Chapter 19
Clover, Venice, California, 2013.
When I was around three and a half months pregnant, Barry and I went to visit my dad at his condo in Westwood, a few days before Christmas, to have a drink with him and Jill. R.J. was in his early eighties then. He had let his dark hair turn gray. His blue eyes remained crystal clear. Despite the recent accusations, my dad was full of happiness for Barry and me, so delighted that he was going to be a grandparent again. Jill still had her bright red hair and gorgeous figure. The two of us have grown closer over the years, establishing a real friendship. Like my dad, she was deeply happy for me. I remember I was wearing a long red-and-white-striped dress, and I had a little bump on my tummy where Clover was growing.
My dad told me he had a gift for me. He handed me a small box. In it was a necklace with a large gold charm in the shape of a clover. Along with the clover was a gold rectangular charm that said “Clover” on one side and “Love Grandad” on the other. Engraved on the back of the clover were the words: “R.J., you are lucky for me. Love Wat. 1955.” My dad’s dear friend Watson Webb had given him this clover charm in 1955.
Clover’s last name was going to be Watson. Maybe some things are meant to be.
My pregnancy was my golden time and I knew it. More than once, I pulled out a letter from my mom to my first godmother, the actress Norma Crane, written just after my birth. The letter was five pages long, dated October 8, 1970, the stationery embossed with my mother’s name at the time, “Natalie Gregson.”
My mom and Norma first met in 1957, when Norma was auditioning for a role in Marjorie Morningstar. Although Norma didn’t get the part, the two of them clicked, becoming close friends from that moment until Norma’s death—tragically young from breast cancer—just a day before my third birthday in 1973. Before she passed away, Norma stipulated in her will that when I turned eighteen, I would inherit the letter my mom had written to her about my birth, which is how it came into my possession.
My mom wrote the letter in hot-pink ink, in large, excited, looping handwriting, detailing the entire experience of giving birth to me.
Dearest Norma,
… I do wish you could see this darling, adorable, tender little incredibly beautiful sweetheart sleeping like a little angel on my bed as I write this. There really is no way to describe the intense joy I feel. I feel also newborn and naked—all emotion and no cover—it’s lovely and scary and happy and anxious and terrific! Yay! YAY!…
… I watched her make her appearance into the world—it is such a profound moment, I don’t know what I said or did. I think I was speechless and awed.… Natasha is steady and alert and bright-eyed. The moment that they bring her to you—about twelve hours later—that is the ultimate. I know I will never know anything like it again…
She went on to observe that I had my Daddy Gregson’s legs and a combination of both of their noses.
And she does have Richard’s dimple. And she has this smile—it just knocks me out. She actually smiles and grins and shows her dimple—Natasha of the smile. She was so aware and alert the minute she came out screaming and wailing. Good strong lungs—strong little body. A small, tender toughie.
Her only complaint about my birth (told with her characteristic humor) was about being expected to sign autographs in the recovery room.
When you’re in a hospital having a baby, it’s better not to be a celebrity. That’s only good for getting a table in a restaurant.
Whenever I read my mother’s words, I could hear her voice: her throaty laugh, the wobble in her voice when she was emotional, her delight in the retelling of a good story. Somehow, Norma had foreseen that one day I was going to need these five pages. Norma had no way of guessing that she and my mom would both die young. Had my mother lived, the letter Norma left me would have been a touching memento. Without my mother here to share my pregnancy with me, it reconnected me to her in a way I could have never imagined.
In the second trimester, I began to feel the first stirrings of Clover’s kicks and wriggles inside me. My mom’s letter to Norma kept playing itself out in my head. I heard her words—Yay! YAY!—in bright pink cursive in my brain. Natasha of the smile, or a small, tender toughie, or thank God she has Richard’s legs. Her words echoed in my heart, reverberated in my body.
Mother’s Day was a few weeks before Clover’s due date. Barry and I had a simple lunch in Venice. This was the first Mother’s Day since my mother’s death when my focus was not on me being motherless. I was mother-full—a brand-new feeling. Instead of being consumed by lack, I felt expanded. I was keeping my baby alive inside my body. My heartbeat and her heartbeat were in sync. I could feel her squirming, making her presence known. I felt certain I knew how to be a mom. I knew how to give the good love. The good, safe, solid, golden love that my mom had given me. I could give this love to Clover and I could not wait. I would love her more than love.
Clover was due on May 31, a couple of days after Memorial Day. The day of the holiday, I felt sure I was ready. I woke around four the following morning with mild contractions. The next afternoon, we checked into the hospital. I had told my OB that I wanted a natural birth if possible. After a long night of contractions without enough dilation, they broke my water and gave me Pitocin to induce labor. With Amanda and Barry by my side, I pushed, grunted, screamed, and swore for hours and hours. My OB and his nurses turned me around, they put a rebozo sling underneath me, and hung me in it from a metal bar overhead. Everyone was hoping I could have my baby naturally, but no matter what we tried, Clover refused to make her exit.
After five hours of serious pushing, I begged the doctor for a C-section.
