Dear Cary

by Dyan Cannon

  “Don’t go away like that again!” Mary said. “We were scared to death you weren’t coming back.”

  So was I, my dear friends, I thought.

  So I just gave it all up. No more booze—not even wine; no more pills. For a while, I took a toke or two here and there to take the edge off, but eventually I decided I didn’t want to use crutches anymore because I was tired of limping.

  As for men . . . suffice it to say they could be just as tempting a form of escapism as anything else, but as months wore on, I found myself making wiser and better choices. I started appreciating them as companions instead of saviors, or teachers, or whatever the need of the moment was.

  But I still wondered where my life was going, and I still felt like I was making it up as I went along. I’d turned down a lot of roles and a lot of money, and berated myself for putting Jennifer and myself in such a precarious position. I’d try to live according to my highest sense of right, as Lily had taught me, but here I was with a quarter tank of gas and a couple of bowls of salad to my name. Was it always going to be this hard? I really didn’t know how much longer my strength could hold out. Being a single mom is hard enough, even if you’re financially stable—which I certainly wasn’t.

  That night was chilly, and Jennifer and I sat by the fireplace cuddling and warming ourselves. I let out a sigh. It had been a rough few weeks and a particularly trying day. I felt like I was faced with a huge hurdle, and I didn’t know how I was going to get past it. The idea of losing the house gnawed at me. Well, what was the worst that could happen? I had my beautiful daughter and I had my health back.

  I ran my fingers through Jennifer’s dark hair and looked into her big brown eyes.

  Cary’s eyes. My nose. Cary’s chin. My skin. We were all parts of each other, I thought. Sometimes my marriage to Cary seemed like an illusion, but not very often. Here in my arms was the fact that it had all been real. Cary and I had been married, and that was a fact of my life. Jennifer was the fruit of that union, and she was the continuity.

  From the time she was old enough to understand, I told Jennifer, “Your daddy and I have had some problems, but I know how much you love your daddy, and I know how much your daddy loves you. And that’s good and right. Nothing and no one should ever come in between that. Your daddy and I are sorting out our issues, but they’re our issues and not yours.”

  Mostly, it worked out pretty well. Cary and I were always polite with each other and did our best to put Jennifer’s best interests first.

  “What’s the matter, Mommy?” Jennifer asked as we basked by the fire.

  “Why do you ask, honey?”

  “Because you had to give back some of the groceries today.”

  “I’ve just run a little low on cash, baby. That’s all.”

  Damn. Maybe the role as the swamp creature’s love interest wasn’t so bad after all.

  Jennifer gave me a hug, then slid off the couch and went into her bedroom. She came out a moment later.

  “Here, Mommy, I want you to have this. It will help.” She handed me the old cigar box in which she kept the money she earned from doing odd jobs around the house—the money she was saving to buy a horse. No mother in the world has to be told how high up in my throat that launched my heart.

  “Thank you so much for offering this, sweetheart. But that’s yours. We’ll be fine. I promise.”

  We hugged each other and I walked her into her bedroom and tucked her into bed. Back in the living room, I opened the cigar box. It contained a hundred and seventy-five dollars and forty-two cents.

  That’s all we had to our names.

  I started to feel shaky in a way that I hadn’t for a long time. I was beginning to feel that old stomach-twisting anxiety again. I was terrified of falling back into its jaws, and just as terrified of facing it as I was of numbing it. My mind was a hive of angry bees, and it buzzed with a miasma of worst-case-scenario thoughts. Lose the house, hit the skids, nobody loves me . . .

  A familiar pressure built up in me, and I felt like an overinflated balloon that could burst at any second. I didn’t think I could take it another minute, and I urgently needed to let the pressure out. But I knew that the usual chemical options were nothing more than a Band-Aid, and when I started to sweat, they wouldn’t stick. There had to be another valve through which I could release this mess of indigestible and unbearable feelings.

