by Hoda Kotb
On the night of the game, we had access to the football field before the Super Bowl started. What an opportunity! My crew and I walked out onto that grass and just looked around at the crowd packing the stadium. The view was overwhelming—standing where the players would stand, seeing what they’d see during battle. For security reasons, I had to wear a bright yellow vest over my outfit while we were shooting on the field. But underneath, I was draped in Mardi Gras beads and black and gold, head to toe. I had to shoot a stand-up on the field, so I positioned myself with a sea of Saints fans behind me. At the very end of the stand-up, I ripped off that yellow security vest to reveal my true colors underneath. The crowd went nuts! “Hoda, we know you’re for us! You don’t have to hide it!” they screamed. It was hysterical.
Next, the game.
• • •
Covering a sporting event is never as much fun as watching it as a fan, because you’re working and moving and missing a lot. So, I decided to plop down in a Saints section for a while and just shoot all that was going on around me before moving to the next location. There was so much energy to capture, so many highs and lows. I knew that sitting next to every Saints fan was a ghost—the ghost of the Ain’ts and of the four-decade-old cellar dweller. A lengthy past of loss creates a huge presence of anxiety. Every scream of “Who dat!” had a silent echo of, “Oh, no—here we go again.”
I moved locations a few times and was also tracking down celebrities to sign a football I’d brought along from work. The idea was to get the ball signed by as many VIPs as possible, then auction it off to benefit the New Orleans Habitat for Humanity. (My thanks to Emmitt Smith, Archie Manning, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Chris Rock, Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Bob Schieffer, and Atlanta housewife NeNe.) By the time the fourth quarter hit, I was again in the stands, elbow-to-elbow with worry-weary Saints fans. After a series of nail-biting convulsions and conversions, the Saints secured a 24-to-17 advantage. With less than four minutes left in the game, no one around me was willing to believe the Saints would maintain their lead to the end. Confidence would require every last tick of the clock. Then, in a remarkable split second, all the butterflies turned into skyrockets. Saints cornerback Tracy Porter intercepted a pass by Colts quarterback Peyton Manning at the Saints 26-yard line! The elation was deafening as Porter returned the ball 74 yards for a touchdown!
At Super Bowl XLIV with hopeful fans
All around me, people were crying. I hadn’t seen men openly bawl like that over football since Rudy came out. It was a raw, unabashed tear fest and every Saints fan was in. If I had to put a word on the collective emotion, it was relief. So much doubt had been pent up inside, and now, all things repressed were being expressed in an explosion of joy. Wow! What an experience. After a successful extra point, with just 3 minutes and 12 seconds remaining, the Saints lead grew to 31 to 17.
My crew and I made our way out of the stands and scrambled down to the field with 25 seconds left in the game. Boy, New Orleanians are skeptical to the end. I couldn’t believe how quiet the crowd was! Fans were not willing to fully celebrate until they saw double zeros on the clock. Only when Coach Sean Payton got his Gatorade shower did fans start to truly celebrate.
Because the Super Bowl was not an NBC-sponsored event, our access immediately following the game was limited. We’d been told that if we didn’t race out to the center of the field, we would end up outside of a rope perimeter Security would create instantly around the players. Well, my crew and I strapped on our track shoes. The minute those seconds ticked down to zero, we sprinted. I may have posted a 4.3-second 40-yard dash. We made it inside the ropes, and then I just lost my mind. I stared up into the confetti blizzard and started screaming and waving my arms in the air. The photographer yelled to me, “What am I supposed to be shooting?” I shouted back, “I don’t care! Anything you want! Point it everywhere!”
As luck would have it, I ended up crammed in next to the podium where the game’s MVP, Saints quarterback Drew Brees, was hoisted and now waving to the cheering crowd. I was trying to get his attention, like everyone else, to ask him a question, but was having no luck. We were squeezed in together on the ground, surrounded by massive football players, the media and random people jammed into a very small area. Behind me, I heard a voice with a southern accent yell, “Hoda, git Drew! Git Drew!”
