Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
The first time we drove into Rhinebeck, I knew I’d found a place I belonged. As we crossed the Kingston Bridge, the world cracked open before us, all sun and sky and river.
A large billboard for the Dutchess County Fair promised livestock and carnival rides and country music acts. A driftwood sculpture that loosely resembled a dinosaur peeped out from behind a few trees as we approached the town. I scratched the hair at the base of Jeff’s skull and kept my hand on his neck. It felt bold. Together for fewer than two years, we hadn’t exactly been in a honeymoon phase. Parenting was hard. Being apart for work was hard. Not having a real place to call home was hard. But riding along side by side, we felt light and hopeful and new. Our five-month-old son, Gus, babbled in his car seat. This felt like a place where things were made. A place that invited possibility.
We rolled through Rhinebeck Village, a tiny Dutch community that reminded me of Pella, Iowa, where my mom’s family was from—skinny buildings stacked up against each other that housed long-established mom-and-pop shops where you went just as much for the camaraderie as for any material goods.
Rhinebeck has only two commercial streets: Route 9, or Mill Street, which has a couple of churches, a post office, and a bank, and Market Street. On the corner stands a handsome brick building with a sign that reads Rhinebeck Department Store. At the crossroads is the Beekman Arms, a stately white inn with black trim and American flags snapping in the breeze. It’s the oldest operating inn in the country. George Washington and other revolutionaries stayed there, and the Fourth Regiment of the Continental Army practiced drills on its lawn.
We parked and asked a couple of people where to get a cup of coffee, and they directed us to the candy store on Market Street. We passed one cute painted storefront after another, noticing how the sidewalk was hemmed in by a tidy line of trees whose trunks were surrounded by bursts of colorful flowers. Small crowds of smiling people moved along to a seemingly well-rehearsed choreography: nod, smile, wave at the baby, tip the hat, smile again. Like out of an old musical, the town had a rhythm that made it feel like someone might burst into song at any moment.
At the end of the block, we stepped inside the candy store, a tiny jewel box of a shop, cool and dark and soothing. The shelves were lined with luminescent rows of penny candy. I spotted Cow Tales, which I hadn’t eaten since I was twelve.
A flushed, smiling gentleman with a bush of curly hair chatted easily as he rang us up. “Welcome to town. What brings you guys here?”
“Oh, we’re looking at a house,” Jeff replied.
The man was incandescent. “You guys are gonna love it here. You’re just gonna love it. I moved up from the city too.”
We smiled and thanked him for the coffee, and Jeff patted my rear on the way out the door. He gets handsy when he’s excited. Though I didn’t quite know how yet, I sensed our lives were about to change.
Of all the twists and turns a life takes, driving into Rhinebeck was one of the few turns when I felt truly home. But to make sense of how we got here, I have to back up for a moment and point out the seeds of change that led me here.
Seed One: Loss
The trajectory of my life changed in 2007. At the time, I was working on One Tree Hill and feeling a bit lost. I worked hard all day, then went out and sang karaoke in bars with my friends till closing, then got up early the next day and worked again. And while I was smiling and perfecting my rendition of Dolly Parton’s “Applejack,” I was a miserable girl. My whole life had been an ambitious climb to become a working actor. And I’d done it. So why was I so damn disappointed?
In August, we were shooting a scene down by Cape Fear River. It was one of those big days, with every actor in every scene and a hundred extras. Overwhelmed, I retreated to the air conditioning of my trailer and scrolled through MySpace alerts on my phone.
A buddy from high school—Stan—popped up in my messages. I don’t remember the exact message, but I have a vague recollection of his trying to gently break the news to me. “Hilarie . . . I know it’s been a long time . . . not sure if anyone else has reached out . . . I know you guys were close . . .”
Then he said it. Scott Kirkpatrick had died in Iraq.
My heart skittered in my chest.
In high school, Scott and Stan had been part of the cool, drama-goth-poetry slam circle that I idolized. Scott was two years older than me, and I wanted to do everything just like him, including writing and acting.
