The Rainbow Comes and Goes

by Anderson Cooper

  Sidney was separated from his first wife when I met him, and after he went to Nevada and got his divorce, he quickly returned to New York. “Now we can get married,” he said.

  When I suggested, “Let’s wait,” he was devastated. I couldn’t bear to hurt him, so I said yes.

  It seems so clear now that you had no long-term plan, no sense of direction. You never sat down and really thought about what you wanted. You always allowed men you were involved with to make decisions for you.

  That is true. I went with the flow, rarely having a plan or thinking seriously about the future. When I was in my early teens, I thought, “I want to get married and have a big family and wear an apron in the kitchen, cooking like the mother in the Andy Hardy movies.” That was the kind of dream I wanted to make real. Later, I flirted with the idea of going to college or art school, but instead went to Los Angeles that summer, and all those ideas disappeared.

  The future has never had much reality to me. It still doesn’t.

  AP Photo/Anthony Camerano.

  I wish I had made plans, but that just didn’t seem realistic to me. Even now, I think about death; I think about you, Stan, and Chris, and your futures, but I don’t think about my own, the coming months or years.

  I’ve always been way too impulsive for long-term plans. You and I are very different in this way.

  That is for sure. I plan all the time, and I think it’s because I grew up knowing you did not. I always sensed, after my father died, that there wasn’t a plan, and it worried me tremendously.

  I remember lying awake at night worrying about what I would do when I became an adult, what kind of career I would have, how I would support myself. I would try to figure out how much money I needed to earn to be able to take care of you and Carter and May.

  I used to fantasize about having a board of directors I could go to for advice: wise men and women, pillars of the community who would offer me sage counsel. I still kind of like that idea, though I find it very difficult to actually ask anyone for advice or for help. It is something I have rarely ever done.

  Throughout your life you have had lawyers and financial advisers, and they must have urged you to plan ahead, but I’m guessing it just sounded like they were speaking a different language to you

  Why don’t you plan ahead?

  It never occurred to me as a child that when I grew older I would have choices and could make plans. The first eight years of my life I had no permanent home. We traveled from one place to the next, in France, England, Switzerland, one hotel or house to another. Dodo and Naney were my only home. We three traveled around with our Vuitton trunks and suitcases, packing and unpacking, living in the moment.

  The only inkling about plans came to me filtered through gauzelike whisperings between Naney and Dodo.

  Even as a teenager my plans, such as they were, were all short term, urgent, constantly in flux, motivated by random influences, unseen currents, and crises in an ever-shifting sea.

  Spinning a wheel of fortune inside my head, my thoughts rattled around, landing on one thing or another: How could I get rid of the stutter that plagued me? Would my attempt at a Little Women haircut even remotely resemble Katharine Hepburn’s? (Alas, the answer was no.) How would I lose the fat that encased me? These were some of the random “plans” I pondered, but they led nowhere.

  While I was living with Auntie Ger, she never brought up the possibility of my making choices about the direction my life might take; nor did Surrogate Foley who was my legal guardian, ever bring up anything about my future, a long-term look at my life. Although I did dream about what I wanted to be when I grew up, I had no idea that I could make decisions that would determine my future.

  It would have reassured me to have a plan, a direction, to move toward, but even as an adult, I have found this elusive. I’ve achieved some of my goals, but rarely in the way I expected. Without plans, I believe in dreams, even if sometimes they melt like ice cream.

  Did anyone ever talk to you about money? Did they prepare you for the money you inherited when you turned twenty-one?

  Ah, money, money, money!

  It was a shock in February 1945, when I turned twenty-one, and was escorted into the vaults of Bankers Trust by a team of guardians and attorneys congratulating me on the $4.5 million now in my charge. None of it seemed real.

  Hard to believe, but no one had ever discussed this inheritance with me. Naney, though obsessed with money, never said anything; nor did Auntie Ger. I hadn’t a clue how cautious I should be, or how I should handle it.

  I wish I had known then that the greatest gift of money is the independence it can give you. If you are lucky enough to have money, learn how to hold on to it, but don’t be a miser, because it will shrivel your insides and start showing on your face in ways that will startle you. “To give is to receive”—and all those other platitudes we come upon now and again—is actually true.

  What I did know about money was how to spend it on friends and family, charity, and myself. This is another failing I have to keep close tabs on. But I never doubt that I have the gift of my talents to rely on to make a living. Just when I suspect I am about to fall off the tightrope on which I am balanced, the acrobat pauses, then confidently moves forward. One way or another, a new venture begins and back the money comes!

  Oy! It makes me nervous to read that. We have such completely different views on this. I just don’t believe that one can always rely on one’s talents to make money. Talent fades, accidents happen, the world shifts and suddenly a once-prized skill is no longer in demand.

  When I was in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia, I would see people in the market selling whatever possessions they had to earn money. The jobs they once held no longer existed. I bought a broken pocket watch from an elderly man. I didn’t need it, but I wanted to help him, and he refused to accept a gift.