When I turned around, I recognized the face behind the voice—Brittany Brees, Drew’s beautiful wife. We’d never met, but I was delighted to see her. She was holding their adorable baby, Baylen, who had on a set of black head phones to protect his little eardrums.
“Just git ’im, Hoda! Git Drew’s attention!” she yelled, smiling at me.
My God. Here was the MVP to the MVP asking me for help. I started yelling my head off, cupping my hands to my mouth and screaming, “Dreeeeeeewwwww! Dreeeeeeewwwww!”
Nothing. My voice could not carry above the delicious din. Not even from the three feet I was standing from him. Then, an unbelievable call was made by my QB, Brittany, as she clutched the butterball.
“Hoda, peench his butt! Peench Drew’s butt!” she demanded.
I stood there, frozen. “Um, what?”
She came back hard. “Peench it! I can’t do it holding him,” she said, nodding her head toward baby Baylen.
I must have been standing there in shock, because, again came the call. “Goooooose heem!”
Okay, I thought. I guess I’m gonna have to take one for the team. I’m just gonna have to pinch Drew Brees’s ass. (Angels sing here.) And so, I reached up to the podium, grabbed ass, and twisted.
The play was complete.
Drew turned around to find out what the hell was going on and, thankfully, saw Brittany standing there with his son. She handed him that baby, he kissed her, and then he held Baylen in his arms. When tears started welling up in Drew’s eyes, I realized I’d better start pinching myself, too. It was one of those moments when you just have to keep reminding yourself that you’re watching history unfold before your very eyes. That you’re right there—live. That it’s happening. Don’t miss a second. Watching Drew whisper into his son’s ear, at one of the greatest moments of his life, was awesome. It was a moment for him, inside a moment for me, inside a moment for the entire country. The layers of emotion were as complex as the last five years of recovery for the weakened city of New Orleans.
• • •
The postgame party continued in the stadium for at least an hour. Saints fans did not want to leave. Everyone felt it. This was a public turning point. New Orleans got the right medicine for the right ailment. Right in front of millions of people. Somehow, the problem kid that they’d watched and supported for years and hoped would turn around finally did something brilliant. And everyone was there to bear witness.
“Who dat?!”
As long as I live, I will never forget the experience. Rarely in life do you get a front-row seat to the Full Circle Miracle. To have stood at the deep, dark, zero-degree mark of Katrina, then to share in the pure, sweet relief of victory 360 degrees later was an extraordinary gift. Whatever that night means or doesn’t mean for you, for New Orleans, the Super Bowl victory is a building block—in the shape of the Lombardi Trophy. It’s a solid foundation for optimism and confidence and strength. The city’s years ahead will reveal the power that a fresh start can unleash.
P.S.
At a breakfast conference I went to in New Orleans fourteen years ago, well before Hurricane Katrina and Super Bowl XLIV, a dynamic speaker named Patricia Russell-McCloud stepped up to the podium. She shared a series of words that mean even more to me now than they did that morning.
She said, “If you fall—and trust me, you will—make sure you fall on your back. Because if you fall on your back, you can see up. And if you can see up, you can get up. And you can keep going and going and going.”
Mrs. Russell-McCloud is right. Every now and then, when my life heads for horizontal, I pull out those four little words: fall on your back. And I try m
y hardest to land where I can see up.
Fall on your back. That advice sure helped me when 2007 rolled around.
PART THREE
Shit Storms and Silver Linings
12
THE BAD YEAR
Some kind of magic
Happens late at night
When the moon smiles down on me
And bathes me in its light
I fell asleep beneath you
In the tall blades of grass
When I woke the world was new
I never had to ask
It’s a brand new day
The sun is shining
It’s a brand new day
For the first time
In such a long, long time
I know
I’ll be ok.
—Joshua Radin
I love music. For me, music is morning coffee. It’s mood medicine. It’s pure magic. A good song is like a good meal—I just want to inhale it and then share a bite with someone else. “Taste this!” I’m forever saying. “You’ve got to hear this. Listen to this line—can you believe it?” My friend Melissa Lonner faux complains, “You’re always force-feeding me lyrics!”
