Judith Schonbak and McKenzie Wren

00:04 And how did you find out about this $300 car for a long time from Tatiana did one at Refugee Road?

00:13 So, my name is Mackenzie when I'm 45 years old today is August 21st, 2010 and I'm here in Atlanta, Georgia with my mom.

00:25 And my name is Judith Sean back and I am currently 69 but next week I turn 70 and this celebrates that day and today's date is August 21st, and we are in Atlanta, Georgia and

00:40 I'm with my wonderful daughter.

00:43 So Mom and honor of your turning 70, I thought it would be really fun to come in and kind of talked about how our lives were shaped in the 70s by some of the stuff that went down in our family and when you and Dad got divorced how you created your life and your new persona, if you will and how that affected me and how wonderful that has a model that you provided for me. So maybe you can start by talking a little bit about what life was like for you before y'all got divorced. Well, I grew up in the fifties and back then there weren't many choices in terms of when you grew up you figured you were going to get married have children and if you wanted to go to the college, which I did you could be a teacher a nurse and if you didn't go to college you could be a secretary and those there were very few options. I did go to college and went to William and Mary and I always love literature in English and language is

01:43 Writing and all those things. So I went into English and education and minor in languages.

01:54 So when I graduated I was already married actually your dad and I eloped and then we got you know, we didn't live together for the last semester of my college. But anyway my role you guys were you you eloped and then you finished up college dorm, but we were married was very secret. I forgot about that. But anyway, I'm in growing up the role models and all the the training if you will was to be the support system for the husband and the woman's role was to run the house and all those funky ass at we see now the silly that seemed really silly to us. That's what we were taught to do. And so that's what I did and somewhere along the line and I got really restless with that because I felt like there was more even though I adored my children and love love love being a mom and you had a lot of Curry.

02:54 I'm Outlets as well while you were at home with us. I did I mean just having children with creative and I remember taking a painting lesson taking a couple painting lessons back then before I was divorced and just loving it and actually don't know that this is for publication, but I wanted to take these classes and dad didn't want to spend the money on that. And so I went to a local loan office and borrowed $75 to take these classes gradually paid it back until like six months. That was a lot of money but I did it because I felt so strongly about taking these lessons. Is that watercolor or I remember you doing calligraphy at one point was in it. And this was I'm trying to think this was the drawing class since the first drawing class not always drawn messed around with Arden and spent hours design.

03:54 Clothes and cutting them out in a coloring them cutting them out of paper and I had reams of paper dolls that I had made with all these clothes designs. So there was clearly an artistic streak and you also you are always sewing a remember you do during craft fairs in The Gingham Dog and the Calico cat and all of my great wonderful clothes and costume sewing when I was ten on the machine and I started making my own clothes when I was 12 and 13 and it's showing was just a huge outlet for me and I loved it and I love coffee love costumes and I create a lot of those in on paper and in Fabric and yeah, so when I had kids especially a daughter for goodness sake and I met a lot of Chris's clothes to wear overalls and things but when I had a daughter, oh my goodness, I made almost everything you more and I made everything my own that I wore and I made I made tents.

04:54 Curtains and drapes and bedspreads anything that could be sewn on some point or another all the stuffed animals in the Gangnam dog on the couch. And I remember that you had that sign and it was Judy Wren. I remember how beautiful that sign was cuz you drew that that ran and it was Judy Wren right then that's that name embodies everything I used to be and what I am not now, it's interesting that I don't identify with that name at all except as a historical, you know, we have a lot of good years. We had fun. We went camping. We did all kinds of things. I did the support system thing and was very much a partner with Dad and I think he respected my opinions to a certain extent and and ask my advice or or honored my intelligence.