Scott and his friends would pick me up after the football games I cheered at, and we’d drive to Clyde’s in Reston, where we’d order a bucket of sweet potato fries and they’d smoke clove cigarettes. We’d work on our tortured poems and go to poetry slams together—me in my cheerleading uniform and them in their big dark trench coats and little Dracula glasses. Scott was the kind of person who made you feel like big, magical things were right around the corner, and you just had to be bold enough to make the turn. We all followed, dutifully.
After graduation, Scott, with his Kurt Cobain hair and lanky gait, became a nationally ranked slam poet and traveled all over the country. Then, after September 11, he joined the army. When I heard the news, I was shocked.
Scott deployed to Iraq and became a sergeant, then got married and was planning to leave the army and come home to his wife. He and I kept in touch via MySpace, where he gave me hell for being on the cover of Maxim with all the girls from One Tree Hill. “What the fuck’s going on Burton? That’s not the girl I know.”
We’d made plans to return to our theater roots and make indie movies together once he got out of the service. The big plan was to do an update of a play we’d done in high school—Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. I’d begun mapping the story out, filling a spiral notebook with ideas and research.
He was almost done with his tour when somebody shot one of the guys in his squad. Scott and another soldier chased the attacker into a building that had been rigged to explode.
This was a cheat that I couldn’t stand for. Not Scott.
My life took a turn, and I struggled with the grief and unfairness of losing him, his friendship, and the future we had plotted.
I wrangled one day off of work to attend Scott’s funeral at Arlington Cemetery. With its meticulous grounds and stark white headstones set with eerie geometry, it is both one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in the world and a museum of sadness. A crowd flocked into the chapel, packed tight in the sweltering August heat, dizzy with grief. Scott was eulogized by a higher-up in the army and awarded several honors for his bravery. I grew anxious as the service neared its end; I did not want them to stop talking about my friend.
We were ushered outside to take part in the procession to Scott’s final resting place. Goths and generals side by side. It was a weird, mournful military pageant that Scott would have appreciated.
At his gravesite they played taps, and each note was agony. Don’t end. Don’t end. Don’t end, I thought, not wanting to get back in the car and go on as if everything were normal.
After the funeral, friends and family were invited to Scott’s parents’ place. In the years since we had graduated they’d moved to a little farm. The house had a wide front porch, and there were goats and sheep, and a handsome tractor was prominently displayed. They called it Whack-a-Mole Farm. I didn’t want to leave.
Scott’s death snapped my priorities and goals back into focus. I had spent the previous few years wandering, never really finding my place, but I wanted more. I wanted a family. I wanted a home that could be a refuge and a blank canvas that would allow me to daydream, to take risks, to try and fail and try again. I wanted to push myself every day. I wanted to make every moment intentional. Wake up intentionally. Work intentionally. Eat intentionally. And rest intentionally.
It was time to make a change, so I left One Tree Hill. I’d always wanted to travel and to write, so I started to work on a novel, bought a one-way ticket to Paris, and rented an apartment across from Notre Dame Cathedral.
Before I flew across the Atlantic, I took what I thought would be one last trip to Los Angeles for a few days. I had a handful of meetings, and I wanted to see my friends Jensen and Danneel (our friendship was one of the best things to come from working on One Tree Hill). I’d often slept on their couch, and they listened to me lament about shitty boyfriends and feeling adrift in life. Those two are so damn generous and meddling, so naturally, when I got to LA, they wanted to set me up with a friend of theirs—but they wouldn’t tell me who.
Seed Two: Mr. Morgan
I watched from across the bar as a man dressed all in leather sauntered through the front door. Surely this wasn’t the friend Danneel and Jensen had in mind? Motorcycle helmet in hand, the man hugged them and made very direct eye contact with me as he shook my hand. “I’m Jeffrey.” He had bracelets stacked to his elbows and large silver rings on damn near every finger. I leaned in to Danneel, “Good lord, D. You invited a midlife crisis to dinner!”
Hours later, we closed down that little Irish pub, and then all four of us ended up back at Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s house. He had just bought a huge, beautiful place in Studio City, a Mediterranean beast of a home that had more than five thousand square feet and was the exact opposite of the intimate (and haunted) Victorian I was living in, in Wilmington, North Carolina.
