Clinton in-law and former House rep talks about small kindness and raising a village

NEW YORK — One of the first lessons Marjorie Margolies’s father taught her was that a good life was one occupied with the pursuit of social justice.

And for much of her adult life, the 79-year-old Margolies has done just that — whether working as an Emmy-award winning television journalist highlighting stories of women and children, becoming the first woman and Democrat to represent Pennsylvania’s 13th district, or founding the Women’s Campaign International to empower women around the world.

“My dad, who was amazing and hilarious, would always say, if you can just pass the gift along to one person then you’ve done a service,” Margolies said in a Zoom interview with The Times of Israel.

Now a professor of political science at the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, Margolies was in New York City to help take care of one of her 21 grandchildren. She seized an hour early in the morning to chat about her new book “And How Are the Children? Timeless Lessons from the Frontlines of Motherhood.” The book, with a foreword by Hillary Clinton, is part memoir, part parenting advice.

In 1970, as a young television journalist and single mother, Margolies became the first unmarried United States citizen to adopt a foreign child: Lee Heh from Korea. In 1974, she adopted Holly from Vietnam. She later blended them into her joyful, if chaotic, Jewish household consisting of four stepdaughters and two biological sons. Aside from taking in a refugee family who lived under her roof for 25 years, Margolies also adopted three more Vietnamese boys.

“What would have happened to me if my folder had been on a different desk that day?” Vu Phan, one of Margolies’s adopted Vietnamese children, shares in the memoir. Now an anesthesiologist, husband and father, Phan also delivered the best man toast at the 2010 wedding of his brother Marc Mezvinsky to Chelsea Clinton.

Determined to write an unvarnished account of her life, Margolies details the 2007 dissolution of her marriage to the former Rep. Ed Mezvinsky, who was incarcerated for fraud. She doesn’t shy from talking about living with grief after her daughter Holly’s death from cervical cancer in 2016.

“Life is joy and pain. It’s tragedy and triumph. I have lived through both and just kept going,” Margolies writes.

The following conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

The Times of Israel: Where did the title of the book, which sounds like something your mother might have asked you, come from?

Marjorie Margolies: It does. How Jewish is that?

Actually, it came from Women’s Campaign International, which I founded. We travel all over the world and one of the places we go to all the time is Africa. The Masai warriors we meet do not say, “How are you?” They ask, “How are the children?” For me, that’s perfect. For me that’s what it’s all about. So that’s where that came from.

The Jewish tenet of tikkun olam, or repairing the world, is the thread that stitches the book together. You write about how throughout your childhood your father stressed the idea of helping others.

He would always say, “If you just help one person. If you can do something for just one person.’’ That’s where I got that from and that’s where I’ve always gone with the kids, the idea to help others.

That sense of passing the gift along led you to adopt Lee Heh and so become the first American to do an international adoption. How did your parents react when you told them of your plans?

They were really great parents who gave me a long leash. They really did think I was crazy, but they were also amazing. They supported me. Lee Heh came when she was 7. She was so kind and giving. My father went nuts for Lee Heh.

My mom was an artist and very talented. She stayed home and took care of us. My father was a riot. He never told a joke; he was just funny. And my mother spent a lot of time laughing.

It’s clear you use humor to cope with extremely difficult and challenging things, like your house burning down before Lee Heh’s wedding and of course Holly’s death.

There were a lot of reasons in my life to lean toward resilience. There were a lot of reasons why one could get up in the morning and say, “Woah, how am I going to get through this one?” But I did, we did, and the kids were terrific. They all say they can land anyplace.

I think psychologically humor is a healthy way of coping. I mean you must face reality and get to the bottom of what is wrong. But I think humor did a lot to save us. Especially with Holly. Holly was absolutely hands down the naughtiest, funniest, most irreverent individual. She was really something.

Can you talk a little more about how Holly and how you two were so open with each other?

When she was dying I asked her how she would like to be remembered. And she said, “I know how [the obituary] should start, ‘She was always my favorite child.’” The whole thing was so sad. She was always so honest and so amazing.

Last night I talked to her oldest son, who is in college. It was really interesting. He was at a place where he just wanted to share. It was fascinating to listen to him because it brought back so many memories of Holly. I think about her a lot and I think about what she said a lot. She had an incredible imagination.

I think when you have a kid like that, and you’ve gone through the peaks and troughs and you’ve come out the other end, it becomes increasingly more challenging to lose her. She was amazing.

When you were elected to Congress in 1992, you pushed for abortion rights and access, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Brady Handgun Bill. Here we are in 2022 and there is concern that Roe v. Wade might not see its 50th anniversary, gun control legislation isn’t moving ahead and there still isn’t paid family and medical leave. What do you make of this?

Congress has always been divisive. There was dramatic divisiveness when I was there. But it’s become so divisive and so unnecessarily mean. That’s what I have the hardest time with.

You know you’d go on these CODELs (Congressional Member Delegation), when Democrats and Republicans travel together. I was on one recently where a member of the delegation came late because he had been at a Trump rally. I thought, “Oh my gosh. How am I ever going to talk to him?” He turned out to be a gem, a great guy. We didn’t agree on many of the issues, but he was reasonable. I said, “So tell me what you think works,” and he did. And that’s what’s not happening in Congress, and that’s what makes me so sad. I think the sides are becoming much farther apart. There is no sane center. There is no moderate middle.

Tell me more about what you mean by, “Today’s Wonder Woman is tomorrow’s basket case,” and how it might relate to what women are going through in respect to COVID-19.

I think you can do it all; you just can’t do it all at the same time with the same energy and the same verve. You have to be a little bit patient, or a lot patient.

Regarding COVID, women once again were most affected by it because they’ve had to stay home, their kids have not gone to school, they’ve lost jobs. I think there’s huge relief in many places in the country that the kids are going back to school. But there is a lot of catching up to do and women are the ones who have to do the bulk of the catching up.

There’s a quote in the book from Diane Feinstein, “Toughness doesn’t have to come in a pinstripe suit.” What did that mean for you when you were the only woman at the table, or one of just a few?

It’s just learning how to hold your own. As women, we are always apologizing. We are always saying, “I’m sorry,” or, “Perhaps I shouldn’t say it this way,” or, “Perhaps this isn’t the right time to say it.” When we do that we are marginalizing what we’re about to say. It happens all over the world. We’ve been acclimatized to do it.

Don’t. Do. It. It’s just not necessary.

Toward the end of the book you offer some advice. Among your suggestions is the idea that fathers can be mothers too.

There should be several paragraphs under the heading that not only can fathers be mothers too, but that they’re missing out if they’re not doing that.

We assume mothers are going to be doing X, Y and Z, but when you talk to fathers who have had a lot of the caring responsibilities, they really love it. Some don’t, they’ve been brought up in really traditional homes, but for the most part they have a lot of things to share. I think the most important part of this equation is that the kids see a different kind of family. It’s much less hierarchical. It’s much more open.