“Don’t trust anyone over 30!” I remember the phrase well, but somehow, though I did some eye-rolling back in the day at things my parents said, I never embraced the philosophy. My parents were the babies of their respective families and were 39 when I was born. I am the youngest in a large generation of first cousins. The oldest had children my age or older, so I grew up accustomed to being with “peers” much older than myself, and a diverse lot of relatives. Though it took a long time for my cousins to treat me as an adult, they always treated me with kindness. I never felt a generation gap, as I was always with older relatives. I felt no need to rebel in my personal life.

What I did have was an unstable mother and a father (like others of his generation) who worked long hours. My mother was very artistic, loved music, dance and fine art and took me to see and appreciate all of it. But she suffered tremendous anxiety, depression and self-loathing. Somehow, I was supposed to make up for her supposed short-comings…something that no child could ever live up to. She loved me, not for myself, but for how I reflected on her. My father was a loving, kind man, but couldn’t deal with my mother and worked six days and two nights a week. He nurtured as best he could, but he just wasn’t around much. It was only later in life that I learned what a remarkable human being he was.

I became adept at seeking surrogate mothers to nurture me. I found them amongst my cousins, in a teacher and from my friends’ mothers. I was lucky to turn out a whole human being thanks to the love and continued support of these wonderful women. They know how much I love them to this day and I still turn to them for support and guidance. I am lucky they are in my life. No generation gap here. Only love.

The first such relationship was my cousin Connie, shown, pregnant with her first son and 7-year-old me. I was the 6-year-old flower girl at her wedding and I just adored her. I have three Polaroid photos from that day. I kept them by my bed at all times. The featured photo is the least crumpled. She was kind to me and always had time to talk, even with three little boys of her own around. When we moved from Detroit (where we lived a few blocks away from her father, my dad’s oldest brother) to Huntington Woods, her husband built our house. It was a few miles from hers. If things got too intense in my house, I’d bicycle over to hers, just to be close. I was always friendly with her three sons, though they are younger. They all came out to Boston for both my kids’ b’nai mitzvot. When my parents took a two week vacation to Palm Springs (a trip my father won through his car dealership), when I was an 8th grader, I stayed with Connie and her family. Though we did not live in the same community, they got me to school every day, took me to all my activities and Sunday School, and even left me in charge of the three little boys one night (quite an adventure for this 12 year old non-babysitter). I stay with Connie whenever I go for a Detroit visit now. She held the shiva when my father died. She remains a close confidante. She has known troubles in her personal life, which she has shared with me, but she is strong and brave. She worked as a physical therapist and after retiring, as a yoga instructor.

My father was always close with his first cousin Richard. When I was very young, he divorced and remarried Harriet (a dead-ringer for Jackie Kennedy with her dark bouffant hair style). My parents and Dick and Harriet often socialized, even vacationed together. They lived close to us in Huntington Woods, in an expanding, beautifully decorated home. Harriet is a marvelous hostess and cook, decorator, bridge player, but above all, a docent at the Detroit Institute of Art for over 50 years. Always patient, pleasant and friendly, she put up with Dick’s large dogs in her elegant house and always had time for and interest in me. This was my short bike ride, if I didn’t have time to get to Connie’s. I loved to see all the beautiful objects in Harriet’s home, listen to her discuss them, go with her to the DIA to learn about the art. She struggled to have children and they eventually adopted a baby boy; she treated me like her daughter. When I was home from Brandeis over Christmas break my junior year, she took me to Bonwit Teller and bought me two outfits. One lovely pink dress I wore to my two best friends’ weddings and my rehearsal dinner. The other, a pantsuit, was my go-to, chic, around-campus outfit. I wore it in my senior photo. Harriet had style, which I greatly admired. She threw one of my bridal showers. I still have the fully-outfitted sewing basket that was the present. She called a few months ago to tell me, at the age of 91, she is alive and well, and has moved next-door to her son, where he could care for her. I was so glad to hear from her.