  For some reason, I reached for my notepad. I decided I would write a business letter to the customer service department of the universe. It would begin: Dear Universe, I am writing to complain of the miserable circumstances here on the planet Earth and in particular to point out my own personal unhappiness . . .

  I took the pad and went out to the beach. I sat down on a fat log I’d hauled down from Big Sur.

  I wrote: Dear Universe, . . .

  And then I put my pen down. I felt the darkness—not the darkness of the night, but the darkness in my soul—swirling around me, funneling around me like a tornado.

  I looked up to the heavens and started to shout. All was anguish, from the hair on my head to the marrow in my bones.

  “Does anyone care?” I screamed. “Is anyone listening? If anything or anyone is up there or out there, I need to know it! I’ve got a mess here. A big mess. And I am trying to climb my way out but I need some help! DO YOU HEAR ME? I need help, damn it, and I need help now!”

  I thought of that day when as a seven-year-old I’d shouted at God and then suddenly fell down hard on my behind. And I halfway expected to be knocked off the log. In fact, I would have welcomed it. But nothing. I felt completely lost. And alone.

  I sat back, truly drained, emptied out. But then something began to swell up in me like an incoming tide. And in the silence of the night, I heard:

  Today is Liberation Day, and everything is going my way.

  Where did that come from? I wondered. The fact was, nothing was going my way. But deep, deep inside me, in a place I had never visited before, I was led to be still, very still. Then I heard these words and I wrote them down:

  Today is Liberation Day,

  And everything is going my way,

  Right here right now,

  please listen to what I have to say

  I’m gonna stand up, kneel down, roll over,

  kiss the ground and pray

  Thank you, Love, for bringing to me

  the answer to a lifetime prayer

  Heaven isn’t tomorrow . . . or yesterday,

  or him or her or them out there

  or ice cream

  It’s here right now, inside of me

  And that blinkin’ message has set me free

  to do just what I’m meant to do

  Love each and every one of you

  it’s here right now . . . as I sit here

  and don’t know how

  to pay the rent or the laundry man

  or the big tough lawyers with their get-even plan

  it’s here right now . . . for me . . . for you . . .

  for all of us who refuse to do their will or their way,

  just because they say

  it’s the way to do and the way to be

  because they don’t know

  they just make up schemes

  as they improvise their unsteady way along

  with the I’ll-come-with-you throng . . .

  but that’s not the key to harmony, goin’ along

  with the rest of the group you see

  who will label and stamp and press you out

  till we’re all like each other,

  without our own man, understand?

  If we just be what we are, we’re all a star!

  So if I love you like I love me,

  then our problems are over, don’t you see?

  So do whatever you have to do,

  always holding that in your point of view

  and our great big world will finally be

  what it’s always been that we couldn’t see

 
because we are free!

  That’s the way it’s intended to be.

  I continued to listen but all I could hear was silence. There was nothing more. Well, that was strange. Very strange indeed.

  I wondered where those words, those thoughts, had come from. They hadn’t come from me. I was just the one screaming for help. I was just the one taking them down. Today is Liberation Day . . .

  Something was going on here.

  Something big. Something powerful. Something much bigger than me. It wasn’t just the words I’d heard or the thoughts, but the overwhelming feeling of peace that came entwined with them. And well-being. And Love.

  Whoa! That’s what I felt: Love. That’s what had enveloped me, consoled me, and suddenly strengthened me. Love. I felt like a lamp finally plugged into an electrical socket, and the light was within me and all around me. I was surrounded by it.

  I sat on my log all night in that blissful solitude. As I watched the dawn bloom, I slowly realized that nothing—not all the forces of the world gathered together . . . not a person, place, thing, or circumstance . . . nothing, absolutely nothing—had the power to stop that dawn from dawning. Why? Because that was the dawn’s purpose—to dawn. To spread its fingers of light over the advent of a fresh new day.

  And I knew as well that it was a fresh new day for me.

