Wildflower Page 13

  I dedicate myself to my kids the majority of the time. So when I take time in my day or week to work, I feel torn. It takes me hours to unplug from the laser focus I have with my kids. Then the guilt comes in—“I should be with them”—and unless I have pulled a five-day marathon with them on my own, I don’t ever leave the house without feeling like a total piece of crap! I know that I am not the deadbeat parent I am whipping myself over! I am an insanely involved, loving mother! Obsessed with my priorities, always being in the right place. I would do anything and everything with and for my kids.

  But sometimes, when I am at the pony park or the bouncy-ball place, there is a little miniature devil on my shoulder after a few days that screams “You have to give an hour or two to work!” and then I feel bad that I totally didn’t work hard enough that week because I wanted to make sure that my kids get woken up by me! Get their breakfast from me! Get to their weekly activities in music class and art class with me! It seems like men don’t do this to themselves and women are just nuts when it comes to their parenting.

  Speaking of men, at some of these mommy-and-me groups I go to, it’s like a penis-measuring contest over who is the most involved mother! I swear. And then I start to reject that! I can do that by myself, but I rebel in a group environment. I’d rather sit with the kids at my own house and play with Play-Doh and glitter art and order pancakes from “Olive’s store” than feel like I have to compete with anyone. I feel like I don’t fit in totally with the overbearing mother crowd, as much as I want to be the world’s best mom. And yet I know we’re all on the same team to get it right.

  The conflict it seemed to reach the loudest hysteria in my head after Frankie, when I went back to work right away. I didn’t get to have the standard maternity leave. I went straight back in and did a film, which is the thing I have struggled with most. And I had three-day weekends and I still felt like the world’s worst mom, and kind of vowed to really take even more time off acting. I was already only doing one film every year or two. I even took three years off. But here, I had moved the family to London, and I was experiencing postpartum depression for the first time.

  I didn’t have that with Olive. I had the “everyone is stupid for caring about anything and I don’t want to do anything but be with my baby” feeling. But eventually, like in slow motion, sound comes back in and the focus gets clear, and all of a sudden you start putting one foot in front of the other. You get the “Oh my, I actually just got a creative idea.” Or “I made a phone call about something.” I started getting involved again, although life carries on without you and I had the insecurity of jumping back in and wondering if I had anything to contribute. It took a while—like physical therapy after an accident is what I equated going back to work after a baby to. One step at a time, working toward some kind of recovery, knowing everything might not be the same.

  This time with my second baby, I just felt like a failure on every level. I also wasn’t just trying to make everything perfect with one kid. I was trying to keep my oldest happy and keep her feeling like number one while there was an invader to her throne crawling around. Was I giving enough to my new baby? How much do I just listen to everyone when they say it’s most important to keep the older one happy because the younger one doesn’t realize what is happening? Really? Because my Olive is Miss Independent and my little one is a “stage-five clinger” and cries if I even leave the room, which I love because Olive is so strong-willed and wants what she needs only when she needs it, and Frankie wants all the mushy love I have to give. It seems to me like my children both need me equally even if their needs are different. So unless I become a human octopus or divide myself up like a pizza, nothing will get my best. I will just be trying to do everything, but poorly, and filled with anxieties.

  And so I continued the film, because I had committed to it; and I gave it my all, but I noticed that my pandering Labrador acting style wasn’t there because I wasn’t totally there. I was older all of a sudden and it was starting to show up in my performance. I’d done a lot of romantic comedies, which were fun, and then Grey Gardens, which was a whole other level of commitment. In Grey Gardens I shut out the world for four months in complete and total isolation to truly become this icon, but with where my life was at with a family, I knew that would never be possible again. All of a sudden, in my performance, I felt like I was actually doing something that felt less juvenile and desperate. Not to pooh-pooh what I have done, but there has always been an air of little girl to my work, and all of a sudden I was a woman who could take it or leave it. I was happy that this was different.

  The reason I decided to do this in the first place was because my husband, my partner Chris Miller, and my agent Peter Levine all said I should. Three men I love. And the irony is, this was a female movie through and through, but it transcends and touches people because it’s a great story about two lifelong best friends. And one is trying to make a baby, and one is dying of cancer. So the whole cycle of life told in this love story between these two women has such poetry and strength that I wanted to be a part of it. When they gave it to me to read, I turned the pages of the script with Frankie in my arms, and Olive in her high chair. I would make breakfast for them and be sobbing as I read one page here and one page there, because it was so moving. I told Peter I didn’t even have time to read this—how was I going to do this?

  And he and my husband vowed to help make it work, and so here we were. My partner in the film was also a woman I could not respect and admire more, Toni Collette. I think she has given some of the great performances of our generation. She was playing Milly, the woman who gets cancer, and I was playing Jess, the woman trying to get through everything to start her family. I was to be pregnant through much of the movie too, and having just had a baby, that worked out very well.

