It's absurd for me to sit here, as a healthy adult woman, and tell you how I'd have preferred my mother had handled her impending death. However, I wish she'd have allowed us all to talk about the looming loss of her. But because she couldn't acknowledge it to us, we couldn't bring it up, couldn't talk about our feelings, try to clean any slate. I didn't feel like that she was putting up a front for us; to me it felt like denial, and in the face of that, I didn't feel I had permission to say anything. I could only sit with her; be with her, acting like I was waiting for her health to improve. Even as she was dying, I was still wanting from her, thinking, Look, even now at the end, you have nothing for me ... as if she were withholding from me. I think of that now and I wince with shame that I was still so self-absorbed.
Whitney was at their home on Martha's Vineyard when she died--just seven months after her diagnosis--on September 28, 2002. She was seventy-six. As per her wishes, she was cremated. We had two memorial services--one on the Vineyard and one in their home in Malibu. The first one, in Malibu, was very informal: we invited friends and family and anyone who wanted to could stand up and share memories of her. Back in 1987, once the acting jobs were not forthcoming, Whitney had reinvented herself one more time. She produced and directed a documentary called Reno's Kids: 87 Days + 11, about Reno Taini, a California high school teacher who helped troubled students turn their lives around. Reno and his wife had stayed close with my parents over the years, and he spoke quite movingly at the memorial about the importance of Whitney's documentary and what a deep and natural connection she made with all these troubled teenagers.
My mother? Gifted at working with young people?
Were we talking about the same person?
I just lost it. All I could think as he eulogized my mother was, Then what was wrong with me? Why could my mother be so loving to these kids, these strangers, while ignoring and emotionally abandoning her own children?
Here was a lovely gathering meant to honor and celebrate this woman whom so many loved, and all I could contribute were tears, frustration, and longing. I was devastated by Whitney's death. I was a walking protoplasm of pain, plagued by a profound sense of loss and rejection my whole life. I must have been hoping until the very last that something would give, but with her death I realized that ship had sailed. There would be no healing with her, no being made whole. I'd been so slow to learn that nobody could fix me. If it were going to happen, I would have to do it myself. It was an inside job.
My divorce from Michael was finalized right after my mother was diagnosed. I was relieved. I prefer one battle at a time. I'd reconnected with Carla at an art opening that same month and we started spending time working to repair and restore our friendship. She had been a great support and source of wisdom for me while my mother was dying and had come to the memorial service. Carla noted that because I'd avoided much of the self-examination process suggested in the program, I'd not laid to rest many of the issues that brought me into the program in the first place ten years before, the primary issue being my mother! Drinking had been but a symptom of my alcoholism; I used drinking to solve my problems, but my problems were caused by my thinking, my selfish, self-centered, self-seeking, self-pitying thinking, and the destructive feelings and resentments that resulted. This way, I developed and preserved a belief system that filtered all information through a warped prism of being unwanted, unloved and unlovable.
So Carla started working with me, putting me through program steps to dispel that belief system and create a new one. She helped me find clarity around the deep resentments I had clung to since I was a kid. I resented that my brothers and I had to stop calling our mother Mom or Mommy in favor of her stage name. I resented that she didn't acknowledge us as her children for a long time. I resented that she basically gave us to our stepfather, Jack, to raise while she pursued her career.
My job was to try to understand her, figure out who she was, learn what kind of mothering/role modeling she received, what did she want that she didn't get, what were her disappointments in life and how did she deal with them? And why did she make the choices with her children that she made? After I'd written about all of that, I heard something at a meeting that clarified a lot of it for me. A woman was talking about our parents as wells and that we were wired to go to our parent-wells for nurturing and sustenance. Many of us found our parent-wells were empty, but they weren't empty at us. They were just empty. Although my entire life I had experienced myself as being the target of her empty well, there was no fact to support it; they were just my feelings.
The next part of my job was to learn to have compassion for my mother's empty well, to accept my mother's limitations and forgive her. Well, as soon as I started thinking of ways I had disappointed my own children, I quickly had a much better perspective. I thought about being too fearful to protect them from David, times when I traveled and worked when they probably needed me, times I left them with nannies, times I, like Whitney, had chosen work over my kids, times when I'd had too much to drink to be useful to them in any way--the list is endless. I could honestly say, however, that I did the best I could given the tools and information I had at the time, and therefore I had to allow the same for Whitney.
What I came away with was a sense of understanding Whitney and appreciating her in ways I wouldn't allow myself to before. In truth, she gave me the very best she had. What I thought of it at the time is not important because I wasn't in a position to know.
Many of what I think are my best traits as a mother were developed as a protest to what I had experienced with her. Working or not, she never came to any school function or play that I was in. So, I was very attentive with all my children. When not working, I was with them all the time, making breakfasts, packing lunches, doing carpool, play dates, homework, projects, school breakfasts, soccer games and practice, gymnastics, baseball games and practice, swim meets, piano, violin, track meets, open houses, teacher meetings, performances. Every single one was an effort to not re-create what had happened with me. I understood that my absence had more power than my presence. They may not have cared so much if I saw a particular play or recital. But my not being there could be devastating to them ... and besides being very interested in what they were into, I wanted to come anyway. Thank goodness, I learned to love doing it all. I am grateful for a gift my mother never knew she gave.
