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Shrinkrapped | A mid-life shrink raps about life, friendship, psychology, and politics
In January 2016, some writing friends and I rented a house at the Russian River so we could concentrate on our writing. Naturally, we did anything but—instead we napped, cooked, browsed the internet, stared into space. I was in the kitchen when my friend who was reading the news looked up and announced, “So now Trump says he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody without losing any voters.”
I burst out laughing. I was one of the many back then who regarded Trump’s candidacy as a total joke. At times I found him quite funny, and thought he could have made a go of it as a stand-up comic, what with his innate feel for the audience and sense of comic timing. Yet I couldn’t imagine him getting the nomination, let alone becoming President.
The joke’s on me. It stopped being funny long, long ago. In fact, most of the time I feel terrified. Not so much by Trump, who has always made it perfectly clear that he’s a total fraud who has no business being anywhere near elected office. What alarms me are those voters and so-called adults in the room who have continued to support him no matter how many shots he takes in broad daylight. Even inciting an insurrection hasn’t deterred his tens of millions of fans. Or most of his fellow Republican politicians and nominees who hate his guts but will still vote for him.
Of course, Trump has lost voters, which is why he’s no longer president. But still.
My mind has been boggled and broken thousands of times by what Trump has gotten away with. His latest legal claims of total immunity take the cake. They are as ludicrous and laughable as his becoming president once struck me. But once again the joke’s on me.
So I guess it’s true that Trump could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody without losing any votes.
I just never imagined that the conservative members of the Supreme Court would be driving the getaway car.
My husband and I took advantage of a break in the rain and our schedules to head out for a quick getaway for some early Spring hiking. We always feel the most rejuvenated by short getaways for a night or two–no airports, no need to stop the mail or water the plants, no hours-long traffic to wipe out every moment of hard-won rejuvenation.
We found what we were looking for in Sunol/Ohlone Regional Wilderness. We’ve been many times before, and it’s always a winner. Even though it’s a stone’s throw from Silicon Valley and the massively congested Highway 680, Sunol/Ohlone lives up to its wilderness moniker. Such intensely green hills!
This time we explored some new areas off of Welch Road. We didn’t see a soul–at least not of the human variety, but of course my cow-whisperer was his usual magnetic self:
On our way home, we checked out the new-to-us Vargas Plateau, at the base of Mission Peak in Fremont, overlooking the South/East Bay metropolis:
It was a little early for wildflowers, but there were definitely some great harbingers of the peak season to come:
And, of course, the Johnny Jump Ups have us jumping for joy on this first day of Spring!
I didn’t happen to have a groundhog on hand today, so I used my own shadow as a proxy to predict the future. As usual, results were mixed: Under sunny blue skies, I entered the grocery store to pick up some fruit, and emerged not three minutes later into a downpour. Shadow, then no shadow. So spring around the corner, or six more weeks of winter? Where I live, in northern California, winter and rain have become obsolete concepts, replaced by “God, how can we bear this 40-degree temperature?” and “atmospheric rivers.” So I guess today predicted Sprinter and Wing, and lots more of it. Which is not that surprising, since the daffodils are out while the creeks run high under cloudy and blue skies. Per usual.
Per usual is the point of why Groundhog Day is one of my favorite holidays, or at least one of my favorite movies. Nothing else quite captures how one day is much like another, on and on. Our routines are both deliriously comforting and maddeningly monotonous. A creature of habit, I quite like it that way.
Groundhog Day strategically falls right as January’s flush of new resolve–“This year, things will really change!”–gets flushed down the toilet. Who were we kidding? It feels good to burrow under the covers instead of rising early to write, and who wants to down a green energy drink instead of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia just when it’s getting to the perfect melty stage? Out with the new, in with the old.
Speaking of old, you may have heard there’s an election this year featuring two old guys who’ve both been president.
One’s a malignant narcissist who tried to overturn the last election and prefers an address of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue over–Oh, let’s say–a prison cell. The other’s a decent guy who’s gotten a lot of good done despite massive obstruction, a stammer and stiff gait, and some questionable embraces that are not of the sexual-assault type favored by the first and former guy.
The election’s actually a do-over of 2020, only worse, which has a lot of people far more upset than the do-over Bill Murray faced day after day in Groundhog Day. Bill Murray’s plight had a Hollywood ending.
As for the ending of our Same-old, Same-old election contest in November? It all depends on voters whether we’ll be cast back into the shadows or emerge into the light.