05:54 To some extent but he has grown up to that. The mail was the dominant person and whatever the mail wanted. That's what he got. And so anyway, we ultimately came to a parting of the ways and you were 10 and Chris was 12. And so I had a summer where I stayed home cuz that all happened in a minute in May and I wanted to be home with you guys. And so we did that and just sort of Friday, you know, I figure it out and I had taught high school and what then was junior high for probably three or four years over a. Of time in Pennsylvania and Maryland and I didn't want to go back in the classroom because the discipline a chain and I wasn't willing to put up with the lack of support and and so I decided that I always wanted to write for a living and

06:54 This was my opportunity.

06:56 I was going to have some child support. I didn't think would be for long and I was so the first year when I went back into the job market. I didn't know anything about the media in Atlanta. We had moved to Atlanta from Delaware Delaware and we're only in Delaware year. We had moved from Baltimore after being in there there for several years. And so I ended up fortunately with a job with a restaurant firm with two of the most unlikely people. You can ever imagine for me to be dealing with in the restaurant business. They just we were just sold disparity in our views of the world, but they took a chance on me to be a PR person and I didn't know diddly. I mean they really did take a chance on me and and the money was decent and so I started working for them Birds place, right? Well, they had Burt's Place. They had Burt Reynolds and they had other restaurants most of the word.

07:56 And the other three were downtown Atlanta and our office was right over one of them which was in Peachtree Center. So it was a and a World opening in out open my eyes to the big city and I enjoyed it for a long time as a challenge and it was fun and I did not know what I was doing. I mean I had some in staying but in terms of the funky kind of stopped not just good solid PR, but sort of silly stuff. I wasn't big on that. I'm not feeling well at least wasn't bad and anyway, but we did some good things and and it was fun and it worked out for us and I have the job at but my purpose for taking that job was to learn the media in Atlanta cuz I had to buy advertising and figure everything out and that's what I did and within six months of that job.

08:56 I began to tell the Press people that I've APR people that dealt with it. I was wanting to write and if they had anything they needed written. I would like that job. And so I began to pick up small things and if it paid $5, I did it and then back down there were some things. I was a restaurant reviewer for where magazine I did all kinds of things and and after about a year the company I was with decided they couldn't keep five restaurants going and they kept all but two and I remember when we they close the Cobb County restaurant my cannot remember the name of it. There was a watercolor

09:36 Abstract painting on the wall that I have loved absolutely loved and the manager who was Billy who was maybe 5 feet tall in a cage and then just the most delightful guy and I went in to say goodbye and he said, you know that painting invoice. Like I said, oh, yeah. He said why don't you take it with you? And I said just take it. He said sure we're closing the restaurant. So I walked out with that big painting in the dining room for you.

10:04 So when they downsize then they didn't have any need from my position they did away with the position. So at the end of that year, I had learned a lot of the media had made a lot of contacts and I began then to really look to get writing jobs and it was a struggle but I had two children to feed and they were huge incentive and I sometimes wonder really if I would have made such a good career of writing if I hadn't had two children needing clothes and I really don't know. I was awfully motivated. This all happened in the mid-seventies were talking like 77 or so are we were divorced in 1977. So this was a time when divorces were really first starting you called it an epidemic a divorce and it's also a time when really the women's movement was

11:04 Full force in full swing and where you connected to that at all. Did you have an awareness of what women would do it like where I think I recognize that there were a lot of others out there having the same new situation in their lives. Where as I said, we've been taught to be this support system and all the sudden we had to find our own way and a lot of us didn't get child support after and I never ask for alimony or anything. So it was going to be a short-term thing not as short as I feel and and so there was a recognition but in terms of Sisterhood and people that I could call and talk to no because everybody those of us who were in The Situation had kids we were struggling to keep a home to have our kids to find a job to work at this job and working full-time with kids was a pretty new thing. I had done it.

12:04 I talked a couple years but I lived only minutes from the school and I came home from lot for lunch and I got home for at 3 so it wasn't my head of somebody across the street who watch the children, so it wasn't a big deal but to have a full day work and to be driving so hard to make a living totally on your own. What's the difference anybody? I began writing. I started on a typewriter and I'm not a good typist never really started every time I had to type it I cringed because I am kind of dyslexic and I transpose letters and back then you had to have the little ribbon that are little piece of pipe the bad letter and then typed over it when people have longer attention span so it.

