Prime Time - Jane Fonda [64]
It’s good to carry a pad with you so that if a thought comes to you, you’ll be able to jot it down.
Maybe, like me, as you remember yourself as a child, an adolescent, a young women or man, and so forth, you will discover that to a significant degree, your developmental changes revolved around issues of gender. In my case, I rediscovered the trying to please; the needing to be authenticated by a man; the self-hatred, especially of my body; the responses to my mother; my remote, objectifying father; and the eventual emergence of my own voice. For me, the evolving metaphor for my life thus became that of a gender-role journey. I believe that many women and men doing a life review will find this to be true, too; or in any case, it may be a helpful metaphor for their own journey.
Other metaphors might be the challenges of poverty or violence or always needing to be the best at everything—competitiveness. If you come from a family where alcoholism played an important role, your metaphor may have involved being the hero or the clown—two common roles for children of alcoholics that may follow us into adulthood.
Discovering a metaphor for the story of your life can open you to internal growth, renewal, expanded self-definition, surprising energy, and healing, because your story will then resonate with the universal story.
It wasn’t until I was able to see my own life as a gender-role journey that I felt ready to begin writing my memoirs at sixty-two.
CHAPTER 11
The Importance of Friendship
…Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.
But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.
Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no seconds,
and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten hundred thousand, your own country.
It goes on one at a time,
It starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
It starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
MARGE PIERCY, excerpted from “The low road”
in The Moon Is Always Female
With son Troy on his Bandits set.
Saying “We” and Knowing Who We Mean
It is May 2008. We are in my Atlanta loft having dinner. My brother, Peter, is next to me. He’s flown in from Los Angeles, as have my son, Troy, and daughter-in-law, Simone, along with Bridget Fonda, Peter’s daughter, and her three-year-old son, Oliver, who is sitting on the floor playing with my grandchildren’s toys while they—nine-year-old Malcolm and five-year-old Viva—throw pillows down from the second-floor balcony to build a fort. Their mother, my daughter, Vanessa, is at the table, calm as usual in the midst of raucous children. Odd as it may appear to some, Ted Turner is sitting at the far end of the table with Elizabeth, one of his girlfriends, whom I like. This evening represents a long overdue coming together for my family, and I cannot help but be emotional as I make a toast to love, friendship, and continuity.
The hook that got us all here is the thirteenth annual fund-raiser for my nonprofit, the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention; the theme this year is “Three Generations of Fondas in Film.” Tomorrow the family will be interviewed onstage about our careers by Robert Osborne, the host of Turner Classic Movies, and the evening will end with an homage to Henry Fonda, our father and grandfather.
Malcolm and Viva, all dressed up to go out. Clearly Viva is happier about the dress-up part than Malcolm.