For Ruth.
(and Freddie)
September 20, 2020
Yesterday the world shook with the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. I wanted to stay there, to bathe in her and not jump to politics. But of course with Ruth, the two are inextricably linked. She changed the world that way.
Yesterday I didn’t know what to do with myself, exactly. Grief is like that. But then my world filled up, as it often does these days, by taking care of my 94-year-old mother who suddenly needed a blood transfusion. Not an emergency, exactly, and not unusual for her these days. But a thing to be handled, nevertheless. Which hospital? Would she have to be admitted, or could it be done in the ER? How would she be transported there? How much could I stay by her side in this time of coronavirus? Which caregiver could be there if it took a long time and I had to peel off to give dinner to my son?
I did all these things, as caregivers like me do every day. My brothers and I constantly texting. I did not feel alone, or resentful and felt actively grateful to have something to do while I grieved. I took care of my mother yesterday in honor of Ruth.
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In my imagination Ruth and my mother, The Honorable Frederica Brenneman, meld. The smoke from two individual fires, merging, circling, dancing with one another. There is a picture of my mother with Ruth, commemorating all the female judges who were Harvard Law School graduates. Ruth was the star, of course, but my mother was the actual trailblazer.
My mother was in the first class of women at Harvard Law School, five years before Ruth. She was the second female judge to be put on the bench in the state of Connecticut, when I was three years old. She, like Ruth, had a long and loving marriage to a taller, funnier man who celebrated his brilliant, tiny, Jewish wife. Ruth and Freddie also shared the deep belief in equal protection under the law. They understood discrimination, being female and Jewish and brilliant. But they did not only fight for those like themselves. They understood that just as traditional gender roles kept women from being fully actualized in the world and workplace, they also kept men from being fully actualized at home — as caregivers, homemakers, as fathers and husbands. I imagine Ruth understood this because of Marty, and my mother because of my father, Russell. And for me, too. I remember a couple months after Brad and I married. He was offered a job that he didn’t want to take, but assumed he had to because that was the responsible thing to do. I was making a movie at that time and simply said, “Don’t take it — I’m earning now, we’re good.” His eyes welled up with tears. As a male in American culture, he had never conceived of sharing his financial burdens.
Gender assumptions and discriminations hurt us all.
My mother specialized in Juvenile matters — delinquency and neglect. It was in the neglect and abuse cases that she excelled. There was a general understanding that female judges were better suited for these cases. Male judges would look at a 6-month-old child with cigarette burns, a 3-year-old victim of sexual abuse or the bruises on the tender flesh of an infant and see red. They simply wanted to punish the perpetrator. My mother, after carefully removing the child out of harm’s way, would engage with the perpetrator. Why would a parent do this? What had gone wrong? What supports did that parent need? How, if possible, could the biological bond be preserved, so critical to human development? Mom said, “I try to look at the abusive parent as a child of God, not so different from me, who was suffering as well.” How much suffering must a parent be experiencing, to abuse an innocent child.
Ruth and Freddie understood profoundly systemic discrimination, the marginalization of the disempowered, the callousness of capitalism. They created laws where there were none. Laws that exist to this day, that changed the culture forever. And once glimpsed, equity does not easily slink back into the dark.
I stayed off social media and the news yesterday. I may again today. In this era of very public lament, my emotions and thoughts today are too complex and too private, for the tiny boxes on a newsfeed. But here’s what I know.
The spirit of Ruth and Freddie allows me to have the life I lead today. They showed me what it was to have agency over my life. To pursue an education. To follow my dream of being a working artist. To imagine being a boss. To earn money, choose when and if to have children, and to know how to choose a man who was not threatened by my agency but celebrated it.
I am not in despair today, not by a long shot. We have seen what a powerful, brilliant woman looks like who works for justice. (The world is so hungry for this that her likeness has been tattooed on countless forearms.) Imagine in the 1950s, 60s and before — before the laws that are now on the books. That would be a time of despair. But our job today is simply to continue the work, not create it from whole cloth. The hard work has already begun.
My mother’s cognition can get drifty sometimes, and her dementia comes and goes. Last night, after she got home from a long afternoon in the ER, I called to say goodnight and tell her I loved her, that I was proud of her for all sorts of reasons. It’s important to say stuff like that, constantly, when someone is 94.
She said to me, “Now that there’s a vacancy on the court, you can apply.” I laughed and said that I don’t have a law degree, so that might be difficult. She didn’t think it would be a problem.
And she’s right. In the fight for equal justice under the law in 2020, it’s all hands-on deck. It will take all of us to fill a Ruth-size hole. In her honor — and in honor my own mom — let’s get cracking.
