Recently a good friend asked if I had any regrets about having children. The question was unexpected, my initial response was brief. When she persisted I realized a more fulsome reply was being sought.
I've never thought of life in those terms. When I became pregnant the first time I declared impulsively,I wanted to be the mother of five sons. But I didn't actually plan the size or make-up of my family. Who has that power?
It seems to me I reached out and embraced life as it came to meet me. I seized the day.
In the same week of the conversation with my friend,Charlie Rose had Brian Dennehy and Nathan Lane as guests on his show. They brought Eugene O'Neill's play, The Ice Man Cometh,from the Bronx to Broadway.
They talked a lot about Eugene O'Neill, his work and theirs.
O'Neill is a giant among playwrights. It's said he is third behind Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw for plays translated and produced all over the world.
He had three children. Two sons committed suicide and he severed contact with daughter Oona when she married Charlie Chaplin. He was fifty-four and she was eighteen.
Oona was two when her parents divorced and never saw much of her father. She had eight children, seventeen grandchildren and never divorced.
Brian Dennehy told Charlie Rose as O'Neill lay dying he talked about the illusion of life and how meaningless.
Evelyn Buck
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8 comments:
What a strange question you were asked !
Now it is more often asking the women who have no children if they have regrets. Only a very good friend could get away with such a query - it is intrusive and might be beyond a person's control.
His plays are wonderful to read & watch but I would not liked to have lived in any of them.
Dickens was no bed of roses either. Despite his brilliance, he did not seem to understand where all his children came from or why his wife required some minimal attention and financing for them.
Is this going to morph into a literary column?
If you want to make yourself fairly ill, quickly, take a look at the Juno Awards photos from the red carpet.
Most of these people shouldn't be allowed out in public looking like they do, male and female.
Is there no taste left?
20:27- What's funny is that they pay people to make them look like that.
20:32
I am OK as long as we don't get into food. I have no idea why people want to show me what they are eating.
Flowers might be nice in season
10:44
Bite your tongue. Flowers are nice...but food rules.
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