  In war, societies are turned upside down. If you can fix a motor or wire electricity, you can become a king, but if you have a less practical skill, you will struggle to survive.

  When I was a teenager I overheard you on the phone one night telling a friend, “Well, I will always be able to do something to make money.”

  I froze hearing that. It went against everything I believed, and it still does.

  What surprises me about you is that unlike many people who inherit money, you have always had a tremendous drive, a need to create and achieve. I think that is rare. How many children of wealthy or accomplished parents have gone on to make their own mark?

  Early on, you and Daddy told me that I would not be inheriting any money and would be on my own financially after college. I’m thankful for that. I never wanted a trust fund, and it has always bothered me when people assumed I had one.

  While I was proud of your success, it wasn’t mine. I wanted to achieve something on my own.

  I am not pretending to be a self-made man. I grew up with tremendous privileges and advantages that others did not. You paid for my education outright, and I have been lucky in countless other ways. But had I believed there was a financial cushion to fall back on, I probably would have made different choices, and I doubt I would have been as driven. I certainly wouldn’t have started working when I was twelve as a child model in order to save up money, calling an agent every day after school to see what auditions or “go sees” there were for me.

  Knowing I would have to find my own way financially is another reason I paid more attention to the Cooper side of our family history than I did to the Vanderbilt side. I didn’t feel like any good would come of thinking of myself as a Vanderbilt, and I still don’t.

  Your father was born into a family that didn’t have much money, and he wanted you to understand money’s value and the importance of hard work. I certainly agreed with his thinking. I’d seen enough of what money could do to families and wanted you to grow up without the feeling of entitlement so many children of wealthy parents seem to inherit.

  People who are given trust funds often
sit back on their duffs and do nothing. For me, work is the key. The money I have earned through work is the only money I respect. The money I inherited never belonged to me. I felt as though I’d received it under false pretenses. I had not earned it.

  Money is supposed to bring stability to one’s life, but your lack of planning has often meant you were surrounded by chaos. I’ve never understood why you seem comfortable with that chaos. I’ve worked hard to avoid uncertainty. It is another reason I was so eager to become an adult, so that I could impose order and structure on my life.

  I think you would be much happier if you weren’t so used to having chaos around you, but I don’t think you can allow that kind of stability in your life. It’s not something you’ve ever had.

  Chaos does not frighten me. On the contrary, I am comfortable with it. Chaos is my natural habitat. Part of me does long for stability, and always has, but whenever I’ve achieved it, I haven’t been able to let it last. Restlessness is rooted in my nature.

  Dorothy Parker wrote, “They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.” And I think that is very true. I was formed by chaos, even before the custody trial, it was always present, although I wasn’t able to identify it as such. There was Naney, always agitating, planning, plotting, and whispering; and my mother, moving from one rented house to another, in Paris, Cannes, and London.

  Chaos is part of me, like a tattoo.

  Tattoos fade, though. They can even be removed.

  Yes, but it’s very painful to remove a tattoo from one’s skin. It takes a long time; you have to go back again and again for sessions.

  Am I ever content? Of course, but rarely. Perhaps just momentarily.

  Do you know the story by E. B. White, “The Second Tree from the Corner”? On the way from a session with his psychiatrist, a man sees a beautiful small tree with the light hitting it just right. He remembers his doctor asking him, “Do you know what you want?”

  Suddenly he knows, telling himself, “I want the second tree from the corner, just as it stands.”

  Of course, this is something he can never have. It is a fleeting image; it exists only in the moment that he’s seen it, and represents the idea of never being satisfied.

  I try to create order and stability around me in my home, but it never gets near where the trouble really is, so I always feel the need to change it around again. I decorate a room and I’m enchanted with the changes for a while, but then I think, “No, no, this isn’t right at all; it has to be another way.” When I lived at 10 Gracie Square with Leopold, I used to repaint rooms every few months.

  Even now, I can’t stop changing things around me. I just hung mirrors on one entire wall of my bedroom. I loved the look at first. It had a magical Alice Through the Looking-Glass ambience.

  “Perfect,” I thought.

  Now it just seems like a wall of mirrors.

  The truth is, and I haven’t told you this yet, but I’m considering moving from my apartment. I just heard that the house on Washington Mews in Greenwich Village where Auntie Ger lived is available. Or perhaps I might move into the penthouse apartment at the top of the building I live in now. It has a terrace, and you can see the river. What do you think?

  Mom, you are going to be ninety-two soon, and I really don’t think moving apartments is a wise idea. You know as well as I do what’s going to happen: You’ll move into a new apartment and it will satisfy you for a few months, but then the restlessness will return.

  Don’t worry, I just sneaked that in to shake you up a bit. I know now that moving won’t solve the problem, but the impulse is still there.

  It’s true that I constantly need new stimulation, and I know it is exhausting for everyone around me. Impatience is my biggest weakness. My biggest strength: the ability to harness this weakness.

  Well, that last sentence isn’t really true. It just sounded good on the page.

