Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir (56 page)

Liza turned fifty-one in 1997, the same year our mother would have been seventy-five. Liza, of course, is in the tabloids almost as often as our mother was. Her personal disaster in
Victor/Victoria
and a string of canceled concerts have an eerily familiar ring. Liza, like me and Joe, has struggled with her own ghosts and shadows. Sadly, Liza and I have not spoken to each other for a while. Those of us who love her confronted Liza two years ago with our concerns about how she was living her life. She is not yet willing to take responsibility for her life or to leave behind the hangers-on who encourage and enable her self-destructive behavior. She has made a choice I cannot support, so I have chosen to live my life without her for now. I hope and pray that one day she will make better choices so that I can welcome her back into my life. I truly hope that those who surround my sister will find their consciences and take her best interest to heart.

S
ome people say my life has been a matter of survival. I object to that word. Survivors are people who, like my former in-laws, emerge from the horrors of Auschwitz or some experience like that and somehow manage to live beyond it. My life can’t be compared to that kind of experience. I choose to think of my life not as surviving, but as coping.

Sometimes it’s been difficult, and sometimes it’s been glorious. Either way, I’ve coped. And I’ve learned from it, which may be the most important thing of all. I was never very good at school, and I’ve sometimes been a slow learner in life’s school, too. But the important thing is that, eventually, I did get the point. I understand, and that understanding has changed my life, and I hope and pray it will change the lives of my children. There are some family traditions I don’t want my children to carry on. My mother would be the first to agree with me.

Meanwhile, I count my blessings. I have a healthy body, free of the chemicals that once controlled it, and a wonderful group of people who help me keep that commitment. I have a husband who is able to love me for who I am, and who doesn’t try to make me someone I can never be. I have a teenage son with a wonderful smile, his father’s face, and his uncle Joe’s sweet disposition. And I have a beautiful little girl with my blue eyes, my mother’s face, and a voice like an angel.

One evening a few years ago, I was sitting in a restaurant with a group of my friends, including Ernie Sabella, who would later be the voice of Pumbaa in
The Lion King.
Over the years it seemed as though whenever I’d be spotted at a restaurant or club, someone would play one of my mother’s songs. They always meant it as a tribute, and they always thought they were doing a nice thing for me, but it was always painful. Hearing her songs were a reminder of what I had lost. That evening, someone put on a song from my mom’s Carnegie Hall album. Before I could groan and say, “Oh no,” Ernie looked at me and said, “Isn’t that cool? It’s like having a guardian angel.” It was as if someone had turned on a light
switch. I had never thought of it that way. From that day forward, every time I hear her, instead of thinking, “Oh this is terrible,” I give thanks that my mother is watching over me.

My Al-Anon book,
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,
lies on the table beside me. Each day I read the passage given to me, and I remember that the blessings of that day are enough.

It’s all that any of us can ask.

Mama at the age of four at the old Lewis Hotel at Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park. At a dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Victor Gray, Mama jumped off her chair and ran out onto the dance floor and started doing the Charleston. (Photo by Victor Gray, courtesy of Dorothy Schwartz and the Judy Garland Children’s Museum)

Mama’s beloved father, Frank Gumm, soon after his 1914 arrival in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. (Photo courtesy of Robert Milne and the Judy Garland Children’s Museum)

The Gumm Sisters in 1926, shortly before their departure for California.
From left to right;
Mary Jane, Virginia, and Mama. (Photo courtesy of the Judy Garland Children’s Museum)

The Gumm Family in southern California, circa 1927.
From left to right:
Mama, Frank, Ethel, Virginia, and Mary Jane. (Photo courtesy of the Judy Garland Children’s Museum)

Mama at about age five, in the middle, surrounded by Mary Jane and Frank on the left and Ethel and Virginia on the right. (Photo courtesy of the Judy Garland Children’s Museum)

Mama and her mother on board the “Hiawatha” to a homecoming in Grand Rapids, in 1938. She was almost sweet sixteen. (Photo by Lou Daugherty, courtesy of the Minneapolis Historical Society and the Judy Garland Children’s Museum)

With Mama in 1953. (Collection of the author)

Daddy and me on the set of
A Star Is Born
in late 1953. (Photo by Pat Clark, courtesy of Warner Bros.)

Sitting on the table in Mama’s dressing room, while she feeds Joey, 1955. (Collection of the author)

Lauren Bacall, Mama, and me at a western-themed birthday party. (Collection of the author)