This picture haunts me. It’s of Brittany Watts, a 34-year-old Black woman from Ohio, at a court hearing last month, where a judge ruled she could be tried for the felony charge of abusing a corpse after she miscarried. Such things have happened before, especially when the targets are poor or of color. But there’s no doubt that anti-choice fanaticism in the wake of Roe’s upending contributes mightily to this obscene persecution. Here’s the backstory to this picture of a woman caught in a nightmare.
On September 19, 2023, Ms. Watts had gone to the hospital because she appeared to be miscarrying 21 weeks into her pregnancy. Although doctors recommended inducing delivery of her non-viable fetus, she was kept waiting for 8 hours without treatment while the hospital ethics panel debated her fate. She returned the next day and again left without treatment. Soon after, she passed fetal tissue into the toilet, which clogged when she tried to flush. Upon returning to the hospital, a nurse called the police. In October, Ms. Watts was arrested and charged with a seldom-used law against abusing a corpse despite evidence that the fetus died in utero.
Imagine being denied treatment, miscarrying alone at home, then facing charges that could have resulted in a year’s imprisonment.
Fortunately, a grand jury recently ruled against proceeding with this persecution prosecution. The legal case may be over, but the anguish on Ms. Watts face speaks to the indelible horror of our post-Roe abortion landscape.
And this wasn’t even an abortion! But it did occur in the midst of Ohio’s ugly climate as forced-birth proponents in the state legislature tried (unsuccessfully) to severely restrict, even criminalize abortion. As Wendy A. Bach, a law professor at the University of Tennessee noted in the New York Times, “This is part of an ongoing and increasing trend to use the criminal law to punish reproductive health in this country. . . [Ms. Watts’s] punishment started the moment [the hospital’s ethics board] had to debate what to do with her rather than provide her with medical care.”
The cruelty is the point.
But it’s also backfiring. In state after state, voters of all political stripes are rejecting the wet dreams of Gilead. Abortion rights advocates have certainly capitalized on horror story after horror story of what the loss of Roe has meant: a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped being forced to seek an abortion in a neighboring state; her doctor facing egregious threats to her medical license, liberty, livelihood, and reputation; a mother and her pregnant teenager facing charges based on their Facebook messages; women like Texan Kate Cox who desperately want their babies but are unable to get the care they need when the pregnancy goes awry; ob-gyns leaving red states because it’s become impossible to deliver quality care without fear of prosecution in the legal morass of abortion bans.
These, of course, are the stories that generate sympathy and the will to fight back. My heart breaks for the hardships these people face, and I’m grateful to all who have come forward.
But even though the strategy of amplifying such stories has been highly effective at the ballot box, I’m also ambivalent about the hyper-focus on these relatively rare “sympathetic victim” cases.
After all, the vast majority of those needing abortions don’t fall into this category. They shouldn’t have to. Failed birth control, no birth control, casual sex, awkward sex, great sex, acquiesced-to sex, immaturity, drunkenness, having other goals that don’t include childbirth are no less deserving reasons than a tragic turn in a wanted pregnancy or becoming pregnant through rape or incest. There are no categories of deserving or undeserving people when it comes to the decision of whether or when to bear a child. Everyone deserves the freedom to choose.
So come November, choose to overturn the cruelty of the forced-birth movement. Vote blue.
It’s a wonderful novel, a so-so Netflix adaptation, and an expression that captures the essence of this winter solstice season.
This longest night of the year caps off a year of much brutality: Ukraine; the Israeli-Hamas war; a world on fire; so many people hungry, unhoused, desperate; casualties mounting in our gun-obsessed culture; an extremist Republican Party that has enabled a man who should never have been President and is now a coin-flip’s chance away from ascending once again to the Oval Office even as he should be headed to prison. Personal and hidden sorrows that don’t ever make it into the headlines abound. It is sometimes hard to see any light.
And yet it is there: the millions who have not given up on peace and compassion, on seeing the humanity in the other. Those who know that despair is an enervating strategy, and who thus work—tirelessly or tiredly–for change. Hard work bearing fruit. The green fuzz emerging on the gray-brown hills as rains come to the parched earth. Babies and young children whose joy and urgent demands insist on life and laughter. A consoling casserole, an embrace.
The stillness and replenishment of these dark times yields to light. Hope is the light we cannot see.
My husband and I are used to being empty nesters. Our daughters have been living on their own for years, with jobs, partners, plans, and dreams far beyond their childhood universe.
