I'll Scream Later (No Series) (30 page)

Luckily the campground was about five minutes from our house. One of the other moms called Kevin, and he came and rescued me—not particularly happy about it, but he came. One of the
other moms took over Sarah. The next morning when we picked up a not-too-happy Sarah, I said. “Look, Mommy got a little scared, now get over it.”

Our extended families go a long way to keep all of us grounded. My children know that I’m an actor, but it’s something they are all humble about—they’ve found a way to be proud of what I do without being arrogant.

Besides my immediate family to help keep egos in check, there is Kevin’s clan.

Since his mom, Charlotte, and stepdad, Dan, live close enough to be around the kids a lot, Gramma and Papa Dan have been very much a part of my kids’ lives, and they make it possible for me to juggle my home life and my work. They have so much energy it never ceases to amaze me, and I know the trips they take the kids on to the mountains or the beach, the arts-and-crafts projects they undertake, are making memories for a lifetime.

Gramma Charlotte and Papa Dan

I don’t know how we’d do it without their help. When I have to go out of town for work, sometimes for several months, depending on the production, it’s such a relief to know we can call on them.

Charlotte says, “I don’t want someone else raising my grand-kids. Besides, we love being with the kids so it’s not a chore, you get to see things all over again through their eyes. And I feel very lucky that they want us to be here.”

Charlotte underestimates her impact. At times she’s moved in for as much as six months so that both Kevin and I could work without any worries that the kids weren’t in excellent hands.

Of course even with Gramma around, when something happens, it’s really hard not to be there. The summer that Isabelle was three, I was in Vancouver shooting
The L Word.
Kevin was at work when he got a call from his mom. He remembers, “My mom was on the phone and she said, ‘Isabelle is okay, but she fell and hit her head and I think I should take her to the hospital.’ Isabelle had fallen backward and hit her head on the corner of a concrete step. When my mom picked her up, she had one arm around her, and one hand on the back of her head. When she set Isabelle down, she saw that her hand was covered in blood.”

Kevin raced to the hospital, and about that time I was in the elevator going up to my room at my hotel when I got a call from one of the neighbors that Isabelle had fallen and was okay but on her way to the ER. When Kevin got to the hospital, Isabelle saw him and said, “Daddy, you’re in your costume,” which is what she used to call his police uniform.

She wasn’t crying, and she was barely talking, but otherwise she seemed fine. The doctor considered, then decided against a CAT scan, Isabelle had just stitches to face. To keep her still, the nurses told her they had a special princess dress for her to put on—and they wrapped her round and round in a sheet that was more straigt-jacket than anything else.

Kevin knelt down beside her while they got ready to put in the stitches and says, “She was looking at me, and when the doctor put the needle into her scalp to inject the anesthetic, she barely reacted. Not a peep, not a cry. I thought,
This is not good
.”

The doctor was concerned as well. After the stitches were in they did a CAT scan after all. Thankfully there was no damage, and Isabelle pretty much just giggles at the memory today.

K
EVIN IS THE
oldest of three, with a younger brother and sister. And the clan just keeps extending out with all sorts of aunts and uncles and cousins. My favorite time is Thanksgiving, when just about everyone decamps for Charlotte and Dan’s house near Yosemite. It’s on about five acres, and by the time everyone arrives, there are about thirty-five of us. When everyone is inside, we’re like sardines, and if you find an empty spot, that’s where you sleep.

Every year there’s a theme—sometimes it’s who has the best hats, or the sixties, or pajamas, or togas. Games go on inside and out, with more food than you can imagine. The party goes on for five or six days, and it always feels like such quality time just hanging out with people we love.

Christmas is a close second. A Santa always stops by for the kids with a big bag of toys, and my kids have countless cousins to play with. We make the trip to San Diego for the day each year. Every Easter we go back to San Diego for egg hunting, with each kid getting his or her very own colored egg to hunt for—with new toys after the hunting is done. There’s Hannukah at my cousin Lynne’s too every year. All these traditions make the holidays feel complete.

And really, I think that’s why we have holidays—to give an excuse for families to get together and remember where they’re from, who they are, and the people who will always be there for them.

B
EING AROUND
T
Y
Pennington and the gang at ABC’s
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
is like finding yourself dropped inside a beehive—although instead of bees buzzing there’s a crazy man with a megaphone!
GOOD MORNING, TY!

I have
never
seen so much movement and activity compressed into such a short time in my life—and I say that as the mother of four young kids!

