The Road to Reality

by Dianne Burnett

  In January 2005, Melania asked Cameron to be ring-bearer in the much-publicized Trump wedding. A private plane whisked my kids and Mark off to Palm Beach, Florida—destination: the Trumps’ Mar-a-Lago estate.

  I needed a media blackout, and checked into an ashram for a week.

  Nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains, the ashram—frequented by the likes of Oprah and Julia Roberts—was thankfully TV-free and devoid of newspapers. Accommodations were sparse, and the workout was tough: we woke up at 5:30, practiced yoga for an hour, then ate a thimble-sized portion of granola with an almond on top. Then we hiked for five hours up steep mountain trails, ate lunch, and had a massage … followed by water aerobics, weight lifting, and meditation until evening. A light dinner followed our meditation, and then we partook in group activities designed to increase personal awareness.

  One evening, an analyst deciphered our handwriting—and everyone was supposed to guess who the person was by the description. When she looked at my writing sample, she noted that it indicated a caring person with an abundance of creativity. “This person’s handwriting shows she is family oriented and has a lot of compassion,” she said. Nobody guessed that the writing was mine.

  She then led us on another self-exploration exercise—this one called “picture completion.” Handing out pieces of paper with dots marked on them, she told us to let our imagination run free as we connected the dots to form our own images. I drew a tornado, followed by a sharp-toothed piranha.

  Afterward, the woman collected all the drawings, commenting on the images. She held up one picture of an island. “This one shows great inner peace,” she noted. “And here,” she said, looking at another, “we see courage in the face of adversity.” My drawing was next in the stack. “And this drawing …” She held it up and looked at it. A strange expression crossed her face, and she shoved it back in the stack without further mention.

  Yes, I realized I still needed to do more work on myself.

  The ashram helped exorcise my demons. I lost ten pounds, and when I left, I felt stronger, more centered, and altogether rejuvenated. More than ever, I realized I had to reinvent myself—and figure out what new role I wanted to play in the movie of my life. I decided “Dianne Burnett, Producer,” had a very nice ring.

  That was Step One: deciding what I wanted. Step Two was figuring out how to do it. Step Three was actually doing it.

  Shortly thereafter, I started a production company, becoming executive producer of my first feature-length indie film. Called Jam, it featured a brilliant ensemble cast, including Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The plot revolved around five families whose lives change as a result of a traffic jam on a back-country road. I liked overseeing it as a hands-on producer and making key decisions; I liked being awarded respect. Jam won the Best Narrative Feature at the Santa Fe Film Festival, and was a symbolic victory for me. I was getting back on track, making progress in the entertainment arena that had called to me since I was a little kid.

  I began pitching ideas for new TV shows. I hooked up with billionaire John Paul DeJoria—who co-founded John Paul Mitchell Systems—along with his wife Eloise and executive producer Phil Gurin, and we developed a concept for a reality show to be called The Salon about a beauty shop where the hair stylist also serves as a therapist. There were nibbles, but it didn’t fly.

  We developed another reality show, to be called Changing Fortunes: a philanthropist would travel the country helping struggling businesses devise new strategies to emerge from their financial woes. What better person than John Paul—a man who’d once lived in his car but was now worth $4 billion—to host it? We pitched Changing Fortunes to ABC, CBS, and NBC. Everybody seemed to love it, but no one picked it up.

  My friend Brian MacGregor and I tinkered with a show that offered pragmatic financial advice. I pitched it to David Eilenberg, Mark’s president of development, and he loved the idea. But in the end, it went nowhere.

  With every meeting, I learned more—from the art of the pitch to the need for an agent to help guard against ideas being lifted. Most important, I was back in the game. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that if you want something, keep going up to bat, and even if you don’t get a hit, keep trying. I recalled that when Mark and I were trying to get Eco-Challenge off the ground, the idea was initially greeted with laughter; even Survivor was nixed by all five networks before getting the green light in a second round.

  I’m still pitching, and getting bites on a new reality show … about a psychic who heals people over the phone.

