Mommywood (15 page)

It was a hundred degrees out. We‘d been in the West Covina parking lot for half an hour. I texted Dean, ―We‘re hiding from a paparazzo in some random neighborhood and Stella has poop up the puss. Well, I used the standard texting abbreviations, like PUTP.

At last the coast—and the poop—were clear. The children were calm again and we got back on the road and made our way to the resort. Upon our arrival we found that we‘d been upgraded to the presidential suite. Awesome! Instead of the small split room we‘d booked for us and the single for Patsy, we now were the lucky residents of an enormous three-bedroom suite, with a private pool, a Jacuzzi, and its own garage. It felt like a trade-off for the paparazzo: he was the burden that came with who I was, and the upgrade was the benefit.

Liam loves hotels. As soon as we walk into a hotel room he does a little happy hotel dance. When I was a child I always liked small, cozy places, but when Liam burst into that huge suite, he was psyched. He was especially fascinated with the bedposts. He‘d never seen bedposts before. He stared at them for a good thirty minutes while we unloaded the car and fed Stella.

Dean eventually arrived. A little room service, a movie or two on the DVD player, and we all settled down for our first night of vacation. There were a few cockroaches on the sink, but we trapped them under glasses and didn‘t worry about them. We were in the presidential suite. I‘m sure they were the classiest cockroaches the resort had to offer. We weren‘t about to complain.

Who traps cockroaches but doesn‘t kill them? I‘d never dealt with cockroaches before. It was our first night in a new place. Killing them seemed like a bad omen. I wouldn‘t let Dean do it. Of course, the next day the cockroaches had escaped. I just hoped they would go home to their friends and relations, tell the tale of their night of horror, and stage an exodus, far from the glass cages of the presidential suite. Anyway, that morning Dean and I had more important things to worry about. We were on a mission: Target. We needed a few critical items. You know, food and beverages for the fridge. Diapers. Movies. Toys for Liam. Toys for Stella. Pool toys for Liam. A portable swing for Stella. A ride-on truck for Liam. More food and beverages.

Elaborate floating devices that could save us all in case of a hurricane. We spent a solid two hours stocking up at Target. By the time we were done we could have moved to the desert.

For a while we saw no need to leave our presidential suite.

You know how the president just stays at the White House or Camp David and doesn‘t go out much because everything‘s there already? It was like that. There was room service. There were TVs. A full-sized pool. Beds. And a bomb shelter‘s worth of supplies from Target. The first few days flew by. I had an okay massage. We rented bikes—Dean‘s had a little seat for Liam up front—and rode around the resort while Patsy and Stella followed behind in a golf cart.

Eating at the restaurants wasn‘t such a big success. Liam was always an easy baby. Patsy says she‘s never had a baby as good—not even her own kids. He loved being out. He rarely cried. He never sent food back to the kitchen. We‘d be in Europe at a fancy restaurant at ten at night after a long flight, and Liam would be there, chilling in his baby carrier. Airplane trips, crowds, flashing lights? No problem. Liam was always game to hang out and take it all in. Stella? Not so chill. She doesn‘t want to be held or rocked sitting down. No, sir. Princess Stella would like you to walk. Maybe it‘s because I was so crazy busy when I was pregnant. She got used to constant movement. Whatever the reason, you can‘t just sit at dinner holding her. Princess Stella must be carried around, and as soon as you try to sit down, she wakes up and starts screaming. Her face turns bright red and her little legs go all rigid.

The one night we tried to eat at one of the restaurants, Liam got obsessed with the Bavarian music at another restaurant downstairs and refused to stay put. Dean ordered some food to go and the two of them went off to hear the music. I stayed back, thinking maybe Stella and I could have a mother-daughter dinner, but I ended up walking Stella around the restaurant instead of eating or feeding her. That was when I first realized that having children at dinner is the best diet plan I know.

The next morning I had a moment of fear when Dean put Liam in the hot tub. I was pretty sure kids under ten or twelve or twenty or something weren‘t supposed to go in hot tubs. Liam usually splashes around in the pool, but in the hot tub he sat on the top step, looking spaced out and mellow. I was trying to be cool, but finally I couldn‘t take it anymore. What was the hot tub doing to my little boy? I said to Dean, ―How do we know that his insides aren‘t cooking? Dean said, ―He‘s just relaxing. But Liam was so dopey, I thought maybe his system had already started shutting down. I was certain we were making Liam soup.