  I’m still very impatient. I wish it weren’t so, but it is. I become enthusiastic, and if something sounds like a great idea, I move on it without considering the long-term ramifications. I plunge forward, without giving it another thought.

  I’m working on trying not to do that, but it’s hard. I’ve always relied on instinct, on my impulses. I’ve been told psychologists consider that a great sign of immaturity, but to me it’s a kind of leap of faith.

  It’s interesting that you recognize your impulsiveness. I don’t think you used to. I have always been aware of it, and as you said, it is exhausting for those around you. You get an idea in your head, and then you’re suddenly sending out e-mails about it. You don’t really think it through. You decide to have a dinner for a few friends at your apartment, and it quickly grows into a party for thirty people whom you then need to entertain at my house because the layout is more convenient. Or you visit a friend in Santa Fe and fall in love with the place and decide you are going to move there, but you haven’t really thought through the reality of living in a new city where you know only one other person.

  More often than not, I have to be the voice of reason, advising you to slow down or rethink something. It is not very enjoyable being Thomas Cromwell to your Henry VIII. Henry had all the fun, and Cromwell ended up declared a heretic and beheaded, though I do hope to avoid that fate.

  Despite our differences, I am just now realizing how much like you I am. It has never really occurred to me before. Though I plan a lot, I do think I am naturally impulsive. It is only by watching you over the years that I have learned to suppress that impulsiveness. I force myself to wait and plan. I run through a range of scenarios and options in my head before I act, and I rarely discuss my ideas with others. I don’t want the intrusion of their advice interrupting my thoughts. When I bought the house I live in now, I agonized about it for weeks, silently making financial projections and trying to imagine where I would be in my life and career many years from now.

  When Carter was little and couldn’t sleep because he was worried about something, Daddy used to say, “Carter, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.”

  I don’t think that is something you or I do very well. Even now you’re constantly rearranging, redecorating: painting floors, laying down new carpets, moving artwork. It never stops.

  Your restlessness was always frustrating to me, but I now see just how impatient I am as well. To others, a room looks fine, but I notice a cable slightly visible behind a speaker, and it becomes all I see. Or I paint a room and it seems all right at first, but after a few weeks want to repaint it. I’m always looking to move on to something new.

  I used to have cleaning frenzies as a child. When I felt things were out of control, I would seek to create order over what I could, vacuuming and dusting, rearranging and throwing things away.

  Shortly after I told you that your impulsiveness is exhausting, a friend of mine said to me, “It’s exhausting being around you.” I have to admit that he is right. Even I get tired of the constant churning and planning, the inability to allow myself to simply enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

  With aging you gain perspective, as if looking through a telescope. Your eye focuses and sees things you never noticed before, or never wanted to. I now see so many flaws in myself, things I wish I had done differently.

  Looking back on it now, I see how much Sidney loved me, big time. No one in the world did more for me than he did, showering me with love and supporting my career, and yet I was never satisfied.

  Toward the end of the relationship, he would say to me, “You’re not giving me all of yourself.”

  Sadly, it was true. After discovering that Leopold was not the person I thought he was, I edited myself in future relationships, always holding something back.

  Shortly before he died in 2014, I met with Sidney briefly and was able to tell him how much he meant to me, how much I loved him. It freed me from the tormenting guilt over our split that I’d been agonizing over for years.

  When Sidney and I separated, Richard Avedon said to me, “I don’t know if the kind of happiness you’re looking for
exists anywhere.”

  It startled me then, reminding me of the pain I had caused, the trail of broken hearts that stretched behind me as I’d heedlessly wandered in the forest. It doesn’t startle me now. It contains a truth I have only come to understand with time.

  Avedon was right: the kind of happiness I was looking for didn’t exist. It was what Sontag wrote of, “The inescapable longing for something you never had.”

  Would it have made a difference if you had understood that at the time? So often, I can comprehend something rationally and intellectually, but it doesn’t change the way I feel emotionally, no matter how much I wish it did. Would it have lessened your restlessness, your inability to be satisfied, if you had recognized it for what it was?

  I like to think so, but I’m not sure. If you can see your patterns of behavior, and you can understand the motivations behind your actions or emotions, it can help tremendously. It doesn’t mean I would not have been restless or dissatisfied, of course, but I might not have acted on those impulses in the way I did.

  I’ve always had passion, what John O’Hara called a “rage to live.” Yet part of me craved stability, which is incompatible with that rage.

  At the start of my acting career, I read for the part of Carol Cutrere in Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending. At one point she says, “I want to be seen, heard, felt!”

  That’s what I wanted, too.

  When you feel you have so much to give and so much passion inside you, there is only one thing to do, and that’s go out and find it, fulfill it. If you have that rage to live, nothing is going to stop you from trying to satisfy it, and each time you fall in love anew or achieve a creative goal, you tell yourself, “This is it! This is what I’ve been looking for!” But then you soon start to think, “It’s not enough, I want more. I want perfection!”