Welcome back to Beach Reads and Beyond!
This week I’m taking you Beyond the world of beaches with a memoir I read very quickly during my commute home from college, which I think was a very important scenario to read this book.
Photo by Kimberly Donahue
Recently, I have been trying to stay away from reading memoirs due to an addiction I had to them a few summers back. My new method of thinking was, “why read about somebody else’s stories when I can go out and make my own?” While I still find that to be somewhat true, The Rainbow Comes and Goes by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt completely changes that belief and is a work I believe is absolutely essential for everyone.
As an aspiring journalist, Anderson Cooper of CNN is someone for whom I have high respect. I even had the opportunity to stand behind him for several hours as he broadcasted at Hofstra’s Presidential Debate! I recently learned Cooper is related to the Vanderbilt family, who were steamship and railroad tycoons during the 1800s making them one of the most wealthy families in America to this day. Cooper’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt and became an heiress to millions of dollars at a very young age. (Cooper and Vanderbilt, 18-19).
The authors created the book from a chain of emails they sent to each other beginning on Vanderbilt’s 91st birthday in order to build a deep and close relationship before it is too late. A feature of the memoir I enjoyed thoroughly is that it is written more like an adventure/mystery/romance novel all in one. The life of luxury described by Vanderbilt is so extraordinary the events do not sound like real life and comes as a surprise to her son as well.
Photo by Kimberly Donahue
To Cooper, who writes as if Vanderbilt is an interview subject, the stories his mother tells sound as if he is meeting her for the first time as she goes into the extremely personal details of her custody case that dominated the national news, her hardships within her four marriages, and coping with the death’s of Cooper’s father, Wyatt Emory, and the suicide of his brother, Carter.
Though it is tough for many people to ask these difficult, sometimes impossible questions for our parents, Cooper defends his raw and honest correspondence by warning that if we choose to keep acting proper around those who raised us, we may never learn their true selves.
“When we’re young we all waste so much time being reserved or embarrassed with our parents, resenting them or wishing they and we were entirely different people,” he writes. “This changes when we become adults, but we don’t often explore new ways of talking and conversing and we put off discussing complex issues or raising difficult questions. We think we’ll do it one day, in the future, but life gets in the way, and then it’s too late.”
I have always learned to treat my elders with respect but rarely is it encouraged to treat those who have witnessed our highs and lows since birth as our friends. Though the relationships with our guardians evolve and sometimes the roles are reversed, the authors prove that even if it two people were distant throughout a lifetime, it only takes a little bit of curiosity and power to reserve all judgments to understand someone you have known your whole life in a new way.
Throughout the responses to her son’s deeply personal questions, Vanderbilt instills many life lessons she hopes Cooper can apply to the rest of his life, as well as the lives of others. I found the most powerful lesson comes from the root of the piece’s namesake.
Photo by Kimberly Donahue
“The rainbow comes and goes. Enjoy it while it lasts. Don’t be surprised by its departure, and rejoice when it returns” she writes. “There is so much to be joyful about, so many different kinds of rainbows in one’s life… It may seem a small thing, but rainbows come in all sizes.”
It is incredibly refreshing and extremely brave that this duo shared this slice of their life with the world and is able to encourage others to do the same. I recommend this book to anyone no matter how they think their relationship might be with their elders, offspring, or others who they might think they truly know. The Rainbow Comes and Goes will leave you awestruck, challenged, and maybe even unsure of your emotions but its intentions will impact you more than you will imagine.
Photo by Kimberly Donahue