Had this essay come out in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, and I was amazed at the response. So, I thought I’d post it here and see if any of you had anything to say about what I had to say.

Age before beauty is true view

By Martha Woodroof

May 25, 2008

For me, 60 need not be the new 30. I’ve already been 30, and I prefer adventure to repetition.

I do still dance uncontrollably in grocery store aisles, but I’ve moved way beyond the person I was at 30. And I have no desire for anyone to take me as anything other than what I am: A woman who’s officially old.

Yet, I’m barraged with the message that looking like the person I really am is so not the way to go.

My bemusement peaked recently at the college fitness center where I work out. From my perch on the elliptical, I could check in on three TV networks: CNN, NBC and CBS, which was airing “The View.”

Except for Whoopi Goldberg (God bless her!), the hosts of “The View” came off as aging, animated dolls.

What has Barbara Walters done to herself, and why? She’s Barbara Walters, for pity’s sake. Does she think we expect her or even want her to look less seasoned than we know she is?

The other two women looked like shop-worn Barbies; same perky expression, dyed hair, bright make-up. Nothing at all about how they looked told me anything about who they were as individuals, or what, if anything, was going on in their minds.

I rate people’s appearance by whether they look like someone I would want to have lunch with. Let’s just say I would love to lunch with Goldberg. She obviously has something going on inside her head.

On NBC, two women hosts were talking with their guests about a children’s book. One host’s eyebrows had been lifted into permanent surprise; her lips stretched into an everlasting half-smile. She wore bright make-up, had very red hair, was dressed in standard talk-show clothes—tailored, with cleavage. Every bit of experience had been stretched from her face. She might have spent her 50 plus years in a glass case. Her sidekick was younger but equally standard-issue.

And then there was the depressing children’s picture book they were discussing. It was about how parents might talk to their children about mommy’s face lift.

Mommy looks, “Not just different, my dear—prettier!”

Then next door, on CNN, Dr. Michael DeBakey was getting yet another presidential medal in honor of his lifetime of contributions to medicine. DeBakey is an un-enhanced centenarian. His lined, sagging face suggests he would be a rewarding person to lunch with. What keeps Barbara Walters from joining DeBakey in seeing herself in terms of what she has done and thought, and letting time write its proud notes upon her face?

Look, I do sometimes miss those days when I could turn heads, miss that frisson of awareness that often sparked when I entered a room. But that was a passing accident of birth, and I knew it all along. So what, exactly, is wrong with looking 60 if you are 60?

I came of age fighting for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. I’ve always thought of my generation as folks who are unafraid to change, who saw life as being about more than conformity.

So what happened to us? What has frightened us into denying who we are—the generation who isn’t afraid to change?

Martha Woodroof is a radio reporter and the author of “How to Stop Screwing Up: Twelve Steps to a Real Life and a Pretty Good Time.”

mwoodroof@gmail.com

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

I really believe that sobriety is about living and let-living, forgiveness, tolerance, and getting along with others–and this certainly includes our neighbors.

That’s one of my neighbors in the picture. I just discovered that she took a recent stroll through my gardens, leaving huge holes where flowers used to be.

Sometimes, sobriety is a real challenge. . .

Here’s the deal. I just finished the second draft of my second book, which has the working title, God Is. Now What? It’s basically about having a working faith in God outside of the confines of organized religion. The manuscript is up at my agents, but I’m frankly hungry for feedback. Below is a piece of the “Note,” which opens things up. I’d love to hear reactions just to this tiny portion. What I’m trying to do is be part of what I see as a change in our conversation about faith.

“One bright May morning my husband Charlie, who’d just read the second draft of this book, asked me why I was writing it.

What a question! I realized I hadn’t a clue other than on the most subliminal level. I was writing about God because—as deeply as it made me blush even to think such a thing—I felt called to.

My first impulse was to say something vague about being interested in the subject and let it go at that, but I knew that wouldn’t pass muster with Charlie. He’d known my dad, the atheist, and my mother, the agnostic, and he’d known me for a long, long time. For years I’d been happily scribbling away at this and that—in between reporting gigs—and then, all of a sudden, I was hard at work on what he and I call “my God book.”

So Charlie, as usual, had asked a good question. No one writes about anything without some kind of personal motivation. And no one writes about God without setting oneself up for the charge of hubris: So what’s the deal here, lady? You think you understand God and the rest of us don’t?

Well, not exactly. What I think, actually, is that none of us understands God. And that, in itself, is partly what I want to write about.

But that didn’t fully answer Charlie’s question; so, in case you, like Charlie, are interested, here’s what I think is the answer.

I’m a long-time sober alcoholic and addict, and I go to 12 Step meetings to help ensure that I stay that way. At these meetings, I sit in rooms with people whose concepts of God range from Evangelical Christian to avowed atheists—and no one cares. The only thing that matters is that each of us has something going on with some Power other than our own. Each of us, in our own way, acknowledges that it is our relationship with that Power that helps keep us clean and sober, makes us want to live kind and productive lives, and makes us willing to put ourselves to considerable trouble in order to help each other and those who still struggle with active addictions. Faith is about more than just our own spiritual comfort; it is about how we live our lives. And none of us tries to explain how this Power works, or how our own relationships with It works; we just know that living in partnership with that Power does make a positive difference in our lives. And I, for one, am very grateful that I’ve got enough sense to live in partnership with whatever that Power as a useful human being again.

Sobriety, to me, is a good example of one’s relationship with God in action. It doesn’t matter to anyone in those rooms how I privately relate to God or even what I call God. We come together for just two reasons: 1) to enjoy God’s presence and power in each other’s company; 2) to figure out what our individual partnerships with God mean in the living of our daily lives.

