It's All About Him (8 page)

We lived and learned, life threw curves
There was joy, there was hurt
Remember when

Alan Jackson, “Remember When,”

N
othing made me happier than holding our tiny, precious baby girl and knowing that she was healthy and normal. I prided myself on the fact that I had rigorously watched my diet and made sure to get just the right amount of protein every day. We had learned in our childbirth classes that this was important for strong brain development. (Indeed,Mattie has proven herself to be an exceptionally intelligent girl over the years. Never mind the great genes she must have gotten from both her parents!)

But with this new joy came tremendous disappointment as I realized that Alan had to leave town the day before I'd go home from the hospital. While I was grateful that he had been present for the birth, and that I hadn't gone into labor while he was on the road, performing, I was also sad that he wouldn't be with me to bring our first baby home.

I had held a happy homecoming picture in my mind—both of us laughing and carrying our new baby into our little home, together—ever since we found out I was pregnant.Now it would just be me. And though I didn't really realize it at the time, a lot of the happy expectations I'd had about our dream-come-true life were, in fact, rather different from its reality.

Marty Gamblin's wonderful wife Cherie, who had been such a good friend to us over the years, offered to bring Mattie and me home. She helped us pack up everything, including many massive flower arrangements from Arista, record executives, and family and friends, and then joined a couple of nurses as they pushed the wheelchair holding me and Mattie outside to her minivan. There was no fanfare as there would have been if Alan had been with us. Even though he had had only two singles out by then, people were already recognizing him from his first CD cover.

I rode in the back with Mattie next to me in her new car seat. Even with the extra padding around her, she seemed so small and scrunched. I was just beginning to realize that as a new mother, I was going to worry about everything: Is she straight enough, is the sun in her eyes, is she cold, is she hot, is she wet, is she hungry? She made it home to our basement apartment in much better shape than I did.

Tears and Fears

As a teenager I'd never done babysitting, and as the youngest in our family, I hadn't helped to take care of little siblings. I realized—belatedly—that I knew just about nothing about the care and feeding of babies.

Cherie helped unload all the stuff that we had accumulated at the hospital. We had all kinds of pamphlets on child safety, choosing a doctor for your baby, tips on breastfeeding, postpartum depression, and a thousand other topics that I had never had reason to think about before, but that now seemed quite important.

All four of our parents had driven up from Georgia the day after Mattie was born. Alan's mother and daddy offered to stay with me until Alan returned from his trip that weekend. Alan's mother prepared meals and took care of our little house so I could tend to Mattie. I was like a nervous cat. I could not relax, even though Mattie seemed content to eat and sleep. I stood over her bassinet, watching her anxiously.

Stress and Sleepless Nights

At least the feeding part went well. Mattie took to breastfeeding right away, and by her two-week checkup she was thriving. But during the third week, I began to notice that she was crying more and more . . . particularly after she nursed. I made sure that she was burped adequately and that everything else was fine, but she would cry and pull her knees up to her little chest in a fetal position. It was clear that her stomach was hurting.

When I made a call to one of my friends with three daughters who had survived infancy (along with their mother), she informed me that Mattie had colic. In the months that followed, I acquired a tremendous amount of advice, both solicited and unsolicited, on how to relieve colic. Mothers, grandmothers, professionals, and strangers who stopped me on the street all gave input about Mattie's condition, and I could have written a book. Oh, wait, I
am
writing a book. But not about colic. Never mind.

Unfortunately, nothing helped. By now all the relatives had returned to the peace of quiet Newnan. Alan was out of town, working at least four days of each week. It didn't take long for me to think that I had made a big mistake, or at least that I was the most incompetent mother in the world.

IT DIDN'T TAKE LONG FOR ME TO THINK THAT I HAD MADE A BIG MISTAKE, OR AT LEAST THAT I WAS THE MOST INCOMPETENT MOTHER IN THE WORLD.

Alan was always a smart thinker and a good problem solver, but he would get so distressed that the baby was crying—and that he couldn't relieve her pain—that I felt like I needed to take her away, out of his hearing. It was almost a relief when he and his band would leave town on Thursdays.