  But much more important, I kept wanting to be a part of this because all the women who are most important in my life have lost someone important to them to cancer. My beloved Nancy lost her mom. My mother-in-law, Coco, lost her mother, who was her hero and best friend. When Coco read the script, she said, “I am so proud of you for doing this,” and I felt like a little girl who had done something right. It was the kind of praise that silenced all the demons that plague me.

  My personal mantra, strangely enough, comes from The Simpsons. There is an episode called “And Maggie Makes Three.” In it, all of the family is looking through a photo album, and there are pictures of Marge and Bart and Lisa, and then the kids ask, why are there no pictures of Maggie? And so it tells the story of how when Homer was working at the power plant, he wasn’t happy. Every day he worked in an octagonal room looking at an Orwellian plaque that read, “DON’T FORGET: YOU’RE HERE FOREVER.” And one day when Homer came home he told Marge that he was afraid of his whole life slipping away without his ever getting to live his dream, which was to run a bowling alley.

  And so they all squeezed financially and made it work and Homer finally got his dream job! He became so happy that even his hair started to grow back! His life fell into place with his wife and two kids, and then suddenly Marge became pregnant. Now, of course, in order to earn the living his family needed, he had to go back to work at the power plant. And so he did.

  But at the end of the episode, the kids say, “Yes, but why are there still no pictures of Maggie in this photo album?” And Homer says it’s because he keeps her pictures where he needs them the most, and it cuts back to his office, and they are all taped up in front of him on the plaque for inspiration. But the way he has taped all the pictures of Maggie on the plaque, it has covered some of the words, and it now reads, “DO IT FOR HER,” and that is what he now sees every day.

  Do it for her. That is it. You show that you love them endlessly. You devote yourself. You sacrifice. You parent also by example. The way you live and the things you achieve and the way you behave will be more evident than trying to convince them of anything. I am a stay-at-home mom some days and a work
ing mom others. But I am always first and foremost a mom. When we mothers worry or guilt-trip ourselves, or try to convince ourselves we will ever be the same after having kids, we are missing the point. Because we won’t be the same. I feel like I was born the day my kids were and that my life before was only there to gain wisdom for them. The point is you do your best. Your very best every day. You do it, and you do it for them!

  My beloved grandfather

  THE ROYAL HAWAIIAN

  I first met my grandfather when I was around two years old. His name was Shuni. He and his second wife, Marta, lived in Pennsylvania, where my mother was from. My mother was not born there because she was born in a postwar displaced persons camp in Germany. That was also where Shuni met Marta and left his wife—my grandmother and my mother’s mother—to be with her. But, according to what my mom told me, the marriage was over long before that and the camp forced my grandfather to think differently. He wanted to be happy, and so the family immigrated to Pennsylvania when they got out, and then everyone went their separate ways.

  My mother’s upbringing seemed very dark and bleak. Her mother was not kind and then was bitter from her life not going the way she wanted, and she took it out on everyone around her. I don’t even know her name. I met her once, when I was very little, and I recall my mom being so guarded and stiff around her. It was air you could slice with a knife. That is all I remember. One uncomfortable encounter.

  However, I was so fond of my grandfather. I knew in my bones that he was a good person. Interesting. A great artist. He was a stained glass maker, and he could draw so beautifully. My mother could too—she was amazing. I have never dared to draw. It reminded me of her, and yet I think the skill skipped a generation. But I was glad because it differentiated us, although I wonder if my daughters will have that skill.

  It runs in our family for sure because my grandfather John and my great-uncle Lionel were also great artists. John actually tried to be an artist until the family business of acting just swept him up, but he always felt like he didn’t get to draw his way to success the way he did onstage. If I see the gift in my girls, I promise to foster it. It is so amazing that someone can put out through their hand what is in their head and make it beautiful at the same time. Sometimes I think I am trying to draw a different picture with my own family in my own way. One where everyone stays in the picture.

  Although my grandfather Shuni lived across the country, we all made efforts to see each other. He and Marta would come and stay at our West Hollywood duplex for a week or two.

  I remember he took me to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to see my grandfather John Barrymore’s hands and feet in the cement with all the other movie stars’, except John had put his face in it too, as he was known as “the great profile.” I loved that he was different and had really gone for it.

  As one grandfather taught me about the other, he also helped with my father. One time when Shuni was staying with us, my father had broken in and destroyed our house. He broke all the dishes and ripped things apart, and much worse is that he had taken the hidden spare key. Not wanting him to be able to have access to our home anytime he felt like taking out his anger, my grandfather volunteered to get it back from him. A meeting was arranged between the two of them. My dad came screeching around the corner to pick him up (where my dad got a car was totally dubious, as he didn’t own a home or wear shoes and by no means had a car!), and he pulled up, and we watched my grandfather go out, get into the car, and then it ripped down the street and out of sight.

  Hours later the car screeched back into the hood, we all ran to the window, which was louvered glass slats, and we saw my grandfather get out of the car, obviously drunk to indulge my father, and walk up to the house. The car zipped away again at a crazy speed, and when my grandfather walked in, he composed himself, smiled, and, without a word, opened his hand and there was the key.

