Becoming Grandma: The Joys and
Science of the New Grandparenting. By Lesley Stahl. Blue Rider Press. $27.
The COPD Solution: A Proven 10-Week
Program for Living and Breathing Better with Chronic Lung Disease. By Dawn
Lesley Fielding. Da Capo. $16.99.
The biology of becoming a
grandmother is quite clear. The psychology, as Lesley Stahl makes abundantly
clear in Becoming Grandma, is not. In
a few sentences, here is what it comes down to: “I thought about what it means
to grow up. I decided it means that you watch time flow backward. First, when
you raise your children, you relive your own childhood, going through
(sometimes painfully) the various stages all over again. Then, as a
grandparent, you relive your children’s lives. The process tends to soften the
indignities of aging.” Yet this is only one element of what it means to be a
grandmother, a state that Stahl discusses from her own perspective (she has two
grandchildren) and many others – using the reportorial talents she has honed at
60 Minutes in the service of exploring
a mundane-yet-exceptional time in a woman’s life. The book combines Stahl’s
personal stories, including the difficult one of her mother’s death shortly
after the birth of Stahl’s first grandchild, with the experiences of others and
a certain amount of research. The latter takes such forms as: “The average cost
of full-time day care varies across the country. In New York it’s $14,500 a
year; in California, $11,628; in Alabama, $5,547. In most states high-quality
child care is more expensive than college.” This information is not very
useful, nor is it particularly accurate, since “high-quality” is indefinable
(or at least undefined here), and an average for a state such as California surely
does not reflect costs in the areas that Stahl herself most frequently haunts,
such as San Francisco and the upscale areas around Los Angeles, where Stahl’s
grandchildren live. Far more interesting in Becoming
Grandma are the discussions of grandparental attitudes and worries with
everyday people – not the ones with the celebrities whose comments Stahl
sprinkles through the book, and who are presumably mostly concerned with their
public images. For example, the other grandparents in Stahl’s own family are
conservative Midwesterners, and a painful conversation between Stahl and her
grandmother counterpart, Barbara, raises troubling-but-fascinating issues of
resentment, competitiveness and financial inequality: “Financially, we can’t
afford to go see them often in LA,” Barbara tells Stahl. “I understand that you
can do that, and that hurts.” In fact, Stahl explains that one way she got to
California often after the birth of her first grandchild was by figuring out
how to work there: she arranged to do stories that required travel to Los
Angeles. This makes for a slightly disingenuous comment: “I know that traveling
across the country several times a year is something most people can’t afford.
As it does with so many facets of life today, income inequality has a bearing
on how we grandparent.” That may be true, but in Stahl’s case, where work inequality is her primary
advantage, it is not entirely relevant, no matter how real Barbara’s pain is.
There is hurt in modern
grandparenting, often involving the use of grandchildren as weapons within
family units, and Stahl explores this situation with sensitivity and empathy.
But there is also considerable joy in being a grandparent today, and Stahl’s
descriptions of the explosions of it are among the most affecting parts of her
book. “Being a grandparent was my new identity. And I was fast becoming a
stereotype. Whenever I passed a store that sold anything for babies, man, was I
sucked in. ....I am so not alone. Grandparent spending on child-specific items
has increased sevenfold in the last ten years. We’re out there buying baby
food, equipment, clothing, tricycles, and toys. Our grandchildren melt our
wallets!” This is an exaggeration at Stahl’s specific income level, but it
makes a good point, one among many, about the ways in which having a grandchild
changes one’s entire perspective on life – for some people. Stahl does note that many modern grandparents are
uninvolved with their grandkids, more focused on themselves and going on with
their own lives than they are on their children’s children; and she offers a
few thoughts on why that may be so. Most of the book, though, is celebratory,
because it reflects Stahl’s own bright and bubbly feelings about being a
grandmother. This makes the forays into deeply troubling territory all the more
effective, such as the story Stahl did about a grandmother whose grandchild killed
his father – the grandmother’s son. The way Stahl recovers from the emotion
generated by doing an interview about that tragedy – by visiting her own
grandchild – makes a clear statement about grandparental love as a balance for
life’s turmoil, if not a cure for it. Similarly, Stahl recounts the effect of
being a grandfather on her husband, screenwriter Aaron Latham, who has
Parkinson’s disease. Four months after the birth of the first grandchild,
Latham’s condition improves markedly: he walks better and can even drive again,
and facial tics caused by the medicine he has been taking for Parkinson’s
disappear. Stahl writes, “We had trouble getting a straight explanation for why
his symptoms had all but disappeared. …My own theory was that becoming a
grandfather had healed him.” Indeed, “grandchildren can be curative in a
profound way,” one doctor tells Stahl, and she does some research on the topic
to back up the physician’s experience-based remark. Becoming Grandma is like that: personal, off-the-cuff at times,
reportorial at others, pervaded always by Stahl’s own feelings about the
“pivotal event” (as one of her colleagues called it) of a grandchild’s birth.
