Finding It: And Finally Satisfying My Hunger for Life (5 page)

“Mom!”

Because we had three-and-a-half more hours together in the car, I acquiesced. I thought about the notes I made to myself, the endless To Do lists I made. I said I wanted to finally hire a contractor to draw up plans so we could start renovating the house before the backyard deck slid down the hillside. I also said that I wanted to drink more water, which was met by shouts of “weak!” I felt like I couldn’t win.

“Okay,” I finally said. “I want to improve as a person.”

He rolled his eyes. But I was being pragmatic. Losing weight had been like an amazing reveal after a magic trick, a big ta-da. After years of using food to keep myself from facing the fears and insecurity of my life, I had come out of hiding. I had woken up and started becoming the person I had always wanted to be. I no longer looked in the mirror and disliked the woman I saw. Nor did I walk
around with a frown, avoiding eye contact and wishing I were invisible. I was beginning to really like this new me—and even on days when I didn’t, I was still pretty darn happy.

However, I knew that I was not yet a finished product. Not even close. Off camera and in the privacy of my real life, I was raw, vulnerable, curious, and uncertain. Although I had put some problems behind me, I faced new challenges. Now that I felt better about being me, I wanted more—more confidence, more experiences, more insights, and understanding. I was frustrated that I couldn’t think of any resolutions, because I felt as if I had a long list of them.

I didn’t know how to articulate it—this new kind of hunger. It was like when you eat something delicious and don’t want it to end. I had felt that same way after dieting and exercising for the last nine months—I wasn’t ready to stop. But I didn’t know what to do next other than doing more of the same. I needed a plan, or at least to see where I was supposed to be headed.

Tom has always had a deep belief in God, and I was intrigued by the sense of calm he seemed to get whenever he “let go and let God.” For many reasons, chief among them that I was haunted by the irrational concern that too many good things were happening to me so something terrible must be ahead, I could have used a dose of letting go and letting God. I made a mental note of adding that to my To Do list.

“I know a resolution you could make,” Wolfie said.

“Let me hear it,” I said reluctantly.

“You could try to be more patient when I’m driving,” he said. “It would be great if you didn’t scream ‘hit the brake’ all the time.”

•      •      •

With that, Wolfie opened a Pandora’s Box that we continued to deal with long into the new year. At sixteen and three-quarters years old, Wolfie could already have had his driver’s license. But he didn’t. A year earlier, when he had been eligible to get his learner’s permit, we had made a plan that both Wolfie and Tony would go through the process at the same time. They took the practice tests online in their bedroom.

It seemed like an invitation to cheat. But they clearly didn’t. Tony came out smiling, followed by Wolfie, who looked bummed. Depressed at failing the test, he moped around until he was able to take it again. When he passed, his self-confidence bounced back. He would need that resiliency, of course, once he got behind the wheel.

Although Tom and Ed drove with him, I bore the primary responsibility of taking Wolfie out for practice drives. I was mostly okay with that since I considered myself a better driver than either of them. (Of course, both men would disagree with me. Imagine that!) I swore I wouldn’t be the kind of parent who sat in the passenger seat, barking orders to turn, stop, and watch out. The first time we got in the car, I promised Wolfie that I would be cool.

“Just remember to buckle up,” I said.

“Ma!”

“And turn the ignition key gently.”

“Mom, I’ve started a car before,” he said.

“Sorry. I’ll keep quiet.”

But months later, I was still shouting instructions at him when we got in the car. I wasn’t as bad as I had been when I was in labor and swearing at Ed, but I came close. Even when there wasn’t any traffic nearby, I warned Wolfie to watch out, check his mirrors, and drive defensively. It was as though I had some disorder and it got more severe in proportion to the number of other cars on the road.
Finally, one day he pulled over to the side of the road and said, “Mom, stop it!”

“What am I doing?”

“You’re making me nervous,” he said. “
You
are going to cause an accident.”