I wake up at 4:00 in the morning for work and the music starts at 4:05. I go right for the play button on my countertop iHome. Sometimes I like mellow, sometimes I like Li’l Wayne. I pack up for work and head to the gym, where I crank forty-five minutes of high-energy music on my iPod. I could not work out without my tunes. If music didn’t exist, I’d weigh 500 pounds.
At work, I have one of those portable iPod speaker things in my dressing room, which makes it easy for me to regale my NBC colleagues with good music. I like to bop into the makeup room with my music “purse” and watch the city gals with all their Versace and Gucci panic when they hear what’s playing. “Oh, God, what is it?” they whine. And then I’ll school them. “It’s country. Put on your cowboy hat and shit-kickers.” Then I’ll crank “Hillbilly Bone” and hope they find that hillbilly bone down deep inside.
I love country and pop and R & B and some rap. I wish jazz had lyrics because I’m a words girl. Now, I do admit—I’m a song killer. I’ll play a song over and over and over until it dies for me. I will wear out the repeat button on my iPod when I fall hard for a song. Then, by Wednesday I’m shocked: How did I ever like that stupid song? When I travel, I call ahead to make sure the hotel has an iPod docking station. I used to pack my own speakers to set up on the dresser, but since most hotels now accommodate iPods, I have room for an extra pair of shoes. I just feel naked without music. In fact, I carry two iPods with identical music programmed on both—in case of battery failure, loss, or any other tragic circumstance.
Music truly is my lifeline, marking time from the past to the present. Song after song after song creates an audio scrapbook of all my highs and lows. Music has always been there for me, on good days and bad.
And boy, did I ever need music in 2007. My iPod was like an IV drip.
• • •
Only now, when I look back, can I say the year 2007 was a gift. That’s the year my body and my heart broke at the same time. You’ve probably had years like that—where even one of the challenges you face could drive you to your knees. But two? Again, only now can I see that two crises were actually a blessing, because I couldn’t focus too long on one or the other.
The gift, disguised as a double sucker punch, unfolded like this: you know those movies when the people on screen are in the middle of a picnic or birthday party or something happy—and suddenly, out of nowhere, the freaky bogeyman sneaks up and whacks them in the back of the head with a two-by-four? That’s kind of what happened to me.
I was forty-two years old, enjoying the wonderful movie picnic that was my life: comfortable in my job as a correspondent for Dateline, host of a television show called (ironically) Your Total Health, and newly married to the wonderful man I met and fell in love with in New Orleans. We had tied the knot in December of 2005, the Caribbean Sea painting a picture-perfect watercolor of our wedding. Family and friends joined us in tropical Punta Cana, a sultry province on the eastern tip of the Dominican Republic. The area is surreal, with its turquoise waters and gentle breezes. Even the Punta Cana International Airport looks like a movie set, complete with beautifully crafted thatched huts for terminals. When our guests deplaned into 80-degree temperatures, they were immediately greeted by steel drum bands, the musicians dressed in colorful island garb.
Days before the wedding, my fiancé and I frolicked in the warm sea, relaxed and enjoyed the ongoing arrival of each family member and friend. Resort staff was busy setting up the large, open-air thatched hut that would house our reception. The color scheme was fresh white sand and coconut brown, with accents of natural shells and flickering candles. Everything reflected casual elegance. For the ceremony, we chose the end of a small pier to say our vows, soft waves lapping the wooden posts. The resort staff was limited, so we often saw the same person serving in different roles. Remember how in comedy shows, the judge would slip off his wig and put on a sheriff’s hat, then pop on the mayor’s cap, then the milkman lid? That’s how it was there. I think the guy who took our bags married us. Who cared?! It all unfolded exactly the way we’d hoped. A golf cart delivered me to the marital pier. (I think the guy who made us fruity drinks was also the guy who drove the cart.) Hala was my maid of honor, dressed in a striking red satin dress. Adel walked me down the “aisle.” All of our guests gathered round in the sand as the sun set over the calm, endless ocean. I’d never been married before and was forty-one years old. The man I’d dated on and off for twelve years now became my husband. We shared the dream of a life together and a family. I’ve always wanted kids and he did, too. I had finally balanced my personal life and career, a real challenge for me up to this point.