Elaine Zeve was my second grade teacher. I began wearing glasses during that time and she made me feel OK, since she wore them too. I started down my ugly-duckling path during that period, but she asked if I had been named “Elizabeth” after “Elizabeth Taylor”, then considered the most beautiful woman in the world. I was ga-ga over this teacher. She encouraged my love of performing. She came to see me in my school plays. We had her to dinner, and she had me over to her house, where I met her daughter Rhonda, just a few years my senior. Our birthdays were two days apart and for 10 years we exchanged birthday cards, until my senior year in high school I didn’t hear from her, which I thought was strange. Two months later my mother heard that Mrs. Zeve had died of stomach cancer, aged 42. Mother took me to her funeral, the first non-family member’s I had ever attended. I cried my heart out for my lost mentor.

Friends’ mothers have also been surrogate mothers for me. One has been particularly meaningful. Millie is bright and vivacious, for all the world resembling Doris Day. Her daughter and I have been friends since we were 12, though we only lived in the same city for a year in Boston in the mid ’70s, then the 16 months I spent in Chicago, for Millie is a Chicago native. I saw her often in Boston, and constantly in Chicago. She always treated me like her own daughter and imparted wisdom that my mother never could. We puzzled through difficult situations together. She offered generous guidance, kindness, an open heart and perspective. She has lived an interesting life and shares her joys readily with me. She encourages and protects. She is political and wise. She has great taste, loves classical music, is a wonderful cook; she is what a mother should be. She wrote the best letter when my father died. I treasure it more than 27 years later. She taught me how to grieve, and I use it as a model when I need to write a condolence note. I love her with all my heart.

Thanks to these women, I have been able to synthesize a stable personality for myself. I didn’t distrust “The Man”, I was too busy trying to become a woman.

 

The Sister Lottery

Just this morning I learned that one of my good friends has an older sister. They’re extremely different, apparently, but mostly their value systems appear to be miles apart. “I just don’t like her and I have no respect for her,” my friend concluded.

I couldn’t help but reflect on the relationship I have with my only sibling, Kathy. I won the Sister Lottery, hands down. There is no one, no other person in the universe I’d rather have for my sister than Kathy. Well, maybe George Clooney’s wife so I could use the Lake Como place, but Kathy would agree to that in a second – that’s what a great sister she is!

As little girls we certainly had our arguments. And I did chase her under the kitchen table once. But we were really close friends, partly because our family moved quite a bit. Every year for seven years Kathy and I were the new kids in school. Ours was a tightknit family of four: Mom, Dad, Kathy and me. Sometimes the moves were to fairly exotic places like Montreal and Switzerland, so it was interesting. But still, you need a buddy when you’re in a new place and Kathy was always there. Often we shared a bedroom when I knew, as the older one, she would have preferred her own room but knew I didn’t want to be alone.

Early on, the family knew that Kathy was an incredibly caring person and she DID NOT LIE. Now that kind of perfection made it rather hard for me. She was the ideal daughter; I was just a typical kid. I played with my mom’s things without permission, didn’t make my bed, fudged the truth, tried to manipulate my parents, broke curfew, etc, etc. Kathy committed none of those sins, so of course I looked even more evil in comparison to her. I am sure there are times I was frustrated at being compared to Kath, but somehow it never translated into my disliking her. She seemed to inspire kindness by her very nature.

As time went on and we grew to be adults I saw the example Kathy provided for others and me. She set a high standard for herself, and didn’t compromise her integrity. She’s always been a great listener and very supportive of me. Besides her moral character, Kathy has always been an exceptional student – endlessly curious – and very artistic. And she’s a really good athlete. Did I mention she excels at languages AND baking? But you see I cannot be jealous of her because we love each other too much. And in a funny twist, her sweet nature has taught me not to be jealous of her.

So, does Kathy have ANY bad traits or weaknesses? Sure she does. But what kind of a sister would I be if I wrote them in this essay? I’m enormously lucky because I do respect Kath and we share the same value system. However, she will be mortified with embarrassment when she reads this. She might chase ME under the kitchen table.