  I hadn’t called anyone for help—or lit up a cigarette or a joint; I hadn’t reached for a drink or a pill or a man or sex. I’d stopped trying to figure things out for myself. I’d simply asked for help. Could it really be that easy?

  I went inside and looked up the word “liberate” in the dictionary.

  Liberate: To set free. Release from imprisonment. To liberate the mind.

  Today, indeed, was Liberation Day.

  In a flood of excitement, I called Lily and told her about my experience. I was so excited that the words just poured out of me in an exuberant rush.

  “That’s it,” she said. “You heard it.”

  “Heard what?” I asked.

  “The still small voice of truth. That’s it. And it has set you free. Dyan, once you’ve opened up to the truth, the truth will stay with you. And this is only the beginning.”

  Wow, I thought. If this is just the beginning . . .

  By this point, Jennifer was waking up and I heard her call me. I went to her room, took her into my arms, and held her tight, then made her breakfast and took her to school. Throughout the day, I warmed myself in that cocoon of pure love, a love that wasn’t going anywhere. I could move away from it, but love wasn’t ever going to move away from me.

  As it turned out, I didn’t lose my home, but for a long time I had neither a job nor money. But I had peace. And it was real.

  I spent the next months in much solitude. Apart from being a mother, my time was spent in study that steadily led me from faith to understanding. I knew that what happened on that Malibu beach wasn’t just a one-time experience—that the warmth and peace that had revealed itself to me was a constant reality, not a fleeting thing that would be here today and gone tomorrow. Therefore, it must be available to everyone all the time. I understood that it was a matter of awareness on my part . . . a conscious awareness and a choice.

  Happiness or sadness? Love or hate? Faith or fear? Intelligence or ignorance?

  I chose to be happy. I chose to be smart. I chose to believe when everything around me was screaming not to. Most important, I chose to love.

  Love love love.

  Not just in March but in April, too.

  I realized that life was more than something just to get through, that it was a treasure—every moment of it. That it was a gift. A precious, beautiful gift. I became a better mother, a better friend . . . a better me. And because I changed, my life changed. There were still temptations with men and undesirable roles, but I learned how to say no with grace and yes with gratitude.

  Now when the road gets rocky, I know exactly what to do. I try—and “try” is the key word—to be gentle with me when those feelings of fear start to pull me into their undertow. But no matter what, I stop and then reach inside for that power called LOVE . . . not little love . . . not the limited love that comes from Dyan, but the big LOVE that comes from a Higher Power—the same power that held me as a happy hostage that extraordinary night on the beach.

  Of course, sometimes I slip back into thinking that I’m running the universe, but not for long. I’ve learned to be abidingly patient with myself when those moments of anxiety or frustration and panic set in.

  How do I feel now? I feel as good as I felt in my twenties. No, that’s a lie. I feel better than I felt in my twenties or my thirties or my forties or my fifties.

  I’m alive. I’m complete. I’m whole. I’m free. And safe.

  Finally, it feels good to be me.

  Dear Cary

  I’ve been waiting for this moment for what seems a lifetime. And finally, once again, I’m in a place where I can completely open my heart to you. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to do that, and it’s taken many years of revisiting our time together for me to get there.

  It’s been like going into an old house that has been shut up tight for many, many years but finding things just as they were when I left. I opened all the doors where the memories were stored—went down to the basement and up to the attic, looked inside the closets and dug in the garden. It was as if I could see everything that happened between us back then . . . but this time around, I was seeing it all through different eyes.

  There is so much I want to share with you, Cary. So many things I’ve needed to say that I couldn’t talk about then because I just didn’t understand them. I couldn’t piece together the puzzle of the hurts, the disappointments, the shame of it all. But with the passage of time have come clarity, understanding, forgiveness, and grace. Now so many things that I thought would never make sense seem perfectly clear, and I can finally write you the letter I’ve wanted to write for so long.

