The Time of Our Lives by Peggy Noonan

Author:Peggy Noonan [NOONAN, PEGGY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2015-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

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During the summer, when you were a kid, your dad worked a few towns away and left at 8:30; Mom stayed home smoking and talking and ironing. You biked to the local school yard for summer activities—twirling, lanyard making, dodgeball—until afternoon. Then you’d go home and play in the street. At 5:30 Dad was home and at 6 there was dinner—meat loaf, mashed potatoes and canned corn. Then TV and lights out.

Now it’s more like this: Dad goes to work at 6:15, to the city, where he is an executive; Mom goes to work at the bank where she’s a vice president, but not before giving the sitter the keys and bundling the kids into the car to go to, respectively, soccer camp, arts camp, Chinese lessons, therapy, the swim meet, computer camp, a birthday party, a play date. Then home for an impromptu barbecue of turkey burgers and a salad with fresh Parmesan cheese followed by summer homework, Nintendo and TV—the kids lying splayed on the couch, dead eyed, like denizens of a Chinese opium den—followed by “Hi, Mom,” “Hi, Dad” and bed.

Life is so much more interesting now! It’s not boring, like 1957. There are things to do: The culture is broader, more sophisticated; there’s more wit and creativity to be witnessed and enjoyed. Moms, kids and dads have more options, more possibilities. This is good. The bad news is that our options leave us exhausted when we pursue them and embarrassed when we don’t.

Good news: Mothers do not become secret Valium addicts out of boredom and loneliness, as they did 30 and 40 years ago. And Dad’s conversation is more interesting than his father’s. He knows how Michael Jordan acted on the Nike shoot, and tells us. The other night Dad worked late and then they all went to a celebratory dinner at Rao’s where they sat in a booth next to Warren Beatty, who was discussing with his publicist the media campaign for “Bulworth.” Beatty looked great, had a certain watchful dignity, ordered the vodka penne.

Bad news: Mom hasn’t noticed but she’s half mad from stress. Her face is older than her mother’s, less innocent, because she has burned through her facial subcutaneous fat and because she unconsciously holds her jaw muscles in a tense way. But it’s OK because the collagen, the Botox, the Retin-A and alpha hydroxy, and a better diet than her mother’s (Grandma lived on starch, it was the all-carb diet) leave her looking more… fit. She does not have her mother’s soft, maternal weight. The kids do not feel a pillowy yielding when they hug her; they feel muscles and smell Chanel body moisturizer.

When Mother makes fund-raising calls for the school, she does not know it but she barks: “Yeah, this is Claire Marietta on the cookie drive we need your cookies tomorrow at 3 in the gym if you’re late the office is open till 4 or you can write a check for $12 any questions call me.” Click.

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