Iris Mitlin Lav
Iris Mitlin Lav grew up in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. She moved to Washington, DC, with her husband in 1969, where they raised three children. She is retired from a long, award-winning career of policy analysis and management with an emphasis on improving policies for low- and moderate-income families. She has traveled extensively in the US and abroad, and she lived in Thailand for two years in the 1970s. She and her husband now live in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with Mango, their goldendoodle, and with grandchildren nearby.
What Brings Me Great Joy?
In normal times, it gives me great joy to play, or read, or bake with my two young grandsons. However, it has not been safe for me to be with them since the beginning of the pandemic.
Right now, I greatly enjoy tromping through the woods with my 7-year old, 55-pound Golden Doodle dog named Mango. He is very well trained to pay attention to our commands and to keep us in sight, so my husband and I can let him explore off leash when we are in the woods. He is a lot of fun to watch, running up and down hills just because he can, jumping over logs or other obstructions, and putting on a periodic burst of speed to try to catch a squirrel, bird, or deer. Fortunately, he is not fast enough to succeed, but he loves trying. We are lucky to live in an area where there are many parks and wild wooded areas around us, a few to which we can walk from our house and many more to which we can drive. Joy is hard to come by during the pandemic, but this works for me.
Is There Another Profession You Would Like to Try?
When I was a child in the 1950s, I often answered the question about what I wanted to be when I grew up by saying that I wanted to be a rabbi. I remember not understanding why grownups laughed when I said that. As I grew older, I realized that it was not, at that time, a permitted occupation for a female person in traditional Judaism. I moved on and had a rewarding career in public policy. In my mid-40s, however, some of the barriers to women had dropped and the urge returned. I did not want to abandon my career or make the changes in my family necessary to actually become a rabbi, but I wanted to study and acquire at least some of the knowledge that a rabbi has. I did so, and have had the opportunity in my congregation to “play rabbi.” I occasionally give sermons, teach, and sometimes substitute when our rabbi is away. I was able to have the best of both worlds.
Now that I have written a novel, I feel that I am changing professions again at age 74. It is never too late.
What is the Difference for Me Between Being a Writer and an Author?
I have been a writer for my whole 45-year career. I have written reports, testimony, journal articles, and book chapters about public policies, particularly about how to improve policies for low- and moderate-income families. Policy writing has to be precise and evidence based, with care to choose words that will lead the reader to consider the evidence presented and ultimately conclude that your point of view on the policy is correct.
After all that, being an author writing a novel felt liberating. I could keep my historical background and sense of place true, checking some evidence but largely relying on memory, while being free to conjure the characters and their actions as I imagined them to be. I had to learn – with the help of a great editor - to express my characters’ feelings through “show don’t tell” -- while policy writing is very much about “telling.”
I was still writing policy while the novel was in process. I think the ways of thinking about policy writing and fiction are so different that my brain segregated them. I had no problem switching back and forth.
What is My Comfort Food?
My all-time comfort food is roasted chicken. In many Jewish families whose forebearers lived in Eastern Europe, roasted chicken is the food served for the Friday evening Sabbath meal and also on holidays. It conjures for me the memories of my parents and the warmth of eating with family and friends on festive occasions. I continued the tradition in my own family, so it also holds memories of Sabbath and festival dinners with our own three children. Unfortunately, this tradition has had to bend in more recent times when our offspring come to town for holidays. Two of them are vegetarians!
My novel is set in Thailand, and Thai food is a strong second for my comfort food – especially phat thai and sticky rice with mango. Thai food inspired several scenes in the novel. If I write another novel that is Jewish-themed, as I am thinking of doing, then the roasted chicken is sure to be front and center.
What Piece of Clothing Tells the Most Interesting Story About My Life?
When my husband and I moved to Thailand in 1975 for his work, I was very pregnant with our second child. He was born about two months after we arrived. As is the custom there, we hired a maid named Noi to be with our son Daniel at all times, including sleeping in his room. In Thai culture, an older sister or aunt would usually be charged with this job, carrying the child on her hip and protecting it from dangers such as bugs or falling into ponds. Daniel ended up walking – or really running – at the age of 9 months, so he really did need a caretaker to chase after him when I was not around.
In the second year Noi worked for us, she became pregnant but continued to work. Then near-disaster struck. She was walking nearby our house and was bitten by a stray dog. The dog couldn’t be identified, so she needed rabies shots. We supported her through all this. After her baby was born, she asked if she could have time off to take the baby to her village in the Northeast of the country to see her mother. We, of course, agreed.
When she came back, she had a gift to give me. She and her mother had woven a beautiful piece of silk cloth for me from silkworms that had been raised and dyes produced in the village. It was a purplish red color with a traditional Thai design in what looked like a silvery thread. I had it made into a skirt, which I loved to wear.