Now we’re empty branchers, too. Along with the cornbread stuffing and apple cake we brought to Thanksgiving, we delivered Emma’s collection of Christmas tree ornaments we’ve been accumulating since before her birth to her and her fiancé.
Emma’s sister Ally got her ornaments in 2019, the first Christmas she lived with her then-boyfriend, now husband. They had a tree higher than the knee-high ones from the supermarket–the criterion for the hand-off. And now so does Emma, so the changeover is complete.
My husband and I thought maybe we’d have to get a knee-high tree ourselves to accommodate our significantly depleted inventory. Luckily, though, I’ve been collecting ornaments since long before I met my husband, long before we had kids. So we did all right, and didn’t even have to dig into the stash of the last-resort ornaments.
I admit it was hard to relinquish one ornament, though–my all-time favorite we got for Emma’s first Christmas.
Emma knew of my attachment, and very thoughtfully said, “I’m not sure I’m ready to have this one yet, though.”
But we both knew it was time. Now my baby in the cradle is in her forever home, just where she belongs:
My husband and I recently saw the Taylor Swift film. Since tickets to her San Francisco show cost $49-499 (plus fees), were hard to come by, and averaged $3,801 on the resale market, we got quite a bargain with our senior rate of $13.25 each. Even the risk of a parking violation for exceeding the 2-hour limit would have made it a steal. And we got much better seats!
Here’s the sum total of my Taylor Swift knowledge before I saw the three-hour film of her last 2023 Eras Tour concert in the U.S, in LA’s SoFi stadium:
She is about the same age as my daughters (who could pretty much care less about her)
She is a young, pretty singer-songwriter who makes the Beatles-era screaming, underwear-throwing audiences seem tame
She is super-rich
Pod Save America host Jon Favreau’s wife, Emily, is a huge fan
Heeding Taylor’s call, 35,000 people registered to vote in one hour
She seems like a nice person
She is either dating or not dating Travis Kelce, an NFL tight end, but is definitely messing with the media
Actually, they both have pretty tight ends. That much I picked up from the movie, as Taylor strutted her stuff, musically and physically, non-stop for an energetic 3-hour extravaganza. Early on, I leaned over and whispered to my husband, “Is this a prequel or a sequel to Barbie?” Taylor and her fellow female blockbuster bear a strong physical resemblance, and both can be interpreted as either sexualized objects or the embodiment of feminist power.
At any rate, my husband and I only made it through the first two hours not because we didn’t like the movie, but because (a) bladder size; (b) we were worried about getting a parking ticket; and (c) we wanted dinner. We didn’t feel we were missing out on that much since there’s no plot or character arc to complete in a live-concert film. We got the gist of her pleasant music, generosity toward her fans, sexpot/wholesome vibe, and fabulous production values.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if Taylor ever missed the time when she was just a girl with the voice and a guitar alone on a stage.
Joan Baez was that girl. To a large extent, she still is. Right after we saw the Taylor Swift movie, we took in the new documentary, Joan Baez: I am a Noise (senior rate: $9.75 each). It makes for an interesting double feature if you’ve got five hours to spare and no fear of parking tickets.
The two—the films and the women–could not be more different. Although there’s music in I am a Noise, it’s by no means a concert movie. But it is a portrait of a full and complicated person—a sister, a daughter, a musician, an artist, an activist, an ambivalent lover, wife, and mother.
I knew a lot about Joan Baez before this film:
Most of her lyrics by heart
Her relationship with Bob Dylan as told through “Diamonds and Rust”
She was jailed, along with my mother-in-law, for a month in Santa Rita County Jail, for blocking an induction center in protest of the Vietnam war–and sang for all the inmates, protesters and prostitutes alike
She was briefly married to the anti-war activist David Harris, and together they had a son, Gabriel
She was ubiquitous at civil rights and anti-war demonstrations
She was Mimi Farina’s sister, and did a set most years at Mimi’s Bread and Roses fundraising concert, which I went to every year at Berkeley’s Greek Theater
Mostly, though, she was the girl on the stage with a guitar and the voice of an angel
What I did not know is that Joan was also a great visual artist; came from a family with extremely complicated dynamics, including a father who probably sexually abused his daughters; had intense love and rivalry with her sisters; and suffered from debilitating anxiety and depression from a young age. She described herself as being great at relating to thousands of people at once, and pretty terrible at one-on-ones. The documentary was one of the most honest self-appraisals I have ever seen.