I said, ―Liam! Liam! Look at Mama, and prodded him gently, but he didn‘t respond. I knew it! Organ failure! I swept him out of the hot tub. Liam immediately came to life and started screaming, ―Water, water! He flailed and struggled to get back in the tub. When I put him back in the hot water, he instantly relaxed again. The kid has a stressful life; should have known he needed his spa time.

Liam is a water baby. So long as we were in the pool, he was happy. But eventually we thought it would be nice for him to have contact with other children out in the general pool.

It was a hot, sunny desert day. The main pool wasn‘t too crowded, just a nice bunch of families, with kids jumping around between the big pool and the kiddie pool. Some parents were relaxing, some were in the water with their kids. If there were child-free people at the resort, they were definitely segregating themselves from the Marco Polo culture of the main pool.

Dean and I wrangled a couple of lounge chairs and got settled. In a matter of seconds everyone was staring at us. Now, people don‘t react the way you think they might in these situations. It‘s not like they glance over, notice who we are, watch for a bit, shrug their shoulders and go ―huh in a vaguely anticlimactic way, then go back to their lives. No, they stare at us, stare some more, take a sip of a beverage without breaking eye contact, and then just keep staring. Sometimes when we‘re at a restaurant, people will walk up to the table and stand there staring at me like I‘m an animal in a zoo. They don‘t say a word, they just stand there with mouths open, hands on hips. It‘s always funny to me. It reminds me of the moment in
Mary
Poppins
when, after Julie Andrews does some sort of magic or another, she tells the boy, ―Close your mouth, Michael, we are not a codfish. Dean often says, ―Yes, it‘s her, just to break the silence. I guess I‘m used to it because it‘s been happening for as long as I can remember, but in a way I‘m also not used to it, because no matter how often it occurs, being stared at makes me uncomfortable. I think that would be true for anybody.

At the pool, nobody walked right up to me to stare. Instead, out of nowhere, the cameras appeared. Suddenly everyone was taking family photos at the pool! They‘d snap a few token shots, then send their kids to stand strategically in front of us so they could pretend to take photos of them while really snapping us.

Using the kids, always in good taste. (This is another way those poolside photos come about—sold to magazines by any Joe with a cell phone camera and a hungry wallet.)

Patsy always reminds us to be gracious to the people who can‘t help staring; she says these people are our biggest supporters. They‘re our fans. And I get what it‘s like to see someone in real life when you already feel like you know them from the screen. I get starstruck too. Once I saw Jerry Springer and asked him to take a picture with me. And when Erin Moran hugged me with unforeseen exuberance at the Sixty-second Annual Mother Goose Parade, I was secretly thinking, ―Wow, Joanie Cunningham just accidentally brushed up against my boob. Starstruck, yes. But I can‘t say I ever stand in front of celebrities and stare at them as if they‘re not real. It‘s staring! It just feels odd.

Dean took Liam into the pool, and the woman in a flowery caftan next to me caught my eye. ―They‘re so cute, she said. I thanked her and smiled. She pointed at Stella. ―What‘s her name? When I told her, she said, ―Oh, that‘s right. She looked over at the pool and said, ―And he‘s Liam. Then she gave me a conspiratorial wink and said, ―Don‘t worry. I‘m not going to tell anyone. Everyone else was already staring at us. I loved that she was whispering like we were sharing a big secret. Thanks a lot, flowery caftan woman.

I escaped into the kiddie pool with Liam, and Dean took Stella in the big pool for the first time. She loved it. But she was only four months old. The doctor said they‘re not supposed to swim until six months. This was worse than Liam in the hot tub.

I knew for certain that we were violating the doctor‘s orders.

What was wrong with the pool? What was it going to do to her?

Didn‘t they basically spend their first nine months in the equivalent of a very small heated pool? It was all about fertility, wasn‘t it? It always was. The hormones in milk would bring on early-onset puberty. The wrong baby bottles would destroy their fertility. Probably at that very moment the chlorine was making its way up her vagina and destroying my chances of ever having grandchildren. But before I could get even more paranoid, I noticed something floating near Liam. At first I thought it was a dead leaf. I went to scoop it away from him, but the moment it was in my hand, a horrible realization dawned on me. I wasn‘t holding a dead leaf. I was holding a piece of poo. Now this was a photo op I prayed nobody would exploit.

