by Maria Bello
So I consider myself a W, a whatever, and I am lucky enough to have found another W to love. I also take the label of LGBT and whatever other letter you want to add. But I will especially take P. Or we can just get rid of all the letters and instead use the phrase “Pay It No Mind.” Because it’s no one’s business anyway. Thank you, gorgeous Marsha P. Johnson.
12
AM I RESILIENT?
Why can some people withstand so much hardship and still continue to find joy and bring joy to others?
Recently, my mother received a call from her doctor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He told her that her cancer was back.
She’s had a peaceful three years without chemo, radiation, and worry. She should be a wreck. She should be crying. But, instead, she’s making pierogies, that Polish specialty full of the most evil and delicious carbs. And she’s laughing. She’s not in denial. She’s as joyful as she always has been.
My mom makes me laugh often and hard. The bellyache type of laugh that makes it hard to breathe. She laughs so hard she pees her pants. Mom has always had a lack of bladder control, especially when she laughs. You would think in these moments that she must be stoned or drunk. She has never smoked, rarely drinks, and has never done an illegal drug. When she had a double knee replacement 10 years ago she made the nurses stop giving her morphine on the first day after the operation. She said it made her sick. The nurses were in awe, as they rarely had anyone refuse the pain drugs, especially just one day after surgery. I had a dose of morphine last summer when I was in St. John’s being treated for the intestinal parasite. And I can say that without it I would have shot myself in the head because of the pain.
But Mom didn’t want the drugs. Instead she listened to meditations on her iPod every day and did affirmations to get herself well. “I am healthy,” “I am vibrant,” “I am joyful,” she would say over and over again as she took her first steps the day after the operation. She was in excruciating pain. She drew power from these mantras, and from her inner strength.
My mom, Kathleen Antoinette Urban, was born in a kitchen. She and her parents lived in a small apartment above the Brown Derby, the bar that my grandparents owned. This was in a small steel town 20 minutes outside of Philly.
Her earliest memories were of Mary, the mother of Christ. When she was two years old, my mom fell down a 12-foot staircase in her house. She says that she saw Mary at that moment, gently holding her and guiding her down the stairs. My grandmother was spooked when she heard this, as she couldn’t explain why her two-year-old had fallen down the stairs and remained unharmed. But my mother could explain it. Mary had kept her safe.
Mom slept on the pullout couch in the kitchen and as my grandmother explained, “She never complained.” My grandfather was a happy drunk. Always singing and laughing after shots of cheap whiskey. My Gram was always yelling at him to stop. She paid so much attention to him, that none really went to my mom. Mom was on her own, but never bitter about it. My grandfather, PopPop, was what you would today consider a highly functional drunk. He drank from morning to night with his buddies from the steel mill. Often he would bring his brothers and a few guys upstairs after the bar closed to sit around the kitchen table and play the accordion and drink whiskey, smoke cigarettes and cigars, and play pinochle. This was the best time of my mom’s day. She would get up from her couch bed in the kitchen and serve the men Cracker Barrel cheese cut into perfect slices, along with salami and Ritz Crackers. She didn’t do this because PopPop told her to. She just loved the music, celebration, and joy of family. By the time she was seven years old, she was making more complicated dishes like scrambled eggs for all the adults hanging out and singing at 2 A.M. She loved it. Cooking and sharing food was her passion and joy and continues to be so today.
A WEEK BEFORE I GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL, NEAR THE TOP of my class, my mother was first diagnosed with inoperable cancer. My mother and father sat crying in the den with its dark paneled walls and brown carpet and called us in to tell us. My mom was told she had five months to live and that it was time to put her “affairs” in order. I was in final exams at the time at Archbishop Carroll High School. The day after I found out, I had a big math exam. I stared at the test on my desk and saw that I already knew many of the answers. But in the pages that were supposed to contain answers to equations, I began to write in my essay book to my teacher, Sister Ruth, how afraid I was about what was happening. When I got my test back two days later, Sister Ruth asked me to stay after class and she gave me a long hug and said all the nuns would pray for my mom and family. She gave me an A.
But my mother was not one to give up. When that doctor at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center told her to “sort out her affairs,” she uncharacteristically replied, “Go fuck yourself!” That was literally the first time she had ever said that word.
She started chemotherapy right away. None of us could be with her because she was being treated in Philly and we were all working at our Sea Isle City pizzeria at the Jersey Shore, trying to keep it afloat. After treatments all week, she would drive the two hours to come to the shore and make sticky buns. At the end of the day she would flop on the couch in our TV room and vomit in a bucket as she recited her mantras: “I am healthy. I am vibrant. I am joyful.”
One night I came home crying at 2 A.M. after a night of fighting with my then boyfriend. I was trying not to wake my dad, who was passed out drunk. Mom called in from the den: “Marie, what’s wrong, hon? Come here.” And I went into the den and saw her on one of those couches with her half-bald blond head hanging over a trash can. I sort of flung myself onto the floor, indicating to her that my life was officially over. “Mom, I went to the bar to surprise him at the end of his shift, and he wasn’t there,” I wailed. “The manager told me he went with that girl who I saw him flirting with.”