  Our next visit, we went to see them out in Pennsylvania. It was my first time seeing snow. One of the things I loved about my grandfather was that he made life interesting. He would explain where snow came from and how it works. He would tell me the functions and yet nothing lost its poetry.

  I think my grandfather made me feel like everything was magical. We played in the snow all day and he gave me Peanut M&M’s to give to the squirrels. He looked at me with a glint in his eye. “They love it,” he said. And he was right. They went apeshit for them. His backyard seemed like a tiny little white, icy-powdery world where creatures ate candy and everything was safe and beautiful.

  I was always calm when I was with him, and so sad when I had to leave him, so I was over the moon when my mom pooled together a little cash from the earnings of making E.T. and took us all to Hawaii.

  It was the first vacation I’d ever been on. I hadn’t yet traveled the world for the E.T. press tour because the film had not come out yet. It was 1981 and the last time my life would ever feel simple. We went to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, which is in Honolulu. The entire hotel is pink, a perfect bubble-gum flamingo pink. Like many girls, I have a Pavlovian response to pink, and I just loved it. It was right on the water and it seemed like paradise; in fact it was my introduction to paradise. When we got off the plane, the hot air and smell of flowers immediately transported us. I knew we were in a different place upon landing. It is so open and airy and I couldn’t have loved it more.

  We all set up camp and spent our days on the beach, or going to fun kids’ things like Hanauma Bay, a snorkeling bay, where there were so many fish that you could hold a stack of saltines under the water and, as they disintegrated in your hands, a bunch of fish would swim up and nibble the crackers right out of your fingers. It was a wild sensation, and I couldn’t get enough of it. I went home tired. I wished life was like this and yet I guess that’s why it’s called vacation.

  I didn’t sleep well at home. I was stressed and an insomniac. That has always been a big telltale sign for me, even to this day—where do I sleep with peace? Not even in my own bed do I feel that way because of just daily life worries. But every once in a very blue moon, somewhere will envelop me and literally put me into an easy, deep slumber, and those places feel so special to me, and rare, unfortunately. Hawaii was one of those places.

  During our days in Hawaii, I loved to walk around the grounds of the hotel. Palm fronds would canopy my journey, and I would find myself going to visit my grandfather in his room. He was always doing something—reading, drawing, writing. He was a thinker. One day I came in and we were talking about the human body, and he was horrified to learn that I didn’t know my knee from my ear. I just didn’t know how anything functioned or what it was there for.

  He looked at me. “Do you know why we breathe? Do you know what bones or muscles are? Do you know how we grow hair and why it’s only in certain places?” I looked at him. “No, no, and no.” I really didn’t. No one had ever explained simple or complex workings of anything, not school or any adult.

  So right then and there, he decided to make me a human body chart. Again, when you can just draw something, you can do anything. And while he was doing that, I sat in a chair, enjoying the breeze coming through the window. And then I saw the minibar in the corner and silently crept over to it and opened it. I found a chocolate and looked at him with a pleading look. My mother was a vegetarian health nut and never allowed such things. It was the ’70s health-nut hippie movement and she was in it. I am not sure I had ever even had chocolate. I looked at him, he looked at me, and he silently nodded the way he did with the squirrels. He knew it was a treat and that treats in life were good.

  I unwrapped it and stared at him. He watched me take a bite as my mind was exploding at the same time. I smiled at him. He smiled at me and then went back to his drawing. I knew he was glad I was experiencing something of pleasure. And in our wordless exchange, I understood so much. He believed people should experience things that make you happy. Maybe that’s why he ultimate
ly left his wife. She was said to have been very cold and mean. Maybe he knew that life was short and that feeling good was crucial. Maybe this didn’t come easy to him. Maybe it weighed on him very hard at times that he was not able to stay. But he was someone who could recognize joy. And some people cannot, no matter how hard they try.

  We sat there on this lazy day. An older man and a little girl, and there was nothing wrong, no stress, no worries. I remember these moments well. Not just because I loved him and appreciated him so much, but because easy moments are memorable to me. He finessed the drawing and then took me through “anatomy,” as he called it and wrote that word at the top. He had drawn a man and a woman, and arrows with descriptions so that I could keep them and use it for any reference. It had so much cool information on it, and it was a simple work of art in itself. I put it in an envelope, and that’s where it stayed for the next twenty years.

  After that trip, Shuni would come out to Los Angeles again when my mother bought our first house in 1983. Life was extremely different, and I had traveled the world, and my mother was taking me to nightclubs, and I was working nonstop. I was different. I don’t feel like I spent much time with him, and I have no idea what my mother’s and his relationship was moving forward because we didn’t see him really. My mother was very private about her relationship with her family and her life. And I was too young to grasp any of it. I was becoming cynical and I figured nothing lasted at that point in my life. My anger was growing and I was so confused. The days of sitting in a room at the Royal Hawaiian seemed so far away. Life was sweet then. Now it was confusing and inconsistent. I missed him. I wished we could have spent more time together. But I figured there was a reason for it that no one was telling me and I just let the mystery linger. And then one day I got a phone call.