As we entered the house, a dignified lady Rottweiler mix with soulful eyes met me. “This is Bisou,” Jeff said as I scratched the fur behind Bisou’s ears. She pressed into me and Jeff smiled. “She usually doesn’t like other girls.” Apparently, Bisou had been less than fond of some of his exes.
“Looks like I’m not like other girls.”
Jeff gave us a tour, and when I saw the comedically stereotypical bachelor-pad sheepskin fur on his bed, I rolled my eyes. He swore up and down that it was for Bisou. I believed him, though I didn’t let him know that. I’d seen his Harley, but I also had seen his car as we walked through the garage, a “dad car,” with room for baby seats and dogs and groceries. I was surprised to realize that he hadn’t bought the single-guy party house; he had bought the family home, with bedrooms for kids and a big yard with a lemon tree. As I said goodbye to Jeff that night, I could feel myself becoming more intrigued.
A few hours after we’d said goodbye, I flew back to Wilmington.
Two days later my doorbell rang. A package sat outside, with blocky, masculine handwriting on the FedEx shipping label. No way.
I tore off the seal and out tumbled guidebooks on Paris, Raymond Carver anthologies, and a beautiful, red, leather-bound journal, which Jeffrey had inscribed: “Go nuts. Xoxo jdm, Miss your face.”
There was also a note that read, “For someone I just met, I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Seed Three: The Land of Enchantment
A day later Jeffrey called. “I’ve bought you a plane ticket from Wilmington to New Mexico. I want to take you on a date. This weekend. I packed a suit.”
It was romantic as hell, but my heart dropped into my belly. I was supposed to be leaving for my new life in Paris, not getting tangled up with a leather-wearing, motorcycle-riding, Raymond-Carver-book-sending guy.
Fuck it. I thought. What’s the worst that could happen?
In the days leading up to our first date, we had long, rambling phone calls that lasted until sunrise. I shared so many personal details with him, including the Native American family history I had been uncovering. So when I arrived in New Mexico, Jeffrey didn’t present me with flowers, wine, or chocolates. He gave me a tacked wood quirt with long leather straps, half battle club, half riding whip.
Standing in the living room of his little rental house running my fingers over it, I felt so known. Tears stung my eyes, and I tried hard not to cry.
I had made all these plans—I had written a quarter of my novel and rented the place in Paris—and here was this curveball changing the whole game. Jeffrey was so sure of himself, so sure of me, and so sure that the two of us were going to be together.
I was terrified.
Right away we began negotiating the terms of our new life together, meandering behind a mariachi band as it led a wedding parade through the Santa Fe town square. Passing a tiny art gallery, he peeped in the windows. “We’re gonna have a shop like this.”
“How many kids are we having?” I asked.
“Two. Three?” That worked for me. I smiled at him.
“You gonna be good cop or bad cop?” he asked.
“Oh bad cop, for sure.”
Relieved, he added, “When we get our ranch, we’ll get you some of those buffalo you’re so excited about. Let them just roam and take over the place. Dot and Kenny.”
“Okay, so, kids. Ranch. Buffalo. All sounds good.”
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Don’t laugh. But I’ve always wanted a Christmas tree farm.”
I braced myself for the knee jerk “you dork” reaction that always came when I told people about my Christmas tree farm dream. Two months into my run as a VJ on MTV’s TRL, the Offspring (don’t pretend you didn’t sing along to the massively inappropriate “Pretty Fly [For a White Guy]”) announced that they were going to give away a million dollars as a promotion for their new album Conspiracy of One. Kirsten Dunst was our guest. Like me, she had recently enrolled in college.
Carson Daly asked her, “What would you do with the money?”
“Get flip-flops for the showers in the dorm!” The audience roared at her hilarious answer.
“What about you, Hil? One million dollars. What do you buy?”
“Oh, no question: a Christmas tree farm!”
Crickets.
“Huh. Okay then.” Carson pivoted and sent us into a commercial break. My segment producer pulled me backstage. “You can’t say stuff like that. It’s not cool.”
