Nate’s production staff had said they’d only need a couple of days to finish up. Of course, they’d been inside my apartment measuring and taking pictures in the prior weeks and much of the work, the purchasing and building of furniture, and so on, had been done ahead of time and off-site. But it took a little longer than planned. When I was asked to spend one more night at the Waldorf, I didn’t complain; it seemed to me it would take a miracle to turn what I had left behind into anything that could compete with the Waldorf. But I was wrong.
The big morning, I was raring to go. The TV cameras were in front of me as I got off the elevator and rushed down my hallway toward the apartment. I tried to slow down, as the cameraman was walking backward and I didn’t want him to fall. But I didn’t slow down all that much because I was dying to see what had been done. They filmed me ringing the doorbell and then I had to wait a moment or two as the camera crew went inside and set up to film me as I walked through the door. I was on pins and needles, in part because I am always an impatient person, but in this case, I was especially eager to see what had become of the place I’d been calling home for over fifty years.
Nate answered the door, but he wouldn’t let me in.
“Dr. Ruth, you have to close your eyes.”
“But I want to see what you’ve done.”
“Just for a second, dear, you can do it.”
“All right.” And so I closed my eyes and let Nate guide me into the foyer and point me so that when I opened them, I’d see my new living room.
“OK, you can open them.” I did, and I looked around in utter amazement. I never would have recognized it as my old apartment. The transformation was miraculous. I was speechless, and then I started to cry. Really, on national television. I collect dollhouses and to see my cramped and crowded apartment turned into a dream dollhouse was just incredible.
I call myself a kibbutznik, which means someone who lives on a kibbutz and is more concerned with the community as a whole than him-or herself. A kibbutznik doesn’t care very much about her surroundings. But saying you’re a kibbutznik when you haven’t lived on a kibbutz in half a century is a bit of a stretch. It’s a way of saying, “What my apartment looks like is not that important to me,” when what you really mean is, “I could never put together an apartment that could be in a magazine.” But what I couldn’t have pulled off, Nate and his crew did. And it really got to me.
But another reason I was so emotional was that many of the belongings that filled my apartment were those that my late husband, Fred, and I had purchased as a team. It’s not the four walls that make up a domicile so much as what is within those four walls. And now not only was Fred no longer there. The whole front of the apartment had been stripped bare of the life we had built together, replaced by what I would call a fairy tale—because what I was staring at was a transformation that you might see in a dream but never in real life. It’s not that Nate removed every trace of what was there before. Far from it. He did an incredible job of highlighting some of the items that were most precious, such as pictures of my family and other mementos, many of which had been hidden away among all the clutter. But the bottom line was that when I walk into my living room today, it’s not the living room that had been created over those fifty years.
I know that there are those who change their furniture the way other people change clothes. They say it’s time to redecorate, and out goes the old and in comes the new. But I’m not like that. I lost everything in the war—the only thing I have left is a wash rag with my initials embroidered onto it—and so having gone through so much loss my tendency is to hold on to everything. In my life, change had been anything but a positive experience. So asking Nate to come in and make alterations had not been an easy decision. But once I’d made it, I stuck to it, and am I glad I did.
Let me highlight two of the many changes Nate made. First, everyone I knew had a flat-screen TV except me. It’s not that I couldn’t have afforded one, but where would I have put it? I don’t know how he moved all the wiring to the opposite wall from where my little set had resided, but now I have a flat-screen TV hanging in my living room. I don’t watch a lot of TV, but when I do, I always thank Nate for the view!
The other thing he did was to make some of the furniture my size. I usually manage with regular-size furniture, but I’m not totally comfortable. Now I have chairs that fit me rather than chairs I have to fit into. So you see, Nate really did design this apartment for me, not for the TV show or some designer magazine. He studied me and set out to create a home that I would love. And he succeeded. And I took a chance by asking Nate. Now my home no longer looks like that of an eighty-six-year-old woman but instead is a sleek, modern residence that could belong to someone half my age!
In Israel there’s a lot of group singing and dancing that goes on, and when I lived there, I never missed a chance to take part. These social activities were the reward for hours spent under the hot Israeli sun, filling up baskets with olives or grapes. But when your voice is mixed in with those of a lot of others, it’s not that obvious that you can’t hold a tune. However, when you’re the only one singing, your deficiencies become a lot more apparent, which is why as soon as my children were old enough to speak their mind, they forbade me from singing another note in their presence. So the fact that I was once up for a Grammy Award came as quite a surprise, most of all to me. And that my singing “career” didn’t begin until I was in my seventies shows that one should never say never.
An award wasn’t in the offing the first time I sang in public—just a bad case of nerves. I was asked to take part in a special performance of the show Pippin to raise money to combat AIDS. It was a concert version, meaning different celebrities would appear just to sing the songs of the show. There’s one tune in that show that was made famous on Broadway by the character actress Irene Ryan, “No Time at All.” The words of that song can actually be spoken, and that’s what I was supposed to do, backed up by four good-looking hunks to sing the chorus and cavort around me.
The offer to do this came through Merle Frimark, with whom Pierre shared an office at the time.