She got off the couch and gave me a huge hug as I was lying on the carpet crying. “Ah, hon, whatever happens it was the way it was supposed to. You just gotta laugh.” I was a bit pissed that she didn’t see how “serious” my situation was. Didn’t she know this was the end of my life???? Of course, it was hardly the end of my life, but it was hard to escape the fact that she was potentially facing the end of hers.
Now, years later, what I remember the most is the white embroidery on the chest of the Laura Ingalls nightgown she was wearing that night, stained with vomit. I remember the look on my mom’s face reflecting back at me. “I love you. More than life. I don’t even care if I live or die. All I want is for you to be happy.” And I lay there in my 1980s high-rise white-washed jeans and permed hair and continued to cry. It’s a shame I didn’t learn her lesson of laughter back then.
I was a little less self-indulgent the next time she told me she was going to die. Her cancer had recurred and the doctors again told her she wasn’t going to make it through the year. I was 25 and had moved to New York to become an actor. When she was feeling well enough, she would take the two-hour train ride to NYC to make sure I had enough food. She would bring me homemade meatballs and sauce, schlepping up the steep flights of stairs to my tiny apartment in the West Village. Often she would come to the French bakery where I worked. She loved having a croissant and mint tea while she waited for me to finish my shift.
I would go back to Philly every weekend to spend time with her after she finished a round of chemo. I could always find time even in between my jobs as a dog walker, French bakery waitress, and housecleaner. We would lie in her bed and watch Oprah. Oprah became our inspiration. She spoke to our hearts, made us laugh, and counseled us to remember our spirits and recognize that we all have a divine destiny on this earth. She reminded us of what my mom always knew to be true: that we are beautiful souls, living in human bodies, and our only job is to be a channel of light and bring our gifts forth. She would give my mom strength in many trying times.
Oprah was having some sort of competition during that time where you submitted a story about someone who changed your life and who you
considered a hero. I decided to enter my mom into the competition. In one of my journals under my bed I found the letter that I wrote:
Dear Oprah,
My beautiful mother is a walking MIRACLE. Eight years ago she was diagnosed with terminal lymphoma. The doctors told her to give up and she only had five months to live. But after all these years, she is still vibrantly alive, working and taking care of her family, she is more alive than anyone I’ve ever met.
My mother is truly an angel. Everyone I meet knows about her. I tell them about her beautiful spirit and her capacity for love that is not of this earth. She was a nurse for 15 years and I met people on the street of the town we lived in who said, “Your mother was there until my brother’s dying day. She’s an angel.” After working at the hospital she got a job at the local vocational school in the poor area of town and began to teach nursing. She is now an administrator at the Vocational School working hard to change the educational system so that the poor kids in the neighborhood have as many opportunities as the Catholic school kids across the street.
Three years ago, she was voted teacher of the year in Philly. We received mounds of letters from ex-students all saying the same thing, “Mrs. Bello changed my life. She showed me for the first time in my life I was worth it.”
When my mother began her second bout with chemotherapy—as her cancer became active again and spread to other parts of her body—her spirit was so strong it was clear she was fighting it with every ounce of her being.
My family hasn’t been away together on a family vacation in 15 years. Her dream is to take all her children away—she loves beaches, food, and celebration.
How can I begin to express to you how incredible she is and how deserving of this honor? Maybe this says it all: Saturday I sat with her after her treatment. We talked and laughed though she was wracked with pain. I asked for what she wished for more than anything in the world. I expected her to say, “To live,” instead she said, “I just want you kids to be happy, to have everything you ever dreamed of.” How completely selfless, compassionate, loving, and kind she is. She’s my hero.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, Oprah. I know you are busy but you would miss a great opportunity not having my amazing mom on your show.
Sincerely
Maria Bello
I never sent the letter. But in the spirit of Oprah, I made a promise that I would make my mom’s dream come true.
That summer, I saved $1,500 to take Mom on her dream vacation to Italy before she died. She had flown on a plane only two times before, once to Disney World in Orlando and once to Acapulco for her honeymoon. I accounted for how much money we would need to survive for two weeks staying in hostels and small hotels in Rome and Florence and Venice and Portofino.
I will always remember her laughing and smiling as we landed in Venice. It was as if she did not have cancer at all. We took one of the famous vaporetto water taxis from the Venice airport to San Marco. We were in heaven, except for one small detail—our cumbersome baggage. Instead of the backpack I traveled through Europe with on my own, my mom and I bought fancy suitcases that we loaded onto those silver luggage dollies. Remember when luggage didn’t have wheels and you needed a luggage cart? Ours broke on the first night in Venice as we dragged them for an hour down dark cobblestone alleys looking for our hostel. We were sweating and exploding with laughter at the same time.
“Marie, this is Venice,” Mom laughed. “I thought it was supposed to be all romantic.” But even if some of her romantic notions of Venice were dispelled in that moment, she took it all in with wonder and laughter. My mom and I spent two weeks heaving our broken suitcases and laughing the whole way.
