herkind.com

My first national magazine piece appeared in the November issue of More Magazine, a Canadian publication for women over 40.

You can read it here:

Meet Your Match

It was a wonderful writing experience and I look forward to more... so to speak.

Pretty soon it'll be four (long) years since I returned from Vancouver, city of my unrequited love. I joke, but the truth is, I made the biggest leaps forward in my life when I lived there and this past (very difficult) year has felt like moving back to way before I made those leaps. And, that last sentence doesn't even begin to characterize the emotional difficulty of the year I've had.

When first back, I wrote a blog entry called Putting the Cart Before the Horse which was all about making a decision before I had a clear plan. I do that alot. It could be pathological. I could speculate on why this is but I think it's mostly because I am a creative at base, who was reared to believe that notion was irresponsible, or at least inadvisable.

Like many creatives I know, I cannot be confined. It's really not a good scene when I am!

Up until now (hopefully now) I haven't had enough of a belief in my creative talent to really make the leap I keep trying to make. But something recently has changed and I feel readier than ever. So, it might be only a sketch of a plan, but the outline feels more right than wrong and I'm ready to move from pencil to ink.

Perhaps this sounds flighty, but sometimes you just start to believe it's your time in the world and you need to prepare yourself to step directly into it.

Not long ago I met a woman who, recently divorced, was looking forward to the "cougar" trend, whereby women of a certain age date younger men. She'd been married for quite some time, so I can see how it might be a novelty to her. She couldn't wait to go out on the town and see what kind of "cubs" she could bring into her lair. And judging by the type of hype the new Courtney Cox show, Cougar Town is receiving, you'd think this was a brand new idea, and a fully accepted one at that!

The thing is, if it was a fully embraced lifestyle, a whole show devoted to poking fun at it wouldn't be necessary.

I spent a number of years in a relationship with a man more than a decade younger than me. It started before Ashton and Demi made it fashionably fun, and ended for the same reason many do - as my fertility window neared its close, he simply wasn't ready to make the comittment. At the time I was a lone wolf in this, my gal pals couldn't understand and didn't take my six-year relationship seriously. Until a few years later when they began to dip into the younger, more virile pool of men to shake off the sting of break-ups/divorces. Or because it's now the must-do activity once you're free. Boy-hunting is the new crying into your ice-cream.

'Course I've never been married, so that must be the difference. Unmarried 'cougars" must be desperate, while divorced ones are in full control. Once you've escaped the constraints of a long-term marriage getting it on with a younger man can only be seen as "empowering." I guess.

I've seen this "cougar" thing gain ground, fade, gain ground and fade. I actually think it's pure silliness. Rather than empowering, it's degrading. I don't spend alot of time talking about my experience with it because I didn't think it was anything to brag about, it was a personal and very real relationship.

Trivializing it, branding it a trend takes away from the reason an older woman might choose to spend time with a younger man. Here it is: at a certain age it becomes extremely difficult to meet men who are free - either because they are married, married-looking-to-fool-around, or divorced and feeling reticent. At one point it was important to me to be with someone who hadn't been married, and that's also difficult to find over 40. Even though, by most of society's still very firm standards, I'm past marriagable age (think about the treatment Susan Boyle got, the never-been-kisssed, dowdy reality show enigma), I do still want to have the same experience most people yearn for. My very own one and only.

Dating a younger man, at least for me, was not an immaturity thing, a "girl power" thing or a thumbing of my nose at societal mores. It was just a circumstance of my life - I met a man, we hit it off - and then mostly, a personal decision that was and is diminished by so much scorn posing as acceptance.

At the risk of sounding bitter, I would also like to say that our culture is increasingly infantilized by our entertainment sources. I'd rather see women portrayed as smart, insightful and empathetic (whether they are mothers or not, I might add, but that's a whole different topic).

Now that is empowering.

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth our while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

I've read Angela's Ashes a handful of times, listened to it twice on tape (read to me by the man himself), I've given this book to at least a dozen people as gifts for various occasions, or none at all, and seen the film (only once, generally I dislike books to film). It's safe to say I've done some serious time with Mr. McCourt.

It's hard to believe I resisted reading this book that makes you cry and then laugh through the tears. I guess I thought it was just too popular so not my kind of read. Hey, I'm a self professed book snob. Published in 1996, I think I finally got to it a couple years later, and of course, didn't put it down til it was finished. While reading it I found a newspaper photo of McCourt and pinned it to my bulletin board at work. I simply couldn't believe he had lived through his miserable childhood But live he did, and the literary world was richer for it.

Me & Frank McCourt, Bravo! Rehearsal Hall, 2000Now, I've met alot of famous people. Just about anyone you can think of - writers, musicians, actors, celebrities. It doesn't faze me usually. But when wee Frank McCourt came into Bravo! (where I worked at the time) for a news interview, I suddenly felt very shy. Though I was determined to get my book signed I didn't know what I could possibly say to a man who had lived ten times the life, and hardship than I ever would. Feeling nervous, I waited in the wings while the interview wrapped up and then timidly approached. Lacking the courage to say very much I just asked for a signature. A co-worker who must have known what it would mean to me later, snapped our photo. I shook McCourt's hand and walked away. Happy.

When I got the photo I tucked it away for safe keeping. Then, when I moved to Vancouver, changing my career to fulltime writing and journalism, I framed the photo and put it the desk by my computer. Inspiration.

I didn't know if I'd ever meet him again, but his book, life and this meeting had made enough of an impression.

And yet I did meet him again. A few years later, working as a producer on a TV show in Vancouver I had the opportunity to invite him to the show while he was promoting his book Teacher Man. Now, getting authors on this particular show wasn't easy, it simply wasn't the best venue for a considered interview. But noone expected to ever have the chance to score this particular author, so there I was one bright, sunny, early morning greeting Mr. McCourt again. This time I had to overcome my shyness to talk to him since I was producing his interview. We chatted in the green room about his teacher anecdotes, deciding which ones he would tell and discussing how the profession has changed since his early days.

He was quite simply a lovely man. And though I didn't by any means begin to know him, I will miss him and his unwritten words.

Whether or not you liked Michael Jackson, there's no denying his music and dance influence. I think that eventually loneliness took over his life and changed its nature.

Here's my fave clip from yesterday's memorial. A performer who used his unique talent to pay tribute to a singular talent.