This show I love—it has so much heart. Even though it’s essentially the same story every week, it never fails to leave me reaching for Kleenex by the end of the show. Week after week, a family’s life is transformed.

Admit it—is there anyone out there who hasn’t secretly wanted to stand in that crowd at the end of the week and yell at the top of his or her lungs,
“BUS DRIVER, MOVE THAT BUS!”

It’s as if the bus is powered by the sheer sound and energy of all those voices.

I knew I wanted to be there at least once, watching as the bus rolled away to reveal a new home and a new life for one lucky family. So when the network asked if I’d be on one of the episodes, I couldn’t say yes fast enough.

But before I met the family for the first time, there was that bus. It is huge, and it takes a while to get used to moving around inside while the bus is rolling down the road.

Oh, yes, they do really ride in that bus. It’s like a mobile headquarters for the army Ty leads into battle each week against rotting floors, leaky roofs, defective plumbing, and, most important, hopelessness and despair.

The
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
demolition derby

The families that make it onto
Extreme Makeover
are always facing incredible hurdles, usually with remarkable strength and grace. That was certainly the case with the Vardon family of Oak Park, Michigan.

Stefan was in high school when he wrote to
Extreme Makeover
about his family—his parents were Deaf and his only brother was blind and autistic. Stefan was the family’s communicator whether it was interpreting for his parents at the store or explaining what someone was saying to his brother.

That’s a heavy load for a kid to carry, but Stefan did it with humor and charm.

I stood on the Vardons’ front lawn with Ty and the design team as he screamed into the megaphone—for the first of many times that week. With “Good morning, Vardon family,” the controlled chaos began.

The design team, the builders, the volunteers, everyone worked at warp speed, seemingly flying in a million different directions, but somehow it all came together. In between everything else I was responsible for that week, I had a thing for that megaphone. Anytime Ty put it down or looked away for just a little too long, it was mine!
The Deaf chick had volume—I could rev up the volunteers with the best of them.

In the world of
Extreme Makeover
the impossible happens—a house comes down, and a week later in its place is a new, state-of-the-art home equipped to enrich life for everyone under that roof. In the Vardons’ case, the Starkey Hearing Foundation, which I’d been working with for a few years, gave Stefan a college-scholarship check worth $50,000.

Often by the time Ty and the designers show up, the families are just hanging on by a thread. If you are ever feeling sorry for your own plight in life, or down if you’ve hit a rough patch,
Extreme Makeover
is a good reminder of how good life is for most of us.

Even in that world, the Llanes were a heartbreaking case. So when I got a call to be on the show again in 2006, I was there.

Vic, the father, was blind from a hereditary disease that he’d passed along to two of his three children; daughters Gueni and Carrie who were now going blind. His other child, Zeb, was Deaf due to a case of German measles his mother, Maria, had had when she was pregnant.

Vic’s mother, Isabel, who was also blind, lived with the family, too. Maria, who served as the main interpreter for her son, Zeb, and was the rock of the family, had battled thyroid cancer.

The house was a nightmare—a small, fifty-year-old split-level with dark, narrow corridors that would have been difficult to navigate if you had perfect vision. It was not nearly enough room for six people. This family definitely needed the help of Ty and the design team.

Once again the army was mobilized. More than two hundred volunteers and a lot of innovation conspired to create what was dubbed the “Z home,” because of its A-to-Z technology. When the bus rolled away from Bergenfield, New Jersey, we all knew that life might never be easy, but it would definitely be so much better for this great family.

So once again I kicked the dust off my work boots, packed up my tool belt, reluctantly handed the megaphone over to Ty, and said good-bye to the design team and the bus, until the next time.

O
NE OF THE
best things about the career I’ve built is the chance I get to be a guest on many TV series that are among my favorites, working with actors and writers that I so admire. Andre Braugher and Ruben Blades on
Gideon’s Crossing;
the
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
crew, in another performance that would earn me an Emmy nomination; Gary Sinise at
CSI: NY;
and
The Division,
five female cops try to figure out life—how much did I love that!

While I thrive on the dramas, it was a kick to be on the lighter side—well, the lighter/darker side—in
Desperate Housewives
and
Nip/Tuck,
two of the most smartly written, beautifully acted, cynically perfect series around.

Though they are very different series, a kind of high sheen and intensity about both
Nip/Tuck
and
Desperate Housewives
sets them apart, and both have a Swiss-watch precision in their execution that’s remarkable to witness.