  In 2006, Mark and I divorced—four years after Howard Stern had warned me what was coming down the pike. I brought the maroon crocodile purse to court, subtly underscoring better times and the romance that had lured me to the West Coast. I did not pursue alimony. Even though I’d helped my husband during his climb, I didn’t demand that Mark share half of his earnings, as Howard Stern had predicted years before would be the case.

  In April 2007, Mark married Roma Downey, the star of Touched by an Angel. This time, Della Reese—Roma’s co-star and an ordained minister—officiated at the ceremony held in the backyard of their Malibu home. This time, Archie wore a kilt to the wedding. This time, the news was cried out in everything from People to The Star.

  The next month, I married The Replacement. This time, I had the big Long Island wedding I’d always wanted, with my parents, all my siblings, nieces, and nephews gathered around. This time, top-notch photographers shot us throughout, and videographers conducted interviews; this time, we had an elegant reception at a private club in the Hamptons, where a string quartet played during the cocktail hour, the dinner was gourmet, and afterward we danced to a 14-piece band. This time, everything was “designer”—from the Monique Lhuillier wedding dress to the Sylvia Weinstock wedding cake.

  And this time, when I said my vows, I couldn’t keep a straight face.

  “Could you repeat the part about for richer or poorer?” I asked the officiant, my verbal stumbling causing my family to break into laughter. On the other side of the aisle, they weren’t amused. “Oh no,” whispered my soon-to-be mother-in-law, “this is not a good sign.”

  This time, when we walked down the aisle as husband and wife, my mother subtly leaned in as if to give my new hubby a celebratory kiss, but instead whispered in his ear. “Hurt my daughter,” she warned, “and I’ll kill ya.”

  James and Cameron, best man and ring bearer at their father’s wedding in April, and best man and ring bearer at their mother’s wedding in May, took it in stride. They just wanted us both to be happy.

  Epilogue

  FINDING MY WAY

  The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity.

  The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

  —Winston Churchill

  EVERY MARRIAGE HAS ITS reasons for existence.

  When I look back at the 13 years of my first marriage, I see how well-suited we were for each other at that juncture of our lives. Mark gave me a reason to leave the East Coast, and he opened a reality that I hadn’t imagined existed; with my husband leading the way, I traveled the world, and challenged myself in ways that previously would have been unfathomable.

  In turn, I gave Mark stability as well as a reason both to root and to start a family—and reinforced his belief that anything was possible. I helped him hone ideas and pitches, and to open social doors.

  Together, there was a synergy that benefited us both. Together, we defined goals—and we strived to reach them.

  Husband Number Two served his purposes as well. After Mark and I separated, there was a void that I felt like I needed to fill—and quickly. Number Two helped fill the gaping hole I had in my heart. At the time, he served as a male figure around the house for the boys, and a companion for me. Society prefers to keep everyone coupled. A lone female can be perceived as a potential threat, and women who stay single for long risk being seen as “too independent.”

  When I showed up to parties and dinners
with Husband Number Two at my side, social gatherings seemed more relaxed. Husband Number Two is good-looking, attentive to the kids, and he was kind and thoughtful to me, at first. I figured that as in an arranged marriage, I’d learn to love him the same way I once loved Mark.

  But the qualities that I once adored in my first husband—among them, his relentless drive—weren’t inherent in the second, who was more passive by nature. I’d gone from a first husband who didn’t turn off his phone when he was home to a second husband who wouldn’t turn off the TV and get off the couch. I’d gone from a man who helped lift me up (and vice versa) then dropped me, to a man who was mostly apathetic about the things that were important to me, and began sucking the energy right out of me, although I didn’t realize that at first.

  Mom indirectly pointed it out.

  In April 2009, I had a terrifying dream about my mother. In the first scene, we were talking about good times and bad times on Peppermint Road and all the things in my childhood that she wished she could have changed; next, we were holding hands as she was slipping away on her death bed.

