Finding It: And Finally Satisfying My Hunger for Life (24 page)

“Mom!” I scolded.

“It’s true,” she said. “And that old man you saw scooting around in a wheelchair.”

“Yeah.”

“Cancer. He’s never getting out of here either.”

“Mother, please.”

“And every time I want to watch shows on the good TV in the living room, the same old woman is sleeping in the chair. She’s in her nineties. She’s always there. Daytime. Nighttime.”

“Poor thing,” I said.

“She has her own room, too,” my mom said. “She probably doesn’t want to go there because she knows she’s never leaving here, either.”

Finally, I had had enough. I told her to get over her negativity and tried to put her in a better frame of mind, reluctantly lecturing her on the importance of a positive attitude. The mind has incredible sway over the body. If you’re depressed, your body will reflect it one unhealthy way or another. But as I told my mom, if you think positively and visualize yourself healthier, you will find a way to get yourself in that same kind of shape.

“If you think you’re never going to get out of here, you won’t,” I said. “But if you focus on sitting in your favorite chair and watching HGTV at home, with all of us around you, you’ll find a way to get there.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Focus on the next cruise you’re going to take,” I said.

“Well, the doctor—”

“Come on, Mom,” I interrupted.

“We’re never going on a cruise again,” my dad chimed. “You don’t know what we’ve been through.”

“Both of you, stop it!” I implored. “I know this has been hellish. But the worst of it is over. It’s all up from here.”

•      •      •

I want to think my talk had an impact on them. I don’t know for sure if it did. But the following afternoon when I walked into my mom’s room, I found both of them in much better spirits. My dad had spoken to my mom’s doctor and wrangled her a day pass. She could go home.

“Isn’t it great?” she said. “I couldn’t believe it when Andy asked, and they said yes.”

“See what I mean,” I said.

On January 1, my mom went home for the day and the first thing she did was take a good hot bath. She came out of the bathroom slowly, but obviously refreshed, and declared, “I finally feel clean.” I took that to mean she finally felt like she would get better. She had washed the icky veneer of sickness off her. Then she went in her bedroom and ran her fingers over the clothes in her closet.

“I just wanted to smell them,” she said. “It’s been so long since I was able to wear anything but a hospital gown.”

At her request, we celebrated Christmas. Since she had waited this long and we knew it was momentous for her, we pulled out all the stops. That afternoon, Tom and I and Wolfie, and my brother Pat and his wife, Stacy, met at my parents’ house, carrying in food and gifts and decorations. Within an hour, you would have sworn we had turned back the clock six days to Christmas.

My mom took it all in from her leather chair, occasionally turning to watch her favorite HGTV shows. We didn’t let her lift a finger. We teased her about being on a day pass, as if she were on probation. If she didn’t listen to us about taking it easy, we joked that she would have to go back for even longer. My dad also made sure that she resisted the urge to get up and help.

During dinner, my brother and I reminisced about how special Christmas had always been in our family, especially when we lived in Delaware. On Christmas Eve, my mom would put us to bed early while my dad went out and bought a tree. Then he and my mom stayed up all night decorating it and putting out presents.

“Wait a minute,” Wolfie said, looking upset.

“What?”

“Are you saying there’s no Santa Claus?”

I punched him in the arm. I wanted to keep talking about my memories of waking up in the morning and finding the gorgeous tree surrounded by presents and the mouth-watering smells coming out of the kitchen.

On one of those mornings, I found a blue box of Barbie dolls under the tree. I still have the box, with Barbie inside, as well as all the beautiful clothes my mom made for her. It sits on the top shelf of my closet. I probably haven’t played with them for forty years. Nor can I remember the last time I opened the box. But I can’t imagine not having them.

As I described some of the doll clothes I used to love, including a black-and-white bathing suit, Wolfie rolled his eyes. So did Tom. I didn’t understand why they couldn’t tolerate me waxing nostalgic about some adorable ice-skating outfits and formal gowns. I’ve sat through countless stories about my son’s bass and my boyfriend’s childhood athletic feats. What was the big deal?

“The difference is you love football,” Tom said. “I don’t love Barbies.”

The point was moot. Before we got to dessert, my mom began to fade and my dad shooed all of us out of the house so he could put her to bed. On the way out, I told my mom that I hoped she’d
liked her presents. It was such a trivial thing to say, but it was Christmas, even if it was a week later.

“Being home was my gift,” she said. “It was the best medicine.”

“And as I told you the other day, it’s only going to go up from here,” I said.

“I hope you’re right.”

“I know I am.”

As it turned out, I was. My mom returned to the after-care facility and spent twelve more days there before being discharged. She wasn’t in perfect health when she got out, but she was on her way to making the full recovery her doctors had promised her was possible.

Much of that recovery would be in her own hands, just as making the turn in my life had been up to me. If you get your head into a different place, the rest of you will follow. The message applies whether you are beginning a diet, recovering from an illness, or figuring out what to do after being laid off from a job.

