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My first published essay appeared on the final Sunday of 1969. One night, I quickly jotted down my thoughts of that tumultuous decade. My father knew someone at the Los Angeles Times, and the next thing I knew, I was the Op-Ed’s featured piece. Called “A Child of the Sixties: From Mouseketeers to McCarthy,” it garnered a lot of attention and made me a symbolic star — well, until Joyce Maynard came along with her cover story in The New York Times Magazine.
When I read my piece today, it feels terribly sad and immature. (“I have been playfully loved by a black boy. Ten years later, I am hated by the same man.”) Like so many others, I was inspired by Joan Didion’s sparse, powerful — and personal — words. Could I do that too, I wondered?
The truth is, after my first 15 minutes of fame, I left the “essay” world and spent the following decades reporting on entertainment, culture, and politics. (My current beat is theatre for an NPR affiliate.) When Huffington Post came along, I became a regular presence. Looking back at the many pieces I wrote for them, and for others, I realized they had again become more personal. (My second 15 minutes, by the way, was a New York Times opinion piece about the challenges of now being the oldest person in most rooms: “Rather than going gently into mentor mode I have entered the Extreme Sport of the Boomer Challenge, returning to college after 40 gap years. But how many people have both student and senior IDs?”)
Over the years, people have encouraged me to combine those pieces into a collection. When I applied to and was accepted by the American Academy of Rome a few years back, it was to do that exact thing. I titled the result From Mouseketeers to Menopause. I resist calling it a memoir, though the experience did — almost accidentally — allow me to accomplish several things.
For example, I have also been encouraged to write a book about my father, a self-made businessman who was an important philanthropic and political figure in Los Angeles and beyond. I resisted that, but I realize now that my book is filled with him: particularly in the travel chapter, discussing my unique visits to China and the Soviet Union.
Because of my dad’s work, and a man who had an old friend from Brooklyn who’d been living in China since the War, my parents and I were invited there in 1973. Our connector wrote a letter addressed to “Sidney Shapiro, Peking, China” and it was received! My essay in the current collection is about returning there with a journalism group 40 years later and spending time with Sidney’s wife and daughter. One of those amazing bookends.
When I traveled to the Soviet Union, and found myself at the Gorbachev Foundation, I reminded them that my father and another Los Angeles businessman had gone there to turn a weapons factory into a children’s clothing store. His smart decision to purchase a home in Malibu also led to many memorable experiences. Robert Redford told us that while renting our house, he looked out one day and saw a wrapped up, tightly wound Mary Tyler Moore strolling the beach. He then cast her in Ordinary People.
In my chapter on death and dying, I have an essay about Paul Newman. He and my dad fought many fights together, and I couldn’t resist recounting the day we all had lunch at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club, when Newman insisted on making the dressing for my salad.
The collection is primarily for my children, but it is also a love story about the city that will always feel like home. In the last piece in the chapter called “A Year to Forget,” I reflect on my dual allegiance: “In New York, 9/11 remains the bond that does not bend, but I have remained bi-loyal: rooting for the Dodgers and the Yankees, the changing of the seasons and the relentless sunshine.” That was written in the middle of COVID, when people thought I was foolish for getting on a plane, but I felt a real need to return to where I experienced so many special, transformative moments.
Among those moments was when I dragged my good friend, singer Lori Lieberman, to hear Don McLean at the Troubadour in 1971. That night led to the writing of “Killing Me Softly with His Song.” The moments have continued. A two-character play, done by the Skylight Theatre in Los Feliz, was based on an essay about my relationship with my remarkable aunt, who died last year at the age of 96.
Why the Mouseketeer thing, you might ask? My mother one day pulled me off my brothers’ sports fields and placed me in front of the TV. “Why can’t you watch this show like every other girl in America”? she asked. It was The Mickey Mouse Club and to say I became an instant, ardent fan is an understatement. Am I still that “child of the Sixties” who lamented so many sad changes? Well. I just wrote a piece about a man of color who received clemency after spending 23 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. That man has now become my friend.