“Dr. Ruth, you have to do this. We’re raising money to fight AIDS, and your name on the program will be important.”
“But Merle, I can’t sing, and everyone else will be famous singers.”
“You won’t have to really sing. You just have to speak the words to the right beat. All the victims of AIDS need you there.”
I was pushed into acquiescing, but to say I had reservations is putting it mildly. It wasn’t a case of typical stage fright. By that point I’d done hundreds of lectures in front of huge crowds. (I actually put in my lecture contract that I won’t speak in front of crowds bigger than three thousand because I’d done a couple like that and didn’t like not being able to connect with the audience.) What I had was zero confidence in my ability to sing, even in a talking style.
When I do a commercial, I tell those in charge that I call myself “One-Take Westheimer” and I never want to rehearse because I feel it spoils the spontaneity of my performance. (I always give them as many takes as they like, but I don’t want them to know that or we’d be there all day.) But for this show, I insisted that there be a lot of rehearsals. I went to the director’s studio half a dozen times, and we went over the song again and again.
“Dr. Ruth, that was perfect.”
“No, it wasn’t. I was terrible.”
“Really, you were great. And remember, you’ll have the four guys backing you up.”
“But they won’t be doing my part. They’ll be doing the chorus.”
“Trust me, the audience is going to love you.”
I didn’t trust him at all. Normally when I do something in public, I let all my family and friends know about it. This time I told Pierre I didn’t want anybody I knew in the audience. If I was going to make a complete fool of myself, I didn’t want friends or family as witnesses. The only two people who saw my musical debut were Pierre and hi
s wife, Joanne. And what they saw was me getting a standing ovation! Every time I started to walk off stage, the audience roared even louder, so I had to go back out and take another bow.
Of course, I later regretted not having invited those children of mine who never wanted to hear me sing. Imagine how I would have been able to gloat over the reaction I got from that audience. Oh, well—at least I didn’t chicken out and was able to bask in the glow of that standing ovation for a little while.
The next person to approach me to sing was Tom Chapin. Tom, the brother of the late Harry Chapin, specializes in children’s music and he wrote a song, “Two Kinds of Seagulls,” about the fact that animals come in pairs—he-gulls and she-gulls, for example. Though the song was very cute, I don’t know if I would have agreed to join Tom in a duet if I hadn’t been in the Pippin event. But that show gave me more confidence—and since we’d be recording in a studio, not in front of a live audience, I didn’t have to be One-Take Westheimer but could afford to muff my lines.
Tom is very tall and I’m very short, but the engineer was able to work out the mike situation in the studio easily. Tom and I have performed this song together in front of an audience a few times, once even at Carnegie Hall, and in order for it to work, what he ends up doing is going down on his knees. So you have a funny song and a funnier-looking couple, and audiences eat it up. Tom deserves all the credit for writing such a cute little ditty and then being smart enough to ask me to join him. And the album the song was on, This Pretty Planet, got nominated for a Grammy, further proof of Tom’s talents.
Not long after that, a woman I’d met once in a chocolate shop and to whom I’d given Pierre’s contact information started bugging Pierre about wanting me to narrate some fairy tales. She was part of a classical music group, An die Musik; the concept she had was that they would play original music to accompany the fairy tales that I would read. I hesitated for a while, but I had young grandchildren at the time whom I felt would like to have a CD of fairy tales read by their omi, so I decided to at least explore the possibility.
Connie Emmerich is a very distinguished-looking, gray-haired woman with a large apartment on Fifth Avenue who talks very, very fast. I move fast, but because I tend to enunciate what I say, I actually speak rather slowly. (Whenever I do a commercial and they write copy for me, they end up having to cut it because the words won’t all come out of my mouth within the allotted sixty seconds. But since it’s my unique accent that they want, they have to put up with my rolled r’s.) Connie, however, was a speed talker; I often had to tell her to take a breath so I could follow what she was saying. But when I went to her place for tea to meet the other musicians, and she sat down at the piano, they picked up their instruments, and all played me the music that composer Bruce Adolphe had written, I was enchanted. This time there was no pretense that I was singing. All I had to do was read “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” while they played the music in between each little scene.
“So, Dr. Ruth, what did you think? Isn’t the music beautiful? It fits these fairy tales so well. I just know with you doing the narration this CD will be well received.”
“Connie, you don’t have to sell me anymore. I’ll do it. I know my grandchildren will love it, plus it will make a terrific Hanukkah present.”
What I didn’t know when I agreed to be a part of this project was that the real present would be a Grammy nomination.
The opportunity to win an award like that doesn’t come around very often, so I when I got the word, I went into high gear. This was in 2002; I’d written a couple of Dummies books, and the man who started the For Dummies series and signed me to write those books, John Kilcullen, was now president of Billboard Magazine. I made an appointment to see him.
“John, you were the most important man in my life when Sex for Dummies came out, and now you’re going to play that role again.”
“Ruth, you know anything I can do for you, I will.” John is a real sweetheart.
“I made an album of me reading some children’s fairy tales backed by a classical music group and guess what? It’s been nominated for a Grammy.”
