So tell me what you want, what you really, really want
“Life is too short to worry about Marilyn Monroe.”
Yesterday was the anniversary of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday” to JFK at Madison Square Garden in 1962. It was also the anniversary of Anne Boleyn’s beheading in 1536. I haven’t found a connection between those events, but I have found the above epigraph.
Mrs. Kennedy was not in attendance on May 19 so did not see Ms. Monroe’s performance. According to biographer James Patterson in Town and Country magazine, “Jackie tells her sister, Lee, “Life’s too short to worry about Marilyn Monroe.” Instead of attending Jack’s fundraiser, Jackie and the children are at the First Family’s Glen Ora estate outside Middleburg, Virginia, enjoying what she calls “a good clean life.” As spectators, including her husband, ogle Monroe at Madison Square Garden, Jackie is winning a third-place ribbon at the Loudon Hunt Horse Show.”
I find this quote compelling partially because of its irony (JFK would be dead in a couple of years) but mostly of its metaphor. The truth is life is too short NOT to worry about Marilyn Monroe.
As I approach my 57th birthday, and America approaches summer’s opening weekend (Memorial Day) and the imminent destruction of its economy, democracy, and world standing, I find myself unconcerned about living up to Jackie’s restraint and worried about living in Marilyn’s vivacity.
Jackie and Marilyn typify, respectfully, reserved poise & responsibility and unrestrained appeal & possibility. Living in my Marilyn Monroe means having the confidence to wear an invisible dress on a world stage, to have brilliant husbands, and take powerful lovers. It means challenging society’s expectations of your limits and using your name to support and protect others. It means doing things that you are not supposed to do.
And I wonder how many years of Marilyn-level self-authority I have left. My marriage has reached its end, I just got out of a relationship with a man 17 years my junior, and I am ready for a new life.
But my knees hurt, and I go to bed by 9. Suddenly, I have more grey hair than I did before, and, in crowds, I am starting to disappear.
I am not ready to disappear.
May 19 is the anniversary of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday” to JFK at Madison Square Garden in 1962. May 19 is also the anniversary of Jackie Kennedy’s death in 1994.
Marilyn Monroe was 36 when she died. Jackie Kennedy was 64. It’s too late for me to live fast and die young, and it’s too early for me just to die. But how do I live in my Marilyn, making the choices I want to make and doing so on my own terms without, of course, getting my head cut off?