He agreed and the medical team started prepping me for surgery. Barry was standing next to me on the table. I was awake but felt incredibly woozy and strange from the drugs in my system. They put a curtain up so I couldn’t see what was going on. Everything happened so quickly.
“Oh,” the doctor said as he made the initial incision, “no wonder you couldn’t push her out. She’s tucked up tight in there. All right, here she comes!”
I heard Barry react first. “Natasha, she looks like a mini-you!”
Barry laid her on my chest. Clover was crying and swollen and her hair was blood-soaked. A small, tender toughie. She immediately found my breast and started feeding. How does she know how to do that? She fed a little. They took her away to clean her up, then they gave her back to me. I gazed at her. Blondish hair, elfin nose, Barry’s gorgeous mouth. I felt overwhelmed with humility and gratitude. At seven pounds, two ounces, Clover was ready to begin our journey together.
They wheeled us into another room, where my dad and Jill and my godmother Delphine were waiting for us. The date was May 30. That was the date in 1969 that my mom and Daddy Gregson were married.
The early days with Clover were spent in a bubble of contentment. First we were at my place in Malibu and then at Barry’s house in Venice. Clover slept in our room in a Moses basket right next to my side of the bed, her sweet baby smell perfuming the air around us. Her soft grunts and gurgles were the soundtrack of my dreams.
After Clover’s birth, I read my mom’s letter to Norma again. Her words held new meaning now. That feeling of cradling your child in your arms. The love! It just knocks you out! Looking at my beautiful, perfect baby, all I felt was yay! YAY! How did I get to be her mother?
The Japanese have a method of repairing broken pottery called kintsugi. Instead of trying to disguise the fractures and cracks, they highlight them with a special gold glue that makes the repaired piece more beautiful than the original. The scars from breakage add glorious new patterns. Rather than throwing away a broken vase or dish, they make it more valuable than ever by emphasizing its flaws. I had been a motherless daughter since age eleven. I was broken and jagged. Clover was my golden glue.
Early motherhood was not without its challenges, however. One afternoon in Malibu, Barry went to change Clover’s diaper. From the corner of my eye, it seemed to me that he was doing it sloppily (never mind that he had been through this twice before with his sons). I raced over, literally shoving my body in front of his. Elbowing him in the chest, I planted myself in front of her changing table, forming a firm barrier between him and Clover. Some kind of feral vigilance had swept over me. My body and I were keeping this human alive. If I failed, she failed. I had never been so vital to another human’s existence. Barry was shocked and hurt. I wasn’t usually this fierce with him.
We hired a baby nurse for the first month, but I had a hard time allowing her to care for Clover so that I could take a break. I stopped sleeping. What if I fell asleep and Clover needed me, but I wasn’t there for her? I became exhausted, short-tempered. Honestly, I wanted everyone to leave me alone so that I could focus on Clover. Barry, the boys, the nurse—they were all in the way. The boys were loud, they were hungry, they wanted to play, they wanted to hold the new baby, they had a million questions. They wanted mothering too, and I felt guilty that I was unable to meet their needs. Suddenly, a wedge had formed between us: me and Clover versus Barry and the boys. I got angry when Barry sided with Oliver and Felix. My nerves were on edge; a ribbon of stress and fear rippled through me every day. Clover didn’t like a bottle, so I was the only one who could feed her. I had a painful C-section scar to deal with. My body was a mess, my house was a mess, my relationships were a mess.
When Clover was six weeks old, Barry had to go to New York for the summer for a job. I was actually relieved. The boys stayed with their mother. I hired a nanny named Susan to help out, but I was excited to have Clover all to myself. I craved quiet time with her. We went on walks through the neighborhood. She was all smiles for me, mischief in her eyes. We were a pair.
My need for Clover and only Clover was initially so strong, I was seriously considering parting ways with Barry and raising our child on my own, just like my mother had split up with Daddy Gregson when I was a baby. After Barry returned from working in New York, and Clover was four months old, we took a trip to Michigan, where Barry was born. Barry let me know he was completely committed to me and to our child. I realized I loved him, that he was a great dad. I remember thinking: I am going to lose this man if I don’t make an effort to reconnect with him. It seemed as if I were waking up from a dream. I realized that I wanted a life with him, I wanted to be a stepmother to the boys, and I wanted Clover to have a life with her dad and her brothers. So I began making a conscious effort to share Clover with her father, to make time for the boys. It wasn’t hard to do. Julia always says that a baby is like a fire, everyone gathers around. I had been keeping Clover away from Barry and the boys, and as soon as I let them in, she drew them to her.
My psychopharmacologist recommended a specialist in postpartum depression. At our first session, the doctor instructed me to turn my phone off.
“There is no way I am going to do that,” I said. “You don’t understand. What if Clover needs me? I have to be reachable at all times.”
I felt as if thin gossamer strands connected me to my baby. I could almost see them. They pulled me back to her, making it nearly impossible for me to even go to the gas station on the corner or to run to pick up groceries. When I took a shower, I would bring Clover into the bathroom, wrapped in towels and propped comfortably on the heated floor, rather than leaving her with Barry or the nanny. I told the doctor about the anxiety I felt, the overpowering responsibility to keep her alive, the familiar feelings of panic and hypervigilance that would take over. These overly protective and dark emotions took me by surprise. They felt extreme and scary to me.