  I bolted up in my bed. My heart was pounding so hard that it felt like it was pushing through my chest, and I began hyperventilating. Tears gushed down my face. I wondered if that dream was a warning. I grabbed the phone and called her.

  When I talked to Mom that morning, she assured me that she was absolutely fine. Three months later, however, the doctors said she didn’t have long to live; she was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the esophagus.

  When I told Husband Number Two the bad news about Mom, his response was matter-of-fact. “Oh really?” he said, not looking up from the TV screen. We were going through a rough patch in our relationship, and his coldness wasn’t the response that I needed.

  When I told Mark, he picked up the phone.

  “Joan Minerva,” he crowed into the receiver, doing his best Monty Hall imitation, “you have just won the America’s Favorite Sweetheart Sweepstakes for 12 billion dollars …”

  I heard my mother’s voice on the other end, “Excuse me … Who is this?” And then I heard her giggling. “Oh, is this you, Mark?”

  Mark sent flowers, and he sent her cards. He sent thoughtful gifts. And every week or so Mark called her again, in a different accent—sometimes asking her to partake in consumer surveys about windows, other times announcing she’d won yet another contest. Every time, he got her.

  Ten months later, my mother died. I was devastated. My world seemed to be crumbling down.

  Husband Number Two wouldn’t come to the funeral. But Mark did.

  At Mom’s funeral, Mark’s words were touching: he talked about Joan being one of the kindest, most loving people on the planet, and how much she would be missed. It reminded me of when Nana died, and Dad, barred from the house, nevertheless arrived to be with us all in that sad moment. I recalled how Steve embraced him and Mom in a three-way hug, saying, between sobs, “She still loves you.”

  It made me realize how much Mark still meant to me, although certainly not in the same way he used to. Nobody knows his flaws better than I do; nobody knows his strengths better, either. And nobody knows my flaws and strengths better than Mark. After all the things we’ve been through—for better and for worse—we still talk to each other often.

  We celebrate the boys’ birthdays together, and he and Roma often come by for holiday dinners. Mark and I still sometimes disagree, but—even if he ended our marriage—he never stopped being a father to our boys, one of the things I respect about him.

  He’s no longer my reason for being and no longer defines my identity. But Mark is still part of my family, and family is the thing in life that has always been most important to me. And now Roma and her daughter Reilly are part of that family, too.

  It made me reflect on my childhood, and the role my father had played. When he and my mother split up 40 years ago—an era when divorced dads often disappeared—Dad made a priority of keeping us in his life. Even though I didn’t get along with Wife Number Two, he gave me a place to stay when he feared I was too often alone at Mom’s house. And my father was the one who instilled in all of us kids that if you want something, you have to work hard, and persist, to get it. I realize that my father and my mother were both doing the best that they could, and they both passed on some great qualities: Mom showed me love and compassion, and Dad passed on his the attitude of “don’t take no for an answer.”

  Dad just turned 80—still a handsome devil, he looks decades younger. He remains a hoot, and is famous as a story teller, and infamous as a lady killer who flirts up the waitresses wherever he goes. He visits us often, and I fly back East to see him every few months—all the more frequently since Wife Number Two left him. This summer, I’m taking him back to Bari, his home town in Italy—the old country—where we’ll drink plonk, feast, and get back to our roots, this time with the boys. Dad recently dusted off his accordion; he’s been practicing every day. I’m so proud that he’s still doing what he loves, and hasn’t let his dreams fade. We’re even closer since Mom passed away.

  After my mother died, I was a mess. The death of a parent creates, at the least, a small existential crisis; my crisis was severe. I felt even more that I’d been passed a torch and had inherited her dreams, not just her dreams for herself, but her dreams for me. More than ever, I needed to forge my own name. I wanted to do something symbolic for Mom, and take on a challenge that would strengthen my will and belief in myself. So I put a picture of her in my purse, and I flew to Tanzania.

