Quality and Quantity

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Life Stories Are Due Tomorrow

For the course I'm taking this semester on life history and leadership, our own life histories (to this point) are due on Monday. We get to read one another's and then each of us will be assigned one of them to be the lead reader, and to provide commentary and help interpret it.

In my insecurity at the prospect of producing it, I remember trying to feel superior, and thinking about the majority of the class, who are half my age: How substantial could their life stories be? And then I felt ashamed on the ride home, as I recalled hearing the author Joyce Carol Oates speak once, and how I was hurt by her similar attitude: I was 30 years old at the time and raised my hand during her Q&A to ask a question about memoir writing.

"A memoir? You have to have *lived* [enough years] to write a memoir," she said, and I disliked her then. She went on about how eager her undergraduate students sometimes were to write memoirs and how inappropriate it seemed to her due to their youth.

I thought she was mean to be so discouraging...and here I was, thinking the same way just 12 years later. Maybe the difference is that I saw my bigotry and was chagrined by it...but if she hadn't said what she had to me, maybe I'd not have had the insight to see my prejudice.

Teenage, then 21, 42, 84...

The other night, my nearly 15-year-old nephew Zach was telling me how he and a friend from 7th grade, and another from 4th grade had found one another on Facebook, and how they met again after not having seen one another for years.

This morning, I checked e-mail on my Columbia University ID and saw a Facebook e-mail notice from a guy, who used to sit behind me in one of my freshman-year classes at Stamford High. It's a similar feeling, but just a big difference in the time lag.

At the Newark Airport on Friday, a young guy was wearing a Hebrew University, Jerusalem sweatshirt and I couldn't resist talking with him. As I've mentioned here before, I studied there for my junior year abroad in college.

Should I talk to him? Shouldn't I? It's so darn early -- around 6 am -- and I'm not yet feeling so sociable, but how many times do I see such a sweatshirt, other than on myself?

"Excuse me. Hi. Did you study there?"

"Yeah." He's not a morning-person, or I'm just not who he feels like talking to right now.

"When did you go?"

"Last year, for a semester."

"Neat! I was there for a year in '85-'86. I loved it!"

He smiled politely and I walked away as quickly and as gracefully as I could.

I was exactly twice his age, and I'm still thinking about what that experience in Israel meant to me. It has been brewing all these years....I wish I could meet someone from IBM, who's 84, and who spent six months in India for IBM at 42...though I don't think we were in the country then. In any case, no doubt, that person might understand what the experience meant with greater hindsight than mine.

Pat's mom will be 84 on Monday and so she's twice my age. I'm always trying to rush my insights and hindsight, I think. I'm envious at the bank of experiences that Pat's mom, and mine, can draw from. Mr. McWilliams, my favorite teacher from high school wrote in my year book, "Sarah, just stay young long enough to grow old."

Have I Ever Been Young?

What did he see? Probably, he saw a 17-year-old , who had lost her father that year and so who was much older than her peers as a result. I've been that way ever since, or maybe even prior to my dad dying.

My family was so much older than I, growing up; my parents were 40 when I was born and my sisters already five and a half and nine, so I had to be precocious if I wanted to keep up, e.g., with vocabulary acquisition....And now, with my partner, being 15 years older than I, I find myself wondering when menopause will begin to hit me when, really, I should have several more years, if not a decade or more left prior to "the change of life."

A friend of ours sent us a hilarious clip recently of a comedy routine by "Mrs. Hughes." She said, When a girl menstruates for the first time, they say, 'And now, you're becoming a woman.' When a woman goes through menopause, they don't tell you what you're becoming....[She rubs her chin and upper-lip, pauses, and says,] "I'm becoming my father."

When my friend Chitra was in the States and met my mom, she told me later, "It's as if you're the mother and she's the daughter. Your mom's so youthful!" Maybe that's why I loved Saffy on "AbFab."

What has my maturity bought me? It's not a fair question. Maturity simply became one of my traits, like having dark-brown hair and blue eyes.

Dream

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Spanning Three Continents in a Matter of Minutes

In my dream last night, Pat and I were staying at a hotel that was walking distance from Jerusalem's Old City, much closer to it than when I lived on Mt. Scopus for my junior year of college. I was so excited to show it to Pat and it was Shabbat (Sabbath), and so her first sight of the Western Wall (the only remaining part of the ancient temple) would be even more dramatic/full of people/celebratory.

But we never made it. We kept walking down the wrong alley and being misdirected by strangers, who were friendly enough, but misguided.

Next, I was on my own in Northern Westchester County. I was heading to the Adirondacks, for a semi-annual trip that Pat and I make with ~80 female couples (we do make this trip in real life twice a year), and I ran into a colleague I like from work. She urged me to come to her home and join our other colleagues there (in real life, she lives in California and I've not been there on business since we've begun working together, and I've not been to her home).

Because I enjoy her company, I said yes and she rode with me in my car, a station wagon -- my parents', which I haven't driven since high school. We parked by a beach (there are none in Northern Westchester County) and so I guess we were in Westport, CT by now. It was a long walk to her street from where we parked.

When we got there, I was reminded of the homes Pat and I saw last night when we took a walk around the most established part of our housing development here in India. They were gorgeous, and in the dream, some of them were commercial, including the one on the corner that she heartily recommended we enter for some shopping.

I didn't want to shop. I just wanted to visit her home for a brief while and then make my way up to the Adirondacks. But I went in and struggled among all the eclectic stuff to find anything of interest. Finally, I found a Haggadah (the story of Passover), which was homemade, apparently by a pre-Bar Mitzvah boy. It had a soft, burlap cover and inside, he had pasted some sand and other messy materials, but as I flipped through it, I was impressed by his originality and decided to buy it.

The cashier looked like Bubbles from "Absolutely Fabulous" and told me that the book was US$65. I thought, God, I don't want to pay that much money for this book, but oh well, I guess it is one-of-a-kind.

"Do you take credit cards?" I asked.

"No, but --"

"If the ATM isn't mere steps away, I won't buy this. I'm in a hurry."

"It's just a couple of blocks from here."

"No, sorry." And I walked out of the store, relieved not to have spent the money.

I never made it to my colleague's and instead, went searching for my car, which I couldn't readily find. After much walking, I thought I spotted the area around the bend of which it would be.

Unfortunately, there was a low fence I had to climb over, plus some wet rocks and crashing surf to navigate, till I figured out that I could climb across solid marble bleachers till I got there. I was walking among the bleachers and passed a placid, happy American couple (man and woman) -- we smiled at one another -- and I kept walking, sure that I was on my way toward the car, but disappointed at my lateness, and then I woke up.