Finding It: And Finally Satisfying My Hunger for Life (9 page)

Their hugs at the start of those summer visits put me in the best mood. The problems began a few hours later when everyone wanted to know where they were sleeping and what we were doing for fun the next day. It was typical family stuff, except it involved seven people with seven different agendas. Invariably someone whined that he or she was bored, someone else carped about not liking dinner, and after dinner there were too many people of different ages for everyone to agree on one movie.

Life under one roof like that was a challenge. But it was, in many ways, an even bigger challenge when the other three kids were in
Arizona, looking to Tom for advice or help or the kind of everyday dad stuff that kids want and need. Long-distance parenting strains everyone. I wish I had a dollar for every time I looked at Tom and said, “So you had such a bad marriage that you had four kids.”

Gradually my attitude changed. I toughened up, didn’t worry as much, and became more realistic about what I could do and what I
would
do for the kids. I knew I couldn’t be perfect. No one is—except Mary Poppins, and her calling card said she was
practically
perfect. I came to realize that one day as I was preparing three different versions of dinner, trying too hard to make everyone happy. As I told Tom, I would have been better off letting everyone be miserable, like me.

Hee hee.

After losing weight, I realized that I had changed even more. I didn’t want to pretend to be anyone I wasn’t. In a way, that was part of the work I still had to do. I may have come out of hiding after losing 40 pounds, but I still had to figure out who that person was, and that didn’t change even when we had the kids.

Their most recent visit was one of the hardest, and best. It was their spring break, and for me the challenges began right away. Within a few hours, they had devoured all the food in the fridge and pantry, sending me off on the first of numerous trips to the grocery store, not a place someone who has made national news for losing weight wants to be seen two or three times a day.

I had trouble gauging how much food four teenagers and one ten-year-old boy consumed in a day. It was more than my three Jenny meals and two snacks, that’s for sure. Yet I also found my frequent trips to the supermarket a convenient and comforting escape from Tom and his kids as they reconnected, which could be
noisy. I wondered if I was still using food to deal with stress even though I wasn’t eating it. But I returned home without having given in to temptation.

Then one night Andie engaged Tom in an emotional talk about his divorce. She didn’t understand his side of the split. She didn’t think that he had gone through any hard times or suffered any pain. From what I observed, it seemed as if she thought that he had waltzed straight into my life. She seemed to want an apology or perhaps an explanation from him.

They ended up having a heartfelt, honest talk. She had forgotten the difficulties that Tom had gone through, how he had been sleeping on a friend’s floor when I met him. She didn’t know that he had considered himself a failure. Tom told her as much as she could handle, calling it the lowest part of his life. His had been a painful passage that many divorced parents know well.

I stayed out of it, but in spite of their tear-filled, painful back and forth, it was nice to see them connect. Bertinellis keep everything inside and stew in private. If it had been me, I would have buried my head in a pot of marinara sauce. Indeed, even though I was only an observer, I still felt like doing something similar. But I didn’t—and that fact was a healthy break from old bad habits.

The next day was better. The kids’ friends came over and Tom’s sister, Angela, came out from Ohio, her trip having been arranged months earlier. The timing was perfect. She was almost eleven years older than Tom. The kids love her. And I felt like I had a partner. She amused the children with stories of having changed Tom’s diapers when he was a baby, and she reminded them of the excellent father they had forgotten. All of them shared some beautiful memories.

I had wanted to strangle them three days earlier. Now I told
them that they were adorable and hugged them before they went to bed. I realized that all of us, at our various ages, were trying to get to know ourselves better. We weren’t necessarily lovable all the time, but we definitely had our moments.

As always, the best days of their visit came at the end. By this time, everyone had gotten used to one another, found their comfort zone in the house, relaxed, and figured out how to stay in touch with friends back home. Wolfie and Tony took the girls with them on errands. They hung out at the pool, went to the beach, listened to music, and swapped songs on their iPods. It was as if the entire house had exhaled.

After dinner, the kids got up at the same time to play Wolfie’s Wii. Without being told, each one of them cleared their plates from the table, thanked me for dinner, and disappeared into the living room, leaving Tom and me alone in the kitchen. I couldn’t believe it.

“Whoa,” I said. “What just happened?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But let’s not say anything in case we ruin it.”

Later that night, Tom and I were still in the living room, talking with his sister about the kids, who had gone off to their rooms and were either sleeping or watching TV. I wanted to go to bed but was too tired to get up off the couch. A few years earlier, I had been one woman with one child. Now I was exhausted. I jokingly asked Tom and his sister how that had happened. Even better, why had I let it happen?

“Because you met me and I’m irresistible,” Tom said.

“You’re half right,” I said with a laugh.