As the weeks dragged on, we resorted to anything that might possibly help. We put Mattie on her stomach on top of the dryer while it was on, at the suggestion of a friend who had heard that the warm vibrations would soothe a colicky baby's stomach. It might have distracted her for a moment, but it was no solution. We even tried running the vacuum cleaner near her after someone told us that that had helped her infant. The vacuum helped our rugs, but not our baby.

The only temporary solution came from above. My friend and our upstairs landlord, Donna Thompson, would come down to our basement apartment after she arrived home from work. Donna was an angel in disguise: she would bring a hot meal; insist that I take a warm, relaxing bath; and take Mattie outside, far enough away so that I could not hear her crying. That short intermission from the howling did more for my soul than Donna will ever know.

One night we were invited to dinner at the home of country great George Jones; he and his wife,Nancy, had become wonderful friends. It was a lovely evening—except that Mattie cried the entire time. Alan made light of it, crediting it to the fact that the baby's infancy had thus far been spent in a basement apartment. “You'd cry too,” he told George and Nancy, “if you were seeing light for the first time!”

Moving Up: Out of the Basement

When Mattie was two and a half months old, Alan's success was such that we could do something about our housing. We left the little basement apartment, with its calico curtains, old couch, dented mattress, and the brown shag carpeting.Now that we had some money,we could upgrade, so Alan located a beautiful brick home in the nicely landscaped, lovely neighborhood of Burton Hills in a very desirable area of town.

The house belonged to Crystal Gayle, and she rented it out now and then. Our “yard sale” furniture would not look quite right in it, to say the least. “That's okay,” Alan told me. “You just go and get stuff, whatever you want. We can afford it now.”

We had not had the money to buy furniture or accessories before. I didn't really even know what I liked—or, more important, what Alan would like. He had always made every major purchase, and I had always been happy with what
he
wanted.

The very thought of taking Mattie to furniture stores while I browsed made me nervous. What if she cried incessantly? Would the store clerks think of me as a bad mother? I couldn't control Mattie's crying at home, so how was I going to be focused enough in a store to buy furniture? I began to feel more and more inadequate . . . and the longer I did nothing, the worse I felt.

Moving day arrived, and Alan was on the road. His parents came to help me, and we arrived at our new home to find that the workmen who had refinished the hardwood floors hadn't exactly finished in time. When I walked in, holding my screaming baby, the floors were still sticky with stain and gluey polyurethane.

It was a last-straw moment. My husband was out every night, singing to screaming women who were throwing their personal clothing onto the stage . . . and here I was, without him, and we couldn't even move into our home because it had glue-trap floors. I burst into tears.

If Alan had been with me, we would have probably laughed about it and come up with a solution as a team. Without him, the floor problem felt like yet another sticky wicket I had to pass through on my own . . . and another daunting reality that was so different from my happy expectations.

The floors eventually dried, and we moved in. Over the next few months, whenever Alan came home from the road, he was disappointed that I hadn't made much progress with furnishing the house. He wanted me to be able to enjoy the new life we had always wanted.

MY GROWING DEPRESSION MADE ANY TASK SEEM ABSOLUTELY OVERWHELMING. SOMETIMES IT TOOK ALL MY EFFORT TO EVEN GET UP IN THE MORNING.

My depression made any task seem absolutely overwhelming. Sometimes it took all my effort to even get out of bed in the morning. Since our move, I had lost Donna's wonderful support, and Mattie was a huge challenge. And now Alan—ever so capable and confident—was hoping for me to take pleasure in our lovely but intimidating new life. I was so down on myself that even though he wasn't trying to control me, I felt like he would second-guess every choice I made, so I didn't make any choices at all.

Alan did everything he could think of to lift me out of my dark valley. He took me on an idyllic trip to Hawaii, encouraged me to get whatever help I needed. He desperately wanted me to feel better.

“Nisey, you're going to be all right,” he'd say. “You can have everything that you want now,” he'd say. “We have a beautiful new baby, my career is going great . . . why can't you be happy?”

