A Twinkle of Mirth is Needed on Earth

Vandalia, IL

August 8, 2011

7:12 p.m.

A Twinkle of Mirth is Needed on Earth

In my belief you cannot deal with the most serious things in the world unless 

you also understand the most amusing.”            --Winston Churchill

The Odd Couple

If you have been following this blog I want you to understand one thing about this American Cross-Country Mother-Daughter Walkabout:  whatever our mission and intention purports to be, it is still and always a seventy-something mother and her forty-something daughter traveling together in an RV for 6 1/2 months!  

My daughter Viveka played country music superstar Wynonna Judd, in the 1996 mini-series “Love Can Build A Bridge.”  Wynonna said, “Every woman should spend a year in an RV with her mother.”  I believe I now know what she meant.  It is a situation in which the relationship is tested at every turn, especially if the two individuals are so different in temperament and style as to form an “odd couple” polarity -- as Viveka and I do with her playing “Oscar” (the freestyling “messy” one) to my (prim and proper “controlling”) “Felix.”

   

The Sufi poet Kabir wrote (and I’m paraphrasing from memory)

“God and I are like two old fat men in a small boat, 

bumping up against each other and laughing.”

After Viveka and I heard this delightful poem we began to use the insight as a life-saving method for diffusing tension.  We began channeling the personas of the two old hecklers in the balcony from “The Muppet Show.”  For some unknown reason we took on Italian accents.  Immediately all the tense situations we found ourselves in stemming from our respective “odd couple” natures -- disputes over little things, territorial squabbles, power struggles -- were transformed into scenes of hilarity in the style of comedia del arte, ending with a fluorish: “What’s a matta’ you?  Boomba, Boomba!  

In this way we are healing the mother-daughter relationship by using humor to soften the shocks and blows of the inevitable role reversals that happen when children become adults and find themselves more in charge, and parents start slowing down letting go of memory, vision, hearing, and their interest in coping with technology and the pace of modern life. 

I can’t tell you exactly where this transformation to a kind of humorous detachment took place, probably somewhere between New Mexico and Kansas, but ever since we learned to resort to humor to diffuse tension I have found myself having a lot more “fun” than I ever imagined I would, given the serious nature of our enterprise. 

*   *   *

R.O.M.E.O.s

When I first began to train for this walk last January, I would stop after a few hours of walking at a MacDonald’s restaurant in my home town, Culver City, California.   Every time I stopped I noticed a group of 6-8 men having breakfast.  They were the regulars -- most of them retired.  Even though it was clearly a “men’s club,” I couldn’t resist the opportunity try out my mission statement on them:  “Imagining a world where women are equally-valued decision-makers in partnership with men worldwide.”  When I explained that it was my intention to walk across America with my daughter carrying that message, one of them quipped, “What do you women want?  We gave you the vote!”  

Since then, in countless MacDonald’s restaurants I have seen similar “men’s clubs” gathering between the hours of 6 and 9 a.m.  I presume they gather in local diners as well as fast food places all over America.  They are a tough crowd to play to, for they don’t know what to make of a woman like me -- although I have come to appreciate them and what they stand for.  Because of their age and experience, they really do have all the answers, and, as I learned in Sedona, they are quite frustrated that no one seems to want to listen to them any more.  

One man I met in Amboy, California, himself a member of this floating group that can gather almost anywhere like a pick-up basketball game, told me that he knew of one group in Florida that called themselves the Romeo Club.  He spelled out the letters, R.O.M.E.O.  

“What does that stand for?” I asked.  

“Really Old Men Eating Out,” he answered.

One morning, eating breakfast at the Corner Cafe in Gallatin, Missouri, we learned our breakfast had been paid for by one gentleman in a group who saw the sign on my backpack which says “Sole 2 Soul Walk -- Walking Across America.”  When I shared the observation that without knowing it they all belonged to a men’s breakfast group numbering in the millions nationwide, one jested, “We just like to get away from our wives.”   Then I told them about the R.O.M.E.O.s and another one said, “I like that name better than ours.”

“What’s yours?” I asked.

“‘The Rusty Zippers.’”

*  *   *

Movie Trailer Concepts (written with Viveka)

As Viveka is making a documentary film about our cross-country adventure with the working title “Gathering WOmentum,” we are constantly receiving inspiration around how to market our film to the international festival circuit.  Here are some possibilities. . .

(Imagine the following being delivered in that rich baritone “movie guy” voice:)

You’ve always heard, “Go West, Young Man.”  

Now it’s time for. . .“Go East, Old Woman.”

or

In a world where women must. . . 

step up, 

step out, 

and step beyond. . .

Can she birth a movement 

Without stepping in it?

or

You’ve heard of Sky Walker

You’ve heard of Planet Walker

Now watch Doris walk

IN-CONTINENT WALKER

Will her mission hold water 

Even when she can’t?

Humanity’s future DEPENDS upon it.

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Do you think AARP might want to fund this movie?