Cool or not, the thing was, I really did want that Christmas tree farm. When I was growing up in Northern Virginia, the most magical place in the whole wide world was Reston Farm Market. It was more than fifteen acres of gardens, new plants in the spring, pumpkins in October, and at Christmas, it glistened with twinkly lights, bonfires, and real magic. Out front was an old wagon piled with brightly wrapped presents, and just outside the door were great mounds of Christmas trees. It also was next door to a petting zoo, which for a long time while I was in elementary school had a buffalo, hence my obsession with them.
Outside, chestnuts were roasting and the air smelled of pine and earth and freshly ground coffee. Inside the old converted barn was a holiday emporium. The tables held fresh eggs in baskets, crates of apples, and seasonal treats from pickles to smoked trout. Rainbows of hand-dipped candles hung from the rafters, and there were wreaths made from dried corn or pinecones, garlands, dried flowers, jams and butters, and hand-stitched, hand-knitted, hand-carved, and hand-painted everything, from Christmas ornaments to tablecloths. An enormous trimmed tree gleamed in the middle of the room, and Mrs. Claus was always nestled in a rocker, reading books to us kids after we’d sat on Santa’s knee and told him what we most wanted.
All my Christmasy, folksy dreams began there at Reston Farm Market, and I harbored a fantasy that after my acting career, I would build my own version of it. I wanted a place where families could come together and make holiday traditions—Christmas caroling, Easter egg hunts—or other traditions, like drive-in movies during the summer. It would be a place for people to make memories.
I felt a little closer to that dream when Jeffrey said, “I love Christmas trees. I put Christmas lights on everything.” There had, in fact, been Christmas lights on that lemon tree in his backyard in LA. “How many acres?”
“A hundred?”
“A hundred acres works.”
Seed Four: Rolling the Dice
Reader, I didn’t go to Paris.
The plan had been to make a new start and find something that was mine. As it turns out, I found that thing a hell of a lot more quickly than I’d expected.
Jeffrey and I weren’t made for dating. He was the man I was gonna get old and boring with. Instead of late nights out at clubs or wining and dining, at night we’d settle in and watch an episode of Lonesome Dove. We decided that when we had a kid, we’d name him Gus, after Robert Duvall’s character. Who doesn’t see that prostitute-loving cowboy and think, “I’m gonna name my baby after that ol’ cuss!”?
As the credits rolled, Jeffrey turned to me and asked, “Do you just want to do this? Do you want to try and have a family?” We’d known each other for less than a month.
Doctors had told me that I was going to have a lot of trouble having kids because I’d always had what was referred to as “girl problems.” I had never had a period until my doctor put me on birth control pills when I was eighteen. I didn’t have an eating disorder or any illness; I was just a really, really, really late bloomer.
I told Jeffrey, “This is going to be difficult.” He wasn’t concerned, so we took all the fences down.
When I got my period in June, I stood in the kitchen and cried. I could see the next ten years unfolding. I could see how every month we’d be disappointed. Then it would become a sensitive subject. Then it would become a fight. Then it would break us. I saw all the bad spooling out before me.
But Jeff just stood beside me and listened as all my fear poured out. Then he turned to me and said very matter-of-factly, “Hilarie, it’s been a month. I don’t think you understand that this is going to happen.”
The next month I found out I was pregnant.
Seed Five: Lost Angeles
LA was Jeff’s turf. I’d only ever visited the city, though when I was a child I was obsessed with it. There is a rather embarrassing video of seven- or eight-year-old me one Easter morning. My parents are asking me, “Where do you live, Hilarie?” And in this over-the-top Katharine Hepburn voice I announce, “I live on Hollywood Boulevard and I have palm trees in my front yard.” The summer after eighth grade my dad had a business meeting in California, and rather than fly, he drove the family across country. My folks took me to Graceland because I was fanatical about Elvis. We stopped along the way and saw buffalo. Then, right before we got to LA, we stopped at a gas station where I saw my first palm tree. I cried. Then, tears rolling down my cheeks, I hugged the tree, and my parents snapped a picture.
