Maureen Dowd is probably my favorite political writer out there. She's been on book leave for a little while now and I've missed her twice-weekly columns on the Op-Ed page of the NY Times. I was so happy to see her name on the front page of the NY Times website with a link to an article slugged: "Maureen Dowd's Mom" and I clicked. The article was not of a political nature. It was not of how she and her mother waged ideological wars [Maureen is the lone Liberal in a family of Conservatives]. Rather, it was about her mother who always wanted to be a writer; she passed away Sunday morning.
Mom was not famous, but she was remarkable. Her library included Oscar Wilde, Civil War chronicles, Irish history and poetry books, as well as "Writing to the Point: Six Basic Steps," and the 1979 "Ever Since Adam and Eve: The Satisfactions of Housewifery and Motherhood in the Age of Do-Your-Own-Thing.'"
As her friend Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, eulogized her last week: "She was venerable without any of the fuss of venerability; worldly, but thoroughly incorruptible; hilarious, but ruthlessly in earnest; unexpected, but magnificently consistent; wicked, but good. She could be skeptical and sentimental in the very same moment. She set things right just by being in the midst of them."
When I told her I was thinking of writing a memoir, she dryly remarked, "Of whom?" And when reporters just starting out asked her for advice about journalism, she replied sagely: "Get on the front page a lot and use the word 'allegedly' a lot." The daughter of a manager of an Irish bar named Meenehan's, with a side entrance marked Ladies' Only, she grew up in a Washington that was still a small Southern village with horses and carriages. As a child she saw the last of the Civil War veterans marching in Memorial Day parades, and as the wife of a D.C. police inspector she made friends with her neighbor, Pop Seymour, the last person alive who saw Lincoln shot at Ford's Theater. (He was 5 and saw the president slump in his box.)
I felt sad all over as I read the tribute to her mother, a remarkable woman. You don't have to be famous to change the world. Little things helping individual people and little groups cause a ripple effect, good will spreading exponentially throughout. It seems like Mamma Dowd's good deeds had that effect.
I felt compelled to immediately write Maureen an email after reading the article. Take a read and if you feel like doing so, drop Maureen a note. I've never lost a loved one, but I think if I did, every bit of support would help.
Comments