Although Joan’s inner life is rich with pyrotechnics, her stagecraft had virtually none. When did this change? Was it MTV? Skyrocketing ticket prices demanding more than just a great musician? Audience attention spans of fleas? More likely I’m just another old fogey who thinks things were better in my day. I am definitely of the Joan Baez rather than the Taylor Swift era.
Taylor Swift’s tour was built around her albums as eras, while I am a Noise covered the sweep of some of America’s—and Joan’s own–more turbulent eras. It is more of a Coming to Terms movie than a Coming of Age one. And how could it not be? Joan is in her 9th decade, Taylor just mid-way through her 4th. She hasn’t lived long enough for a true retrospective, but is as important to her era as Joan was to mine.
Long may they both reign. I hope they always hold dear the era of being the girl with the voice and a guitar, alone on stage, and already enough.
The numbing horror of a world gone mad is an apt time for a solar eclipse dubbed “ring of fire.” That describes the doom spirals of Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Gaza, the accelerating climate crisis, and the House Republicans. I feel so much that I feel practically nothing.
As a hassle-averse person, I am not one to look to the heavens if it involves crowds, special glasses, and going beyond my house. Perhaps this leaves me awe-averse, too, missing out on the unity that comes from rare moments of shared mass wonder.
NASA’s incredible photography layers awe with dread: confirmation of a world afire. Then I chanced upon a photo spread in The Atlantic of people all over the world viewing this month’s annular eclipse. At least for a moment, they had escaped the gravitational drag of the world’s heaviness.
I could see them, but I felt apart. Only the lone dove on a power pole in Brazil, silhouetted against the eclipse-bitten sun, broke through to me. A fragile, gangly emblem of the peace I hope for, so stark, small, but somehow here.
Of everything that’s been aired about Hunter Biden, this photo breaks my heart the most. It accompanies a recent New York Times article, “President Biden Keeps Hunter Close Despite Political Peril.” Of course he does. What I find so heartbreaking is the haunted look on Hunter’s face.
From the beginning of learning about Hunter’s history and struggles, I’ve been worried that the witch hunt against him–yes, let’s call it what it is–will break his sobriety, break him. The gun at the center of his indictment ended up in the dumpster because his brother’s widow, with whom Hunter had an affair, threw it there, worried that Hunter would use it to kill himself. I worry about that, too. It’s hard enough to face one’s demons without being the subject of a political party hellbent on destroying you in the most publicly humiliatingly way possible to get at your father.
Yes, Hunter’s done awful stuff. He used his family name to make a lot of money (unlike anyone named Trump or everyone in the history of nepotism). I’m okay with Hunter facing legal consequences, although it’s obvious that he’s been relentlessly investigated and now charged far more heavily than typically happens because Republicans want to create a shitstorm for the President.
I also wish that Joe Biden had told Hunter to stay away from any business opportunities remotely connected with President Obama’s and his own administrations–and certainly to stay away from the state dinner for Prime Minister Modi at the White House this summer.
It’s tough to be a parent of an adult child. It’s even tougher when there’s a history of trauma and addiction. I’ve not dealt personally with addiction in my family, but as a therapist I’ve seen lots of it in my practice. It is one of the most destructive forces I’ve witnessed, and nearly impossible for any parent to know how to respond. Being able to kick addiction–or be the parent of an addict–are two of the hardest and most courageous things I can think of. As a parent myself, I’ve never quite been sure if what I’m doing is helpful or harmful, and my kids haven’t had to deal with any major problems. I can only imagine what it’s been like for Joe Biden and his family.
When I first saw the aforementioned article, I thought, “Here goes, another hit piece.” What emerged instead is a portrait of anguish and an unshakeable loving bond. Hunter is lucky to have such a dad. My most fervent hope is that he has the strength to come through all this without self-destructing.
I also hope that Joe Biden and the country survive the mind-boggling behavior of the Republicans in their quest to hang onto power. After exhaustive investigations, there has been zero evidence of any wrong-doing by the President. Nonetheless, the far-right Freedom Caucus, which holds the U.S. House and its cowardly Speaker hostage, plans to shut down the government and impeach Joe Biden, apparently, as some wag said, for the crime of being a father.
Marjorie Taylor Greene has admitted that the aim of this gambit is to make sure Republicans win big in 2024. She told Donald Trump that she wants the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.”
