grandmother, the grandmother’s vicious chauffeur, Richards’ second husband and a two-timing boy friend. Both Dorothy and Richards want to “go home” to a secure place.

There is a big difference between Richards and Dorothy, of course. Richards is an adult who must bear responsibility for her actions as a grown up; Dorothy is a fictional child.

This reviewer was tested by Richards’ claim to divine the thoughts of her horse. “There couldn’t have been any doubt in her mind that whatever her status had been for the past year, here she was a celebrity,” Richardson tells the reader at one point. Really?

Richards’ odd claim notwithstanding, she does a fine job of tracing her metamorphosis from abandoned child to abused alcoholic adult to a largely healed person who has resolved many of the problems that plagued her for decades. In the end she became a certified social worker who gained the self-knowledge that she lacked in her earlier years.

Richards tells her story using finely and thoroughly wrought (though sometimes repetitive) scenes, many of which beautifully describe a horse in action. An earlier Richards book, Chosen by a Horse, was a NY Times best seller and despite some of the book’s flaws, Saddle, too could achieve that success. It has a ready audience among the multitude devotees of animal-themed books. In addition, Saddled will also please readers who just want a well-told story of human redemption.

A white Zimbabwean couple holding out against Mugabe

My current reads include: Douglas Rogers fascinating The Last Resort about his and his parents' lives in Zimbabwe. Doug lives in Brooklyn  now - has lived in South Africa and the UK before - But his parents still live on the land that they bought decades ago - and they're holding their own against the drive to push all whites out of the country in which they - and their children - were born.

This is one of those books that's really difficult to put down.

Woodstock Writers Festival: Paula Butturini -- Healing through Food

"If you don't stop walking like Frankenstein, I'm going to punch you," Paula Butturini recalled screaming at her husband toward the end of his recuperation from a bullet wound. They were in Rome. Butturini added that nobody noticed, at which the audience laughed, at her slightly veiled comment about the volume at which Italians speak.

Her husband, New York Times reporter John Tagliabue, was reporting from Romania at the time that the country was in the process of overthrowing its communist regime, when a bullet almost cost him his life. At the time when she made her angry statement, he was still walking with a brace, but his progress in healing had seemed to come to a halt and he had become immersed in depression. "The accident was a defining moment and things start to turn after that," Butturini recalled, adding, "Sometimes anger can be a virtue."

Butturini's new book, Keeping the Feast has just come out. In fact just an hour ago from this time as I sit here composing this posting, the mailman handed me a copy of it. I heard Butturini speak on the second day of the Woodstock Writers Festival. I was a little tempted to delay writing about her until I read the book. But at 260 pages it looks like a quick dash and interesting -- read. I'll post again after I finished it.

Butturini's book is subtitled, "One couple's story of love food and healing in Italy." She and Tagliabue met in Rome in 1985, married four years later, just a month before he was shot. Subsequently he suffered post traumatic stress and fell into a severe depression. Butturini was no stranger to this latter phenomenon; her mother had suffered from it when the author was a child and she was not going to tolerate her husband putting her through the experienced a second time.

Butturini did more than just demand that her husband not give into depression. As part of his therapy, while living in Rome she established some simple rituals of daily life, shopping for foods in Rome's outdoor market and preparing delicious meals which unlike so many couples and families they sat down and shared. Too many people use food as consolation -- and pay for it on the scales. Butturini used food for healing. It worked.

Healing through Food

"If you don't stop walking like Frankenstein, I'm going to punch you," Paula Butturini recalled screaming at her husband toward the end of his recuperation from a bullet wound. They were in Rome. Butturini added that nobody noticed, at which the audience laughed, at her slightly veiled comment about the volume at which Italians speak.

Her husband, New York Times reporter John Tagliabue, was reporting from Romania at the time that the country was in the process of overthrowing its communist regime, when a bullet almost cost him his life. At the time when she made her angry statement, he was still walking with a brace, but his progress in healing had seemed to come to a halt and he had become immersed in depression. "The accident was a defining moment and things start to turn after that," Butturini recalled, adding, "Sometimes anger can be a virtue."

Butturini's new book, Keeping the Feast has just come out. In fact just an hour ago from this time as I sit here composing this posting, the mailman handed me a copy of it. I heard Butturini speak on the second day of the Woodstock Writers Festival. I was a little tempted to delay writing about her until I read the book. But at 260 pages it looks like a quick dash and interesting -- read. I'll post again after I finished it.

Butturini's book is subtitled, "One couple's story of love food and healing in Italy." She and Tagliabue met in Rome in 1985, married four years later, just a month before he was shot. Subsequently he suffered post traumatic stress and fell into a severe depression. Butturini was no stranger to this latter phenomenon; her mother had suffered from it when the author was a child and she was not going to tolerate her husband putting her through the experienced a second time.

Butturini did more than just demand that her husband not give into depression. As part of his therapy, while living in Rome she established some simple rituals of daily life, shopping for foods in Rome's outdoor market and preparing delicious meals which unlike so many couples and families they sat down and shared. Too many people use food as consolation -- and pay for it on the scales. Butturini used food for healing. It worked.