Not only was he right, he woke me up to my behavior. I hadn’t been aware that I was the source of most of his nervousness behind the wheel. It explained why everyone from Tom to my brother, Patrick, and his wife, Stacy, in Arizona, all of whom had driven with Wolfie, reported that he was a good driver. Everyone saw it except me. I had to ask myself why I was so critical of him when he was driving. Ordinarily, I was Wolfie’s biggest cheerleader. What changed once we got in the car?

After some time, I figured it out. When I got in the car with him, I lacked one of life’s essential ingredients: faith. You can tick off the top five necessities of life, and faith has to be included among chocolate, pasta, and butter. (As for the fifth, love? A warm bed? Salt? I’ll leave it open to debate.) Anyway, Wolfie had been driving long enough for me to see that my fear and apprehension was unwarranted, at least to the degree that I shouted instructions at him. Why didn’t I have more faith in him?

I’d had blind faith in so many other endeavors, ranging from the first time I walked out in front of a live audience on the set of
One Day at a Time
, to marrying Ed when I was twenty, to having a baby ten years later. As I thought about it, bringing another life into the world was the ultimate exercise in faith. I don’t know what had made me think I could raise a child, but I did.

I’d also had faith in myself when I finally split with Ed. Although it had taken twenty years, once I made the decision to do it, I was determined to land on my feet. It didn’t turn out to be as
simple as walking onstage or having a baby. In the aftermath of divorce, though, I made two crucial leaps of faith. I opened my heart to Tom, and I decided that I’d had enough of being depressed and self-defeating, which, it turned out, was the step I’d needed to say yes to Jenny Craig.

How did I know that would work? I didn’t. I had faith—just as I continued to have faith that I would keep the weight off.

My problem with Wolfie’s driving was largely an emotional issue. Rationally, I knew he was a capable young man. He was my go-to guy for computer help. He performed in front of an arena full of people with total professionalism. If anyone had questioned his sense of responsibility, I would have been his loudest and strongest defender. I would have even defended him as a driver.

But I freaked out when I thought about him getting behind the wheel of a car and driving away on his own. Other than his lack of experience, which applied to everyone his age, I knew my fear was mostly irrational. I told myself that I needed to let go for both our sakes. I needed to have faith he would get where he needed to go and return home safely.

At the time, faith was something on my mind, particularly in a political sense. As a news junkie, I knew from reports that President Bush’s approval rating had dropped to an all-time low of 27 percent and then had slightly risen in January to 33 percent. By contrast, six years earlier, he had enjoyed a nearly 90 percent approval rating. I knew that meant that much of the country had lost faith in the president.

By both contrast and necessity, we were looking elsewhere for a new leader. The presidential election was only ten months away. I was thinking long and hard about which of the candidates would
provide me with faith that they could take America in a new and better direction. I watched Oprah Winfrey help launch Barack Obama’s campaign in Iowa and then followed his stops in South Carolina and New Hampshire. I was inspired by his energy and charisma, his ability as speaker and his plans to fix the country’s problems.

I loved that he was younger and smarter than me, and I would love it even more later on as he emerged as the Democrats’ choice. It spoke volumes to me about hope for the country’s future.

At the time, though, Hillary Clinton was still my choice. I liked her experience, I thought she was brilliant and liked that she was a woman.

I could get behind either Obama or Clinton. I thought either could do a better job than the man who had held the job for the previous eight years. I looked forward to the change of administration and not getting worked up every time I saw either Bush or Cheney on television putting forth some argument or policy I didn’t agree with or trust.

I felt like Bush’s parting gift was the optimism he was giving to Democrats like me after eight years of misery. It buoyed my outlook, and that optimism rubbed off on other things, including my attitude toward Wolfie’s driving. If I could survive the Bush administration, I could also make it through my son’s days as a student driver.

One day, I got in the car with him and decided to make an effort to think positively. I watched as he checked his mirrors before pulling out. I noticed that he came to a complete stop at the Stop sign at the bottom of our hill, something I more than a few times had failed to do myself. Finally I saw the way he parked effortlessly in the grocery store’s crowded lot. Hey, what was I worried about?

“Nice job,” I said.

“Really?” he replied, his face brightening with pleasure. “Cool.”