With an eye toward broadening my world, my therapist Sarah had encouraged me to branch out, take chances, do something different to draw people into my life, assuage my loneliness. Being less a warrior than a copycat, I threw myself into dance classes. Sarah was a ballroom dancer and she'd spoken so passionately about her challenges there, I thought I'd give it a try, too. When I first started at L.A. Dance Experience, I probably wrestled with my teacher, Russell Adcock, more than danced with him. I recall early on, after a particularly strenuous tour around the dance floor, he walked me to the side, patted my hand, and said, "Okay, next time, I'll lead." So for many years, I worked to be still and feel his subtle lead. That in itself was a form of surrender. I loved it and continued dancing for several years.
About a year after my mother died my twins got ready to go off to college. Peter went to Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and Mollie was going to Skidmore College in upstate New York, with her first six months in London. All five of my children chose to attend colleges on the East Coast; besides the attraction of their respective colleges, I think it was a prudent and effective move to escape parental oversight.
Never having gone to college myself, I was dying of jealousy. Years they had spent or would be spending traveling, learning, experiencing, broadening their minds, were the years I spent taking drugs, getting married, and having children. In no way do I regret having my children--they've brought me more happiness than I would have thought possible. But I do regret that I didn't have the discipline or drive to pursue a higher education; in my fantasy, it would have given me greater self-esteem, made me smarter, given me answers. Kate told me onc
e that all college taught her was where to look for the answers.
So my last kids were going; the oft-mentioned empty nest was looming. Many times I'd told friends of when my firstborn, Ted, went off to Dartmouth. I had been in a depression for weeks in anticipation of his departure; we were very close; he was just a little younger than I'd been when he was born. He had been a great energy and life force to be around and I was missing him desperately long before he left. I realized that he was the last buffer between me and David. I drove him to the airport and in those days, nontravelers could walk up to the departure gate, too. First, I was hanging on his neck sobbing; then as he tried to get on the plane I might have been clutching his ankle trying to retard his progress, getting dragged with each step down the chute. I didn't care about all the stares; I was bereft at losing my boy.
Eva had gone from boarding school to Wheaton in Massachusetts and the transition felt seamless and good. Kate, also, had gone back East to boarding school at Exeter, then to Yale. So by the time Peter and Mollie were ready to take off, I was pretty much an old hand at launching my offspring. Now it was just " 'Bye! I love you! 'Bye!" Although I was going to miss them acutely, I felt healthier, more grounded than when the others had moved on and less like I was being abandoned. I don't have to do that drama anymore. In another way, this was a profoundly exciting time for me: I was fifty-five years old and I'd never lived alone in my life.
I have a one-bedroom guesthouse in the back over my garage that I've rented off and on over the years. As my youngest were wafting off to college, a young sports coach contacted me through mutual friends. Paula was thirty and gay and wanted to know if the guesthouse was available. My eldest daughter, Eva, had recently separated from her husband and she and my granddaughter, Sophia, were living in the house with me for a while. (Okay ... I still wasn't living alone, but the truth is, I wasn't directly responsible to or for anyone for the first time since 1967!) I told the young woman, "Fine, come check it out," which she did and voila, Paula became my new tenant.
As tenants go, she was ideal--very quiet, polite, and respectful of my privacy. It was a perfect setup for any renter: private street, gated property, separate from the main house, separate entrance, lots of trees and privacy all the way around. I could have lived back there happily. Paula had an independent schedule and I never knew when she was there. But she was also available when I didn't feel like going somewhere by myself. Occasionally, we'd wind up going to a movie or taking a walk, finding we had a common love of reading.
I was halfheartedly seeing a guy for a while and on occasional Thursday nights we would go to the Santa Monica Pier and listen to music. Paula joined us once or twice, dancing with another friend, Keith. I never danced to rock music, so my date and I sat on the side and I just watched Paula dance. I think it started then. I couldn't take my eyes off her. After that, whenever I was at home, I always watched for her; I wanted to know where she was. If she was out by the swimming pool, I'd go out there, or just check on her from inside the house. She was blond, tan, and very fit, so attractive. I loved that she was a reader; we'd swap books and talk about our favorite authors. I felt giddy and silly and was thrilled to have someone so responsive living so close.
In August, about six weeks after Paula moved in, I left for a short business trip to Daytona, Florida. While I was gone, we started sending texts to each other, texts that were fun, flirty, cryptic. And, I thought, inescapably provocative.
I remember one night there, standing on the balcony of my beachfront hotel overlooking the long, flat, deep beach of Daytona; the sunset was brilliant and I was afroth with confusion. What was going on? For one thing, I couldn't believe the way I was reacting to this young woman who was twenty-five years my junior. We seemed to have a great time together. I remember sitting next to her at a comedy performance and I would swear that sparks were leaping between us. But it wasn't until I was in Florida and the texting began that I could no longer deny that something was going on. But was it only going on with me? Was I making this up?