There would be another recurrence in 2012. After a year and a half of chemo, her cancer cells had settled down. But just today, driving to my son’s soccer game she got the call from the doctor. Not only is it back, but it’s back in places that it’s never been. Her non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma has spread to her chest and groin and under her arms and on her spine. When she hung up the phone, she didn’t look shocked. “Oh well,” she said, “just another little blip on the road. The cancer gets so mad when I knock it out, it comes back stronger, but I’ll get rid of it, no problem.” And then we went to my son’s soccer game, me in shock and her cheering him on.
So mom has been dealing with this for 30 years now. She took care of my dad and continues to do so more than ever since his MS has gotten worse. She’s at our side whenever we need her. She’s not perfect and will say so for sure. She gets stressed and sometimes acts the martyr. But when I ask her if she would do her life differently if given the chance, she says absolutely not.
This last summer, my parents took 16 of us on a trip to Italy for their 50th wedding anniversary. We rode around in a big bus to our grandfather’s village and then to my grandmother’s. We ate piles of seafood at our cousin Mario’s restaurant and lit candles to Mary in every church. But the best memory from the trip is when my parents renewed their wedding vows. We were above the clouds, on top of a mountain in my grandfather’s village in a chapel from the 1600s that looked out over forests and villages. All of our family and the villagers came to the mass that the priest said in Italian. My parents sat in the middle of the aisle, my mom on a chair, my dad in his wheelchair. They held hands and cried. At one point he turned to her and said, “Look at these kids. We did good.” And my mother gave him a sweet kiss. Yes, they have done good. Very good.
Mom always says that it just takes a quarter of a turn to change your life. One phrase that someone utters, a passage you might read in a book, or deciding to stay with someone or not can change your destiny forever. The phrase that constantly keeps me going is something she always says: “Whatever happens in your life, good or bad, ya just gotta laugh!”
I hope I will follow her lesson more and more, especially as she goes through this next phase of her illness. She says my specialty during chemo is making her laugh. We joke about how if she’s seriously out of it, I promise I will always pluck her chin hairs, and that I will make sure she has a good wig for the wake when she dies.
Is this resilience? Resilience is about bouncing back. But it is also about fighting your way back. The synonyms are strong, tough, and hardy. My mother taught me that resilience is not just about being tough. It’s about finding joy whatever happens in life.
13
AM I A WRITER?
“Am I a writer?” I ask myself daily. “Writer” is the term I added to my Facebook page and Twitter account a year ago. The word comes right after, “actor,” “activist,” and “adventurer.” It takes chutzpah, I know, to label yourself, especially with labels that are usually given to you. But there’s a method to my madness.
Most people know me as an actor. After I finished college, I went to New York City with $300 and two trash bags filled with clothes, because I wanted desperately to own that label: ACTOR. Turns out I had to earn that label instead.
I studied for years with the most brilliant acting teacher in the city, Fred Kareman. Fred was five one with a white close-cropped beard and hair to match. He was always chewing on a deli take-out coffee straw. His class was almost impossible to get into. He taught out of a small studio that had old wooden seats, originally from Carnegie Hall, lining the walls.
When I went to meet him, I felt like I was walking into a church. This was his holy ground. He was the priest of acting. I felt at home right away. I told him my background. I had taken a year of acting at Villanova and acting classes at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia for a few months. He just sat chewing on his coffee straw and barely glanced up. “So, why do you want to do this, kid?” he asked.
“Well, I want to become a great actor,” I replied.
He paused and then said, “Is there anything else you could possibly do? If so, you should go do that.”
I didn’t understand. He then continued, “If every ounce of your being does want this, just know you may fail and be a miserable old actress who does c
ommunity theater in Iowa and slings hash at some restaurant.”
Wow! This was not what I had expected. I thought Fred would take one look at me, see my passion, and say, “Yes, you are the one! Yes, you are brilliant. Yes, take my class and you will be a star.”
Instead of welcoming me to the fold, he was trying to talk me out of it. I started to panic. “No,” I said, mustering my composure. “I have decided that this is the only thing I want to do.”
He glanced up from his desk, looking over the top of his glasses, and spoke in a holy, hushed tone. “Are you sure?”
I felt like I was about to enter the nunnery and was taking my final vows. I was scared, but I was resolute. So in as convincing a tone as I could manage, I said, “Yes, I am sure.”
“Okay,” he sighed. “Be here Tuesday at eleven A.M. sharp!”
I worked hard and went to class a few times a week. When I wasn’t in class I was practicing with my classmates. When someone would ask Fred how to get an agent or how to become a better actor, he uttered only one phrase: “Just do the work, kid.”
One of the greatest lessons I learned from Fred is “To thine own self be true.” He reminded us all that we didn’t have to “become” a different person to be a great actor. We just needed to find those real places in ourselves that connected with the character. We were taught never to pretend, but to be in the moment of the scene. It was a philosophy much like Zen Buddhism. When you’re washing the dishes, even onstage, all you have to do is WASH THE DISHES. Simple, right? It took a very long to time to learn this lesson, and frankly, I am still learning that lesson in my acting and in my life.