I tried to look on the positive side. I had stayed on my meal plan. With a house full of people there was no place to sneak off to with a bag of chips or cookies without someone seeing me.

Smiling, Angela warned me not to be hard on myself and reminded us that the kids were really good children. They were resilient and depended on parents having the same kind of ability to bounce back with kindness, understanding, and love. I saw her point. As the week had gone on, I had sensed a change in my attitude toward the kids, including Wolfie. I had let go and become more Zen-like. They could figure out how to amuse themselves and make their own sandwiches.

As much as I loved the kids, I also wanted time for myself. Angela assured me that was normal.

“It’s called self-preservation,” she said, cracking us up.

Early the next morning, we said goodbye to Tom’s sister. Later, Tom put his children on a plane back to Arizona. Wolfie went to his dad’s. The house was quiet. I walked through feeling like a storm had passed and savored the solitude at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the crossword. Then Tom came in looking sad after I made a remark about everyone being gone. He pretended to wipe a tear.

“Cry all you want,” I said. “But I’m happy to have a rest.”

“It’s not what you think,” he said.

“No?”

“Don’t hate me. But I emotionally ate.”

“Huh? I don’t get it.”

“On the way back from the airport, I stopped at Burger King,” he said.

“That’s why you’re upset? I thought it was the kids.”

He shook his head and added, “I had fries, too.”

“Oh, Lord,” I said. “I just got rid of five kids. You’re going to have to butch it up, babe.”

Before one of Wolfie’s shows, I took my mom and my dad aside and read them the passage from my first memoir,
Losing It
, about when their second child, a boy, died at two years old after drinking poison that had been stored in a Coke bottle. Since it was something that had rarely been mentioned when I was growing up, I was nervous about revealing this dreadful time in their lives, and even after my book was published, we hadn’t talked about this family tragedy much.

After I finished, though, my mom wiped a tear from her eye and thanked me for handling it with sensitivity. She also offered up a few more details about what had happened and how she and my dad had dealt with their unimaginable loss. For her, a woman who rarely speaks about herself, that was equivalent to speaking volumes.

But at seventy-one, my mom was teaching me that it was never
too late to change. She was more open and willing to talk than she had been when I was younger. I assumed it was because she now liked herself more than at any other time in her life.

She was also taking better care of herself. About seven years earlier, she had been diagnosed with a heart valve problem and warned that eventually she would need surgery. Motivated to take better care of herself, she changed her diet, lost some weight, and gradually improved her lifestyle.

As she saw the progress I made on Jenny Craig, she went on her own diet. She was typically quiet about it. She didn’t announce it to everyone or ask me for advice. She just cut her calories and started to exercise.

Toward the end of 2007, around the same time I reached my goal, she reached out to me for help. She had dropped close to 16 pounds, which was great, but she thought she could do better on Jenny Craig and asked if I could help her. My mom turned out to be my biggest fan, explaining that I had inspired her. She also turned out to be a tad competitive.

“Val, if you can do it, I think I can handle it, too,” she said with a playful chuckle.

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“It means the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” she said.

My mom was so right—more than I cared to admit. As a young woman, she had been drop-dead beautiful. Her wedding photos still take my breath away. However, by the time I was in my teens and twenties, she had lost that figure and dressed in large, formless A-style dresses, the same thing I had done when I had packed on the pounds, except that I wore over-sized men’s dress shirts.

Both of us had been hiding our pain under our weight and big
clothes. At eight years old, my mother had lost her mother and she had had to learn to soldier on without complaint. She handled the loss of her child the same way. Later, as she raised four children while my dad, a retired GM executive, rose up the ranks, there were issues in her marriage. At each juncture, walls went up—and gradually so did her weight.

I had resented her for not taking better care of herself. Now, of course, I looked back and saw that my anger was incredibly selfish and self-centered. How dare I be offended at her for not being the way I wanted her to be! Fortunately, our communication skills had improved since then.

Of course, I got her on Jenny Craig and she embraced the program. One day I called and she said she had just finished riding her stationary bike. She said she’d pedaled for forty minutes and was working up to an hour. She wanted to know how long I exercised for each day. I knew what she was doing, because I did it myself, and I reminded her that dieting wasn’t a competition.

“I have more weight to lose than you,” she said.

“Maybe now,” I said. “But I’ve just spent a year working my ass off.”

“And now I’m doing the same thing.” She laughed.

Her determination impressed me, especially at her age. But she explained that age was her biggest motivator. She wanted to feel better and healthier. She mentioned her heart problem. She said she heard the ticking of the clock. As she knew, at some point, she would need surgery.

Well, I didn’t like to hear her talk that way. She told me to shush and be real about things. By getting fitter, she increased her chances of an easier recovery, not to mention bettering the odds of surviving the operation.