I love the juxtaposition of the title and the style of the book based on the American rapper from Brooklyn · The Notorious B.I.G. Every chapter title is a song title from his albums too! (I Just Love Your Flashy Ways). And they connect it back in the appendix by making a very catchy rap about RBG!

I happened to pick this book up trying to find a way to celebrate RBG’s birthday and Women’s History Month at the same time. I wanted to be inspired, mentored, transformed. Books like these tend to change some corner of your thinking structure and I ardently welcome that change.

When I think of RBG, I think of Power, Poise and Patience. Patience · you know when you’ve known a word and you’ve known what it means but then it suddenly dawns on you what it means? I felt that with patience. I’ve never really known patience. Barely practised it · I struggle with a monkey mind. After the book, I feel more mindful of the word and its intonations. Now I want to know more about the word, inculcate it, imbibe it, experience it, romance it even.

Got carried away a little bit there. I cried while reading Chapter 6 in the book. “Real Love”.

June 17, 2010

My Dearest Ruth,

You’re the only person I have loved in my life, setting aside, a bit, parents and kids and their kids. And I have admired and loved you almost since the day we first met at Cornell some 56 years ago. What a treat it has been to watch your progress to the very top of the legal world!

I will be in J.H Medical Centre until Friday, June 25th I believe. And between then and now I shall think hard on my remaining health and life. And whether on balance the time has come for me to tough it out or to take leave of life because the loss of quality now simply overwhelms. I hope you will support where I come out, but I understand you may not. I will not love you a jot less.

Marty

When you go so closely through the life events of two people and the nuances of their relationship culminating in this letter, I think you will find yourself moist-eyed too.

As a person who has been agnostic about the institution of marriage, theirs made me croon. I find myself unable to put into words that kind of relationship Marty and Ruth Ginsburg were lucky enough to share. I would just dully list out the things I learned and would like to carry forward, heavily fighting the response of the two-year-old in my brain going “Eww!” at the sound of marriage and relationships.

  • It is not sacrifice if it’s for family · if you so choose to do something for them.
  • In an equal marriage, tasks don’t need to be cut down the middle. It could mean doing more of the things you like and less of the things you don’t like.
  • A good partner enables and empowers.

If I were a commoner I would say, “They say, there is a woman behind the success of every man (or something to that effect) but here, there was a very supportive man behind the success of RBG”. But Marty himself would not have preferred me to say it.

I would like to relate this to Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell here. RBG was an outlier. You see, every cosmic event is a sum of minutely, seemingly inconsequential other events. For RBG, it was her mother with an iron backbone in an era where mothers just stayed home. It was her education at Cornell. It was her relationship with Marty · in a very big way. It was her supportiveness of Marty during his bout of cancer. It was RBG overworking herself to help Marty get through his classes after their marriage. It was Harvard refusing to grant her graduation. It was her stint at Columbia. It was them moving to Oklahoma for an army posting. It was Marty’s decision to learn how to cook. It was their privilege where Marty could afford to leave the cushion of his job at a corporate law firm and teach at the same place as RBG. It was him shifting to Washington for his wife’s career. It was his unwavering efforts for his wife to get her appointed to the Supreme Court. It was her colleagues. It was her unfazed persistence during her bout with cancer. It was her personal trainer. There isn’t one thing that you can credit this to.

Here as a side note, I am not listing all of this out to be so bold as to lessen anyone’s achievements. It is, however, my intention to help readers engage in a little self-compassion as I try to do the same. For I have this embarrassing proclivity to beat myself up over the successes of others. A tiny voice in my head dings “You’ll never be good enough. Look at what they’ve achieved”. And then I beat myself up for having this thought.

Now instead I try to give myself some compassion for having these thoughts as I try to also understand that it is a whole chasm of events that lead to the making of a person apart from their whole-hearted 200% effort. It is never one thing. I see a pattern build here. Hmm.