Shame on You!!!!!

It is almost too early in the year to say this but I think I have found the winner of the year's "Most Offensive Advertisement" and I didn't have to even wander out of my own community.  

While walking between stores at a shopping plaza, I was stopped, dead in my tracks, by not one, but three huge, slick, photographs, each depicting a version of what might be considered "stressors". Familiar scenes, intended to draw attention. Each scene bore the same message.

"LIFE IS STRESSFUL. FIND YOUR SERENITY ONE SIP AT A TIME" was the message to the reader. Loud and clear. Tansliteration at its finest.  If the picture didn't gather you in, the wording reinforced the idea that life is stressful and alcohol is the key to stress reduction and the means to the end...."serenity", one sip at a time.

In 1935, a brave man named Bill W. started Alcoholics Anonymous. Today, millions of people, world-wide struggle minute by minute, hour by hour, to achieve and hold on to the precious and hard-won gift of serenity. The simple Serenity Prayer, asking a Higher Power to grant acceptance, courage and wisdom, becomes their touchstone.  Stress, they pray, will be met with this courage and wisdom, not with a drink in hand. The prayer expresses so perfectly the core of their addiction and prescribes the timeless solution. For many, the solution comes years down a very long road.

Am I alone in my contempt?  I bet not.  Shame on the business owners for implying or promising the benefit of sipping alcohol as an escape from stress, a quick route to serenity. Were it that easy.....

In this, the brave new world of 2020, when every word we say is scrutinized to be "politically correct" and everywhere we turn we are reminded of our duty to be sensitive and inclusive, how can this huge ad campaign be anything but wrong?

Sure, if you own a business, you need to advertise.  Bring your product to the market place. Let the public know what you're selling. I used to work for two of the world's largest consumer goods companies.  I totally get it.  But, my companies had attorneys who provided scrutiny.  Every single word that potentially would be used in promoting the products, was carefully scrubbed and sanitized.  No cheap shots allowed in the market place.  Big business recognizes responsibility and advertising, at its finest, not only promotes products but also educates people of all ages, with respect and thoughtfulness.  Sensitivity is key to consumer loyalty and consumers who are happy contribute to the longevity of the company.  It's that simple. You want to make a lot of money and work long hours, become a corporate attorney.  You want to know real stress, get in a room together with a marketing executive and a corporate attorney.  But, in the end, all of it will not be in vain.

It appears that our local wine shop did not engage the services of a legal person.  Maybe they even skipped the expense of a bonafide marketing specialist, an "Ad Man" (pardon me). Perhaps they, the couple who own not only this store location but a string of others here on what I guess they assume is "provincial" Cape Cod, thought they would be terribly clever and rip off the words used by A.A. in one horribly cheap shot.  But it's not funny in any way and I contacted the owners.  Needless to say, I am eager to get a response.  If nothing else, the owners are guilty of false advertising.

Mother Thoughts

I'm not necessarily a book club gal.  I have joined several groups over the years but never lasted very long as a member.  One of the reasons, perhaps the greatest, is the fact that I am a difficult-to-please reader.  I need to feel totally in love with a book within the first, at the most, ten pages.  I do have a pretty good sense for what I am about to either invest or not invest my time and finding the "right" fit in a book makes me gloriously happy.  So, when I heard about this month's choice for my condo book group, I immediately went to my livingroom book case, found my copy of Jumpha Lahiri's "The Namesake" and re-entered the reader's world.  I rarely remember all the details of something I have read, so doing a re-read is fairly easy for me to digest.  Also, I tend to pass books on to other readers either personally or through depositories, holding on to only the most special and this one, I vowed several years ago, would be a permanent resident on my shelf.

I love "The Namesake".  I love beautiful Jhumpha Lahiri. While she's a brilliant author, she isn't exactly prolific, doesn't crank them out and from what I understand, she now lives in Italy and writes in Italian, far from her native language.  Perhaps another of the reasons she is near and dear to my own heart.  But. wait, wait, there's more.  It's the essence of her writing, the time and the place, that resonates and makes takes me back to a world that has escaped my touch and makes me melancholic. In the pages, the story of Ashoke and Ashima, young  pre-arranged newly-weds who start their life together in Cambridge, Massachusetts and soon after their marriage, begin parenthood, I find myself drifting and dreaming of my own life as a new mother. Their baby boy.  My baby boy.

No, this is not intended to be a book review.  Rather, it is a repository for my flashes of memory. As I read on in The Namesake, I put myself back almost fifty years, remembering the first blush of motherhood, all those moments of uncertainty that accompany the birth of a first child to a person who, by today's standards, is barely considered a "grown-up", hardly ready to become as isolated from the real world as new motherhood demands.  Rather than overly joyful, I found myself feeling overwhelmed and envied anyone who still enjoyed what I considered to be freedom.  The windows of our apartment became mournful places through which I watched all those fortunates who were not chained down in a world of anxiety and confusion. My first born was a Winter baby and it was a true Winter that year.  But, slowly, the Spring came forth and with it, my skills as a mother grew and what I had considered to be burdens became joys and the absolute pleasure of being a young mother intensified by the hour, building to a crescendo that lasted for years.  I loved being a mother, and still do.  The thing is, it's when we are going through the hours of uncertainty and the long days of Winter feeling like shut-ins, that we can't hear the voices that tell us that one day, we will miss all of it. That one day, we won't be feeling the satisfaction that a good day with a toddler brings. That we won't experience the reward of simply sitting with a good book at the end of a day that was filled with feeding, cleaning up after and changing the diapers of a helpless little person.

I'm sitting here, listening to the wind roar outside my window.  It's a Winter morning and I have my time to myself.  I am picturing a baby in a blue snowsuit, little red boots, big rosy cheeks, being pulled by a sled, and I see myself, a younger version, smiling and happy and I know there isn't anything I would not do to have one day of that back at any given time.