As wonderful as she is, Kathy hit a new high in my mind this summer when she was visiting me with her daughter and grandchildren. After a long day at the beach, we came home and collapsed on the couch. The adults were about to have a much-deserved cocktail when Charlie, the 4 year old, came bounding into the room shouting, “Grandma! Can we go outside and play Paw Patrol soldiers?”

Without missing a beat, Kathy chimed back, “I’ll get my sword!” and ran outside with him.

 

 

 

Years ago, while visiting my sister, one Sunday I went to church with her and her family. I remember the pastor delivering his thoughts about how many times in our lives we are faced with choices. Choices which cause us to make decisions as to what path in life we might choose to take and how such decisions or choices might influence the rest of our life, in fact our own destiny. He then shared a personal experience he and his wife had.

 

It began years prior, shortly after he and his wife had married and they were just getting started with his first position as a pastor of a small church. A friend whom he had known for many years brought a friend to his house one evening and asked if they could have a few moments of his time as they had a potential business proposition for him.

Both he and his wife listened intently to what the two businessmen were offering. It just so happened one of them had a recipe for a chip and they felt this was going to be a huge success because of a well thought out marketing plan they had developed. Back in those days, potato chips were common place but always packaged in large family sized bags. Part of their marketing strategy was going to include packaging their new chip (which was not a potato chip) in smaller individual sized bags thus making them convenient to put in lunches.

At the end of the meeting, the gentleman laid out their business plan and explained they needed a third partner. Each one of the proposed partners would be required to submit $1000.00 for an equal partnership which was the necessary capital required to successfully get the business off the ground.

At the end of the presentation both the pastor’s wife and the pastor told them they would need some time to think it over to which they agreed. A week later they met with the two gentlemen and informed them that after giving the matter great deliberation and looked for the answers in their faith, they had decided they would have to pass up the offer. While they did in fact have the money in their savings, they worried about so many things that any young family would; needing the savings for an emergency, possibly being transferred, let alone the possibility of the business failing. The risk just seemed too high.

Both the pastor and his wife lived a comfortable and happy life as they continued their commitment to their faith. Some years later the pastor decided to check in on his friend and invited him over for dinner. Having wondered for many years how things might have turned out had he and his wife taken part in the business venture, he asked how their business had faired. His friend explained that after successfully finding a third and equal partner, everything had gone as planned and had far exceeded even their wildest imagination. When he asked what the name of the company was his friend simply said, “Our company is called is Frito-Lay.”

As I sat listening to the pastor that day I couldn’t help but wonder if the pastor honestly had any regrets. He went on to explain many times in our lives we are faced with forks in the road and how many times we would question which path we should take. What might look like the right path at the time just possibly could lead to some place we might regret. Then again, who knows. I recall him trying to explain how many times he wondered had he become a successful and wealthy partner how it might have changed him or led him away from his faith and in doing so, what then of the paths of others in his flock that he felt he had helped over the years since.

 

Footnote:  C.E. Doolin entered a small San Antonio cafe and purchased a bag of corn chips. Mr. Doolin learned the corn chips manufacturer was eager to sell his small business, so he purchased the recipe, began making Fritos corn chips in his mother’s kitchen and sold them from his Model T Ford.

That same year, Herman W. Lay began his own potato chip business in Nashville by delivering snack foods. Not long after, Mr. Lay purchased the manufacturer and formed H.W. Lay & Company. The company became one of the largest snack food companies in the Southeast. In 1961, H.W. Lay & Company merged with the Frito Company, becoming Frito-Lay, Inc.

In 1965, Frito-Lay, Inc. merged with Pepsi-Cola to form PepsiCo.

It was 1974, and after two years of working at the US Department of Transportation, I was ready to quit my job and go to law school. I had applied to several schools on the East Coast, as well as UC Berkeley and two other California schools that I didn’t know much about. Those last three were the result of  my 1970 visit to Berkeley described in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and years of hearing songs like California Dreamin’ and the entire Beachboys catalogue.