13:04 As I was writing features and I did fairly quickly get some good jobs assignments as a writer and and I'll talk about that in a minute, but the feature-length was maybe 2500 or 3000 words in there long. So they're very long. Now there are a thousand to 1200. So it's half or less and that was when you type that double spaced it was 15 to 20 pages when typing and every time I want it had to go type, I just set up really till 3 or 4 in the morning. I mean, I I I got four hours sleep for several years. I was tired a lot, but I went to Atlanta magazine. I sent a query letter to Atlanta magazine and Jim Townsend was the editor at the time and he was a great believer in new talent and young writer.

14:04 Not that was that young but I was 37 when I was divorced and he gave me an assignment to he took a chance on me and I was thrilled and and I turned in a good story. And so I got on with Atlanta magazine and then they started a magazine called business Atlanta and and they asked me to write for that and I what I did I did I know anything about business know and they kept I kept seeing these letters CEO which everybody knows now means chief executive officer. But at the time of the CEO, why don't they tell me what it means? I don't know what that means. But I became a pretty prominent business writer in Atlanta and I wrote for business Atlanta for 14 years and I was there senior ultimately their senior contributing editor and and got a lot of great assignments send one of my favorites. I have a history column business in history all that was up to me and then it was vaguely remote remotely related to business. I could write whatever I wanted.

15:04 And I still have those who always intend to put them together and make a book or something. And that was really fun because I love history and somewhere in there.

15:15 My children were growing up to your children growing up for a second because certainly you were raised with this model of how men and women should be and one of that was certainly not ever any modeling that I got. Thank you very much and that you have always encouraged me to you think outside of the box think outside of what you ever thought you might be an encouragement of every dream. I'm crazy thought and wild idea that I'm and I might have and I have had time for me. I felt when I was ten and watching I don't remember of course as a kid. I don't remember any struggles other than the struggles of serve, you know, figuring out the new relationships, but I remember watching you learning to do this and be really proud of you and I remember like going to birds place and having a sure the various offices and remember seeing your name in print and how

16:15 Proud you are to show this and how proud I was to see you become this person and especially as as I grew up and course, I went to I went overseas it to spend a year in Denmark, which was very brave of You by the way when I came back I had also really had my eyes open to what women's roles could be and when I came back I felt like we really did some growing together in terms of the things that we began to explore and include alternative medicine in that because some of those things were just beginning to come on the front and and certainly just gender roles in in in general and I wonder if

16:59 I know that for me, you've always been my best friend and always have been somebody that we could talk about anything with and including the way of the world and you know, I remember fling myself on the bed and moaning about the environment back then and so on and you always engaged with me, very real in a real way about all these heavy and very real topics including relationships between men and women and I wonder what was that like for you from your perception of a I guess you would have been just about my age now coming on your unit 40 is when I was at math. I don't know. What was that like for you to sort of shape your your daughter in a way that was very consciously different from the way that you were as a teenager while I didn't have any references. I didn't grow up that way. My mother wasn't we didn't talk about things. We we just didn't talk about things and so it was all new to me. I feel like I've

17:59 Winging it, but I think there was an instinct. I think I think when women have that opportunity that they take it and I also believe in keeping the channels of communication open Communications of ours is to be a communicator and I remain that and so I think it opened a lot of flood gates for me because before you weren't supposed to communicate or you didn't know how and I think Anna in our marriage, I don't know and I didn't know how to communicate, you know, we we try and it just wasn't done by very many people. So I think with my children but most particularly my daughter woman to woman. I mean Chris my dear son whom I adore but he's he's not a communicator. He's pretty typical male with from those days. But anyway, it was a gift to me.

