UNBECOMING

Why did I name my new blog UNBECOMING ? It's rooted in the depths of my childhood. My great grandmother and me, circa 1950 My great grandmother, Nellie, was a tiny woman with a fierce Northern Baptist New England temperament. While my grandparents were traveling the world as vaudeville and theater actors, Nellie was left to raise my mother, who eventually ran away from home at 17 and married a jazz musician. (That marriage only lasted a few years until her parents returned and forced a divorce.) Natalie "Sawyer" and Loring. Circa late 1920s Meema, as I called her, was always opinionated and never hesitated to let you know what she was thinking, which is probably why I don't remember my grandfather saying much when I would be at their home in Connecticut. I was a typical child - curious, rambunctious and loud. Meema would corner me when my mother wasn't around and say, "Allison, this behavior is unbecoming of a young lady." I heard that a lot...

I've spent 70 years of my life "becoming." It's been a journey that has been eye-opening, to say the least. Over the years, I've become numerous things: Student, teacher, media person, writer, wife (third time's the charm with a wonderful husband of 30+ years), mother, caregiver, PR professional, friend, advocate, and occasional reluctant adversary. None of these things were what my mother used to call "a walk in the park." Each was a learning experience in becoming the person I am now - old - in the chronological sense. After all, age is simply a chronological dysfunction. In spending so much time becoming what everyone expected, and what I demanded of myself, I lost something along the way. I lost the ability to look at my life in any terms other than what would be best described as PC. My job necessitated it; my life as the mother of an athlete in a judged sport demanded a certain level of decorum, though I wrote between the lines for nine yea...