30.

AT THE FOOT OF THE LADDER

The Institute years were fertile ones. In addition to hatching my first nonprofit organization and field of endeavor, I gave birth to my two sons. By the time they were three and five, I could no longer bear the pull of the organizational and fund-raising demands against their needs and my desire to be with them. Nothing seemed more important, but I didn’t know how to make the transition. My psyche and body turned out to be my teachers.

In my dream, one of my science advisers, Joan Borysenko, beckons to me from the top of a very tall ladder. “You really should come up here, Eileen. The view out the window is spectacular.” I look up to where she is balancing on a rung, high above the rafters of the cavernous barn. Light streams through a window at the peak of the roof. I admire her multicolored, stylish clothing that adorns her enviable body. Unlike me, she is unafraid of heights. She seems to have it all. Good job, handsome husband, renowned research, beautiful figure and face. It is tempting to climb up there, away from the family I have begun. I think hard about all I would have to give up in each case. Something tugs me from within and I hear myself say no. When I wake up, I realize I have begun a new chapter in my life.

Some dreams hit you square in the face. I had led the Institute for the Advancement of Health for seven years and was grappling with whether and how to end my term as president. There was so much dazzle in meeting brilliant scientists, Nobel laureates, appreciative lay leaders, foundation heads, and wealthy philanthropists. At thirty-two, I was featured in the New York Times Magazine as “one of the leaders of the Cousins’ generation of my family.” I founded IAH before I was pregnant with our first son. But after the second one, I was no longer able to annually raise a million dollars and two sons simultaneously. At thirty-nine, I needed to choose where to spend my time.

The woman in my dream did not have children of her own, and she beckoned me toward the light and glamour of a career outside the home. No one was standing with me at the base of the ladder. Who stands with mothers? Something very old and instinctive that was wiser than glamour kept me on the ground.

I made my choice, but it was not without challenge.

Feelings of guilt, panic, and desperation had been mounting since the time I held my first baby at my breast while making fund-raising calls. I would wake by six in San Francisco and bring him into bed. No sooner had he latched on to one side than I was dialing the East Coast in hopes of raising money for the Institute. The challenge doubled when my second son came along. By July of the Institute’s seventh year, when I was almost forty, I developed bilateral ear infections and bronchial pneumonia. My body was telling me to listen and slow down. I was once again experiencing unhealthy mind/body connections. Something had to change.

It had already been a difficult year. My mother-in-law died from cancer in June. Paul and I had spent months driving an hour to and from Ursula’s bedside with our two small boys in tow. The stress of her loss most likely played a role in my illness. In July my family of origin held a first-ever reunion in Wyoming. We had a good time, but old tensions came back to life. My brother Richard had commented, “Eileen, why do you act as if the Institute is the most important thing in the world? There are many good causes, you know.” It was true. I had exaggerated our accomplishments to impress my brother. He was the family’s only M.D., and I thought this would be our point of connection. It didn’t bring Richard closer, but my passionate belief in the Institute’s importance helped me raise the money needed to keep IAH alive.

Within days I got sick. My illness felt like a manifestation of the suffering we continued to feel as a family. Ironically, it was my brother Richard, the family doctor, who diagnosed my symptoms as walking pneumonia. He told me to see a doctor as soon as I got to Maine, where I was given the directive to stay in bed at my parents’ house for a week and take a vacation from the Institute and mothering. Paul took a more active role as father to our sons and I was grateful for his skill and devotion.

The time alone helped me accept the choice already evident in my dream. I had a lot to figure out. Closing the door on my involvement with the Institute was like ending a marriage. For the next four months I worked with a philanthropic adviser to plan the succession. We found a home for our journal, Advances, with our largest donor, the Fetzer Institute. After many meetings, the three largest foundations that had supported us decided to take full ownership of our work. The MacArthur and Cummings Foundations joined hands with the Fetzer Institute in creating the Center for Advancing Health in Washington, DC, as a policy advocate for the field. It was a dream come true.

My last responsibility was to help the board and science advisers to accept that they would no longer come together for meetings. I knew separation would not be easy. As one science adviser said, I was their mother. Some people felt betrayed, but most were genuinely sad. The community I had built would miss the twice-yearly meetings on our family estate in Tarrytown, New York. They would have to find other ways of getting together and supporting one another. I had two young sons who needed coaching for the lives they would one day enter, and my commitment was to them.

At the end of November, after our final meeting had taken place and good-byes were said, there was one more good-bye I had not expected. Norman Cousins died. Norman had inspired the Institute and had played a major role in creating it. More important to me, he had stood by my decisions, including the need to move the Institute on to other hands. He celebrated my every success and bolstered me in times of doubt.

One week after Norman died I received a letter he had written only hours before his heart attack. It was dated and sent on the day of his death, November 30, 1990. Despite having a twenty-one-cent stamp when twenty-five was the going rate, it arrived intact. He was my champion to the end:

Dear Eileen,

Your November 9th letter, which has finally caught up with me, is E.R.G. at her best. It is beautifully sensitive, compelling and persuasive. The tone, characteristically, is one connected to new beginnings and new prospects rather than to history. I’ve never been prouder of you than while reading your letter.

 

Love, Norman

I stood at the foot of the ladder and had no regrets.