Let's Run Away Together

I saw Brooke Shields on a couple of different television shows this week, hawking her book, Down Came the Rain. And I really wanted to be sympathetic to her, I did, but I couldn't because how can you feel sorry for an almost 40-year old woman with such long, lean calves and such well-groomed eyebrows and that dimple right by her pretty mouth?


Brooke on Oprah's show. 

Did you see how good she looked when she left the hospital with her newborn? On my best day, I didn't look that good. I never will. And after I gave birth? I was just a mushy-bellied, red-eyed, crazy-haired woman who smelled like baby spit-up and dried breastmilk.

I know--of course, I know--that post-partum depression is a real malady suffered by scores of women, but her descriptions of the dark days didn't touch me at all. I felt a whole lot more sorry for Andrea Yates, the mom who systematically drowned her five children in a bathtub. I related more to the straggle-haired mom who snapped than to the smooth-haired beauty who didn't want to pick up her newborn.

I know. Aren't I a terrible person?

I suppose the truth is that I'm just jealous of Brooke's beauty and wealth and extreme tall leanness. She is only a few months younger than me and it hardly seems fair that some people get more than their fair share of . . . well, everything. I hate myself for feeling so uncharitable.

But while I'm at it, let me also say that I bet women who are honest-to-God (but unpublished) writers who have something valid to say about post-partum depression, even though they are not gorgeous movie stars who had a traumatic experience . . . I bet they are peeved that Brooke Shields got a book deal about this topic as a result of her fame and good looks. Okay, right, so Brooke Shields went to Princeton and she's smart, too. Like that makes me feel any better. As my dad would say, please don't confuse me with the facts. I know I always narrow my eyes at people who get book deals even though they are not writers, per se.

As for Jennifer Wilbanks, the so-called "Runaway Bride," I feel a great deal of sympathy. In fact, she has inspired me.

I told my husband, though, so he wouldn't call the FBI. I challenge women everywhere: See how far from home you can get with $150 and a bad haircut.

I leave first thing tomorrow.

(Okay, okay, only in my dreams. But wouldn't it be an interesting exercise? And then we could compile all the experiences into a book and call it "The Runaway Woman," and it'll be on the best-seller list and then we'll all become rich, rich, rich and we'll go on Oprah, but before the show, we'll get makeovers and then we'll look fabulous and afterwards, Oprah will take us out to lunch and we'll all be Best Friends and go on a cruise together. And they all lived happily ever after. The End.)