I was now thirteen and living at an institution slash rehab. My mother just wanted someone to deal with me. My anger had taken over and I was out of control, and so in the middle of the night, she took me to a place where I went in and the doors locked behind me. I knew that I was not leaving with her. I had gone in and I was not coming back out. A rat. A roach. Trapped.
So there I lived. For one and a half years. And on one particular day, they said, you have a phone call. They took me to a back office, which was weird. Normally you used the pay phones on the wall across from the nurse’s station where they could keep an eye on you. So I already knew something was different—I just had no idea what it could be. I picked up a red phone. I remember it was red as if it was yesterday. A Pac Bell push-button-type table phone. “Hello,” I said. They hadn’t even told me who was on the line. So I waited. “Hi.” I recognized my mother’s voice from those two small letters she uttered. “Your grandfather has died.”
I didn’t respond because I burst into tears. I just sat there crying. I looked around this small fake-wood-paneled office, and I saw a few of my counselors just pretending to be busy with their work so as to give me as much privacy and space as they could in this tiny room. It was respectful, and yet I could also see that they had seen it all. Done it all. They were all from broken families and were ex–drug addicts, some worse. And now they were trying to help kids who just came from crappy circumstances and needed guidance. It was a hard-knocks place. No Hollywood-bullshit beachside rehab, but a psych ward deep in the valley. No one who was here in this building or here in this office had seen a safe or easy life. It was a place where you accepted that and figured out if you were going to make it or not. Period. I was just another fuckup dealing with pain. I kept crying and I kept looking at this red phone that delivered such a blow.
As the years passed, I didn’t know how to honor him. I have one picture of him and that’s it. It’s in a frame and I look at it all the time. I show it to my daughters and tell them all about this wonderful man. I wish I could have had more time with him. He was just so amazing. And the only thing that feels within my control is to have my daughters spend as much time as they can with my husband’s parents, who are so important to me, and I fight for time with them. I don’t have to, really, they are the most loving grandparents you could ever imagine, but I wonder if they will ever know how much I appreciate them. I know they know to some extent. They know how important family is, more than I do in so many ways. But I hold on to all of it. Because it is such a gift. I finally have a family. And I will never, never, never take it for granted. And in those moments where I miss him, if I want to ever visit Shuni again, I can transport myself back to that room. In that pink hotel, with the lovely breeze and my grandfather drawing me a picture.
Hawaii, 2011
DOOR NUMBER ONE
When I first met Liza, she intimidated me. My best friend Robin introduced us, and I would tag along for lunch with them, but our ages were different so I felt like I didn’t totally relate to the conversation. Liza was ten years older than me, with two daughters around the ages of eight and ten. She was married. Mature. But cool. She is a high-powered executive who is behind a lot of movies that get nominated for Academy Awards. She has great taste. She is capable, and when I was twenty-eight years old, she just seemed, well, intimidating. But we had a best friend in common, and so I would go to her house for dinners, and there was a great bohemian crowd, with a chef, and her husband, who you could tell is smart and has a great taste for wines, so I would just hold out my glass and try different wines all night. I wasn’t married with kids and still had a long way to go until that was going to take place.
Then, years later, Liza and I did a film that she was producing called Big Miracle, a true story about a woman from Greenpeace who set off a chain of events when she tried to save three gray whales in Alaska. The White House, Russia, the oil companies, and global media became involved, and for one moment in time, everyone put down their agendas and actually worked together. It was a very good and compelling story.
So Liza and I got to know each other in a different way. I was now thirty-five and single, just back from India. Swearing off relationships for a while because I knew that I wanted things to be different. As women we know that we have a biological window in which we are forced to ask ourselves, do I want to have a family? I knew that no matter what, unless I made big changes in my life, that was not going to happen in the way I demanded for myself and from myself. If I had grown up at all, I was still young in relationships. A woman in the workplace and yet a kid in love. It was time to reprioritize and sweep the decks. Make way for that big, meaningful, life-changing love.
And Liza and I would sit around and talk about it. When we first got up to Alaska, I was in my “I’m not ready” mode. I would say dismissively, “I just don’t know what’s going to happen, but I don’t even know what I want to happen.” I was exhausted by having spent the majority of my life thinking about someone else. And all of a sudden I was solo, working in this snow-globe-like atmosphere out in the middle of Alaska. After I came back from India I was reading books again; I had adopted another dog, Douglas, a nervous mutt with chopstick-like legs but a good snuggler nonetheless; and I had discovered football and was watching it like mad. It’s amazing the things you get to do when you are alone. It’s actually really fun.
Midway through the film, two months later, I had cooled out on the ice floe we shot on every day, literally, and I found myself saying to Liza, “You know, being single is great! I don’t know why we treat it like some disease we are trying to cure with a remedy of ‘where is he’ because I don’t want to know where he is all of a sudden. This is great. I like being alone.” She looked at me and smiled. I had really changed my tune since arriving. I was sad and doubtful at first. And now I felt territorial about my space and my life.