  A week later, I found myself at an altitude of 18,000 feet, the winds howling, the night black, the temperatures dipping below zero, wondering what I’d gotten myself into.

  Immortalized in Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” Africa’s highest mountain is iconic: climbing its 19,341 feet is an emblem of strength, not only of body, but of mind. Conquering Mount Kilimanjaro requires not only physical endurance and coordination, but also vanquishing fear and the nagging voice of self-doubt.

  I was hearing that voice loudly on the sixth night. The voice that said, “Oh Dianne, are you sure you want to go on?”

  I’d decided to take on my personal Kilimanjaro challenge at the last minute; my training had consisted of only two weeks of hiking in Aspen.

  But as Teddy Roosevelt said, “Believe you can and you are halfway there.”

  And I believed. So there was only the other half, called reality, left to go.

  It was sunny and warm when our organized group of sixteen started off on the climb with several guides, leaving Tanzanian farm lands and villages below. We hiked into a dense and misty jungle, where the moss hanging thickly from the trees made it cool, and under a verdant canopy, we set up the tents and laid out our sleeping bags for the night. Everybody was paired up, except for me, so I spent the night silently talking to Mom.

  The next day, we trekked past fields of flowers and fields of low-lying shrubs; it was warm by day, but when the sun disappeared, and the brilliant stars came out, temperatures plummeted to the teens. We awoke finding frost on the ground, and as we ascended into the boulder-filled desert, it grew colder and began to snow. The climb amid frosted rocks turned more arduous; an icy wind blew up, and the higher we went the harder it became to breathe.

  We went to bed early, needing to start the final ascent before dawn; in the ice fields above, the sun at mid-day melts the ice-covered scree, causing rockslides. When we started off toward the glacier-covered summit in the darkness, the temperatures were well under zero; biting winds slapped my face and my head felt light. The trail grew steeper and more slippery, becoming thick with ice and dusted with snow. Fog swirled around, and for every three steps I took, I slid down four.

  With less than 1,000 feet to go, I stopped. One last hurdle stood before me, and I didn’t have the energy to tackle it. I felt exhausted, and every molecule of my body, from my toes to my brain, was aching.

  The rest of the group passed me with concerned looks, and
one of the guides sat down beside me. “It’s so hard,” I said. He poured me a cup of hot chocolate from a thermos, as I pondered how I would explain that I made it up 18,000 feet, but not to the top of Kili.

  Then I thought of my kids. I thought of my mom, who’d endured months of cancer treatments without a complaint. I thought of myself and what it meant to me.

  “Let’s keep going,” I said to the guide.

  We climbed higher, through the clouds. The first rays of dawn broke through, exposing a landscape of ice, deep crevices lined with icicles, and ice-covered boulders that in the distance looked like white ripples; just below, the thick clouds looked like a foam-covered sea. Incredible.

  We climbed further, across rocks, and finally trudged to the summit. I looked down at the surreal landscape of white, feeling I was close to heaven.

  “Mom,” I whispered, “we made it.”

  On the flight back to California, I read “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” It’s the story of a writer who, facing death, realizes he hasn’t written about the most important events of his life. I took it as a sign that I should return to my book. I realized that I often took on physical challenges to bolster my self-confidence, but there were other feats I wanted to perform—there were creative, entrepreneurial, emotional, and spiritual mountains for me to climb.

  While working on this book, it hit me that I had started on one road, but then I merged it with Mark’s; when his path and mine split apart, I immediately merged my road again, with the road of Husband Number Two. I realized that I hadn’t fully made the leap that I’d wanted to when my marriage with Mark ended.

  I wanted to be single again. Not because I’d found someone else. Simply because, for a while, at least, I wanted to focus on me, and on healing myself. I wanted to give my energy to projects that I hoped would help the world, including a new nonprofit organization that I’d started, Joan Valentine—A Foundation for Natural Cures, that is seeking out alternative treatments for cancer. I wanted to launch theotherside.com, a new multimedia platform and social network that connects people and provides information about feeding mind, body, and spirit.