Wolfie and I put together a string of successful trips. We would get home afterward, and Tom and Tony would look at us expectantly for clues about how we had treated each other. I would say he did great. Then Wolfie and Tony would go off by themselves to jam, and Tom would ask me how our trip had
really
gone. I would tell him that I genuinely believed that I had improved as a passenger.

“What about Wolfie?”

“He was fine.”

Tom and I had wanted to take Wolfie and Tony to the DMV to get their licenses at the same time. Unfortunately for Tony, who was eager to get his license, Wolfie wasn’t in a hurry. He was born two weeks late and has done things on his own timetable ever since. Being on the road where he traveled by private jet, tour bus, and limousine made getting his license a low priority until he returned home and wanted to visit friends.

Once he was back, I made an appointment at the DMV and took both boys for their temporary licenses. They walked in with their driver’s manuals and leafed through them while waiting in line for their eye exams, which both passed. Then they took their written tests in another room. I waited nervously, thinking I would read the book I had brought but in reality just fidgeting and worrying.

About thirty minutes later, the boys emerged and handed their tests back for grading. Tony’s was first, and he passed, but Wolfie missed too many answers and failed. He didn’t want to talk about it.

“Mom, I know you’re going to try to make me feel better,” he said. “But you can’t, so don’t even try.”

“Not even a little bit?” I said.

“No.”

Six weeks later, he failed the written test again. He had studied the manual more than the last time but obviously not enough. Figuring the notion that misery loves company, I told him about other kids who had failed the test multiple times despite studying. I even mentioned a few adults who’d had trouble. He didn’t care. He got down on himself and wasn’t interested in further talk about scheduling a third attempt.

Seeing him avoid the subject and make half-hearted, self-deprecating jokes about his failure to pass reminded me of the worst of myself. I didn’t want him repeating my mistakes; I wanted to break him out of that cycle. One day, we were in the car and, again figuring that misery likes company, I considered telling him about some of my failures. But he knew those as well as I did.

He didn’t want to talk about it anyway, and he especially didn’t want to hear my opinion on what he needed to do to pass the test. Then he went back on the road, which allowed him to forget about the test for a while. Not me. I continued to think about my son and this minor hurdle he had to get over.

“He just needs to study the manual,” Tony said.

His advice was as obvious as the fact that the person who needed to hear those words was in a hotel room somewhere halfway across the country, not in the kitchen where Tony was grabbing lunch before heading to work. I left it to him to pass that information on to Wolfie, which he said he had hinted at and would do again. After he left, Tom and I headed out for a hike in a nearby canyon.

I had learned to like exercising when I felt stressed and emotional.
I couldn’t say trudging up the large hill Tom and I were on beat the short-term satisfaction of burying my face in a bag of chips, but it was healthier. I got a sense of being in control of my feelings and able to cope.

“I still hate this damn hill,” I said.

“We have to bear trials as a test,” Tom said.

“A test of what?” I asked.

“Our faith,” he said.

“You’re quoting Bible verses now?”

“It’s the first chapter of James. It’s gotten people through difficult circumstances for thousands of years,” he said.

“Like this damn hill?” I asked.

“Much bigger.”

We quit talking and focused on the walk. I enjoyed this part of the hike, when my arms pumped in synch with my breathing and I felt into the rhythm of my body exerting itself. It felt good, and I didn’t think of anything else until we stopped for a quick rest and water break at a bench near the top of the hill.

I thought back to the first time we had done this hike. I barely had made it to the bench before falling to my knees and complaining I couldn’t go any farther. But then I got up and went a little bit more. Now that I was lighter, I felt stronger and fitter. I felt like I could do almost anything—short of helping my kid pass the written part of his driver’s license test. I guessed that this was his lesson to learn.

On his next break from the tour, Wolfie came home and wanted to take the test again. It turned out Tony had talked to him about studying the book and, as he later said, Wolfie had practically memorized the manual and there was no way he was not going to pass it this third time. I didn’t end up going to the DMV. As it happened,
Tom needed to renew his license and he took Wolfie. When they returned home a few hours later, Wolfie was waving his test like the American flag at the head of a Fourth of July parade. He had passed.