Miscreants

I went to the movies this morning and was greatly touched by “Lion.” Yes, because it was a “true” story well told, with the good guys clearly demarcated from the bad guys. And yes, because I am a softie. But mostly,
I think, because I needed a really good cry. Why?

No matter what happened in the first 10 months of 2016, November eclipsed all of that and turned our collective memory into thinking that 2016 has been a crappy year. At least for more than half of the voting humans in the USA. It isn’t because the candidate of our choice lost - or was robbed, as may yet be proven to be the case. It was never about the candidate, as a personality, for me. It was about what she knew, how she was connected, and what she represented. What we got in November is the other guy, someone who doesn’t know anything about the job he’s taking on, is connected to people I never want to know, and who represents everything I don’t value.

So: not such a good year, with sides taken and held, and each side defining the other in hideous terms. Nearly everyone became a bad guy in the process.

In the last few moments of 2016 Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds died within a day of one another. More to cry about. I don’t blame Debbie for letting go. She was in her 80’s, and when her precious difficult beloved and torturing child died, it was no surprise that Debbie wanted to be with her to try to ease Carrie in death. They were bound. Debbie couldn’t bear to untie herself. So she caught up with Carrie. They will remain forever tied.

I got the measles when I was 11. Had to stay in bed without any personal communication device, no TV in my room, no internet. I did have a record player. I played my 78 rpm record of Gogie Grant singing “The Wayward Wind”. It wasn’t quite enough to keep me occupied while I recovered, so I gathered all my movie magazines and made a scrapbook about Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. They were the absolute darlings of the world and I knew that spending vicarious time in their company would cheer me.

Eddie had long been my sweetheart. He starred in a weekly 15-minute program on NBC called “Coke Time.” The theme song was “May I Sing to You?” And YES – he COULD sing to me, please! I thought he was SO cute. That dark, thick curly hair, those dimples, and those romantic love songs. His piece de resistance as far as I was concerned, was “Oh My Papa.” To this day, I melt in a pool of teary weeps when I hear him sing that song. He seemed like a perfect guy, equal to and deserving of Debbie’s adorableness.

I put together a big fat scrapbook of their romance that culminated in a wedding on September 26th, 1955 (my sister’s 6th birthday). The union brought together America’s Sweetheart (after Clara Bow and before Meg Ryan) and the Nice Jewish Boy From Philly who were seemingly madly in love, and therefore, immune to obstacles. All smiles.

I cut photos out of the magazines and glued them into my scrapbook (with an eye to layout and white space, even then). I wrote captions. The pages were organized by themes/chapters: life prior to stardom; Debbie before Eddie; Eddie before Debbie; Tammy in love; together. In subsequent years I added pages dedicated to Carrie’s birth. Todd showed up with less fanfare. Happily, I stopped this project well before the whole Elizabeth Taylor thing and Eddie’s turn at being a really bad guy, so my scrapbook reeked with an appropriate innocence.

That’s my primary Debbie Reynolds memory.

My primary Carrie Fisher memory is seeing her live on stage in Berkeley performing her own 1-person play. Two friends and I had gone to the Bay area. The three of us saw Carrie perform: she was funny, self-effacing, clever, charming, greatly overweight. We loved her, exposed warts and all.

I had loved her from her roles in “When Harry Met Sally” and “Shampoo.”
I had seen her in the first Star Wars, but as I don’t care much about those films and only saw the first one, that major aspect of her life was not of real interest to me.

And of course, she wrote “Postcards From The Edge” which made us all feel that we knew her personally.

It will be interesting to see how I remember all of this 2016 flotsam. And how each of you does. I fear the coming four years are going to challenge all of our assumptions many times over: right/wrong; good/bad; up/down, whatever/whenever. It’s already started with Big Brother setting us up to believe that The Emperor is actually wearing clothing. Mixed references in that sentence, but you get the idea, right? I think it may become difficult to be clear on who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

So here I am, thanking “Lion” for giving me an excuse to cry as a pre-emptive preparation for what is yet to be. I don’t feel well armed. But I do feel cathartically cleansed by my tears, so perhaps I will actually be clear enough to recognize whatever it is that shows up, and clear enough to recognize what lies beneath the guise of the messenger. I hope I can do even better than that when I need to. The best I can do right now is wish you clarity, strength, intensity that serves you well, and - like Debbie and Carrie - nearness to the ones you love. In 2017, and evermore.