One of my biggest pet peeves is hearing someone refer to his employees as possessions. President Obama is one of the greatest culprits. “My team, my Secretary of Defense, my this and my that,” he says.
This is a kid's book by Patricia Marx, illustrations by the talented Roz Chast, who has created New Yorker cartoons for decades
We do not own the people who work for us. We may pay their salaries, but they do jobs in return. They are flesh and blood, not decorative accessories for our living rooms.
I guess there are times when saying “my” is appropriate, such as in “my husband, my daughter, my teacher and my boss.” I’m not wild, though, when someone says “my attorney” (sounds so pretentious), but “my doctor” and “my hairstylist” seem fine.
I think we need to think before we use the word “my.” A young man recently–and officiously– referred to the two people who report to his girlfriend as “her staff.” The girlfriend is all of 23. When I had a staff of 200, I referred to them as ” the editors and the salespeople,” not “my staff.”
Don’t you think it’s much classier to refer to Bill Gates as “The Secretary of Defense,” rather than “My Secretary of Defense?”
A Jewish mother, living with her three-year-old son in the Warsaw ghetto in 1939, knows both their lives are in danger. She might be able to save her boy’s life if she listens to a young Catholic social worker, offering to smuggle him out. The mother decides that’s what she wants to do.
A polish mother and child after the 1939 bombing of Warsaw
Soon after, the Nazis kill her. Her son, in the meantime, is given a Catholic birth certificate and Catholic identity papers and sent to a convent in the surrounding countryside. He survives the war and grows up to be a successful man.
To this day, he resents his mother for giving him up. “How could she do this?” he asks.
This is a true story. Irena Sendler and a group of her close friends and colleagues outfoxed the Nazis and saved the lives of thousands of Jewish children. They kept secret records of the children’s real identities, hoping they might be reunited with their parents after the war, or, at the least, know their heritage. It didn’t matter to the one little boy. Now 74, he still hurts from his mother’s abandonment.
Sometimes, mothers do things their children do not understand. It is heart wrenching for everyone.
My latest obsession is thinking of the newlyweds, Kate and Will. The royal factor, good looks and intelligence aside, the couple has something important going for it: Friendship. They’ve known each other for a decade, weathered stormy times, and come through it all, still in love. Wedding watchers hoped for a more passionate kiss on the balcony, but their “kiss” had much more significance to me because it seemed genuinely tender and loving. The way their eyes met throughout the ceremony, and after, showed a far deeper connection than any kiss could mean. Besides, just look at the darling grins on their faces during the kiss.
I have a feeling Kate and Will are going to enjoy an extraordinary life together that privilege cannot buy. I have no idea whether the British monarchy will survive the next hundred years, but it appears that this new couple will do a jolly good job of taking it in a direction it needs to go. They seem grounded and unpretentious. There’s no reason sense and sensibility can’t mingle with pomp and circumstance.
Hats off to Talbots for its marketing program, called “EVERY WOMAN.” Its windows on Madison Avenue grabbed my attention because they feature fab photographs of intriguing-looking women of all ages, including some in their seventies. They are mothers and daughters, grandmothers, sisters. Talbots knows all women want to look–and feel–great and we don’t stop investing in our style after the age of 49.
The Talbots website brilliantly states: “Whoever defined smart and sexy by size, age, or shape clearly never met a real woman. You know—and we know—that in real life, confidence and wisdom trump numbers every time. You know it, and now we want you to revel in it.
“Join us for EVERY WOMAN, a new series we’ve created to share, discuss and discover topics relevant to all of us: size, age, shape, stage of life, to name a few.”