After all the acceptances, rejections, and waiting lists had shaken out, I was trying to make up my mind between two law schools that were similar in size and status, Boston College and the University of California at Davis. Since I was living in Cambridge at the time, in a beautiful big old house on Cambridge Street, the easier path was to pick Boston College. My college boyfriend was halfway through a two-year stint at Oxford on a Marshall Fellowship, and had already been accepted at Harvard Law for his return the following year. So I could stay in my house, resume the relationship with my boyfriend, and keep hanging out with all my other friends while going to law school.

There WAS that lure of California though. And the UC Davis Women’s Caucus was extremely active and had been writing to me ever since I had first requested an application.

It was a tough choice, but after weighing all the competing considerations, I decided on Boston College, and had written the check to send in for my deposit. Before I got around to mailing it, I had a business trip to Washington, D.C. to meet with some transportation people there. Whenever I went to D.C. I stayed with my college roommate Kathy. That night at dinner we talked about my law school choices. Kathy was of the opinion that I should NOT go to Boston College and stay in my same Cambridge life (or my same rut, as she called it). This was the best time to go someplace new, and have some new adventures. Plus, as she reminded me, I was very competitive with my college BF, and if he was at Harvard while I was at BC, it would not be good for my self-esteem or our relationship.

So I ended up at UC Davis. I packed up all my belongings in my trusty Valiant (My 1966 Plymouth Valiant convertible) and drove across country to a place I had never seen before.

My first year in Davis I was miserable. The school was great — very supportive atmosphere, and 48% women in my class, at a time when most law schools were 5-10% women — but the town was the pits. I hadn’t looked at a map very closely, and I thought it was in the Bay Area, or at least a lot closer than it was — 80 miles to San Francisco, and sometimes as much as a two-hour drive with traffic. Davis had no decent restaurants, no culture, and nobody I knew. The entire telephone book was the size of the A’s in the Boston phone book. I had made a huge mistake. So I decided I would transfer to someplace — anyplace — “back East” at the end of first year.

I almost did too. But I went to Boston in June for the wedding of some college classmates and stayed for several days. In one year in California I HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT HUMIDITY! Even though I had grown up in New Jersey, and had lived with humid summers all my life, the beautiful dry heat of Davis had changed me. I had been seduced by the weather. In fact, I had spent the entire spring quarter lying out on a ledge of the law school building suntanning in between classes, and had turned a beautiful shade of bronze, as you can see from the Featured Image. So I stayed in Davis for the rest of law school, and eventually moved only a few miles away, to Sacramento, where I have lived ever since.

Many, many times over the past forty years I have wondered how my life would have gone if I had picked Boston College instead of Davis. I imagine I would still be living in Cambridge, a city that I love very much, assuming I managed to buy a house at a time when they were affordable. I’m sure I would have worked in the public sector after law school, maybe even for the Attorney General’s Office like I did in California. I would have been able to spend more time with my mother and oldest sister, because of living on the same side of the country, which would have been nice, especially in my mother’s declining years.

I don’t think it would have worked out with my college BF, I’m pretty sure Kathy was right about that. Would I have met someone else? Would I have ever married or had children? For some reason I think the answer to that might be “no.” I might have stayed single, and done a lot of traveling whenever I felt like it, unconstrained by responsibilities to other people, like one of my Cambridge Street roommates has done. And now, forty years later and being (presumably) retired, maybe I would have taken over my mother’s house in Florida and started doing the snowbird commute between Cambridge and Delray Beach every year to avoid the cold winters.

This prompt asks for an alternative story, and I don’t have one, I just have questions and maybes. It’s too hard to imagine my life as a Boston lawyer. Maybe some day I will write a novel about my fictional Boston self.

