Barbara Rose Brooker, author, painter, and columnist whose works you may well know and may have in your home, is defined by her ability to love, see truth, forgive, live without guile, speak with candor and move ahead no matter the adversity. After having lived a life of satisfying other people’s expectations that led her temporarily off her best track, she eventually took the lessons learned and powered into the life and career that she was meant to have. She wrote. She wrote about what she knew; the reality of being a woman finding her way in a world filled with impossible assurances and empty promises. She traps the heartbreak and corrals the humor.
When she found her way back to her authentic path, she found that she had reached a stage in life (stage, not age!) to take some real real leadership in the area of age discrimination. When she had had it, so to speak, up to here with being defined by or excluded for her age, she founded the Age March, a grass roots event, a San Francisco but soon to be national if not world-wide celebration of growing older, growing smarter, and reaching new goals. Pride of age for all ages, young and old, for all sexual orientations, genders, races and nationalities. When she was given a seat on the bus, she was grateful for the seat but not for the condescension that came with it.
Experiences have been mixed. Barbara talks exuberantly, as she does here with Sharon Osbourne, about being whatever age she is. She is bothered by the phrases that are meant to uplift but demean instead. The “Oh, you look great for 80,” and the patronizing “90 years young” comments. I mean, what woman does not, in her heart, want to smack someone for saying either of those things. How about just “You look great,” period. Barbara is working on that. And, for the “90 years young” on the birthday cake, find another bakery.
Listen to her talk about her first Age March, how it started and how it will be this year with all the celebrity support it has garnered. Her conversation about lying on dating sites, being told not to admit her age and what happened to turning her book The Viagra Diaries into a movie starring Goldie Hawn is shocking.
When asked who would get her love letter, she brightened with recognition. She knew in a flash that she would write a love letter to adversity itself and thank it for the lessons learned. Listen to Barbara talk about adversity it in her own voice, and when you want a reminder of how adversity can be your best teacher, here it is.
“Dear Adversity:
I am almost 80. You stayed with me so long and now with my 80th birthday approaching, I am saying goodbye. Goodbye to your pain and hello to my blessings. I know you. Like a shadow you followed me. Do you know that I consider you a friend? When you show up, you challenge me to find a new journey. You can’t catch me. Who do you think you are? You sneak around good fortune like a crow waits for death. You think you’re smart. You think you’re permanent. Everyone at every age has hope, dreams, and wishes. You can’t stop that.
You first came to my life when I was nineteen. I had been programmed to marry a rich man who would “provide,” a man who would take care of me forever. Prince Charming. I was told that I was pretty. Was I? I don’t know. I never thought about it. I was sure because I was told that I was pretty that I’d marry Prince Charming and live happily ever after. Beyond flunking geometry, I really didn’t know you. At nineteen I met and married Charlie Gibbs Jr. He was twenty-nine, tall, slim, rich, and handsome. Was I happy? Not really. I just knew that I was going to be a Princess. Then I could write and paint and do the things I fantasized about, the things Mother said should be a “hobby.” The wedding was rushed. I think Mother was afraid Charley would change his mind. In six weeks she planned a lavish wedding at the SF Fairmont Hotel. She chose my wedding dress, a mass of pleats, and a veil held by a band of silk roses. The day of the wedding she arranged to have Helen, her hairstylist, set my hair into a perfect lacquered pageboy. The music, a harp, I think, played Gluck. My father, who looked exhausted, as he traveled extensively for Universal Pictures, held my arm as we slowly walked up an aisle laced with white roses. It was noon, a brunch wedding. I felt shy repeating til death do us part to Charley, a man I didn’t know, who on Saturday nights took me to expensive restaurants and “made out” with in the back of his Jaguar. I was a virgin, like many “nice Jewish girls.” I couldn’t wait. Couldn’t wait to call my girlfriends and relate that I “did it.” They were waiting. I was waiting. That evening, the sun still setting, at the airport motel, as we were leaving for Hawaii the next day for a three-week honeymoon, he blurted that he “made a mistake, and didn’t love me. “So I can’t.” he said. He took me home the next morning. My mother blamed me, said something was wrong with me and that “behind every great man there’s a woman.” He took me to court for an annulment. I died inside.
I hated you. You stole my innocence. My dreams. I refused to forgive you. I had migraine headaches and hid in my closet. On rebound I married a man I didn’t love.
You popped my dreams like poking a lovely bubble.
I lived in Happy Valley, in a gorgeous home, with a swimming pool, horses, a social life with affluent Jewish couples who also lived in gorgeous houses. I hated it. Hated the endless barbecues, dinner parties, talk about Dr. Spock and carpet fibers. I had two daughters. I was obsessed by you. I hated marriage. Parenting. I left the girls with babysitters and found myself wishing I was marching with the Woman’s Movement.
I enrolled in Art College. I submerged myself with painting and studying contemporary art. I dreamed of going to a university, becoming an independent woman like Gloria Steinem, and the other women I read about. My beloved sad father suddenly died.