So, I think I began writing this book when I found myself contrasting the practical spiritual tolerance I experience in 12 Step meetings with other kinds of religious practice. To me, a lot of religious practices use our hunger for spiritual connection in some pretty underhanded ways to recruit and keep followers. In God’s name, they offer an illusion of control over the uncontrollable, answers to unanswerable questions, explanations for the inexplicable, and—most cunningly of all—invented fears that they can then assuage. Religions involve a lot of people in a lot meetings in order to reinforce their own misinformation.

12 Step meetings, on the other hand, recognize that some Higher Power is part of whatever helps us stay sober, inspires us both to be kinder to other people and to think about what useful work we can do. The emphasis of meetings is on strengthening our individual connections with the Almighty towards a constructive purpose. And that purpose is lead a kinder, gentler, more productive—and, yes, happier—life.

So, this is what I said to Charlie: I’m writing this book because I want to challenge people of faith who are not drunks and addicts to get with the program; to eschew further discussion and argument about God’s mythology and methods, in favor of getting down to good work as people of faith in God. . .”

I’m rotten at doing anything with visuals, but I wanted to stick these up, because Shadow asked for them. There are six of these babies. They make it very hard for me to pay attention to what I’m supposed to be doing.

I’m back in the office and, to celebrate, my foxes brought out their kits. I went running (literally) around the office letting my very dignified and very mature colleagues know. They in turn came running (literally) into my office and we all stood around ogling this chubby furry creature  scarfing up my bird seed.

There are four of them, I hear. I was at the physical therapist’s (durn!) when the other three came out for a viewing. There was evidently more running and more ogling.

You know, life is good. It’s hard to come back to the office after doing nothing that wasn’t fun for ten days. But baby foxes sure do grease the grooves!

And Alix, I’m afraid I don’t understand your comment on my last post. What does “starting out tabbed” mean? I’d really like to know. I’m trying to get a better understanding of the blogosphere.

Okay, I’ve been clean and sober for quite a long time. Enough time to have gotten and hung onto a great job, husband, house and 2 cats. In other words, I’m an official grown-up and proud to be so.

However–and I do love this–there are still times when I feel like a kid playing dress-up, and, yes, this is one of those times. I’m posting tonight from one of the guest houses at Montpelier, James and Dolley Madison’s ancestral plantation, all thousand-plus acres of it in Madison County, Virginia. The place is almost at the end of an enormous, multi-multi-million dollar restoration. It was owned for a few generations by DuPonts who entertained on a much vaster scale than the rather cash-poor Madisons and so swelled the size of the Mansion, stuccoed the brick, and then painted it a kind of New Orleans peach.

Now, the playing dress-up feeling is not because I feel I don’t belong at this press shindig. I’ve done several national stories for NPR from here–also ones for my station and a state-wide consortium of public radio stations. I know I’m good at what I do, and I know I know what I’m doing. But here’s the deal. We’re being put up for 2 nights, wined (which I shall, of course, pass on), dined, taken up in helicopters, toured, lectured, given gifts and, in general, professionally fussed over. There are reporters here from all over, professional people who’ve never been jailed for being drunk in public, and/or been fired from jobs. And that I’m being treated as part of this group delights me as much as prissing around in my Mama’s high heels and playing Grown-Up Lady when I was a little kid.

When I was a child, I loved to playpretend. I would fall asleep imagining I was the first female member of Robin Hood’s band, or the first woman to play major league baseball. When I grew up and was slogging through my bad years, I would lie in bed and pretend I was what I am now.

This afternoon, as I was driving up the long, curving, tree-lined drive this afternoon, it suddenly struck me that I don’t play pretend  much  anymore because my dreams have pretty much come true. Of course, it’s not only because I’m sober. There’s been a lot of hard, hard work involved, as well as the taking of a few well-calculated risks. But sobriety was the path I was walking when I did that work and took those risks. But I really, really love living my life these days.

Wow! Tonight when I lie in bed, I think I’ll just go to sleep feeling grateful.

I am a fan of the frankly gaudy, and so am in love with a certain local Chinese restaurant–not as much for its food as for its decor. There are enormous crystal chandeliers everywhere, lots of shiny red stuff, huge aquariums full of enormous golden fish. The staff sports shiny clothes and barks at each other in staccato Chinese, which sounds exotic and slightly stern to my American ears.

I treasure what I think of as the small moments of theater that happen in my real life, and two of them occurred at The Dragon Palace–both at holiday times. One took place around Christmas. There was a huge party eating at one long table in the back of the restaurant. They were all well-dressed, elegant in their bearings, a gathering out of a film. At their exact center, right under a directional light, sat a golden child of about four adorned with a gigantic red velvet tam o’shanter set at a jaunty angle. The rest of the party seemed to revolve around her, and  Charlie and I immediately dubbed her La Petite Dauphine. We have carried our shared vision of Her Royal Highness with us ever since.

The other theater moment happened on Easter Sunday. The usual music at the Dragon Palace is a kind of oriental musac. I was at the buffet, grazing happily, admiring other folks Easter togs, when all of a sudden Bing Crosby burst out singing “White Christmas.” He was speedily followed by Karen Carpenter singing another Christmas ditty. I remember looking up and catching the eye of the woman across the buffet from me and thinking that she looked as baffled as I felt.  Charlie, however, figured it out. The management knew this was an important Christian holiday, so they were seeking to honor it with Christian holiday music.

Such theater moments are a gloriously regular part of my sobriety. I’ve become both   more aware of my surroundings and able to enjoy them with sobriety. Haven’t you had the same experience?