Even though I had wanted to live in LA so desperately, my years working in television had soured me on the city. My baby was gonna be born in North Carolina, surrounded by family and friends. My brother and Nick, my bestie and writing partner, threw me a big baby shower in Wilmington, and all the crew from One Tree Hill showed up with their favorite books for my boy.
But then, in a last-minute change of plans, Jeffrey and I decided to have the baby in California. Jeffrey had gotten a job he really, really wanted. So dammit—I was gonna be a team player. On Valentine’s Day, eight months pregnant, I got on a plane and moved myself and all of our baby’s books and hand-sewn crib bumpers to Los Angeles.
I googled “midwives” there and found Deborah Frank. Waddling into her office three weeks away from giving birth, I thanked her over and over again for seeing me and said, “Hey, I don’t have anybody. Can you please be my midwife?”
She looked me in the eye, emanating a warmth that made me feel like everything would work out. “I’ll help you.”
The week Gus was due Jeff had to go to Texas. It was just a quick trip to shadow a detective down there, and after a week spent visiting morgues and crime scenes, he came home exhausted and emotionally drained. Dead bodies will do that to you.
Understandably, Jeff passed out early that first night home, so I called my high school best friend, Sarah Barnes. We’d gotten pregnant within months of each other. I sat in the rocking chair in the nursery I’d decorated, so lonely and scared. Of my friends, Sarah has always been the sassiest, and pregnancy had made her only punchier. We cackled into the wee hours, until my sides began to cramp with laughter. “Stop!” I told her. “I feel sick.” We hung up and I sent her a picture of my beached-whale belly. I think that jerk just put me into labor, I thought. When I woke a few hours later at 5 o’clock in the morning, I was having contractions every eight minutes.
Jeffrey was sleeping soundly, so I snuck into a little office he had upstairs and called Deborah. She spoke in her soft, calm voice and, as if women had babies every day (which, for her, they did), simply said, “Okay, I’m going on a hike. Drink a glass of wine in the bathtub, and I’ll be over as soon as I’m done.”
It seemed a strange thing to tell a pregnant lady to do, but I followed directions and poured a glass of red wine, lowering myself very carefully into the tub. I expected all my pain and worries to melt away and to find serenity. Wrong. Now I was just wet and uncomfortable and maybe tipsy. Not a good look. Jeffrey came into the bathroom bleary-eyed and too tired to keep the judgment out of his voice, “What are you doing? You’re drinking?”
“Jeffrey, I finally got permission after nine months. I’m going for it.”
Deborah came over at 9 a.m. and checked me; I was only two centimeters dilated. “It’s going to be a while. We’ll probably go to the hospital tonight.” Then she left.
I was disappointed. It was really starting to hurt, and I couldn’t imagine this going on all day long. My parents arrived, having caught multiple connecting flights from North Carolina. They were exhausted and confused, since I wasn’t due for a few more days. I hunched over the couch armrest trying to remain chipper through the contractions.
“Hi Mommy. Dad. I’d hug you, but . . .” Ugh. The air was knocked out of my lungs. They’d been at the house for maybe half an hour when my mom looked at me and said, “I get that you have a high threshold for pain. But this is . . . a lot. Call the midwife.”
Deborah came back over and, surprise, surprise—I was at seven centimeters. “We gotta go!” she called out to the house.
Jeff drove us to the hospital, flying over Laurel Canyon, which is a road straight out of a ten-year-old boy’s video game. If you’re in the trenches of labor, it’s a particularly nauseating road to be on.
Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” came on, and my contractions were timing out perfectly to it. I was punching the ceiling of Jeff’s car and howling along with the “Ahhaa ah—AH!” of Robert Plant, while my poor mother was saying in the backseat, “This is so baaaad.”
Seed Six: My Boy
Our labor and delivery room was busy. Deborah was calm and assertive, suggesting that Jeff and I duck into the little bathroom attached to the delivery room. Perhaps a shower with warm water on my back would help ease some of the pain.