When I was in grade school, I desperately wanted a Barbie. My parents, opposed on principle, got me a Midge doll instead—brunette, freckled, and definitely not Barbie. I was devastated, but had to act grateful for this clearly inferior model. (The same held true when, instead of a Barbie Dreamhouse or even a normal center-hall colonial dollhouse, a play gas station awaited me under the Christmas tree.)
My second-rate Midge had a first-rate wardrobe, however. Not because my parents made up for their failures by buying lots of Mattel outfits, but because my friend Tim’s mother, an accomplished seamstress, constantly gave me exquisitely sewn miniature costumes. I don’t know why she did this. Did Tim have a crush on me? Was his much-older sister far too cool for Barbie? Did my parents secretly pay Tim’s mom to keep further profits out of Mattel’s dirty clutches?
Somehow I overcame my devastation. The Barbie years left little impact other than making me careful about how my husband and I handled our own daughters years later. Since I’d taken to heart that thwarting wishes for the real deal only increases desire, we bought no Midge dolls for our girls. Or possibly any Barbie’s—not out of principle, but because they got plenty as birthday presents. At any rate, the furor over Barbie Lust and the people who decried it had died down by the time our daughters were of age. Just as First Wave and Second Wave feminism evolved into something less compelling, Third Wave Barbieism just wasn’t as fervent.
In fact, the last time I remember my daughters playing with their Barbies was when they were 13 and 10. In honor of my recently joining Weight Watchers, Emma and Ally fashioned a hilarious skit with their Barbies seated around a coffee table, mimicking a day-time women’s talk show. The Barbies extolled the virtues of “FatZap,” a miracle new weight loss pill. “I lost 200 pounds overnight,” Ally’s Barbie gushed, as Emma’s doll enthused, “FatZap has changed my life!” The girls concluded the show with their best fast-talking disclaimer voice: “FatZap! Consult your doctor to see if it’s for you. Results not guaranteed. May result in serious complications, such as sagging skin, heart attack, vanishing, and death.” My mother would have been proud.
Now Barbie is back with a vengeance. In movie theaters near you, in every commentary piece in the country (here’s my favorite), in Mattel’s bottom line, in Greta Gerwig’s Oscar prospects.
So off I went to a theater near me, with Emma, her fiancé, and my husband in tow (Ally had persuaded him to give it a try instead of the latest Mission Impossible, which he’d planned to see in the adjacent theater before he ditched Tom Cruise in favor of family togetherness).
Mainly I thought Barbie was pretty dumb, enjoyable, and enormously clever. I loved the opening homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and no doubt missed many of the other cultural references. The production values were great, as was the acting. Ryan Gosling as Ken and Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie were spectacularly funny (and marketable). The ending credits, featuring the entire stable of Mattel’s Barbie creations, were awe-inspiring (in a sick kind of way) in their own rights.
Mostly, though, I was deeply disturbed throughout because the movie Midge was pregnant, which my Midge—or the doll I thought was Midge—definitely was not. Had my entire childhood been premised on a lie?
Of course, a major theme of the movie is that everybody’s childhood is premised on a lie—if not the whole of society, both BarbieLand and IRL. So maybe Greta Gerwig was just blowing my mind as part of her five-dimensional-chess tour de force. Luckily, Wikipedia set me straight soon enough—Pregnant Midge was introduced in 1980, long after the days my Midge, with her brown hair, freckles, and clear inferiority had been abandoned in favor of other pursuits.
Lots of people, including my daughters and plenty of my friends, loved Barbie’s strong messaging about feminism and patriarchy. I personally found it lazily scripted. Through one pat diatribe after another, it was too much tell and not enough show. But then again, what did I expect from a plastic world, humans and dolls alike held hostage by it? A script by ChatGPT? Possibly Master Chesswoman Greta was weaving in meta messages about AI and the Hollywood strike. Or possibly she was just lazy, laughing her way to the bank. That’s the beauty of Barbie the Film and Barbie the Plastic Doll without Genitalia. She can be anything people want her to be, from adult-sex-doll-spin-off to the ruination of girls and women everywhere, to feminist icon, to a flagging Mattel’s latest cash cow. She can even be this:
No matter. I’m glad I saw the movie, and I’m even more glad that its success has given the less crowd-pleasing Oppenheimer a boost simply because they shared a release date. By the way, my husband and I later saw Mission Impossible. Don’t bother.
Recently I asked our daughters, now in their 30s, about their childhood experiences of Barbie.
“I mean, we had fun playing with them,” Emma said. “But no more than anything else. We liked the animals the best.”
