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I went looking for some famous older moms today and remembered playwright Wendy Wasserstein had given birth at the age of 48 some years ago.
I love her writing.
Years ago when I read the book Shiksa Goddess I laughed and cried and wondered about motherhood. I loved her take on becoming a first time mom in her 40’s.
She also wrote about her list of things to do in her forties:
• On diets and cooking (”I was born to order up… My favorite breakfast china has always been a paper cup embossed with a picture of the Parthenon.”)…
• On getting in shape and hiring a personal trainer (Sue is on hand twenty-four hours to say, Stop! In the name of self-love… She is a fat-free beacon of light)…
• About the rise of the legendary Mrs. Entenmann, who married the boss at nineteen and went from salesgirl to bakery czarina…
• On the truth of her denominational heritage (the name Wasserstein was changed from Waterson by a distant relative in order to get his child into an Ivy Leage college and Mount Sinai Medical School)…
• On buying an apartment — and then seeking refuge from it for a year in a residential hotel (”Life boiled back down to basics: work, friendship, and room service”)…
• About attending the Golden Globe Awards…
• On the traditions of the holidays (”I was very disappointed the first time I saw Plymouth Rock… I thought it would be surrounded by Barricini chocolate turkeys, dancing sweet potatoes, and Pilgrims in crepe-paper hats”)…
• On Mother’s Day and her mother, Lola Wasserstein (”Lola encourages sending a homemade greeting card. A personal citation like ‘I love you, Gramma’ or ‘Mother, I promise next year to be married with three musically inclined children, a co-op, and a degree in dentistry’…
Today I have discovered that she died:
I feel so bad for her daughter.
Wasserstein gave birth to a daughter, Lucy Jane Wasserstein, in 1999, when she was 48 years old. The child’s difficult birth (three months premature, she weighed less than two pounds and had hyaline membrane disease)[2] was recorded in Wasserstein’s collection of essays, Shiksa Goddess (Or How I Spent My Forties).
Wasserstein, a single mother, never publicly identified her daughter’s father. Lucy Jane was named after the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.”
Wasserstein was hospitalized with lymphoma in December, 2005, and died on January 30, 2006, aged 55. The news of Wasserstein’s death was unexpected because her illness had not been widely publicized outside the theatre community. The night after she died, Broadway’s lights were dimmed in her honor.She was survived by her mother, two siblings (including businessman Bruce Wasserstein, who became Lucy Jane’s guardian), and her daughter.
Even though I didn’t know she had been sick and passed away, already I miss her work, her writing, and her spirit.
