Sometimes I feel bad when what I write in this travelog is all about me. Then I think: “any of the boys could write a travelog!” This one’s mine, and it’s on my website, so there! 😝
Thinking about aging, about women in the next chapter… I just read this incredible interview with Isabella Rossellini, and it’s going with my thoughts about Iris Apfel, who just passed away at the age of 102. And the obit of Iris reminds me of something Emerald Fennell, the director of Saltburn, said about herself: “I’m a maximalist.” I love that word. Maybe it’s especially hitting me because of all the time I’ve spent with the music of the most famous minimalist around, though actually I found the entry point into his music, for me anyway, is unlocking the most dramatic, uninhibited levels of expression. Anyway, obviously Iris was a maximalist, and that’s why we all loved her. But there’s something, too, about the fact that neither she nor Isabella chose to fight their aging. In Spain and France, I really noticed a lack of fillers. Of obvious face work having been done. So many gorgeous, lined faces, in Paris especially. Here in London, I saw a BUNCH of ladies these last few days with the super puffy lips, and some others with obvious facelifts. I just don’t get it. We only see the work that’s been done. And I’ll try to see what they were hoping to achieve, but it just looks like a mask. Why spend money on that? Why recover and deal with pain for that? Is it because, as Isabella says in this article, we are having a hard time with the transition between roles? Feeling like once we’re past that age of being seen as attractive, of young motherhood, of the roles women are appreciated for, we may become invisible? I know that fear.
I hung out today with another friend whom I haven’t seen in ~20 years. Her son is only 3, and my boys were very taken with him. Griffin said he wanted to adopt him. Walking around the science museum, it brought me back to being at the Boston Science Museum when my boys were that age. Now I can leave them alone in an exhibit and so my own thing. I can let them walk away from me and know they’ll be ok. We’re far from the point of empty nesting, but we are talking about college, and for me that means thinking about that next stage, when I’m not a mom for a majority of my waking hours (or all of them, while we’re homeschooling!). My own mom is the coolest. She did a number of career 180s in her life, and still makes art and keeps up with friends and family and culture and the things she’s always cared about. I don’t have far to look, when it comes to a role model of a creative, dynamic life. In the middle of this bubble year- a year different from all the rest of our lives, and a year in which I feel like I am in a bubble with these boys a lot of the time, for all the joy and craziness that that entails, that’s a nice thought.
