httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edJa2dYskuY
In “The Rainbow Comes and Goes,” written by Anderson Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, all of these qualities reside.
Cooper wrote one memoir already in 2006, “Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival,” that concerns his beginnings as a war reporter and how it impacted his life.
“The Rainbow Comes and Goes” take a decidedly more intimate and revealing look at one of the most personal relationships, the one between a parent and their child.
Cooper fostered the idea for the book following Gloria Vanderbilt’s hospitalization from a respiratory infection, which motivated a desire to leave nothing left unsaid.
On Vanderbilt’s 91st birthday, a year-long electronic correspondence began between them, leaving no stone unturned and no question unanswered.
“My mother comes from a vanished world, a place and a time that no longer exist,” Cooper continues, “Vanderbilt is a big name to carry, and I’ve always been glad I didn’t have to. I like being a Cooper. It’s less cumbersome, less likely to produce an awkward pause in the conversation when I’m introduced. Let’s face it, the name Vanderbilt has history, baggage.” Baggage indeed! Yet, surprisingly, Gloria Vanderbilt empathizes, “That I have the name Vanderbilt has always felt like a huge mistake. I felt I was an imposter, a changeling, perhaps switched at birth, intruding under false pretenses. For me, this feeling has never gone away.”
Despite this, Gloria Vanderbilt was still raised mainly by her governess, Emma Keislich, nicknamed Dodo, and her maternal grandmother, Naney Morgan.
Vanderbilt artfully quotes Susan Sontag: “You don’t grow up missing what you never had, but throughout life t is hovering over you an inescapable longing for something you never had.” These are the sentiments that have been woven through Gloria Vanderbilt’s entire life, even before and after the infamous custody trial that occurred when she was only 10 years old.
“I know now that it’s never too late to change the relationship you have with someone important in your life: a parent, a child, a lover, a friend. All it takes is a willingness to be honest and to shed your old skin, to let go of the longstanding assumptions and slights you still cling to. I hope what follows will encourage you to think about your own relationships and perhaps help you start a new kind of conversation with someone you love. After all, if not now, when?”.