Change is a process; the key is to start. Obviously you can’t remake your life in a single day, but you have to begin someplace. It’s like giving yourself a day pass, the same kind my mom’s doctor gave her. And it’s not hard. You simply step out of your own way for a few hours. You put yourself in a different head space. You change environments And you tune in to your inner voice, the voice that tells you who you really want to be, and then you become that person. You visualize yourself in that role.

Try it for a day. Then spend the rest of the week figuring out how to be that person two days in a row, then three, and so on.

I had done exactly that before committing to Jenny Craig. I
spent the day with Kirstie Alley, who had gone on the diet before me. She told me about the diet, let me try the food, and worked out with me. That whole day I was with her, I tried to envision whether I could be that person who could stick to the program. I left her house thinking that I could—and soon I was.

For all my cheerleading, I went home feeling like a bit of a hypocrite and worse, knowing I had strayed a little too much from my diet and workout. My brother and sister-in-law’s gumbo was to blame. Before we left Arizona, they had whipped up a batch, which is actually enough to feed four to five families, and I had indulged too much. Aside from the fact that it was delicious, I ate because I was stressed-out from dealing with my parents.

I beat myself up for the slip, and I guess I was still moping around when my trainer came over. Christopher Lane and I were still getting to know each other. Blond and blue-eyed, he’s the guy Jillian had called to help get me into bikini shape. She had injected him into my life like a shot of vitamin B12. The first time he came to the house I thought, Well, isn’t he a handsome fellow. The next time I was more like, Oh, my God, what did I get myself into?

I will describe Christopher in more detail in a bit. Let me just say that, by this time, he knew me well enough to notice that I was walking around with my shoulders slumped. I hemmed and hawed when he asked if I had kept up my workout in Arizona. Finally, I confessed about the gumbo.

“Forget about it,” he said. “Today’s a new day. I want you to have your gumbo. Jenny wants you to have your gumbo. I’ve heard about your gumbo. I want to try your gumbo.”

Before he took his jacket off, he put me on the treadmill and
told me about a woman he had trained for almost two years. At her insistence, he also had to train her overweight Golden Retriever.

“Really?” I asked, wondering if he had put the dog on the treadmill the way he had just done with me.

He shrugged.

“After six months, the woman was the same weight. But her Golden Retriever had lost 10 pounds.”

I didn’t know whether he was telling the truth, but I laughed. He continued to tell stories and before realizing it, I had been jogging for twelve minutes. I had let go of the fact that I hadn’t worked out in Arizona as much as I had planned and began charting new goals with Christopher. He had me thinking about how well I was doing in that very moment. He commented on my strong pace and talked about the exercises we were going to do outside. He said he had a new routine for later in the week. At some point, he had me acknowledge that I was looking forward, not stuck in the past.

“Everyone has a bad day,” he said. “They slip or they don’t work out. It’s okay. You have to allow yourself. Let yourself have a day when you eat or don’t work out. Then get to the gym the next day. Don’t punish yourself for getting off track.”

“Why?” I laughed. “That’s what I do.”

“I know you’re joking,” he said.

“Half-joking,” I shrugged. “I’m trying.”

“That’s all you have to do,” he said. “If you’re eating poorly or not working out, don’t let it become one of those things where you say, I’ll start again next week. You want to start the next day. If you’re driving down the road and you blow out a tire, you don’t get out of your car and shoot the other tires out. You fix the tire and you keep going to your destination.”

“Just where is my destination?” I asked, glancing at the readout on the treatmill.

“Where do you think?” he replied.

“Getting my ass in a bikini.”

He smiled.

“Okay, I’ll keep running. But tell me when I get there.”

“That’s funny,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I won’t know. You’ll tell me.”

In the middle of January, I ran almost 3.2 miles through my neighborhood, a new personal best. Tom was nowhere to be seen. Though we had started out together, I had left him somewhere around the two-mile mark. I found him on my way back, his male ego dangling by a thread as I coasted up alongside.

“Go ahead and make fun of me,” he said. “I deserve it.”

“I’m not going to tease you,” I said. “I just want to know if you are going to be able to make it back home. Or do you want to wait here while I run back and get the car?”

A little bit of a show-off, I got a laugh out of Christopher, who had been running alongside me. At this point, we were a tightly-knit threesome. Christopher and I worked out daily, and Tom joined us most of the time. He was getting noticeably buff and seeing results much more quickly than I was, even though I had gone on-record about getting in a bikini to those involved in my life and career.

Now that I was past the holidays and my mom was on the rebound, I had gotten serious about my workouts. The fact that I was running was enough of an indication that I was making the mental adjustments I needed to take my fitness to the next level. But the real turning point was the day I met Christopher. Jillian took care of all the arrangements, so that one day he showed up at my house. As I said, he was blond and cute and had eyes the color of turquoise jewelry. I thought those assets would make it easy for me to do sit-ups while he was holding my ankles.