A Lotus Grows in the Mud

by Goldie Hawn

  She finally understands, and, with what seems like relief, puts the shells away under her bed. She offers me a hug instead. All I have to give in return is my love and my bag of pastries.

  I leave that remarkable home reluctantly. They gave me so much—charm, hospitality, potato soup, laughter and love. I am left with the even stronger belief that family is the key to happiness.

  Heading back to my hotel, I know that soon I will have to say good-bye to Kristina and return to a world that she may never see. I want to thank her for all she has done for me. I unclip the gold necklace from around my neck, the one my mother gave me for my birthday, and start to hand it to her.

  “Here, I want you to have this.”

  Kristina’s eyes register surprise and then alarm. “Nyet!” she hisses. “Not here. Your hotel. We go to your room.”

  Her nervousness clear, we walk past the matron, who eyes her suspiciously. Only when we are safely in my room does Kristina graciously accept my gift, after placing her finger on my lips to make sure I don’t say anything that can be overheard. I try to put it around her neck, but she whispers, “Nyet. I put in pocket,” and secretes it away.

  We hug then, both of us close to tears. She takes off down the corridor, past the watchful old woman, and back to a world I have only had a glimpse of. From the window of my room, I watch her walk down the street with her son—she is a great human being making the most of a tough life.

  Despite what seem like insurmountable differences, I can feel myself falling in love with the Russian people, with their passion, their longing, their energy. I feel I understand them so much better now than I ever would have from reading articles or seeing films.

  That night—my last—Murray takes me to a nightclub where I can observe young women of my own age. I had always imagined Russian women having high cheekbones and dark hair, like Kristina, all the features I was born without. But all I can see around me are round faces and big eyes. Dressed in their black-market clothes, they wear masses of eye makeup and bright red lipstick. The music is so loud I can hardly hear myself think. Everyone is dancing and drinking vodka and smoking cigarettes as if there were no tomorrow. Trying to keep a party alive inside of them. Living excessively, I guess, to make up for the lack of excess in everything else. There is great spirit here, a tremendous zest for life. It is all the more poignant for its apparent absence elsewhere in this city.

  I sit down and observe with the zeal of a paleontologist who has just wandered into the Lost World. My God, I almost completely forgot why I came here in the first place. I do look like these women after all! They give me insight into my character. There is so much to work with here: my wardrobe, my makeup. Somehow it all seems so superficial.

  Driving back to the airport the following morning, I ponder how much I have learned from this trip. I feel sad. I realize that I will never see Kristina and her son, or Sofia and her family, again. By the time I reach the airport, I am in such a haze of nostalgia for the wonders of this proud nation that I barely notice the armed guards, with their stiff suits and cardboard attitudes, as I hand them my papers.

  “Nyet,” an immigration officer tells me.

  “Nyet?” My attention snaps sharply back. “What do you mean, Nyet? These are my papers.”

  “Nyet.” They take my papers away.

  My heart stops for a minute. I shift from a feeling of grand Russian romance and wishing I could stay here a little longer to a sense of blind panic.

  Okay, wait a minute, I say to myself. I’ve got to get out of here. My heart palpitates as I see my Aeroflot plane revving up its engines out on the runway. I seriously consider making a run for it.

  My voice a few octaves higher, I ask a guard, “Excuse me, is there a problem?” He doesn’t answer me.

  Desperate for a cigarette, I reach into my purse and my fingers close around a bundle of pens that Murray advised me to bring as sweeteners but which I completely forgot about. Accepting them with a twisted smile, an official waves me through. “You are pleased to go.” He hands me my papers in exchange. Before he can change his mind, I dash past him out onto the tarmac and mount the stairs of my plane.

  On the plane, I sit back in my seat, staring down at the lights of Moscow as we fly back west. Yes, I can play a Russian, but I could never be one. I understand their need to overcome obstacles, to make the best of their lives. I now know that their passion, love and art can never be extinguished, for it burns deep inside them. No matter what our political party, we are all individuals striving for happiness, just like Oktyabrina.

  Something extraordinary happened to me during shooting of the final scene of The Girl from Petrovka. The guards were about to take Oktyabrina away to Siberia for a life of hard labor, but they allowed her just a few moments to say farewell to her boyfriend, Joe Merrick, played by Hal Holbrook.

  As an actress, you never know if the emotion you need to draw on is going to come, or even where it comes from, but it was truly there that day. Standing there handcuffed in a snowy courtyard in the middle of Vienna, I began to speak my lines when suddenly I was completely overcome.

  “If only I hadn’t been so stupid,” I said, barely able to get the words from the script out. “We could have loved long ago. Then there would have been so much more to remember.”

  Inside, I was holding back a primordial wail at the injustice and the pain of my character’s suffering. I felt such incredible sadness that this light spirit I identified with so deeply had her life so tragically ruined. I could see this beautiful light being snuffed out, as I suspected little Sofia’s would be snuffed out one day.

  Those moments in an actor’s life are magical, and you can never retrieve them. They are a gift. It doesn’t take away from the fact that we all worked hard at re-creating the reality, but those instances of real emotion come from somewhere else, somewhere deep within us.

