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T A B L E++T A L K

Parents who are still in college discuss term papers and diapers in Table Talk's Mothers Who Think area.

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R E C E N T L Y

The good doctor
By Caroline Leavitt
Why I love my OB
(12/03/97)

Time for one thing
By Kate Moses
If you've been drinking my eggnog, you better not drive
(12/02/97)

Reading between the whines
By Inda Schaenen
The sevenfold path to coping with seven-step parenting manuals
(12/01/97)

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There's something so graceful in a huge unwieldy person finding a way to glide. I remember Marlon Brando ice skating a few years ago in "The Freshman," so massive and shy and full of grace out there on the rink; Jackie Gleason shooting such great stick at the pool table in "The Hustler," actually strolling around the table to take each new shot, in total presence, total command. And there's also something so graceful in a skinny little kid with poor coordination, who's running in a gangly goony way, arms akimbo, knees knocking, this hopeless little kid who will always be picked last in schoolyard games, who's just so happy to be running so fast, running the exact way she's running.

I know more about grace than I did two weeks ago. A poet -- maybe Auden -- said, "I know nothing but what everyone knows, that if there when Grace dances, I should dance."

I was with the incomparable Grace Paley, onstage, and I danced. The thing is, I didn't dance beautifully. I danced like Peter Boyle did as the monster in "Young Frankenstein," doing the soft-shoe in tuxedo with Gene Wilder -- bellowing "Putting on the Ritz" like a wounded water buffalo. But I did the best I could do; I did it with great passion. I got bad reviews. But because when all else fails, you have to follow directions, I did just that. I danced. I danced because I was there with Grace.

Grace in the theological sense is that force that infuses our lives, that keeps letting us off the hook. It is unearned and gratuitous love; the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It's the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you; grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.

And in a literary sense, there's Grace Paley. In 1970, when I was 16, the women's movement had just burst into the general public awareness. Now, I am a person who can say in all sincerity that she owes her life to the movement, but as it first emerged from New York, it was defined by grown-up daughters who did not want to risk having anything in common with what had been their mothers' entrapment. As a result, some of the language of the early movement contained an ugly rejection of mothers, of motherhood, of softness, of wanting to be in deep relationships with men. But also, blossoming out of New York, from the tenements and the Village and the anti-war movement, was a short story writer so wise and funny, whose work taught me that you could be all the traditional feminine things, a mother, a lover, a listener, a nurturer, and you could also be critically astute and radical and have a minority opinion that was moral. You could escape the fate of your mother, become who you were born to be and succeed in the world without having to participate in traditionally male terms -- without hardness, coldness, one-upmanship, without having to compete and come out the winner.

She was beautiful, soft, zaftig and powerful, a mother; she was in love, she was a combative pacifist. And that was Grace. That was Grace Paley.

I used to almost pant like a thirsty dog when I'd have a new unread story of hers before me. I drank up her humility, her generosity, the radical wisdom of those stories. Most amazing of all was her wonderful sense of perspective, grounded in self-forgiveness. She pointed out her own flaws and foibles, but it was clear that she was not bogging down in them, not getting caught up in the small stuff. Foibles are not worth hating, was the point: What was worth hating was poverty, injustice, war, the killing of our sons and brothers.

I met her a couple of times over the years, and we always had an easy rapport. We had much in common -- we were mothers, teachers, activists. And then a few weeks ago, I got to do two literary evenings with her, in two different cities.

Now, the producers of the events both wanted us to read from our work, then each give a prepared talk from the podium. But then this terrible thinky little thought got caught in my head: Why not let us just be together in front of the audience, a couple of funny, articulate women hanging out? And I was sure that this was the way to go.

I had to convince the first producer to give us a shot at this. I've been giving variations on the same talk for a long time now, and after a while it makes you feel like a baton-twirler. It had begun to leave me feeling like Peggy Fleming skating to a medley of songs from "The Sound of Music." And that is what Fleming's audience would probably want to see. Left to our own devices, I think most people want what is smooth and light and easy and instantly warm. They do not want to pay to watch someone sit with the nervous abyss onstage. I do not think they want to see Peggy Fleming skate to "Carmina Burana" or Keith Jarrett.

I saw Peter, Paul and Mary recently in concert. I wanted to hear them sing "The Great Mandala." I became frantic and somewhat bitter when Paul Stookey began to sing an interminable new song about the Internet.

N E X T__P A G E: A nice intimate conversation with 2,000 people