18:56 A gift

18:58 That wasn't been thoroughly the greatest gift in my life as well. I'm the way that I feel like I've learned how to both shape my life and go after my dreams and you stand up for who I am and what I what I want and sometimes consciously thinking about how women's roles were and being always interested in family history in and how were things kind of like back then and hearing you and I talk about you know, what you're supposed to be and and that idea of that me as a mascot of my generation. That was the first generation to to grow up believing that we actually could be anything. It was y'all's generation who opened the door for us and figured it out as y'all went along and broke that ground for my generation to say, hey, we can be anything that we want. We can be astronauts and neurosurgeons and you know, whatever waitresses. I mean it didn't, you know, it's everything and including coming back around to be

19:58 Stay-at-home moms if we can make all of those choices now, I was going somewhere with that thought, but the greatest gift I could give my children was to be what they wanted to be to follow their dreams and that I shouldn't ever sit on them. However scary they were and you had some scary ones, but you don't you know, there's the Instinct as a mom no matter what generation that you just want to wrap your kids in Cottonwood. I do and now that you're a mother used to do and to let them go on their adventures and you don't I will say that it from from my perspective now having just you know sent my ten-year-old on a flight by himself. It was it was hugely difficult. And I I understand. It's like you would not until you have that experience yourself. Do you understand what your parents went through?

20:57 Yeah, so it was there was so many good things. Of course. What can I say about how proud I am of you without tearing up totally and what a remarkable woman you are.

21:13 And I take some credit for that. But mostly because you did you weren't timid you were able to follow your dreams and we were together at a time when those things were happening. And I think that P was partly what was going on in society that allowed you to do what you went on to do that allowed me. We didn't have any choice actually at my very good friend our Janet Paschal when she was 48 and she's become a very successful attorney and and she was in the same situation we talked about it. She never dreamed she would be divorced who ultimately got divorced thought that and so I just commend and respect and honor all the women who made their way and I don't know anybody who sat at home moping and taking to their bed or or just going down the tubes. I mean it to me part of it was you do what you have to do, but I'm thrilled that I had some training some education.

22:13 And drive that was a big e s incentives to pursue what I wanted to do and and that it became such a such a success. I still look back to wow. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's it's amazing and that's in cursive writing that we've talked about is only one piece, but she cuz you've also pursued artist R&R a fabulous watercolor. I stand acrylic acrylic painter painter in acrylics. And that was also something that I always saw you make make time for it sort of watching your creativity you have always had lived in that and it's always been part of you are so strong creative streak in her whole family. It's come down through both sides more. Openly. I'm not openly but more noticeably on my mom's side, but my dad's side was incredibly creative mechanically and and in that sense and Chris has that of course.

23:13 And he's creative and artistic ways as well and and you certainly are creative and I love that. I love creativity. I think it's it just makes the old saying and it's a friend of mine said who she says she is not creative. She said but you do need those of us who just appreciate create event in a family of creative people. It just seems natural and it is natural and to be able to pursue it even its limit more limited than I would like because I write for a living and I have to make a living but I do love art in every way shape and form form and I get to write about art now and work in the gallery one day a week and I'm surrounded by beautiful art and and it just makes my soul sing.

24:13 Are you too, you know, I wouldn't creative it's true. I was thinking about that is as you were talking and feeling again that the thought of being overwhelmed by the choices and feeling like the dad has been something that I have struggled with. My whole life is having so many options and invest in some ways that's made me a dabbler and because I have dabbled in so many amazing things and and I won't say that I'm the master of none. They all form a coherent piece, but it's been an interesting like all I want to do that do that seems fun. Who I think I'll do that for a while and and have really done that have not pursued a kind of a single path. They've all been related and then I feel that with my own artistic expression as well. And and I sort of view that is somewhat symptomatic of the of the whole experience because it was as a woman having all these choices and envying coming overwhelmed by any other way, but as you know, I interview people all the time about this

25:13 Things and I don't think with the exception of car leasing. I remember doing the story on car leasing which just bored me to tears every time I interview someone I think I grow up as it's just and I just have that experience this week on a story with the paper dolls.