When I spoke to Daddy Gregson, he remembered my mother’s similar, almost obsessive concern for me as a baby. He was in the delivery room to witness the moment when we came face-to-face for the first time. He remembered that day I slid into the world. He was the one who had described my mother as “a panther, ready to spring if anyone said anything about you which she didn’t like.”
When I was about a year old, my mom and I were alone in the house on North Bentley Avenue. My mom was divorcing my dad and was taking care of me by herself. I tried to push open a big sliding glass door and it slammed on my thumb. A typical childhood injury, but my mother didn’t just call the doctor—she also called the paramedics and the fire department.
How much of my mother’s obsession with me was fueled by Baba’s obsession with her? Baba’s devotion to my mom was overprotective to the point of paranoia. She couldn’t stand to let her little girl out of her sight for a moment, terrified of kidnappers, attackers, and other imagined threats to her safety. When fire engines would wail past their house, Maria would run to check on Natasha, even if she was only playing in the next room. On at least one occasion, Baba even called to check on my mother when she was grown and married because she heard a siren in the night.
I had become possessive of Clover to the point of ignoring her father, and anyone else who tried to come between us, just as my own mother had, and probably her mother before her.
I got back on Prozac. I had taken the drug off and on since my twenties, but I had come off it during my last trimester on the recommendation of my doctor. After Clover was born, I had tried to manage without medication, but clearly I needed it. Slowly, I came out of the fog of postpartum depression. My symptoms had been my hypervigilance, my fixation on the idea that no one could take care of Clover except for me. I started leaving Clover with her dad, with our nanny. I could handle this. I could do it. Clover would be okay. Barry and I would be okay. At six months old, my daughter seemed sturdier, less like an egg that might break. Sometimes, as I held her, it was as if my mom were holding me. Maybe I was enough of a mother for both of us; maybe there was enough mother love to go around.
Clover hated her car seat and would always cry on our drives. The teacher at our toddler group told me I should sing to Clover when we were driving in the car. It worked instantly. I found I had no shortage of songs. Songs I had forgotten I knew, all the songs my mom used to sing to me: “Bayushki Bayu,” “Fried Ham,” “Frère Jacques,” “My Favorite Things.” I started to hear my mom’s voice in mine as I sang and spoke to Clover. I was Natooshie, and she was Clovie-girl. My voice rose an octave, a blend of singsong and talking—just like my mother’s. My focus landed squarely on Clover as I remembered my mother’s on mine. I knew how to love this kid.
To this day, I still struggle with my desire to overmother and overprotect Clover. I constantly resist the urge to obsess over her whereabouts every second of the day, to nag Barry about what to put in her lunch, what to feed her for dinner, the temperature of her bathwater, and on and on and on. For better or worse, I am my mother’s daughter and Baba’s granddaughter. At the same time, the intimacy of motherhood comes so easily to me. The mechanics of bathing, feeding, and putting my child to sleep. I love the schedule, the routine, the closeness, the affection. I have my mom and Baba to thank for this too.
Clover celebrated her first birthday on May 30, at Whitebrook Farm in Wales, and took her first steps the very next day on Daddy Gregson’s front lawn. Now that our little girl was a toddler, Barry sold his tiny bungalow in Venice. I sold my little beach house in Malibu. Together we bought a house in Venice. Its backyard, shaded by oak and sycamore trees, reminded me of Old Oak Road the minute I set foot on the soft green grass. Everyone could have their own bedroom; toys could be stored neatly away. The boys lived with us half the time, and the other half with their mom.
That year, I turned forty-three, the same age as my mother when she died. I was acutely aware that I would outlive her now, that I would grow older than she ever got to be. I was aware of time marching forward, moving faster and faster. I missed her in a different way now. I longed to talk to her about motherhood, about being in your forties, about how it feels to look in the mirror and notice the lines around your eyes.
On the afternoon of Barry’s fortieth birthday, just before Clover turned two, he knelt down on one knee in the middle of our living room and proposed. The boys had just gotten home from school and were playing rambunctiously. Clover was occupying herself with her toys. The chaos of our life was in full swing. This was not an intricately planned romantic fantasy, but a gesture that reflected the daily life that we were living. The kids gathered around the coffee table and joined us as I agreed to be Barry’s wife.
Our wedding took place on December 21, 2014, in the backyard of our new house. My Daddy Wagner and Barry’s dad, Mike, married us (they both became ordained for the occasion). My Daddy Gregson had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and sadly was too frail to make the long trip to Los Angeles. Barry’s son Oliver read a poem; Clover brought us our wedding rings. We had invited a small group of thirty guests to an “engagement party” in hopes of keeping the atmosphere relaxed. Instead of white, this time, my dress was pale pink jersey, cut on the bias with a flowing skirt and a pink-and-green lace top. Barry wore a green plaid tuxedo. We ate and drank and made toasts until we were filled to the brim with happiness.