Then there’s Earl. Something is so appealing in watching Jason Lee bumbling along trying to make things right in
My Name Is Earl.
And Jaime Pressly as Joy is my kind of in-your-face, take-no-prisoners woman.

All the characters that writer Greg Garcia has created have this great quality of unvarnished truth that is as compelling as it is funny. I love the un-PC-ness of the show and have had a great time whenever they’ve written me into it.

As much fun as it can be to watch, it’s even more fun on the set. It was all I could do not to crack up when Jaime as Joy stood there, popping her gum, explaining why she didn’t want me as her court-appointed attorney:

“I would let you buy me groceries, I would let you greet me at Wal-Mart. I would even buy pencils from you at an unreasonable price, but this is my third strike and I really don’t feel comfortable putting my life in your Deaf hands.”

But Greg is an equal-opportunity offender, so before the episode ended I got to call Jaime “white trash” and a few other choice things, too.

W
HILE
I
LIKE
the challenge of dropping into lots of different shows—each with its own style, texture, and tone—it makes for a pretty nomadic and unpredictable life.

I wanted to create more opportunities for myself and have more control over my future—and the future I wanted to build with Kevin and our children.

In 2003, Jack came up with an idea for a kids’ movie to pitch to the Disney Channel. Unlike other projects we’ve developed, this didn’t star me. Instead, I would be the producer.

Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-off
was about a fourteen-year-old who was the star player of his baseball team, but who also nursed a secret desire to be a chef. The conflict comes when Eddie must choose between helping his team win the play-off or participating in a cook-off. Guess which his dad wants him to do.

Disney liked the idea and so we produced the family movie together.
Eddie
felt like a solid start. Producing has been an entirely different sort of education for me, learning the nuts and bolts and the business side of making a movie. To take an idea and follow it all the way through to the end has made me appreciate the suits in the business.

I wanted to be more hands-on with
Eddie
and was set to travel with Jack to New Zealand, where we shot the film. But I had a terrible scare. My mother called to let me know that she was going to have open-heart surgery to repair some damage. No way was I going to leave her side. Jack went to New Zealand to handle the producing duties alone.

After the operation, we were all anxious to see her, but only two family members were allowed in the room with her at the same time. My dad and Eric went in first, but when they came out, they didn’t tell us what to expect. Marc and I walked in, and we were like “Oh my God” and both stepped back for a second. She looked dead—her skin looked ashen, gray.

I think the color must have drained out of our faces, too. The nurse looked at us and quickly said, “No, no, no—this is normal.” My mom woke up then, still groggy from the anesthesia, and started
fighting the tubes and they ushered us out. It was a long night of waiting and wondering.

By the next morning when we came in, mom was sitting up in a chair. Progress. But she was so thirsty. The nurse gave me something that looked like a giant Q-tip, with a spongy end that I could use to wet Mom’s lips. The first time I tried it, she bit down and wouldn’t let go. I realized she was so thirsty she was sucking all the moisture she could out of that sponge. I thought,
Okay, good, she’s feisty, that’s a good sign.

My dad was, of course, charming everyone at the hospital. He started bringing in chocolates for the nurses and any of the steady stream of friends and family who came to visit. Well, my mom loves sweets—I got that from her. She was supposed to stay in the hospital for five days. On the fifth day she got up in the middle of the night, walked over, and started eating all the chocolate. She paid for it—between diarrhea and heart palpitations, she had to spend another five days.

I sat with her for hours each day, to make sure she was okay. We’d chat, but only about the most innocuous of things. We never talked about the past. We never talked about anything important. But I’m so glad I was there.

P
USHING MYSELF IN
different creative directions is in part why, several years ago, starting with
Deaf Child Crossing,
I began writing children’s books. I wanted to create stories, based loosely on my life growing up, that would be fun and entertaining. I also wanted to help kids see how someone a lot like them learned to face everything from challenges in life when you are different—and we all are different in some way—to living with friends and bullies in your own backyard.

Part of the fun of writing the books has been creating characters who are a lot like many of my favorite people. I get to live out a few fantasies I had growing up.

In my second book,
Nobody’s Perfect,
Megan, the young Deaf girl who is at the center of all the stories, throws herself a Positively Purple Party. Finally I get my purple dream day, or Megan does,
with everything saturated with my favorite color from purple party invitations to purple games to purple cake. A total purple haze and I loved it.

I love that the books are connecting with children both hearing and Deaf, but I think what has been the most special for me is reading the books with my own kids—helping them in a gentle way understand where their mom came from, what it was like when I was growing up.