The film finished and I had a new sense of self. Something had totally shifted here, in this town of Anchorage, and I was really glad. I knew myself in a whole new way, and I actually felt like a complete person for the first time. Not defined by someone else. When I left Alaska, I would go to dinner now at Liza’s with a new sense of belonging. No, I wasn’t married with kids yet, but I wasn’t a kid anymore either. I would drink wine with Matthew, Liza’s husband, and talk to her other guests with a newfound place in the world—was this maturity or maybe a sense of calm I simply had never had before? My life had slowed down and I wasn’t being a workaholic, which was very healthy, and I wasn’t with a man, so really I only had to examine myself and become truly comfortable without any distractions. I could feel the next big phase coming.
I had met Will Kopelman a few years before, in 2008. We met at a friend’s house and he asked for my phone number, which I loved because I felt like men were not doing that anymore. In a confusion of the sexes in the modern world, women were now often the aggressors, which changed the old evolutionary courtship of thunking the woman on the head and then dragging her back to the cave. Which I was starting to miss because I felt like men thought we didn’t want to be pursued anymore—of course, we had come too far, which I appreciate, and I don’t want us to take a step back in time, but I was tired of being the one to make it happen. So when a man asked me for my phone number I almost fell off the chair. I was thrilled at the old-fashioned question and I quickly gave it to him. He waited two days to call, of course.
We had a lovely time dating for a few weeks, and we truly had fun. But fun was all it was because we were both not in the right place at the time. So we just drifted back into our lives and that was that. But it was so nice. And getting to know him was a complete pleasure. But “timing is everything,” and I could not feel more passionate about that universal clock that you cannot control because it knows better than you about when things are supposed to take place. And in this new place in my life—I was sleeping alone for over a year, finding the middle of the bed, and really working on mysel
f—I started to become worried about meeting someone because I was really feeling different than I had ever felt in my life. So strong, and I didn’t want anyone to take that away. Someone would have to be the human equivalent of an addition and not a subtraction. Period.
It’s ironic that we rush through being “single” as if it’s some disease or malady to get rid of or overcome. The truth is, most likely, one day you will meet someone and it will be gone. And once it’s gone, it’s really gone! Why does no one tell us how important it is to enjoy being single and being by yourself? That time is defining and amazing and nothing to “cure.” It is being alone that will actually set you up the best for being with someone else.
Then, one night in 2011, I went out after a function with my business partner Chris Miller, and since we were all dressed up, we decided to go out and have a nightcap. I was trying to get the attention of the bartender when the man in front of me—whose shoulders I could not see past, though I was hovering anyway—turned around, and I immediately started to apologize for being in his space, and I realized it was Will Kopelman. Oh. Hello. I shyly looked down.
Something changed right then and there. Here was this cute nice man who I knew well enough to know he was a good person. The training wheels were off and all of a sudden he didn’t look like fun. He looked real. Chris looked at me when he turned around and mouthed “Oh my God” and the feeling in the air was obvious. Will was with his friend Diana, and Chris and Diana quickly did some kind of recon because Chris walked back over a few minutes later and excitedly whispered in my ear, “He’s single,” and smiled at me and sashayed away. OK, maybe the timing wasn’t off anymore?
We went on some dates and they were really fun but comfortable and without games. There was a goodness there and a shocking trajectory where everything was just falling into place. Being my date to my birthday. Meeting the parents. Traveling. My friends liked him, which was everything. When I would bring him to functions of mine, I loved that he was classy and could hold intelligent conversations with people and was consistently wonderful.
I started to panic. What about my newfound sense of self? Would that have to go away? Would sharing a life with someone mean I was no longer my own person but a “we”? How could I stay one of two rather than becoming half of one?
Just like anyone who is about to settle down, I started to examine every little thing. Right around that time I asked Liza if she and Matthew had any Passover plans. I was trying to take Will to a special place to celebrate it, considering his family was in New York. Thankfully she welcomed us right in, and off we went for great wine and a great Seder.
I just loved the feel of their house. It is intimate yet lively. Food cooking, people chatting, familiar faces. I was enveloped by the warmth, which was soothing my pent-up state of having been evaluating how this love with Will could grow and warrant going to the next level. At the age of thirty-six, you don’t wait years; you examine the relationship after months so you don’t waste years and then find yourself without certain choices. Although I am with men when they want to run away from all the pressure of a woman’s biological clock! I get it.
Yet this is biology, and it’s the facts, so when you’re thinking about being truly serious with someone, it is serious. You will get back to the fun soon enough, I hoped.
Of course when Liza asked how everything was going, in another classic girl cliché, I spilled it. I said we were really thinking about getting serious but “how do you know when and how you should get serious and why does it all feel so serious?” She saw the panic in my eyes. She smiled the most cool and knowing smile and laughed and threw her head back and then looked deep into my eyes. She spoke: “Door number one.”