Liam‘s poops in the pool were like a ritual. By now I knew how to manage the poopy swim diaper. But this was a whole new ball of wax. (Except I would have been a lot happier to deal with wax.) I had never experienced this before. The poop was not
contained.
The water around Liam was starting to get murky. The whole pool was a hot zone. Children were splashing around, blowing bubbles, oblivious. Moms and dads were smiling and laughing. And cameras, everywhere! Everything seemed to be moving in Technicolor slow motion. Any minute those happy faces would darken with realization. There was no other option. I had to get out of there—and fast. I grabbed Liam, signaled Dean (you know, that universal husband-wife sign language for ―our kid just shit in the pool and we are out of here), and just fled. Yes, I made Dean call in the incident once we got back to the room. I don‘t know what subsequent action was taken. I can‘t make any guarantees. But that, parents, is why you should never, ever go in the kiddie pool.

After our pool adventure, we stayed in retreat. Then, a few days later, Liam woke up in the middle of the night crying. We brought him into bed with us, but he kept sitting up and moaning, ―Home, home. He had bed head. It was cute, but he was not a happy camper. And finally he moaned, ―Home, home, home, goddammit. I wanted to laugh so hard; I don‘t know where he‘d picked that up. But it got his point across: Liam was done with vacation.

We all slept in after a long night. In the morning Liam was in bed, watching cartoons, when he sat on Stella‘s head. That was it. We were done.

In spite of his meltdown, Liam was a pro, comfortable on planes and in new spaces. I wanted Stella to see the world too, so as they grew up we could all have adventures as a family. The whole first year of Liam‘s life we traveled constantly, for work and for fun. We went to Europe on business when he was two months old. By four months he had been in London, Scotland, Toronto, and New York.

My father swore off planes at the age of eighteen when he narrowly avoided traveling on a plane that crashed with no survivors. Consequently, my parents never took us anywhere requiring a plane trip. By the time I could travel and had the means to do so, I was terrified of flying. I got homesick when I stayed in hotels. It‘s hard to break out of what you grow up thinking is normal. I always tell Dean that it‘s important to me that we see the world with our children.

I know that someday Dean and I will take vacations alone, but I really want the children to grow up traveling the world, seeing and learning things. We‘ve worked hard. If we can afford to take our children, I want to do that and not keep all the adventures to ourselves. I want them to feel safe and comfortable. I don‘t want my fear of flying to be passed down to another generation. But mostly I just want the kids with us. I want to stare at Liam and Stella constantly. They‘re so amazing to me. The desert was the beginning of something. Baby steps.

Stepmommywood

T
he whole time we were in the desert there was drama about my stepson Jack‘s tenth birthday party. A week before Jack‘s party he decided that he didn‘t want me to come.

I went into my relationship with Dean knowing that the man I fell in love with had a child already. It was part of the deal, and it sounded great to me. I loved the man. I loved his child too.

The two feelings were inseparable. When I first met and fell in love with Dean in Ottawa, before I even knew what would happen when we went home to L.A. or whether we‘d find a way to be together, I started carrying around a picture of Jack. I thought of Jack as my new son. Not in a possessive or competitive way. I wasn‘t planning to be his mother. I was just gung ho. I wasn‘t worrying about the details. In that lovefest moment I didn‘t think through how the relationship would actually work. I‘d never had a baby, much less a child. How could I begin to imagine what it would be like to have a stepchild? And then to have babies?

When Dean and I first met, he and his family lived in L.A.

For the first year that Dean and I were together, Jack spent every other weekend with us, as well as every other Tuesday and Thursday night. After Dean and Mary Jo settled their divorce, she moved her family to Canada. Then we saw Jack less often.

He came for long holidays—for Christmas, for a month during the summer. It was hard for Dean to see him less often, but the three of us had a great time on those visits. Dean and I were in our fun, honeymoon phase and we made each day of Jack‘s visits special, going to play baseball, going to Chuck E. Cheese, and so on. I felt like I was reliving my childhood. Actually, this was a whole new world to me. I was living the childhood I wished I‘d had.