MARCH 2020
IT IS WOLFIE’S BIRTHDAY, and this is the first one that Ed and I will not celebrate with him. It’s the first one the three of us will not be together. My heart aches.
For years, we celebrated Wolfie’s birthday and other special occasions with a family dinner at a small Italian restaurant called Il Tiramisu in Sherman Oaks. The end of our marriage did nothing to alter this tradition. After our beloved restaurant closed, we took Wolfie and any friends he wanted to invite to Morton’s steakhouse, where I always ordered lobster and a martini, Wolfie enjoyed the salmon, and Ed usually asked for a steak.
But it is March 16, and Los Angeles is under lockdown thanks to the new coronavirus pandemic. We aren’t quite sure what this virus means, but it’s scary.
Today’s Los Angeles Times says that “it’s time to hunker down.” In an effort to slow the spread of this virus, the mayor has issued an emergency order closing restaurants, bars, nightclubs, schools, stores, gyms, and all events of fifty people or more. I am glued to cable news, watching every day with disbelief and an insatiable hunger for information.
I saw disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci say the worst has yet to come. I also saw President Trump say of the virus, “It’s something we have tremendous control of.”
Time will tell.
I can’t believe this is happening.
Actually, I can. The facts and the science don’t lie.
But I don’t want to believe it. There are enough problems in the world without adding a worldwide pandemic. These past four years have seemed like a wackadoodle reality TV series, and now it feels like we’re building to a cataclysmic ending. I am waiting for Denzel Washington, Liam Neeson, or Keanu Reeves to show up and kick some butt and get us out of this mess.
I am meeting regularly with Angie and working her program. We have our weekly video chats and try to reinforce the ways I can separate my thoughts and emotions. I will catch myself asking where the weight loss is, but I try to do that less. I am trying to get to a place where I look at myself the way Wolfie did when he was a little boy—with pure love.
That’s not anything that can be captured in before and after pictures. It’s a process I have to practice every day.
I don’t let my disappointment about Wolfie’s birthday define the entire day. It’s out of my control. Even though I am going to miss seeing Wolfie and Ed, who, I learn from Wolfie, is equally bummed, there’s nothing I can do about it. I put the negativity in Angie’s Trash Room and remind myself that motherhood is something I got wonderfully, blissfully right. Just thinking about it fills my heart with joy.
And there it is, that feeling—pure joy. At this age. In this body.
* * *
A year after Ed and I split, Wolfie, then twelve years old, interviewed Ed and me for a school project. Wolfie and I had moved into the house where I still live. Ed came over, as he still frequently did, and the two of us sat next to each other on the living-room sofa facing Wolfie, who pointed a video camera at us.
I was up first.
“Okay, Mom, tell me about me,” he asked. “What was I like as a baby?”
I watched that video recently, so it’s fresh in my mind. I spoke nonstop for about twenty minutes, recalling every cute and wonderful thing I remembered, starting with the miraculous feeling I had when my doctor looked up at me in the delivery room, and said, “You have a boy.” Then it was Ed’s turn. I leaned back and bit my lip as he said a few things. I was icy cold toward him and mad, and now, after watching that video, I’m mad at myself for being that way. My feelings were real. I was upset with Ed for so many things, not the least of which was the egregious lapse in responsibility that caused me to finally leave him. He had flown with Wolfie back to Los Angeles from Park City, where I was working, and he had cocaine on him. But he was sober as Wolfie videotaped us. Was it necessary to still be so angry? Who did it help? What good did it do any of us?
* * *
Love.
Ed and I always intended to have a family. I miscarried a few years into our marriage, and we put off trying again in order to focus on our careers. By 1990, though, I was ready. After ten years of marriage, we were building our dream house in Coldwater Canyon with enough rooms for us to have three or four children. I was thirty years old and my TV series, Sydney, had just been cancelled. I had nothing on the radar. “Let’s really try now,” I told Ed, and two and a half weeks later I was pregnant.
I was never happier than when I had this new life growing in me. I felt like Wonder Woman at the outset. Then, about six weeks into my pregnancy, I was hit by pretty severe morning sickness that lasted all day and night. I sucked on lemons to combat the nausea, but I told myself that the sickness and all the other changes my body went through were a part of this amazing experience and that I should learn to love it.
I also discovered that the nausea went away when I ate. So I ate. Sandwiches were a favorite. Turkey, muenster, and roast beef on rye. Peanut butter and jelly. Italian subs. Whatever I felt like. It was the first time since adolescence that I let myself eat with impunity. I was finally allowed to eat, as if I needed permission. Having been on a diet since I was fifteen years old, I had trained myself to think of food in terms of denial and restriction rather than enjoyment and health. Suddenly, I was free to indulge—and I did. I was like, “Hold the guilt, add the mayo.”