  From where I’m sitting now, I have a clear view from the ocean to the Los Angeles skyline. My town house faces La Cienega Boulevard, and now, in the afterglow of dusk, I vividly remember a distinguished, handsome man and a spunky young woman walking hand in hand down the boulevard. You remember the night I’m thinking of—I know you do! We’d been seeing each other for six or seven months, and after another exquisite dinner we took a long, leisurely walk down the boulevard. It was well after midnight and the city was unusually quiet.

  We came to a corner and decided to cross the street. And halfway across, there in the middle of the boulevard, you stopped cold, looked deep into my eyes, and asked, “Do you know how I feel about you, Dyan?”

  “I’m not sure I do,” I replied.

  Right then, you went into a free fall, toppling like a redwood and landing facedown on the cold pavement. Then you turned your head ever so slowly, looked up at me, and said, “Head over heels! That’s how I feel about you, Dyan! Head over heels!”

  That made me go weak at the knees. But before I could respond, you sprang to your feet, picked me up in your arms, and carried me to the sidewalk. Still holding me in your arms, you kissed me. And then you kissed me again.

  It was a perfect moment, and probably the most romantic moment of my life.

  So in love was I. So in love were we.

  So what happened, Cary? What happened to that great love of ours? It was real. It was right. It was real right. Then it went wrong. Real wrong.

  The falling in love was easy. But the living in love was another matter. It always is, isn’t it?

  I know there are two sides to every story. For my part, I was so afraid of losing you that I lost you. Then I lost me in trying so hard not to lose you. Crazy stuff . . . born of my immaturity and just plain lack of confidence. I honestly think I expected you to make me happy . . . an impossible task for any man. But after all, you were “Cary Grant.” What I’ve come to understand, though, is that you were far more than a “Cary Grant.” You were flesh and blo
od: a warm, intelligent, and oftentimes gentle man, with a heart so big it could embrace the world. Yet, you had problems to work through just like anyone else. So in order to help you sort through those problems, I let go of who I was. I did that in order to become what I thought you needed or wanted me to be. Not fair to you (because it was false) and not fair to me (because it shut me down).

  Leaving you was the hardest thing I ever had to do, and it took me a long time and a lot of work to heal the guilt I felt after we parted. No, I didn’t leave for lack of love. I left because one of us had to leave—because each of us thought that we could find ultimate happiness in each other. We both came up short and started blaming each other for what we couldn’t fulfill in ourselves. If I’d only stayed true to who I really was, we might have made it. However, that’s just what happens when two imperfect people try to find heaven in each other.

  For your part, you let me into your carefully guarded heart. You trusted me enough to have a baby with me. And then . . .

  You panicked.

  You even got mad at yourself for allowing it to happen. From this distance, it’s not hard to understand why. We’ve all got our wounds, but the ones inflicted from your childhood were beyond what most could ever imagine.

  But now is not then. Over time, in learning a bit more about love and in learning to forgive myself, and in learning to forgive you, I’ve found the real deal again. I found it when I came to understand that I had to practice unconditional love, patience, and acceptance first before I could expect that from any partner. I had to become the person that I wanted to fall in love with.

  I asked myself for many years if the love we had was real. For a long time I wasn’t sure about that, but now I have no doubt. It was absolutely real. And out of that reality came our beautiful Jennifer.

  You’ll be happy to know that Jennifer has turned out to be more than any two parents could ever hope for—and she’s exactly the “highly evolved, kindhearted woman” you imagined she might become. Best of all, she’s an amazing mother. Yes, my dear, we are the proud grandparents of Cary Benjamin. He’s a bundle of pure, ecstatic joy. It’s so curious: when he’s concentrating hard, he sticks his little tongue out and bites on it, exactly like you used to do. Where did he get that? Not from Jennifer, whom you’d be so proud of—she’s so present, so beautiful, inside and out. No, that was never one of her habits; he got it from you. Like I said . . . curious.