Hello, life...

Ali MacGraw, who played Brenda Patimkin in the film of Phillip Roth's novella "Goodbye, Columbus", turns 72 today. On Tuesday I had a massage in Santa Fe and asked the masseuse if she had ever seen Ali, as she lives there. She told me that Ali is always at a local food co-op where she supports the area farmers. Naturally, I got the address and went right over, looking in each aisle for a glimpse of someone who made an impact on my life in high school.

Brenda Patimkin is smart, beautiful, bold, but also afraid to truly love Neil, a man she meets one summer who is, according to her mother, all wrong for her. Brenda and Neil have a summer-long intense romance that takes them from stealing into the movies to having sex in her bedroom as her parents sleep down the hall. Neil wants more, but Brenda wants HIM to be more...more like her father, who built a business from scratch so that his children could go to the best colleges, live in a mansion-like home, and swim at the country club. In order to truly love Neil, Brenda would have to either reject her parents' way of life, or ask them to acknowledge that she is an adult who can make her own choices.

I was so taken by Brenda/Ali as a seventeen year old, that I tried to look like her. There is a picture of me as a freshman at Ithaca College in 1970 wearing camel trousers and a matching coat, with a black turtleneck, my hair tied back in a scarf, just like Brenda/Ali's was in the college scenes of the movie.

I was happy to learn, both from the woman in Santa Fe and a recent magazine article, that Ali MacGraw is a vital member of her community. She is described as committed to good causes, generous, and loving. I wonder what Brenda Patimkin would be like at 72. I think she would have married someone her parents approved of, and lived a life of second homes, skiing in Gstaad, winter vacations in St. Bart's, chairing galas, and serving on various boards. And every once in a while, when she had a glass of wine in the late afternoon, she would think back on that magical summer with Neil and wonder why her life had never lived up to its promise.

So, Happy Birthday, Ms. Ali MacGraw from a woman who has been a fan far longer than she cares to admit.