I asked myself the same questions. I felt like there had been too many changes too fast. Within a few months I had stopped working at the job I loved, had a baby, and moved into a big home that felt overwhelming. Alan was suddenly America's new country heartthrob and was gone at least four days a week. I was on a runaway train barreling down the tracks. I had no control over it, I didn't know how to stop it or even slow it down, and sparks were flying.

One evening we went out to eat at a local restaurant. Mattie began to get fussy, and some people around us were already noticing who Alan was. Rather than cause a disturbance, I thought that I could calm Mattie by nursing her under her receiving blanket. I draped it over my shoulder as I held her close.

But she began to scream even harder, flailing her little arms, and to my surprise, actually pushed the blanket off me. I was exposed—briefly—and humiliated for much longer. I was sweating,my heart was pounding, and I would have turned back time if I could. I just wanted my old life back, the life I knew, with Alan at home, free from demands I could not handle.

Buses, Buddies, and Bidets

Meanwhile, after four years of rejections and setbacks, Alan was finally living his music dream, big-time. He bought his first Silver Eagle tour bus with a loan from our newest best friend at SunTrust Bank, Brian Williams. Alan and his band rolled in style all over the country, opening for Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Alabama, the Judds, and other headliners.

During this time Alan played a big club one night to a sold- out crowd. His tour manager, Carson, told Alan that when he was finished, he should just exit stage left, go through the door there, and Carson would be waiting to escort him to the bus.

Alan played his show, finished his last song, and waved to the cheering crowd. Then he turned and walked off the stage to the right. He found the door, opened it, and strode confidently through, still exhilarated by the crowd's enthusiasm.

AS HE WENT OVER THE THRESHOLD, HE FELL OUT OF THE DOORWAY AND INTO A PITCH-BLACK VACANT LOT OUTSIDE.

HE HAD GONE OUT THE WRONG DOOR, AND HERE HE WAS, THE BIG NEW STAR, STUCK IN WAIST-HIGH WEEDS AND TRASH OUTSIDE THE THEATER.

As he went over the threshold, he fell out of the doorway and into a pitch-black vacant lot outside. He had gone out the wrong door, and here he was, the big new star, stuck in waist-high weeds and trash outside the theater. It was so dark that he could not see a thing. He just stood there . . . and then within two or three minutes, he saw a flashlight beam bobbing through the weeds. It was his manager, coming to rescue him.

“Alan!” Carson whispered. “Pssssst! Alan! Over here!”

Soon Alan was in safer venues. His first yearlong tour had him opening for Randy Travis, who was selling out 20,000-seat arenas.

This was heady stuff. Other than the isolated and sometimes grimy bars where he had played in his lean years, Alan hadn't really been much of anywhere except Florida a few times, a big trip to Washington, D.C., when he was twelve, and family camping trips to Alabama.

Now he was traveling the country, lavished with attention. It was all so new. He still remembers staying at his first elegant hotel. He walked into the bathroom, and there was a strange device he'd never seen before. It was next to the toilet, a low, ceramic basin with faucets and spray. He knew it wasn't a water fountain. He knew it was in the bathroom for a reason. It was a bidet, of course, but Alan had never heard of such a thing.

Even if he didn't know what a bidet was back then, he was still a star. On tour, people could not get close to him unless they had an “all-access” pass.He was escorted everywhere, even in the secured areas, by his tour manager. Just hanging out with the crew and band at each venue was energizing. They'd do a sound check together in the afternoon, have a catered meal somewhere in the building, and then shower and relax on the bus until time for the show.

Afterward, they often had pizza and beer brought to the bus. They'd debrief on the particulars of the show as they headed off to the next city, laughing at funny things that had happened, from missed notes, forgotten lyrics, or other train wrecks, to crazy things that extreme fans would do.

When they went out to eat, one of the band members had the habit of getting into the restaurant first, ordering his food first, and expecting to get his order first so he could eat first. (Maybe he had issues about being a youngest child and had grown up hungry or something.) Alan would always quietly take the waiter aside, slip him some cash, and tell him to mess up this person's order or to bring it out long after everyone else had been served. The guy never could quite figure out why, for years on the road, he was always served last. (Eventually Alan told him what he'd been doing, and the band all had a big laugh.)