The book’s flaws are largely ones of Stahl’s chosen profession: a bit too much
name-dropping; a little more celebrity commentary than is necessary; a politically
correct, predictable and not-very-revelatory foray into grandparenting in a
family where someone opts for a gender change. Stahl is too polished and
professional to be able to cast aside her own role as a journalist completely,
but she is at her best when she comes across as most non-reportorial: not
someone who researches wrongdoing for a living, not someone who travels
constantly in search of the next major TV story, not someone who hobnobs with
the rich and famous and politically connected, but simply a woman who has
entered a new stage of life, found it marvelous and surprising, and wants to
use her storytelling skills to inform others about the joy, wonder, occasional
sadness and amazing amount of love she has discovered in her new role.
If only all life stages were
blessings, even mixed ones. Unfortunately, aging brings with it as many
challenges as joys, and one increasingly troubling one is Chronic Obstructive
Pulmonary Disease (COPD), which is actually a disease that combines two or more
of three other diseases: asthma, chronic bronchitis, and emphysema. COPD has
become the third leading cause of death worldwide, after heart disease and cancer;
it affects more than 20 million Americans – 6.3% of the population. Tobacco
use, air pollutants at home and work, and genetic predisposition are all
implicated as COPD causes. The condition is most common in non-Hispanic whites
and in women, primarily in people ages 65-74, and is associated with various
lifestyle factors – not only current or former smoking but also being divorced,
widowed or separated. Respiratory therapist and COPD educator Dawn Lesley
Fielding argues in The COPD Solution
that the condition need not force victims to change their lives dramatically
and stop doing things they love, or even things that others who can breathe
more easily take for granted. Fielding recommends a 10-step, 10-week plan that
she says has “a 100 percent success rate
[italics in the original] with those who followed the program” in her practice
– a claim that is difficult to believe but that would be impressive even if
only half true. The steps are not particularly revolutionary or even unusual,
which makes it hard to believe that Fielding’s “100% successful” program is not
the 100% standard for all COPD treatment for everyone everywhere in the U.S.
and throughout the world. In simple terms, the steps are: 1) accept the
diagnosis and seek support; 2) have oxygen therapy, plus treatment for sleep
apnea if you have that condition; 3) reduce stress and take control of your
breathing; 4) relax and conserve your energy; 5) use prescribed medicines as
directed; 6) have your doctor refer you to a pulmonary rehabilitation program;
7) quit smoking (readers may be surprised that this is #7, not #1 or #2); 8)
change your diet to increase antioxidant, fiber and fluid intake; 9) do yoga;
and 10) maintain a strong social network – stay connected with family members,
friends and work colleagues. Fielding’s tremendous enthusiasm for her program
is uplifting: “Treating COPD has become my mission,” she writes, and she
advocates her approach with evangelical fervor. And in truth, every element of
her 10-step program is worthwhile, and every one of them can help people with
COPD live better and more-fulfilling lives. But nothing in The COPD Solution is in fact a solution to the condition: there is
no cure, and the book’s title is misleading to the extent that it implies there
is one. Furthermore, Fielding’s certainty that she has the solution to COPD is delivered in such a way that if readers try
what she recommends and do not get
better despite the “100 percent success rate” of her approach, it is obviously
the readers’ fault for somehow not doing things properly or correctly – a
belief that, if internalized, will have significantly deleterious effects on a
COPD sufferer’s self-image and psychological health, and may actually make the
condition worse. The big problem with The
COPD Solution is a lack of modesty: this would be a better book if it
contained the same recommendations but stated forthrightly that some people, but not all, will benefit
from Fielding’s 10-step approach, and that some
people will find elements of the approach difficult or impossible to implement
(for instance, Fielding’s dietary changes may conflict with dietary needs
associated with other elements of a person’s health). There is a great deal
that is good in this book, but if you have COPD, it is worth asking your doctor
why Fielding’s 10-step program is not followed 100% of the time by 100% of
health professionals dealing with this very serious condition. The discussion
that ensues will likely be as valuable as anything in this book, if not more so.
The reality is that there is no perfect, one-size-fits-all-100%-of-the-time
approach to any serious medical condition, COPD included. The COPD Solution is a (+++) book because it overreaches, thus
inviting disappointment in readers for whom the approach may not work as
ideally as Fielding says it will; a more accurate title would have been “A” COPD Solution, which is all that Fielding or any other person
who deals with this condition can realistically promise.
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