“That’s terrific. We have to put together a campaign so you win.”
“That’s why I’m here. What are we waiting for?”
John introduced me to some of his staff members. We set up an interview for an article in the magazine, and someone took the job of designing an ad. Of course, now I had to find the funds to pay for that ad—but when I set my mind to something, it happens, and so my Grammy campaign got launched. Pierre was able to get me a lot of publicity; it’s not every day that Dr. Ruth is nominated for a Grammy, so the press were very interested.
The award ceremony took place at the end of February, and I went out to LA. I stayed at my usual place, the Beverly Hills Hotel, and held court at the Polo Lounge and at the pool. I got myself invited to several parties and met some rock stars, most of whom I didn’t know, but they all knew me and were big fans. My line to all of them was, “I hope you voted for me!” and they all said they did. I believed them, and the night of the actual awards, as I sat down in my seat, I felt confident that I was going to win. Can you guess who beat me out? None other than my friend Tom Chapin. Two years in a row his album was nominated, but it was the one I wasn’t on that won.
“Tom, congratulations, you deserve it!” I said to him when I saw him later at the afterparty.
“Ruth, thank you. Sorry I didn’t win last year; then we could have shared this award.”
I really didn’t begrudge Tom for winning. He’s a very talented songwriter, singer, and musician, with years’ worth of experience. All I had done was stick my toe in the water. But no matter how much you tell yourself winning doesn’t really matter, it still hurts to lose.
I was fifty-two years old when I started my first radio show. I’d never dreamed of having a radio program, and certainly not having one that would make me world famous. So when I tell you it’s never too late, I’m the living proof of that.
There are some people who always wanted to learn how to play the piano but don’t start taking lessons until their children have grown. Fred Westheimer was one of those people, and he loved it. But maybe you don’t yet know what new thing is going to bring added happiness into your life. Maybe you were awful in art class in elementary school; that doesn’t mean you should assume that you couldn’t be a painter. If you feel the itch to paint, even if you can barely do stick figures, go and take some lessons. If after a few lessons you come to the realization that you really don’t have any talent in this area, then drop it. But if you make some progress and if you enjoy it, then you can have it be your hobby or maybe even turn it into a career.
There are some women who expect their sex life to wither and die once they go through menopause. With that expectation, that’s exactly what happens. But there are others who come to the realization that sex without the risk of getting pregnant is better than ever. Their sex lives bloom after menopause, especially if their kids leave them with an empty nest and the added privacy that brings.
Your attitude toward life is what allows joie de vivre to flow into it. I’m not saying that you’ll succeed at everything you try, but if you never try anything, then I can offer you a rock-solid guarantee that you’ll never succeed at anything you didn’t try!
EPILOGUE
Questions from the Audience
People love to ask me questions, and every so often I would go up on stage at the end of a performance of Becoming Dr. Ruth with the star, Debra Jo Rupp, and often the playwright, Mark St. Germain, and we’d go back and forth with the audience. I thought I might end this book by offering you some of the answers I gave over the run of the shows in various venues, especially those that relate to living life to the fullest.
Q: What do you do when you feel sad?
I reach into my rainy-day desk drawer. It’s chock full of letters that various friends and strangers sent me over the years that made me fee
l good when I first read them. If I’m having a bad day, I open that drawer and pull out a couple of those letters to read to myself, and afterward, my spirits are back up to their normal level.
The key to behavioral therapy—of which sex therapy is one branch—is not to frustrate yourself attempting to stop certain thoughts or emotions from happening in the first place. If something happens to bring your spirits down or your blood pressure up, you can’t stop the triggering of those negative emotions. What you can do is shorten the duration of how long they affect you. But to effectively do that, it’s often useful to have some tools to push your thought pattern in another direction. That’s where my rainy-day letters come in. But what you employ may be far different. Happy music, reading some jokes that you’ve put in a box or a file on your computer, even taking a hot shower could accomplish the same end for you. But what you use doesn’t necessarily have to be external. Just by thinking about some happy memories could cause the same positive effect. It will work only if you actively turn to this method of behavioral therapy whenever your emotional response is affecting you negatively. You need to train your brain not to respond—in some cases actually crave—this negativity. After a while, you’ll meet with more and more success.
Now, I wish I could teach you how to avoid unpleasant situations altogether, but as you’ve seen from my life, that’s a talent I’m sorely lacking in. And since most people don’t have any more control over their fate than I do, the key to maximizing the joie de vivre in your life is to be prepared for a case of life hiccups. If your boss says something to upset you, it’s easy to dive into those negative feelings, and the deeper you dive, the harder it will be to come out of your funk. So as soon as you realize where you’re heading, force yourself to think of some memories that always serve to brighten your spirit. Maybe it was a surprise birthday party that brought a huge smile to your face, or the moment you met your spouse. You shouldn’t pull out a voodoo doll of your boss from your desk drawer; that won’t help you wipe out any negative feelings but instead will make them that much stronger. You have to select from your own set of positive memories, and as I said, bolster them with some external life vests like letters (or printed-out e-mails), music, or whatever.
The Doctor Is In Page 17