No longer a child, I am still using the written word to try to make a difference.
Michele Willens is a bi-coastal journalist and the author of From Mouseketeers to Menopause, a book of essays.
When I read my piece today, it feels terribly sad and immature. (“I have been playfully loved by a black boy. Ten years later, I am hated by the same man.”) Like so many others, I was inspired by Joan Didion’s sparse, powerful — and personal — words. Could I do that too, I wondered?
The truth is, after my first 15 minutes of fame, I left the “essay” world and spent the following decades reporting on entertainment, culture, and politics. (My current beat is theatre for an NPR affiliate.) When Huffington Post came along, I became a regular presence. Looking back at the many pieces I wrote for them, and for others, I realized they had again become more personal. (My second 15 minutes, by the way, was a New York Times opinion piece about the challenges of now being the oldest person in most rooms: “Rather than going gently into mentor mode I have entered the Extreme Sport of the Boomer Challenge, returning to college after 40 gap years. But how many people have both student and senior IDs?”)
Over the years, people have encouraged me to combine those pieces into a collection. When I applied to and was accepted by the American Academy of Rome a few years back, it was to do that exact thing. I titled the result From Mouseketeers to Menopause. I resist calling it a memoir, though the experience did — almost accidentally — allow me to accomplish several things.
For example, I have also been encouraged to write a book about my father, a self-made businessman who was an important philanthropic and political figure in Los Angeles and beyond. I resisted that, but I realize now that my book is filled with him: particularly in the travel chapter, discussing my unique visits to China and the Soviet Union.
Because of my dad’s work, and a man who had an old friend from Brooklyn who’d been living in China since the War, my parents and I were invited there in 1973. Our connector wrote a letter addressed to “Sidney Shapiro, Peking, China” and it was received! My essay in the current collection is about returning there with a journalism group 40 years later and spending time with Sidney’s wife and daughter. One of those amazing bookends.
When I traveled to the Soviet Union, and found myself at the Gorbachev Foundation, I reminded them that my father and another Los Angeles businessman had gone there to turn a weapons factory into a children’s clothing store. His smart decision to purchase a home in Malibu also led to many memorable experiences. Robert Redford told us that while renting our house, he looked out one day and saw a wrapped up, tightly wound Mary Tyler Moore strolling the beach. He then cast her in Ordinary People.
In my chapter on death and dying, I have an essay about Paul Newman. He and my dad fought many fights together, and I couldn’t resist recounting the day we all had lunch at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club, when Newman insisted on making the dressing for my salad.
The collection is primarily for my children, but it is also a love story about the city that will always feel like home. In the last piece in the chapter called “A Year to Forget,” I reflect on my dual allegiance: “In New York, 9/11 remains the bond that does not bend, but I have remained bi-loyal: rooting for the Dodgers and the Yankees, the changing of the seasons and the relentless sunshine.” That was written in the middle of COVID, when people thought I was foolish for getting on a plane, but I felt a real need to return to where I experienced so many special, transformative moments.
Among those moments was when I dragged my good friend, singer Lori Lieberman, to hear Don McLean at the Troubadour in 1971. That night led to the writing of “Killing Me Softly with His Song.” The moments have continued. A two-character play, done by the Skylight Theatre in Los Feliz, was based on an essay about my relationship with my remarkable aunt, who died last year at the age of 96.
Why the Mouseketeer thing, you might ask? My mother one day pulled me off my brothers’ sports fields and placed me in front of the TV. “Why can’t you watch this show like every other girl in America”? she asked. It was The Mickey Mouse Club and to say I became an instant, ardent fan is an understatement. Am I still that “child of the Sixties” who lamented so many sad changes? Well. I just wrote a piece about a man of color who received clemency after spending 23 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. That man has now become my friend.
No longer a child, I am still using the written word to try to make a difference.
¤
Michele Willens is a bi-coastal journalist and the author of From Mouseketeers to Menopause, a book of essays.
LARB Contributor
Michele Willens is a bi-coastal journalist and the author of From Mouseketeers to Menopause (2021), a book of essays.
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