My Mom Was Diane Keaton for a Week

She actually said it first, “I didn’t grow up with friends who said, ‘La-di-da.’” 

“That’s fine,” I replied.  “I just want to know if that offends you.”

“What? That you call me mom, or that you call me Diane Keaton? She’s like 10 years older than me!”

“Well, not just any Diane Keaton,” I said, ”Specifically Annie Hall – you remind me of Annie Hall!”

“Oh! She’s so cool,” she said in her hippy tone.  “Did you know that Annie’s parents in the movie were exactly like Diane’s parents in real life?  Yeah, you know Grammy Hall? Diane based it off her own anti-Semitic Grammy, isn’t that cool?”

I nodded and stared out the car window.  The Vermont trees zipping past were so intimidating and JoAnn’s driving was as indecisive and jittery as she was. I could feel myself  getting car sick.

She continued, “I’ve met her once or twice. I’m not friends with her but I’m good friends with her good friend.”

JoAnn drove through the bumpy roads of Vermont, both hands on the wheel like a mother would, her ponytail falling apart and her expensive round black sunglasses reflecting a harsh sun and protecting a pair of tired eyes. 

“I learned how to drive on these roads,” she said proudly.   

And then she rambled off about how three point turns were illegal in Vermont and how she had to practice in her 1960’s car that she thought was so cool.

She was cool.  In fact she was so cool she didn’t even know how cool she really was.

JoAnn could have cancelled the retreat she had been hosting for the last 14 years and nobody would have blamed her for it.   Alexander Cockburn, her long time friend and mentor, had died a couple days before and she was mourning the same way she dealt with pain her whole life; patiently.

When she first gave us a tour of the house cradled by the thick forest,  she did it in a way where I didn’t know if she was drunk or just embarrassed.

“And here is the bathtub,” she said pointing to a Jacuzzi built into the red wooded deck. “Feel free to use it anytime.  The rule is that if you want to wear a bathing suit that’s fine but if you don’t want to wear one, you don’t have to, like we won’t force you to, so clothing is optional is… what I mean.”

She began our first morning group discussion by drawing a horizontal line on a long piece of paper and said, “This is a line – a timeline of sorts.”  I looked around at the ten or so activist sitting around the small table wondering what to make of JoAnn’s awkward demeanor.  After all, we didn’t really know what to expect.

“We’re going to go around and I want everyone to talk about the first time or one of the times that you became politically aware – after which I will read a passage from Andy’s book.” She rose up her copy of Andrew Kopkind’s book.

Andy was another mentor and long time friend of hers who had passed away in 1994.   I didn’t realize this at the time but Andy was sort of a badass – a radical journalist during the 60’s and 70’s – she always spoke about Andy as if he was coming back soon – maybe after he was done with the gardening.

“I wonder what Andy would have thought of Occupy Wall Street,” she said, “He thought that the left was dead at one point. He wrote a piece called ‘Epitaph for a dead movement’ but it wasn’t cynical, no – it was romantic.”

On the first day I went out back with her to pick berries from the bushes with the nets on top.  She explained that the nets kept birds from eating all the berries.  She spoke about her frustration with Cesar Chavez and how he sold out more radical farm workers during that movement.  She had a way of talking diligently while being able to focus what she was working on.

Later on we went to the garden and I volunteered to do the picking of the weeds.  “Who says these weeds are bad anyways?” I shouted as I began to search and destroy any signs of them. Earlier, we had been talking about the projecting of ethics and cultural imperialism.  JoAnn had no mercy when it came to her garden. “See these bugs here,” she said pointing at one of her plants. 

“They think they can just come in here and eat my plants and then make love on top of them.”  She was right, two big beetle-looking bugs were having sex without a care in the world.

“Hope they are enjoying it,” she said as she picked them up with her fingers and squished them.

On the fourth night we sat underneath a canopy, surrounded by the patters of the rain, candles lighting up our center as we remembered Alexander Cockburn. Writers and friends alike sat in our big circle of chairs as JoAnn read the obituary she wrote for him, published by The Nation. We sat stunned and silenced as this wonderful-genius and loving woman allowed us into her world and showed us her art.

She finished with the line, “Alex is not dead to me, but there is an ocean of grief to swim before the memory can even try to match the man.”

By the end of the week many of us suspected that JoAnn had been taken advantage of - beneath a plethora of men writers with egos. She had been hidden, improving the work of others, hardly confident to publish her own book until now. 

But now we had her all to ourselves. Her thoughts, her moods and her experience. I felt so unqualified to be speaking to her. She knew too much and I felt so young and reckless. She never judged us.  

She asked and we responded. She listened and we opened up. Sometimes I wonder where she is now as she travels through the country collecting stories in her cool 1960's car, confident but curious - with both hands on the wheel.