I stopped using my diaphragm. Not surprisingly, I got pregnant.
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Accounting was just add-subtract-multiply-divide, right? Apparently not.
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Shy people often come alive through acting. I was no exception. Though a skirt-hugger as a little girl, I started singing publicly as a 7 year old, and acting at about the same time. Everyone thought I had some talent and I was encouraged to pursue it. I was passionate about it. With the stage lights blinding me, I could become someone else and escape into some fantasy world, explore new places and facets of myself, get away and be someone else.

Though I could move well, I felt awkward and from the time I got glasses at the age of 8, I went through a serious ugly-duckling phase. My beloved second grade teacher discovered I had a knack for voices. I could cackle, so when we read fairy tales aloud in class, I would read the witch or old lady. Mrs Zeve had been a “radio” major in college (I think today we’d call it communications) and she encouraged her shy charge to voice other characters. She proudly came to see me play Gretel in the all school (K-8) production of “Hansel and Gretel” when I was a mere 5th grader. We moved out of Detroit that year, but I didn’t lose touch with Mrs. Zeve. The one photo I have of her was after a high school production of “Arsenic and Old Lace”. I played Elaine, the love interest. My mentor died the next year at the age of 42. She never knew that I went on to be a theatre major in college.

I spent six glorious summers at the National Music Camp (now the Interlochen Arts Camp) in Interlochen, MI during the ’60s, majoring in voice and drama, also taking dance. I sang in the chorus, took Operetta, and had good parts in the High School dramas, culminating in the role of Hermia in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 1969. Though not a strong enough singer to ever have a lead in the operettas, the director always gave me extra acting bits to do and rewarded me with the Operetta Chorus Award the three summers I was in the High School division, even going so far as to name me the best female chorus member for the first 25 years of Operetta of all time at the camp!

I was more determined than ever about my craft, got all my general curriculum requirements out of the way during Freshman year at Brandeis and honed in on theatre, which at the time had an excellent theatre program, with a strong graduate program and would hire many professional actors to come in, take leads in the productions and teach part-time in the studio classes.

I began with small parts in large main stage plays and other parts in plays directed by the grad students. For my “tech” requirement, I began stage managing. I was good at it.

By sophomore year, I had a lead in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Junior year, I won the coveted role of Sarah Brown in “Guys and Dolls” against a large field of grad students. The director said he wanted “a little dynamo”. He hired a professional in his mid-40s to play opposite me in the role of Sky Masterson (the role played by Marlon Brando in the movie). Jack had a beautiful singing voice, but needed a hair piece and girdle to go on-stage and look somewhat appropriate. We were an odd couple. He was hardly believable as the dashing gambler who sweeps me off my feet, takes me to Havana on a bet, but actually falls for me. I know…this is ACTING.

The director didn’t help. His directions were mushy. Ultimately, I felt I gave a better first audition than final performance. It is not supposed to be that way. The reviews came in and I never forgot them. The Worcester Telegram said, “Elizabeth Sarason is a superb Sarah”. Boston After Dark wasn’t as kind. “Elizabeth Sarason plays a passing flirtation with the correct key. She acts better than she sings and looks better than she acts. Enough said.” I was devastated. Except for a dancing/acting role in a friend’s senior honor’s project (“An Evening With Garcia Lorca”) and the role of Clea in “Black Comedy”, I have not been in a show since. I am not thick-skinned. I did not have a strong enough drive to overcome the rejection.

I became one of the top stage managers at Brandeis. Senior year, I stage managed the complicated show “Lenny”, for which I was awarded departmental honors.

“Two roads diverge in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both”. Robert Frost wrote “The Road Less Taken” 100 years ago. Randall Thompson turned it into a popular song that I first sang at camp as a 13 year old and as recently as last May in my current chorus. I did not continue with acting, but did with singing, another form of artistic expression which continues to offer gratification. I have thought about roads not taken, both in pursuit of life achievements and love life and what might have been. But one can’t dwell on those thoughts…the “what if’s” or “what might have beens”. One lives life one day at a time; moving forward.

He nodded the beak of his perfectly molded, authoritarian-style trooper’s hat in my direction.
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