After ten years of marriage, my husband divorced me and refused to give me anything. I moved to a small flat in San Francisco. I worked at a bank in the statement Department and times were hard. I was broke.
All because of you. You! See what you did!
Ali Ali Atson Free. I wasn’t going to let you take me down.
So one day a tall handsome Norwegian man who owned the car company where I’d bought my Pacer automobile, rang my doorbell. I was behind on car payments and he came to re-possess the car. “I need the car sir, to drive my girls to school,” I pleaded. He invited me to lunch. Six weeks later I married him. I quit work. He paid rent, the girls’ expenses and Suzy’s private school tuition.
I enrolled at SF City College. I wore a nametag printed Entry Woman. It was the seventies. My old friends were living a life of cruises, and raising children and I never heard from them. To them, I was a “fallen woman.” I made new friends with other re-entry women. I felt alive. I studied hard. Loved college. Three years later, I transferred to San Francisco State University. I majored in English Literature and creative writing. I loved studying, and began writing my first novel The Rise and Fall of a Jewish American Princess. Every night at my Smith Corona typewriter I wrote term papers, and worked on my novel. In spite of my in-attentive parenting, my girls were flourishing. Suzy dreamed of NYU, in film, and dance. Bonny dreamed of horses and dogs and writing. Ha! I was determined to beat you to the finish line.
I was accepted into the masters program. I felt inspired, as if I found connected to my true self. I couldn’t stop writing The Rise and Fall of a Jewish American Princess, selling you out. Three years later, the novel was my graduate thesis. My professor loved it so much he sent me to a well-known literary agent Fred Hill. Fred sold it quickly for a huge advance. He said it would be a film.
My husband died. I was broke but optimistic. At last I was going to be a well known author. Somebody. When I flew to New York to meet the publisher, the editor demanded that I rewrite the book and having no esteem, I complied. A year later, the publisher said the voice was gone and they shelved my novel. I was devastated. My friends and family whispered. My agent wouldn’t answer my calls. You got me again. I was determined to do you in.
I wrote another novel titled So Long Princess. Two years later, my agent sold it to William Morrow Publishers for a seventy-five thousand dollar advance. Once again I had high hopes. I got my masters degree and was teaching writing classes at San Francisco State University. But the faculty wouldn’t tenure me.” “Fifty is too old,” they’d said. But I was sure I’d make a fortune and that you were tired of messing with me.
Suzy got a scholarship to New York University. But you got Bonny. Six weeks before her graduation at Urban private school, you expelled her. I was six months behind tuition. I begged Urban that soon I’d have the money but they threw her out. She became a maid and emotionally suffered. I was teaching and selling contemporary art for a well-known dealer of contemporary art.
You loomed large in my life. It was 1985. I was forty-eight years old. Life was hard. I was aware that I’d made bad decisions, had given in to you, and I began therapy. I was close with Joe and Richard who lived next door to me. Joe and I often sat on the steps that joined our flats, in the sun, talking about life. We talked about you. One day Joe showed me black spots on his legs. “I have the gay disease,” he confided. He had AIDS. I watched Joe and Richard evicted. I watched Joe die a terrible death. “Write about this,” he asked. After he died I met Christian Haren the Marlboro Man the first gay man with AIDS to win the Gay Olympics. He took me through the Gay Catacombs, SF Ward 8, at SF General Hospital and I watched young boys die on mats and scream from pain and horror. I watched neighbors and friends ignore them. I witnessed homophobia. I began interviewing men and women with AIDS, and writing God Doesn’t Make Trash. During this time So Long Princess had a film option. It didn’t go through and sales waned. My agent fired me.
I concentrated on teaching, and God Doesn’t Make Trash was published in 91. It won two prestigious awards, but sales were few. To supplement my income I was a columnist for several newspapers, and published poetry and books that never went anywhere. And then I wrote The Viagra Diaries about love and sex after sixty. Simon & Schuster bought it for six figures. HBO optioned it for a TV series. Darren Star wrote the script. Goldie Hawn was to play Anny Applebaum. Ha! I was on top of the world and you didn’t get me. Two years later, just as the pilot was to be green lighted Goldie and Darren didn’t like the script. She left. HBO shelved the project. I didn’t get the money.
Once again I felt your presence. I was devastated. Then I was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Again, I was so used to you, even more I was determined to ignore you.
But no way will you win. It went to CBS. Another bad experience. Once again it’s optioned with a bigger network. But does it matter? What matters is that I’m moving to other goals and projects– producing my Age March, volunteering at Shanti, forming a non profit, publishing another novel this fall.
So goodbye pain. Goodbye adversity. I’m tired of you. Ha! You didn’t get me. I have many plans. I’m ready for you. When you attack, I move into a better goal. I want to thank you for your pain and disappointments. There’s much I want to say to you. You come in so many ways, strike everything from sudden death, fire, disappointment, illness, failed marriage, romance, but you play a small part.
Tune in.”
And, stay tuned for more on this year’s Age March. No matter how old you are, if you are sick of being defined by the number, you may want to join the growing number of people who are saying “Stop!” to yet one more kind of discrimination.