  I learned so much in Russia. I learned about humanity, about the importance of family, about religious and spiritual repression. I witnessed what people truly value—the tomatoes grown on a windowsill were worth more than almost anything to them. It is so important to get a different perspective in life, to see what other people have or don’t have and what they consider to be valuable. Possessions ultimately do not make us happy, nor does the obsession with acquiring more and more material wealth. How much is enough?

  The Russians I met gave me a sense of humility and taught me about resilience in the face of what was, from my perspective, a very difficult life. They had so little. Yet some of those I met seemed to be just as satisfied and connected to their lives as those of us who have so much more.

  This paradox has now been proved through research into the science of optimism and hope and the level of satisfaction in people’s lives. People in countries with greater poverty and deprivation often have a very high sense of well-being and satisfaction, while those in Westernized societies such as our own are—believe it or not—way down the scale.

  Some wonder how people can be so happy when they have nothing. But in Russia, and for the first time, I saw that what one has or doesn’t have is an entirely relative concept. The joy of having my hair washed, the taste of a sweet cherry tomato—that is not “nothing.” For the first time in my life, I began to see that material wealth really doesn’t automatically bring a sense of well-being or contentment.

  Most of all, I learned from a ten-year-old girl that no matter what your situation, you can always have your special place in your special corner of your room or your heart where you can still dream your dreams and feel wonder over something as simple as a seashell.

  postcard

  My mother steps out of the limousine at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and shoots me a wicked grin. Taking her hand and leading her inside, I am seriously beginning to question my decision to invite her along.

  I have been voted one of five Women of the Year by the readers of the Los Angeles Times. A grand luncheon is being held in our honor in this impressive arena. Looking arou
nd, I see that Mom and I are the only ones not wearing hats.

  Beneath the hundreds of brims surrounding us lurk blue-rinsed, blue-blooded dames buttoned up to their necks in designer suits with matching purses.

  I feel like a freak in my blood-orange minidress, red shoes and false eyelashes. Looking around nervously, I feel like I’ve been plunked in the middle of an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

  I’m even more nervous about what my mom might say to these women. This is someone who never minces words. At the party for Cactus Flower held at “21,” she walked up to Walter Matthau’s wife, Carol, who always wore powder-white makeup that nobody ever commented on, and asked her, “Why is your face so white?”

  At another Hollywood party, she had a few too many to drink and not enough to eat and began being rude about all the women strutting about. “What the hell’s with these people?” she growled. “No wonder they’re so thin: they never serve any food.” Deciding to leave early, we were sneaking out through the kitchen when Mom turned and went back inside. “Wait a minute,” she said, just as I almost got her out. She walked back into the party and sang, at the top of her voice, “Bored!”

  Now I have brought her to this event and I am already reconsidering my decision. But I really need Mom with me in this strange environment that is so not my peer group. I’ll just have to make sure she doesn’t drink any of the free wine.

  Inside, the place is full of tinkling crystal glasses and bone china and women with pokers up their asses. It is a big festival of coiffure.

  I introduce Mom to a few people, and she says, “Helloooo” in the affected English voice she puts on when she meets people. It is the only time I ever see her not being herself.

  “Just say hello normally, Mom. It’s okay,” I tell her under my breath. She doesn’t listen and carries on with her false hellos until it is time for us to take our places in this theater of the absurd.

  Surrounded by all these well-dressed, conservative women in hats, Mom and I sit, watch and listen as the awards begin. One by one, these women make their way to the podium and make their oh-so-earnest speeches. Gloved applause ripples round the room. I feel even more out of place.

  One of the recipients, a socialite who looks about 105 years old and with a face whiter than Mrs. Matthau’s, totters up to accept her award. Taking the whole thing terribly seriously, she stands before a hushed and reverential audience, leans toward the microphone in her hat and her pearls and opens her powder-caked mouth.

  “One kind word,” she says, with the utmost deliberation, “will keep me warm all winter.”

  That’s it. That’s all she says, and there is a long, awkward silence. It is broken only by the sound of me vomiting a laugh from deep within my belly. The noise erupts from my nose and mouth, and there is nothing I can do about it.

  Trying to hold myself together, I go into a paroxysm, physically convulsing and snorting snot out of my nostrils. Mom looks over at me with eyes that say, What the hell do you think you’re doing?, but that only makes me laugh even harder.

  She curls her hand up into a ball and, from across the table, gives me the fist, something she does when she wants me to behave. Looking at me with the blackest of looks that says, Shut the hell up right now!, I laugh more than ever. And then I catch her eye, which is a bad thing, because now she starts to laugh too.

  Knowing that at least she must try to control herself in present company, she screws her face up into a really mean expression that makes her look like she’s bitten down on a wasp. This change only makes me laugh more.

  Tears are now rolling down both our cheeks. She clenches her hand into an even tighter fist and brings it up in a way that promises to come across and punch me in the jaw any minute if I don’t stop. Finally caving in, she puts her head down on her chest and makes a strange laughing-wheezing noise.

  “Don’t look at me, just don’t look at me!” she hisses.