I did not, however, ease up on the pressure I put on myself to get motherhood exactly right (whatever that meant). In addition to reading all the books, I asked my mom questions constantly. I wanted to know everything about childbirth and child-rearing, as if I might be missing information. I was full of anxiety. I wanted to do everything perfectly. I didn’t want to make any mistakes. Finally, my mom told me to relax.
“You’re reading too many books,” she said. “You’re asking too many questions. You’ll be fine. It comes to you naturally.”
I was so mad at her for seeming to not understand the way I prepared. When I got ready for a role, I did a lot of preparation on the character, and made voluminous notes about this person. Even if I forgot my lines, which I did all the time, the work I did let me get to an emotional moment faster and improvise in a way that made sense. It was more than memorizing the script. I had the character down and could handle any changes that were made on the fly.
As I came to learn, my mom was right. There were basics, but motherhood didn’t come with a set script. For a new mom like me, it was more important and indeed crucial to understand the character, her backstory, and the challenges she would face going forward. Why did she want to be a mom? What was she doing to be a good mom? Was she prepared for this kind of love? The job was about being able to organize, prioritize, and improvise.
My first clue that this was true should have been Wolfie’s refusal to stick to the schedule. I was two weeks past my due date when my doctor insisted that I had waited long enough. I needed to be induced. We set a date: March 16. On the afternoon before, while Ed was in Riverside buying a blue and white Nomad, which happened to have the license plate SHES MAD (fitting for the situation), I enjoyed a bottle of 1972 Chateau Montelena with my parents. My doctor had given me the go-ahead to relax with a glass of wine. That is not an instruction I found in any of the baby books I read, but it should be.
It was essentially the same advice Angie Johnsey gave me thirty years later. Just in a different context.
Relax.
Trust your instincts.
Everything will be okay.
Motherhood is a long game. Play it that way. This is just the start.
Later that night, Ed drove me to Saint John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, where I went straight to the cafeteria and devoured one of the most delicious grilled cheese sandwiches of my life. That should be another instruction in baby books: have a grilled cheese sandwich.
I was scheduled to be induced at 8 a.m. the next day. My last words to Ed—after I said, “Goodbye, have a good night, I love you”—were “please don’t be late.”
Guess what?
He was late.
Ed rolled in around 9 a.m. I supposed that was pretty close to eight in rock-star time. By then, I was an hour into my Pitocin drip and was having contractions. He was lucky I wasn’t armed. Nine hours later, Ed was holding my hand and trying to coach me through the home stretch. But every time he said, “Push,” I smelled peanuts on his breath. I was so hungry and in such discomfort and pain that the smell was amplified. I recognized it immediately, too. It was a PayDay candy bar—my favorite.
I couldn’t believe his lack of consideration. How could he?
Very easily, as it turned out.
A few minutes earlier, while I was catching my breath between contractions, he snuck out and scarfed down a PayDay. I had no time to complain more than I did. Finally, at 6:56 p.m., Wolfie arrived, weighing nearly eight pounds and measuring twenty-one inches in length, and Ed switched from a candy bar to a cigar. But the incident was not forgotten. Twenty-seven years later, Wolfie, Ed, and I were celebrating Wolfie’s birthday. At dinner, we reminisced and traded stories. Then, as we got ready to order dessert, Ed said he had a present for me. Grinning, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out . . . guess what?
A PayDay.
* * *
When Wolfie was two or three years old, he got in the habit of suddenly breaking away from whatever was occupying him at the moment and running up to me, sometimes bumping into my legs at full speed as if he didn’t yet know how to put on the brakes. Then, looking up at me with his big, brown, beautiful, adoring eyes, he would say, “Mama up.”
He wanted me to pick him up and give him a hug and a kiss. Every time he did that, I stopped whatever I was doing and obliged. To me, this was motherhood—to pick up my kid and give him a hug and a kiss.
It’s also about being a good partner and a decent human being. Our job is to lift each other up.
Most of my issues, I realize, stem from being too focused on myself. I get myself in trouble when left on my own to gaze in the mirror, step on a scale, or sit and ruminate. My brain will seek out the dark clouds and head straight toward them. I’m like the ketjap I let simmer too long at Thanksgiving. I burn.
I have a painting in my library that Wolfie made when he was in kindergarten. At the time, I was working on the miniseries Night Sins in Park City. It was a two-month shoot, and even though I flew back and forth most weekends and Ed brought Wolfie up for long weekend visits when I wasn’t able to get home, I had never been away from Wolfie that long. I was miserable. He missed me, too.
In his kindergarten class, the teacher asked the students to paint a picture showing what they would do if they had wings. His classmates drew pictures of themselves flying to the candy store or racing birds in their backyard. Wolfie’s said, “If I had wings, I would fly to Park City, Utah.”
After I saw that, I didn’t work for almost five years.
My manager was frustrated and irritated with me for turning down work. Finally, he asked, “What do you do all day?”