The first morning I was back I asked to her to go on a walk and we headed down to the beach. And I put that very question to her, as if she were responsible ... what was going on? And she kissed me. And the highway was behind me and the lapping waves were in front of me; the whizzing cars blended with the gulls overhead as she kissed me; I held my breath to prolong the suspended moment.
"I can't do this," I said as I pulled away. "This isn't going to happen." I was in shock--that she kissed me and that I had liked it. I wished that I'd had the guts to do it first. I don't even remember walking back up from the beach, going home, anything. I felt as if I were wearing a beekeeper's bonnet with the bees inside, crazily buzzing all about my head. I couldn't think; I couldn't focus; yet I was not confused. Despite my denial, I wanted to be with her.
I made love with Paula for the first time late on a Saturday afternoon in her apartment over my garage. I remember this because afterward I went to a dance upstairs at the Hollywood Club, where my dance group occasionally gathered. Sarah was there. The dances were usually held at the Westwood studio of L.A. Dance Experience, where the setup was vaguely reminiscent of high school dances. Men and women gathered around the perimeter of the dance floor waiting for either a dance they recognized or an invitation to the floor. Neither was actually required, judging from the range of dancers gliding around the room. Many experienced couples could skim over the floor with style and finesse, their progress occasionally hampered by the likes of me, struggling to master a sequence of steps.
At the Hollywood Club the whole setup was different. There were several cafe tables arranged where you could linger upon arrival, change into your dance shoes, get yourself a beverage, survey the room. Here, for some reason, I felt the therapist rules were different. In Westwood, at most I'd nod or smile hello to Sarah but would rarely engage in conversation and never hang out. But once in a while in Hollywood I might sit at her table with her friend, also named Meredith. This night, this earth-shaking Saturday night, I ran up the stairs to the studio, breathless, flushed, heart pounding, on fire. I felt delirious and out of my mind with excitement and a secret I was dying to tell but knew I couldn't. I could barely croak out hellos as I threw myself, wild-eyed and red-cheeked, into a chair at their table. I was sure anyone looking at me could tell, "Why, she's just slept with a woman and has been turned inside out!" I think Sarah just took me in, eyebrows raised. I might have muttered something about having "just met someone."
Oddly, I danced better that night than most. A nice man I knew named Tom asked me to waltz with him and I felt a strength, confidence, and abandon I rarely did on the dance floor. I was dancing with a secret. I was giddy with discovery. He spun me out and I twirled as a jubilantly just-born woman. He dipped me low and I leaned back gracefully as the lover of a woman. I felt more fully, comprehensively alive than ever before in my life.
I want to be clear. This was not a revelatory experience because I'd had great sex. The sex was fine. And I'd had great sex before without this feeling. Something shifted in me; there was a quickening and I understood that it was with a woman that I would find myself.
It's like when I was a kid. I had always struggled to see. Close up was a snap but anything further than the length of my arm dissolved into softness and blur. I had no concept of my sight in relation to how others saw. I thought this is how everyone sees things. One day when I was about twelve, I was sitting outside in my backyard with my friend Maxine and, on a whim, I tried on her glasses. I sat up straight and my mouth fell open in wonder. The trees, which had before always resembled lollipops, now had leaves. Individual leaves! I could have cried. Oh, so this is how the rest of the world sees? Being with Paula was like putting on glasses and being delivered to the real world. Suddenly there was clarity and I felt singular and exotic and untouchable. I saw leaves. I fit.
Of course, at the same time I had this prickly problem of being a quasipublic figure. I liked my life private. And the truth
is, I couldn't have planned for this to have unfolded in a setting more conducive to secrecy, totally private and insular. It probably happened the only way it could have. No one had to know. I was very concerned about our relationship becoming known in the business, although I was hardly someone the paparazzi tracked. I did think the general public would have a very difficult time embracing me as a lesbian when I'd been a sort of "favorite mom" figure for so many years. It would just be so confusing. I was confused; why wouldn't the public be? I wasn't unhappy with my self-discovery but I wasn't sure what it meant. Was I gay? Or was I just Paula-gay? I couldn't tell and the truth was it did not matter. I was right where I wanted to be.
However, Elizabeth had to know; there was no way she wasn't going to be suspicious because she was in the house five days a week, now working as my personal assistant. I do not hide my feelings well, and I didn't want to have to lie if my car was home but I was not to be found. I was nervous, braced myself, and told her, expecting God knows what kind of Catholic blather from her. She just dismissed me with a wave, saying she thought as much, she'd seen the signs. "As long as you're happy," she said, "and she's so much better than Michael. She's so cute it makes me wish I were gay!" What? Boy, gotta hand it to the English, poker-faced and unflappable!
I told Eva because she had a right to know, living in the house, and she would have to be blind not to know anyway. Eva did not surprise me with her acceptance; she's always been a most open and laissez-faire girl, but I didn't know that included her mom in a lesbian relationship. I got to see her in a new way, too. Eva's only comment was wondering about Paula's age, which I was trying to downplay. Both Eva and Ted were older than Paula, which made me blanch, as if I were a lesbian cougar.
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