See, I had decided early on that I was going drug-free. If you want the drugs, get all the drugs, sweetheart. No judgment here. But for me, I felt like I had something to prove. I’d felt weak and dumb and small my whole pregnancy. My whole adult life, really. There was so much I was unsure of. But in all my prep work I was sure of one thing: since the dawn of time, women have been having babies. Women are strong and majestic and powerful enough to create other human beings. And I was going to prove to myself, and to everyone else on the planet, that I was a sturdy, badass woman.
That’s all well and good—until you’re at nine centimeters. I stood in the shower as Jeff fed me popsicles, looking very LA in his torn-up jeans, boots, and black T-shirt and all his Chrome Hearts jewelry. (My parents used to call him a fortune teller and asked whether he would read their palms. He was very insulted.)
The contractions were fast, and I was scared, making very unladylike baritone groans. Jeff tried harmonizing with my noise, which made me laugh, which made the contractions hurt more, which made me moan louder. My mother was eyeballing everything, wondering who her daughter had taken up with. My father was out in the waiting room befriending an Indian family who pulled beautiful china, crystal glasses, and a feast out of picnic baskets while they waited for their family member’s birth.
During a lull in the contractions, Jeff took my hand and bent low toward my ear, “Hil, you mind if I go smoke real fast? This is kind of really stressful.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Yes? You mind?” He wasn’t sure he heard me correctly.
I was direct. “Yes.” I think he underestimated how aggressive our son was being. In fact, no one seemed to understand that this baby was coming.
I moved to the bed, and a perfectly nice nurse who gave zero shits about my labor shuffled in and out, filling out paperwork and dealing with all the minutia of childbirth. All I wanted in the whole world was for her to hold my foot so I could bear down during contractions. But it was like trying to herd a cat. The plan had been for Jeffrey to stand up beside my head and not see anything. I was supposed to catch the baby.
“You’re doing great Hilarie,” Deborah said. “I can see the baby’s head. When you feel the next contraction, bear down.”
For a moment, I wondered whether I could call the whole thing off and go to sleep. I just wanted to rest. I didn’t think I could push again. But my body had its own ideas. My muscles tightened in anticipation, and I felt a big contraction build—but the nurse had disappeared.
“Somebody help me!” I cried. My poor mother already was giving me her arm to grab onto for support, cursing in my ear like a high school football coach: “You got this, dammit. Just focus. You fucking got this.” (This memory still makes me laugh.)
“I messed up,” I moaned. “Can I get drugs?”
“You’re fine,” Deborah reminded me in her sweet, holistic voice. And in some instinctual way, this woman whom I had known for only a few brief appointments read me like a book and said just the thing to get me focused: “I have very high expectations for you Hilarie. You are going to do a wonderful job today.”
Well that was it. Now I’d been challenged. Forget the nurse who kept wandering off. “Jeffrey, will you hold my foot?” I asked him. Poor buddy wasn’t ready for that assignment, but to his credit, he stepped up.
Another contraction rocked through me, and Jeffrey was right down where the action was.
The last ten minutes were pure hell.
Then Deborah said, “Now. This is going to be the last one. Do you want to catch the baby?”
But I was so exhausted. “No, no. I can’t.”
“Who do you want to catch the baby?”
“Jeff will do it,” I managed to say.
Then this man who had been looking at bodies in a morgue all week went pale and glassy-eyed. “I will?” Quickly, he adjusted. “Sure I will.”
The final contraction broke, and Jeffrey was the first person to lay hands on Gus.
He raised our boy up and laid his squirmy little body on my chest. Jeffrey and I were bound forever in that moment. Then Deborah busied Jeff with the task of cutting the umbilical cord. All the while this magical little stranger—my Gus—rooted around, found me, and started nursing. Just like that, there was my baby.
Gus didn’t look anything like the person I had had in my mind for the past almost ten months. Instead, he looked just like Jeff. He had his dad’s strong nose and a very prominent chin dimple that was most certainly not mine. He was a very furry little baby. He had hair that came down to his eyebrows, furry shoulder blades, and a double row of eyelashes. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was a love that I knew. He knew my heartbeat. He knew me inside and out. He was perfect.
Jeff leaned down and whispered in my ear, “I’m so proud of you.”