I fixed meals for Wolfie: broccoli and fusilli, meatloaf, turkey meatball soup. I volunteered in his classrooms. I needlepointed him a Christmas stocking. I drove him to Little League practices and games and AYSO soccer at the park. A lifelong sports fan, I looked forward to Saturdays when Ed and I set up our folding chairs along the sideline of the soccer field and watched Wolfie’s games. I was happy when it was my turn to bring snacks for his team.
My closest friendships today are with the mothers I met when Wolfie started kindergarten. Even his teacher is a friend. We asked each other questions, laughed at our mistakes, and traded tips and tricks. Those friendships became vital to the process of raising my child. I don’t think anyone can do it alone—and why would anyone want to?
As our kids got older and went to different schools, our conversations addressed new topics, but the questions, laughter, and tips continued. Occasionally, we helped one another through tears.
Those were the women I turned to for advice and support when Ed wanted Wolfie to go on tour with Van Halen in 2007. At the time, Wolfie was a newly minted sixteen-year-old. I was petrified to let him go. What mother in her right mind would let her son bid sayonara to eleventh grade and tour the world with a hard-rocking band led by his dad who was still, in his early fifties, battling his own demons and abusing alcohol and drugs in a way that made him unpredictable and volatile?
That was the whole reason I left Ed when Wolfie was ten years old. I couldn’t let Wolfie see that kind of behavior any longer. I had to protect him.
When he was sixteen, though, how much protecting could I do?
How much did he need?
How much had he already seen?
Wolfie, in fact, was the one who came up with the idea of inviting the band’s original lead singer, David Lee Roth, back into the group for a reunion tour. He even made the first phone call to David’s manager.
The rational part of me knew that this group wasn’t the Van Halen of the eighties. Each of the guys—Ed, Alex, and David—were deeply ensconced in their own adult worlds. Most of whatever resemblance they had to the band of legend was onstage, and I do have to say that this part was still legendary. Offstage, they had aches and pains and issues. Ed and I had joint custody of Wolfie, so one or both of us could have put our foot down. But we never brought lawyers into our differences and I wasn’t about to start now.
I still roared like a mama bear and gave a list of demands. I insisted that Wolfie have a guardian and a tutor to keep up his schoolwork. I wanted assurance that he would have healthy food. And I wanted carte blanche to come out on the road and travel with them anytime I wanted to. Ed agreed to everything. Wolfie hugged me. Then, as only a teenage boy can do, he reduced all our talks and my concerns to the bare minimum. He said that he was going to have the best time, and he told me not to worry.
Yeah, right.
I had been raised Catholic but had long since lapsed in terms of structured religion. But I had lived in California long enough to develop a recipe for my own spiritual soup. It still included a belief in God, a higher power who accepted collect calls in emergencies. I put in a call and asked God to watch out for my baby. He’s the bass player. The others are on their own.
During the tour, he experienced the highs of entertaining tens of thousands of people who showed up to love the music and the band. He also witnessed the lows of his dad’s struggles onstage and off. It upset me when I saw that he tried to bottle up his feelings the same way that I did. I guess I had done my damage; I couldn’t protect him any longer.
We had some very frank talks. He obviously saw things that I had hoped he wouldn’t see, and I saw a young man emerging with a big, open, sensitive, forgiving heart.
* * *
March 16, 2020. Wolfie’s birthday. At about the time we normally would have been sitting down to a celebratory dinner, I sent Ed a text. “Sending you love on this special day. ❤ What a boy we have.”
Ed responded immediately. “Right?? Happy birthday to you too, Val!! ❤”
We have always considered Wolfie’s birthday a celebration of the love the two of us shared when we created him and the effort we made to raise him.
The first time I changed Wolfie’s poopy diaper, I was so wound up about doing that and everything else right that I burst into tears. The tears went away, but the anxiety didn’t. For years, I felt like I was doing so many things wrong. Now I step back and see the amazing adult man Wolfie has become, and I wish I hadn’t beaten myself up so much. It’s allowed me to do something I rarely do—give credit to myself. I did a pretty good job.
I think of a recent interview he did about his new songs. I had gone over to his house early in the morning to be there in case he needed me. I made soft scrambled eggs, cooking them slowly in a sauce pan on a low flame, adding butter and a splash of olive oil, seasoning with salt and pepper, breaking up the curds, and stirring ever so patiently as if I didn’t have to be anywhere all week. As I had learned, fluffy, creamy, delicious scrambled eggs must be pampered to perfection. Wolfie called them the “world’s best eggs.”
I agreed but for a different reason. My slow cookery allowed me to stick around and eavesdrop on the interviews. When someone asked him how he handled the groupies the first time he went on tour with Van Halen, I stopped stirring and turned so my ear was angled toward him. Without hesitation, he said that he didn’t see any groupies. He stayed on the tour bus, he said, and played his video games. Then he texted his mom.