Grandmothers Are Titanic

By Joyce Marcel
American Reporter Correspondent
Dummerston, Vt.

DUMMERSTON, Vt.

Copied with permission:  Over drinks the other night, a friend explained to me "The Grandmother Hypothesis," which is based on the idea that the human race has progressed so far in its evolution -- progressed over animals, I believe, not over its own best instincts -- because, unlike animals, who die after their reproductive life is over, humans continue to live.

That gives the race, as a whole, a large number of women with free time and energy who can help nurture their grandchildren, protect the family, gather food, and in general devote themselves to the welfare of the species.

The hypothesis, developed by a team from the University of Utah led by Professor Kristen Hawkes, an anthropologist, appeared in an article in the journal, "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science." It tied in nicely with something I have been thinking about since I saw "Titanic."

I loved the movie, not because of its special effects, and certainly not because I thought Leonardo for introducing me to her. I took from the film a calmness that lasted for days.

As it turned out, the very next evening, on public television, I found myself in a similar state of ecstasy watching "Porgy and Bess: An American Voice." The program, created by James A. Standifer, a music professor at the University of Michigan, examined with intelligence and truthfulness the artistic and racial issues raised by the Gershwin opera.

But the epiphany, for me, came at the end, when the stars of the first production, in 1935, sat in an album-lined room listening to their young selves sing gloriously on record.

The camera, in a quiet moment of Zen felicity, lingered for a long time on the faces of Anne Brown, now 86, and Todd Duncan, 95, as they listened with looks of wonder to the great beauty of their voices so many years ago. At intervals, we saw them young and on film, playing the parts of Porgy and Bess, Brown so beautiful that she took my breath away, Duncan, so strong and yet so crippled that I was stories from that bottomless well of secrets that is the female heart.

I find myself in the odd position of being old numerically but in the middle of my life emotionally and professionally. My grandmothers were old at the age I am today; I remember them as plump, white-haired women with no life at all except the ones they made inside their families. I'm their age now, and yet I'm not old at all. And I'm at a loss to make the number that represents the years I've lived compute with the person who has lived them.

It has long been a truism that our society discards women after menopause. Actually, women are discarded all the way through their lives: when they become, for some reason, crippled; when they put on 20 extra pounds; when they stop dedicating their lives to being attractive to men; when they are pregnant; when they are mothers; when they are old.

It is possible that the Baby Boomers will change this, because there are as many vital and productive women out there who are turning 50 as there are men, and they have enjoyed jobs, power and money throughout their lives. They have voices and, perhaps, will refuse to be discarded. It is possible that "Titanic" was -- pardon me -- the tip of the iceberg, and we will be fortunate to know the stories of many accomplished women, that Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and even Gloria Stuart will not be so alone with their great achievements and white hair.

That is why I like "The Grandmother Hypothesis." It makes sense that older women are a treasure, a resource, a source of wisdom, a repository of history. Maybe they even are one reason for the evolutionary success of the human species.

But I must admit that after a cognac or two, my friend and I started wondering, "While the grandmothers were helping the species to evolve, exactly what were the grandfathers doing?"

Joyce Marcel lives in Dummerston, VT. She is a free-lance journalist, a travel writer, and a music critic. This piece was originally published in the on-line newspaper, American Reporter, where her pop culture column, called Momentum, appears every Friday.