Not Yet, Boba Fett

There's this great scene in one of my favorite novels turned movie Postcards from the Edge, when the Shirley Maclaine character (aka Debbie Reynolds) is hosting a party for her just released from rehab daughter (pretty much Carrie Fisher as played by Meryl Streep) and instead of focusing on her daughter's resilience, Maclaine steals the party out from under her. Streep's command party performance, a sweet and ethereal rendition of You Don't Know Me, quickly turns into a pointed commentary (for the audience) on Maclaine's absentee Hollywood starlet mothering but also functions as an addict's lament of the great estrangement from love--motherly, romantic, and self.

Maclain follows this existential riff with her own over the top command rendition of "I'm Still Here"  (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnlgkl_shirley-maclaine-i-m-still-here_shortfilms). In a to die for red sequined top and a full red skirt (which quickly gets hiked up to there to expose Maclaine's dancers legs), Maclaine honors her guests and daughter with a song about her own staying power and her ability to survive her daughter's addiction; it's all about "her worshipfulness."

As I enter midlife, my disdain for Maclaine's poorly timed and skewed self affirmation has tempered and transformed. In a culture that devalues those growing older, especially women, her declaration now seems about so much more than simply shouting "Look at me. I need attention right now." It serves as a siren call, one beckoning us to look first at ourselves. In my midlife world this necessitates a temporal exploration. Who was I? Who am I? Who do I now want to be? That confident (though sometimes needy and sometimes selfish) bravura woman in red, where did she go? Because she existed.

She was there in the good daughter, the ravenous reader, the good student, the jokester, the socially satisfied, the college graduate, the English teacher, the amateur musician, the world traveler. But she faded into obscurity when those roles morphed drastically into betrayed lover and adult child of a deceased parent. Who could know a me blanketed by such sadness? Aloof, I derived intellectual satisfaction from my passionate and brilliant students while sometimes lacking my own, and found little to no emotional satisfaction save from my cats and my dogs by another owner. I could do with a little of that former selfishness, self importance, self care. Though you can't see it, my homunculus still hovers, passionately shouting from the rooftops things about which I care, loves deeply, strives to master the surrounding universe while being spontaneous, unpredictable, and layered. It is exhausting waiting for a manifestation of that woman in red. But fade to obscurity?

Not Yet, Boba Fett. I'm still in here.