25:41 Thinking I mean, I've always been pretty good at focusing and when I determine I want to do something I pretty much go after it and I did that with writing again. I had the incentive of two children and dumped but I do tend to do that. And so I get pretty good at what I'm doing sewing. I was very good. I don't so much now, but I'm beginning to start again costume the Next Generation and painting I've tried to focus but it's been harder to find as much time as I would like, especially when you have a home and you know on the spot to having grandchildren who take up happily take up especially when they're not in school lots of my time. I won't miss I wouldn't miss it for the world because they're growing up so fast and pretty soon. They're going to want to hang out with their friends all the time instead of their grandmother and

26:41 I'm trying to milk it for all it's worth. You know, I've also always found it interesting that I ended up with two sons because so much of my life has been about women and women's work for and everything from Midwifery to a woman's circles and you know abortion care and and all of everything that has to do with with women and I ended up raising two sons and I figured that that's my gift to the world is too to raise a good man who are in touch with their communicating hearts, and I've always been somewhat I view that as a great irony in the universe.

27:14 Khan said that too when she had two sons since she said she'd always thought she'd have a daughter but didn't and she's I remember her saying to you but perhaps our role in our gift is to raise wonderful man. Yeah, absolutely and certainly men who are able to communicate and to respect women and understand that at gender roles are only what we make of them and that it's not for every couple and family to figure figure out how we we work it out. Well, I think there are a lot of couples where they're still in most ways in the old world even some of my friends today still ultimately have very traditional roles, which I sort of have only recently become aware of is that some of my friends still maintained a very happy household and everything that they maintain very traditional roles and love the woman is still mostly taking care of the house in the man working outside of the house with more and I know it's funny because I don't think I realized that because my life is so wacky and Rubens.

28:14 My roller so all over the map and we just share everything and you don't trade back and forth with all of the skills. We know many people who are like that as well that I didn't realize how many still sort of traditional roles people are following them on my friends. Will that surprises me too? Because I watch you all And even Chris and Cindy they do their own thing and I don't think there is traditional certainly in many ways. And so it's a surprise to me when I see younger people not having the more moderate what I consider where my surprise egg and I've dated of course in the many years. I've been divorced. I've had some serious relationships and I think that I did never marry again. I thought well I did that so it's okay, but those people

29:10 Send the men in my life since I was divorced have been men who really respected women highly and had a a better sense not a better sense, but at least a willingness to honor them more than what I had in the beginning. But you know, I think it's also to your great credit that you never became bitter and you never gave me the message that women are better and there's definitely no sometimes that's in order to have women be better and took it to bash men and you never did that and I'm almost always grateful for that because I it's me it's not about we don't one gender being better than the other. It's really about how we work it out together is our wacky species and I thank you for that too. But I definitely know that a lot of women do do the male bashing saying as they were trying to figure out the new new roles and then that's its.

30:10 I can be tiresome as well. But there was a reason for that if I were to bash Minutemen, I was bashing your father and I think that's really destructive for children. And I've seen so many divorces where the parents are bitter and angry and ugly toward each other and that's detrimental to the children. I mean the children love both their parents and and to have one bashing the other whether it's male bashing a woman bashing. It's the parent. I think that's the wrong just plain out wrong and I known I wouldn't want to have done that to my children and I don't want to do that to women. I think we have a nice day in the difference. That's the way it is. And so let's do what we can and enjoy it and make the best but but not bad sometimes yet.

31:10 The gentleman out in Texas who lived in a big old Ranch where he was the lived on the ranch and was outside all the time and and really live in a different way than an urban people dead. And he viewed men in cities as a different species of man altogether, you know, they were a real man. They were a different species of man altogether and and the emasculated or whatever becoming more womanly because of you know, the urban needs kind of thing and it was an interesting perspective to hear. What was that that rural view was and I wonder how much of their that still exists for many Uniworld Merle folks just really seen the people in cities as as having a completely different cultural constructs. I think the majority I mean, we're in Atlanta the mecca of the southeast in one sense and if you go to Thomaston and Monticello and

32:10 All the little towns in Georgia just within our state. I think you'll find much more traditional roles and that kind of thinking. Well, I know that we are wrapping up here. Do you have any other thoughts around our journey together that you want to share or reflect on?