I looked at her, confused. “Excuse me,” I asked her. She said, “Everyone wants to overthink and analyze and take all the fun out of it and freak out, but the truth is you pick door number one. You choose the great person in front of you and don’t play the game of Let’s Make a Deal and see what’s behind door number two because we are so conditioned to seeing what else is out there.”
I said, “I thought you might have been talking about Let’s Make a Deal.” “That’s right,” she said. “You are so lucky because he’s standing right there.” She pointed to him and there he was, my accountable, handsome date, who was once again making lovely conversation with my friends. I turned back to her with pride and calmness. “He is so wonderful. And he is door number one. And I know it. And he’s right here.”
She smiled and said, “And you know what’s behind door number two, of course?” I looked at her with my questioning eyes and she answered, “A donkey and a broken washing machine. So just go. Go and make this work. Will is door number one.”
And she was right. I didn’t question whether he was “the one.” I was trying to figure out how I would go all the way with this man and really create that family I have always dreamed of. What Liza was also saying is that there is no room for looking back. You make a choice to commit and you move forward. You live your life. And you appreciate what you have.
That’s it! It’s the best advice I ever got. I fell in love. I have two beautiful daughters who are my entire universe and who I live my life for. And if you are lucky enough to get the best opportunity, grab it. Hold on to it. And don’t let it go. Otherwise you can get a Kenmore. Or a jackass.
Door number one. Thank you.
Side by side forever
DEAREST FRANKIE
You are the most delicious little girl, and this is what I have to say about you so far . . .
When you were born, I had made a playlist for the delivery room. I put Billie Holiday on it and nothing else. It is such soothing music, and when you hear it you are immediately transported to a timeless, relaxing place. (I think that’s why so many people put it on during dinner parties, me included.) I knew that calm state of her music was perfect for the mood I wanted to create, and when you were ready to come out into the world, at that very moment, the last song ended, and the next one started. It was “God Bless the Child,” and the whole room started to swoon. We all knew that it could not have been more auspicious. What a miracle!
And out you came, and as I lay there, waiting to have you put in my arms, before I could even see you, I heard your father say, “Oh my God, she looks just like you,” and of course I waited to see what he meant. You were put in my arms, and I just held you as if I would never let go. We were finally together, and even though I was so woozy, I just clutched you, making sure you were comfortable and looking at your face. Your beautiful little face.
Once we were taken into the recovery room, we stayed side by side for the next four days. Olive came and brought you a present, a little stuffed bear, and watched you intently. As I took a picture of you meeting each other, I thought to myself, Olive, you must look out for Frankie always! I made sure you had each other. It was a sweet visit and Olive was at her best.
Grammy and Poppy came too. Once again, I held up my old camera and took pictures of everyone holding you. We put all those pictures in frames around the house. I make framed pictures for your father for his birthday, and we have a beautiful collection of pictures and moments in varying sizes all around our home. Something I always admired as a kid in the homes I visited. And now we have that too. Even though I had only had Olive about a year and a half before, I had forgotten how everything works, but then it all came back. It’s funny how your brain just goes blank, but the training wheels of fear had come off, and I was trusting that all would be OK this time around. Your temperature and your eyesight and hearing tests. I knew you would weigh enough. You were such a good little tiny baby. You never cried or complained. Until it was time to eat. And then you would turn beet red in a matter of two seconds and you would find your war cry! You went from zero to sixty, and for the girl who was so happy and sweet, you wanted that food NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And then you would retreat back to sweet, swee
t Frankie with a big burp. Which is what I spend my life listening out for, with my ear to your chest, and you were great at it, and it was such a relief to us both. There was never a struggle. You ate like a champ, you slept, and you smiled. Even when you would get a cold, you were nice about it.
And as you grew more and more, you put on your weight, right on track. I would watch your blue eyes get bluer, and your hair get blonder. You fell in love with the bath. You were over the moon to get on solid foods, as if you had been ready since day one. (You got your father’s love of food!)
But your smile. Frankie, you have a billion-dollar smile. You light up like a Christmas tree, and you feel it all the way in the depths of your being. You are joyful. Happy. And a stage-five clinger. You start crying if I leave the room. Or put you down. Or have to pass you to someone else. We call you rabbit legs because handing you off is like trying to pass a bunny who simply does not want to be handled. And when you are hurt, you throw your arms forward to immediately intertwine them in my arms and clutch me until you calm down. I love it. I love being of service to you.
I am always trying new foods, spaghetti with tomatoes is your absolute favorite, and you can eat an amount that starts to worry me. I think about all the flavors to bring to you, but I don’t obsess on you to learn every color or animal or number. You like to giggle and laugh with me. We both look at the same thing, like you putting sand in your bag of crackers, and you think it’s the funniest thing. We both do in that moment. We get each other, and it’s more about us sharing a sense of humor. At this point I’d rather have jokes than point out in a book, “This duck is yellow,” although you have discovered books and look at them yourself anyway. Somehow I just know you will catch up quick and I don’t feel uptight about that because you will have years in school and you are more of a jock at this point anyway.
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