A Brush with Fame - My Meeting with the Iron Lady

For reasons I cannot explain beyond the anglophilic enchantment occasioned by my abiding JAMES BOND STUPOR, I recently decided to watch THE IRON LADY for the first time. I had no idea it was so heartbreaking. Meryl Streep is astonishing in this role. I love the way historical events are woven in to the story of Thatcher's personal life and ascension to the world stage. But (politics aside), to see the (then) most powerful woman in the western world's decline and her Churchillian "nevah give up" spirit as she fought to defy and deny that inexorable decline, was devastating.

When my family lived in London in 2003, I went to the same, small, family medical practice as the Iron Lady. I discovered this one day when I was seated in the waiting room with my ailing 8-month-old baby on my lap. Twin rivulets of green goo surged from both of his nostrils each time he exhaled, as if in some sort of bacterial race to the finish. Not surprisingly, the seat next to us was unoccupied.

Tired of absentmindedly entertaining myself by secretly handicapping the mucus race each outing, and tired of cleaning it up, I looked to see a new person enter the room and thought "Wow, that looks EXACTLY like Maggie Thatcher!" At first, she was alone. I dismissed the thought, figuring "probably every dowager of a certain age in Belgravia has that hairdo and one of those suits. Thatcher must be a fashion trendsetter among the "smart" septuagenarians in the Knightsbridge crowd, and this gran is one of her Robert Palmer girl knockoffs"

But then, in a split second, four enormously burly men in suits trailed in behind her with eyes darting from side to side. Every Englishman in the room instantly scrambled to grab any reading material within reach and began to busily feign reading something, -- a newspaper or magazine ... anything to avoid the horror of eye contact with A FAMOUS PERSON. Some papers were even grabbed in such haste they were upside down! I was the ONLY one in the room who actually looked at the former Prime Minister, and as she scanned the place for a seat, I smiled at her. She beamed appreciatively and plopped down right next to us, chatting me and my baby up for the next forty-five minutes as we waited for our doctors. (YES SHE HAD TO WAIT TOO!!!)

What followed was one of the most fascinating and puzzling conversations of my life--3 parts small talk, 1 part politics/work-life balance. At times, just when I thought she was an elderly person who seemed to be losing it, she became incredibly lucid, and every bit the wily powerhouse I expected her to be. I asked her about how she balanced child-rearing duties with her rather high profile career ("Norland nannies are the best!"), and then I eased in to soliciting her opinion on Britain's purported role (by many resentful Brits) as "Bush's lap dog" in the war in Afghanistan we had just begun. She was bobbing and weaving like an old pro, artfully ducking a reporter's questions...

And then, suddenly, a different look came over her face and she seemed to slip back into the "dotty old lady" role again. She smiled broadly at us, as if we were old friends she'd spotted from across a great expanse of distance and time, and, switching gears seamlessly, she tenderly picked up my baby's foot ...."JOSHUA" she called out at a volume that had stood her in good stead in her many parliamentary debates, "The kingdom is yours!", she declared. She seemed to be shouting down an opponent at the same time as addressing both my son's green rivulets and his tiny foot, now nestled in her hand: "My tiny good man, the KINGDOM is yours!!!" At that moment, her doctor with the multiply-hyphenated terribly, terribly English name strode grandly into the room, putting on a show for the rest of the crowd... for anyone who might not have been aware of his A-list patient.

"BARONESS!!!" he summoned her...loudly..."Please come with me!!", and she was off....

When I saw the scene of "M.T" being checked out in the doctor's office in THE IRON LADY, all I could think was..."Where's the adorable baby with the sinus infection??"

Contributor Sharon Dizenhuz is a former reporter and anchor on New York 1 News and a Scarsdale mom.