32:33 Well, I'm happy that it's a journey together and boy me to tell you that the best part of it has been ongoing life with you and I'm so grateful for that and had we chosen to go ahead I chosen to keep on going. I would have missed out on a huge huge part of life. And so I'm I'm so grateful to have always had all this time with you and for our lives to be so Sheridan for you to you are a part of the heart of our family and I'm thrilled that it happened. I don't know that I would have followed you around the country, but I think it was meant to be if I can say that, you know, I try very hard to learn for my children and to learn from younger people to I've learned so much from you.

33:33 I learned more how to stand up for myself early on because you've always been very independent and willing to speak your mind and speak up but not offensively and I just think that is fabulous. And and I've always been more reserved and Chris back but I was going up you weren't out in our household. You aren't allowed to speak your mind. So that was a real learning process for me and I learned that from you I watched you do that and I went well, that's really good. And if I help you learn that good, but I learned from you how to do it. So and even now, you know, I'm still a little more reserved than and so I watch and I say, okay I can do that as your children grow up. And and first of all to be in touch with the way things are in the world today, I could easily hide in my house and know even less than I do about the car.

34:33 But I try to be aware and I certainly through your children wants children. If you're paying attention, you learn those things and now it's the kid teaching me what's going on in the greater world today at least on their level. So yeah, I mean it's it has been a beautiful journey journey, it will continue to be and I can't imagine life without my children to match celebrate you everyday and every way and all the big and small ways to being able to just call up whenever and I'm just really looking to you as a very wise woman and I've always look to the women a couple years older than me know. Who am I going to become how a my shaping myself and to see you moving into this next phase of Life gracefully and and really again, you're breaking the ground as you know, what do what do aging folks look like these days and he had to be 70 and as active and young and

35:33 What a great role model that is for me to know that you know, just like just like being a woman into a certain extent. You can create the kind of Aging that you want. You know, it all Health considered that you are you're still pushing the envelope of how people are supposed to be and your figure you're figuring out this next phase in Indus providing a model for me, you know, even even now and so I will have some role model role models for grandparents because I didn't have any they had died before I was born and you all didn't as my children didn't really have close relationships with either my parents or dad's parents because we always lived away and so when I became a grandmother was like

36:19 I'm going to really enjoy this and so I was determined to be a grandmother but I'm playing it by ear sort of what comes naturally because I don't have any role models. I have no that special relationship. The grandparents have with their grandchildren when they really have that. So this is sort of true in one sense in the aging process. Although I have a sister who's a year older and thigh and she's fabulous and you so strong and she's so amazing funny and all the good things that one can be and my own mom and dad who have been gone now for years. They were very useful always all the right up till almost the time they died and my dad was almost 90 and he retired at age 89 and he drove until he reads 89 and my mom didn't do as well the last four years of her life, but up until then they were square dancing and going places and doing things a lot with

37:19 Family, cuz a lot of family lived it written down in Pittsburgh, but so they were good role models to and the people who say oh I'm too old to do that. I just missed that. I just absolutely do not believe that and so I think they're still life to be live and I still want to be when I grow up I think endless curiosity is a big factor. Remember Grandpa your dad's dad and he had that Grandpa Grandpa if he hadn't Limitless curiosity about what was going on in the world about nature and about people and and I loved that in him. I really need remains fascinated by it all well certainly are hopefully our life together continuing on wall of the anything but boring and on this your birthday weekend or beef birthday week, I so much celebrate you and I wish you many many many happy more.

38:19 Birthdays and hope to celebrate with you 30 more years and thank you and thanks for being my mom. I really I really got lucky right back at you is fortunate and bless the universe for your being my daughter.

38:37 Love you.