  “I’m not looking at you, Mom! I’m not. I’m really not!” I cry, completely out of my mind, but when I do I can see her shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

  The other women attending the lunch are beginning to stare. A sea of hats turns 180 degrees to see where the strange choking sounds are coming from. I don’t know what to do. Looking around, I see that they don’t yet realize that I am laughing.

  Mom sees it too. “Pretend you’re crying,” she hisses through her tears. “Make like you’re overcome.”

  So I go with it. I mean, I truly deserved my award for those next few minutes alone. Looking up, and dabbing the side of my eyes with my napkin, I whisper to a few of the women closest to me, “I’m sorry, but this is so moving.”

  By which time my mother is on the floor, giving in to all pretense of holding herself together. I sob facedown into my napkin for all I am worth.

  “Mom, stop it!” I plead. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  Her mascara streaking down her face, she looks up at me and wails, “I already did!”

  To my horror, I hear the presenter call my name: “And now, our final Woman of the Year, Miss Goldie Hawn.”

  Mom pulls herself together and suddenly makes a very serious face. Holding herself in with every inch of her life, she says, “All right, now, just get out of here. Go up there, get your goddamn award and let’s go.”

  Standing up in front of all these hats, knowing my mom is out there hiding somewhere, I am barely able to hold it together as I reach the podium. Starting to laugh, I have to think quickly of something to laugh at.

  “Gee, thank you so much for this Woman of the Year Award,” I say, giggling freely now. “But I didn’t know I was a woman yet!”

  Everyone laughs, and I scan the room to try to find my mom. I can’t see her face, but a little gloved hand suddenly shoots up above the sea of hats and gives me the thumbs-up.

  Fleeing that place, desperate to get away from the whole crazy scene before someone finds us out, just as we are getting into our limo, a woman comes up to us and grabs my arm.

  Pulling off her hat to reveal a lustrous head of hair, she says, “I just wanted to say how much I envy you, Goldie.”

  “You do?” I ask, intrigued. “Why?”

  Her eyes sad, she squeezes my arm and says, “Because I could never, ever laugh with my mother like that in a million years.”

  fathers and daughters

  Our fathers are the first loves of our lives.

  Take heed, for it sets the patterns for our future relationships.

  The little yellow Bug chugs its way up the mountainous curves of Colorado, working its way to see me, my father at the wheel. It is 1975, and I’m doing a film with George Segal, called The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox, and I have got Daddy a seat in the orchestra that plays beneath the stage on which my character, Bluebird, performs.

  I can’t wait for him to arrive. My dad and I have done several shows together already. He was in my first TV special, Pure Goldie, for NBC. He played his fiddle while I danced. We even did a comedy routine on that show, proving that he was funny even when that little red light came on beneath the camera.

  Nor could I resist putting him in my one and only nightclub act at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas. We stayed in Elvis’s suite and had a blast. I love nothing more than being on the stage with my dad, and here we are again.

  I spot his car driving up the pass to the location. He is looking for me through the windshield, hands draped loosely over the steering wheel as always, eyes eager with anticipation. I run out into the street that has been turned into a town from the 1800s. I am in my barmaid’s costume, which is high-cut, low-slung and with fake plums hanging all over it. My hair is piled high atop my head and adorned with a feather bluebird. I forget what I look like as I run to him.

  “Daddy!” I yell as I dart in front of his car. I watch him start to smile, drop his head between his arms and then peek up as I rush to his window.

  “Go, you must be kidding. Is this how you look these days?”

  He loves al
l of it: the work that I am doing, the business of acting. I can see how proud he is through his joking bright blue eyes.

  “Come out, Daddy,” I say, opening his door and grabbing his arm. “Come out and meet everybody.”

  “Where should I park?”

  “Just leave it there. Don’t worry. Just come inside the saloon; I want you to meet the crew.”

  He saunters out of the car, Fred Astaire–style, and glides beside me in his one-step, two-step dance. Inside we go. I am proud to show off my father. I tickle inside when either of my parents shows up on one of my sets. It is so much fun for me, and so grounding.

  Someone whisks him into the makeup trailer and transforms him into a man from the Gold Rush days. With his hair parted down the middle and his baggy trousers and shirt, he steps out looking like Alfalfa from Little Rascals.

  “Oh, Daddy! I wish Mom could see you now.”

  He gives his high-pitched laugh as he slinks down the street, grinning from ear to ear. Beaming, I follow him into the saloon.

  “Places, everyone!” yells the first assistant. “Let’s get this shot before lunch.”

  I take my place behind the curtain on the stage. Daddy, sitting in the orchestra pit, takes his fiddle out of his case, and we are off. The music starts, the curtains open and I stand center stage, gyrating my hips, shaking what assets I have and beckoning men seductively. Throwing myself across a table, I begin to sing, “You can eat my cherry, cherry, cherries, but please don’t eat my plums. You can taste my berry, berry, berries, but please…”

  Halfway through my act, halfway through trying to play a desirable sexual animal, I glance down at my father. He is looking up at me in horror, his face half frozen in a smile. Oh my God! I think, suddenly embarrassed. He’s never seen me like this before. All the while I can hear his thoughts. What is she singing? What is my daughter doing now?