One year later, we were living in a comfortable New York City apartment. In early December of 2006, we left home to celebrate our first anniversary in the cozy Pocono Mountains. Just a few weeks later, we enjoyed the holidays. Christmas was perfect—you could see it in all the photos. My husband, me, his family, surrounded by gifts and smiling. But sadly, pictures can be deceiving. I had no idea that right then, at the time of those very photographs, my body was breaking down—and so was my young marriage.
Just a few days after that lovely Christmas, I had an appointment with my gynecologist. Maybe you don’t mind it, but I hate going to the gyno. I just do. I had no idea how much I’d really hate it this time. During my appointment, Dr. Erin DuPree did a routine breast exam. As her fingertips gently pushed and probed, she found a tiny lump in my left breast. Hmm. She pointed it out to me. It was pea-size. Maybe even smaller. (I’ll be honest. I couldn’t feel it. It’s not like breasts are made of Jell-O and you can easily feel a marble in there. They’re lumpy and bumpy. At least mine are.) Anyway, she asked me to have it checked out. So, I went in for a mammogram (my first ever), then an ultrasound, then a biopsy. All of these, all at once. All the makings of a starting line to a very long race.
The Biopsy
Would you like one lump or two? I would like neither, please. Turns out, I had two lumps. Two lumpy squatters that had been setting up camp inside me for who knows how long. Now, it was time to explore. Time to determine their intentions with the tip of a curious needle. The doctor described the biopsy as a way to remove tissue samples from the suspicious lumps in my breast. A pathologist would then study the samples for signs of trouble.
As I sat in the waiting room, I began searching for signs of trouble, too—in my marriage. My friend Karen was with me and both of our laps were covered with papers. I’d brought along two months of cell phone bills and also my calendar. Months earlier, I happened upon an inappropriate text message on my husband’s cell phone. He claimed it was harmless and that the woman was an old friend. But in recent days, I’d noticed the same number on a phone bill I was paying. Disgusted and confused, I asked Karen to help me scour the cell phone records. The plan was to highlight c
alls and texts to a particular area code. We’d then cross-reference those dates with the days on my calendar when I was out of town. Talk about your shitty afternoons—waiting to get stuck in the boob with a needle and through the heart with a knife. Blanketed in printouts, I scanned for numbers until the nurse called my name for the procedure.
Being the woman in wait for the results of a breast biopsy is downright terrifying. I was numb. But somewhere, under all the numbness was terror, tingling below my skin, waiting to rush in like blood that flows back into an arm that’s fallen asleep. I began to use a journal to tap off some of the fear that was pooling inside me. It overflowed from my brain, down into my pen, and onto these pages.
PAPER JOURNAL
January 27, 2007
Saturday
For the biopsy, I went into a room and they gave me local anesthesia. They flipped me around on the bed so I would be positioned just right. At that point, in that room with the dingy walls and that curtain, the sheet over me and the machine showing me exactly where those two lumps were—right at that moment—I got scared. The doc made a small incision and started poking around in there trying to get a piece of each lump. Pushing and poking. It seemed so aggressive the way the doctor pushed that probe around. It was like a bow and arrow. I watched the screen as he shot that arrow into the lump. I heard a thunk sound. I hoped it wasn’t the sound of cancer.
CANCER. CANCER. CANCER. CANCER. Hmmm. When you write it four times in ALL CAPS it doesn’t seem as scary. Look at it. I don’t know why.
January has been an awful month. I found out my husband is deceiving me and now this. So twisted. The whole thing. Who would have thought one month could be so unhinging? When did it get like this? What if it is cancer? There is a big cry stuck in my throat waiting to be unleashed.