JULY 2020
IT’S SUMMER—THE middle of July—and nothing is happening. Covid has shut everything down. Everyone is confused, scared, depressed, and anxious. Ordinarily, I would be traveling a couple of times a month to food festivals, speaking engagements, New York City, and maybe taking a vacation. But I have not gone anywhere or done much of anything.
I miss traveling. The more I am not in Italy, the more I want to be there. I also want to go to London. I just want to go. Somewhere.
In a few weeks, we are taping the new season of Kids Baking Championship. The Food Network has found a hotel an hour south of me in Palos Verdes where we can create our own bubble and shoot the episodes with everyone getting tested beforehand and wearing masks throughout production. I am looking forward to getting back together with my pal, master baker Duff Goldman, the crew, and a new batch of talented kid bakers.
Actually, I am eager to be around other people again. I am hungry for conversation, laughter, stories, and cute pictures of children and pets. It has only been about a month or so since Wolfie and Andraia decided that it was safe to come inside the house when visiting me. The three of us were tired of waving and yelling through the windows. Our temperatures were normal, our hands were washed, rewashed, and wrinkled, and we were not going anyplace other than the grocery store. So I told them to come in. “The door is open.”
“Hi, Ma!” Wolfie said.
My arms were already wide open and ready to grab him. We hugged. I didn’t let go. It had been way too long. My eyes filled with tears. I could feel my soul inflate inside me. Never underestimate the power of a hug.
Since then, Wolfie has been coming over with more frequency, and those hugs are more important than ever. Between Covid and Ed, the backdrop has been so gloomy. The hugs reignite my sense of hope. My spirit lightens after each one. Forget those stickers on the back of cars that say MY CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT. I want one that says MY KID HUGS ME. It is a blessing—and like most blessings, it is delivered in a small package that is so ordinary looking it’s easy to overlook or take it for granted.
You have to pay attention or else you are going to miss the joys in life. That has been my problem. I have not been paying attention.
It has been seven months since I went on the Today show and announced that I wanted to stop letting my concerns about my weight cast a negative shadow over everything in my life and to experience joy instead. As I was right then. In my body. At my age. I didn’t want to always think I had to fix something about myself. It was enough already. As I told Angie Johnsey, the mind coach the Today show introduced to me, I sensed that I would find I wasn’t all that broken if only I could get myself to see more of the good.
Either that or everybody is kind of broken, and being kind of broken is actually normal and okay.
Angie worked with me on recognizing the voices in my head that spoke to me, especially the one that always said I needed to lose ten pounds before I could even begin to think of myself as being on the right track. Then Covid hit. The world went full stop.
I turned sixty.
Ed’s battle with cancer took a turn none of us had wanted to imagine.
I didn’t see my son in person for months.
I didn’t see anyone for months.
Life got very slow. Clothes were closeted in lieu of sweats and pj’s. Every day was Tuesday or Wednesday or Friday or Saturday. It didn’t matter. But the cats purred and stretched out in the sunlight. The dog chased the squirrels. The flowers bloomed. Fruit appeared on the trees. The orange blossoms and jasmine perfumed the air. I enjoyed the warmth of the sun. I basked in the quiet. And in the very stillness that surrounded me, I did the thing that had somehow eluded me for so long. I began to count my blessings.
I didn’t even have to work at it. One day I thought of the delicious simplicity of a bologna sandwich, like the kind I took for lunch in elementary school. Two slices of Oscar Mayer bologna, Wonder Bread, and mayonnaise. I loved them—the taste; the soft white bread; the gooey, buttery sweetness of the mayo; and the tenderness of the bologna slices.
You know what? As I remembered those sandwiches, I found myself grinning from ear to ear.
It was a blessing—a blessing that I had parents, a family, and a mom who packed my lunch, and that I wasn’t hungry.
Later, I thought of my sweet cat Dexter, who had passed away years ago at thirteen from cancer. He was nestled by my side through the hardest years of my life. A blessing.
A few days went by, and out of the blue I was picturing myself in a helicopter seated next to Ed and flying into Devore, California, for the US Festival. It was May 1983, and Van Halen was headlining the heavy metal portion of the three-day concert in the desert that was the brainchild of Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. As the pilot zeroed in on his landing spot, we swept over the massive sea of people below us, several hundred thousand metal fans partying to Mötley Crüe, Ozzy Osbourne, and other bands, while eagerly anticipating Ed and company. I remember Ed shaking his head in awe and chuckling from nerves and disbelief. They played that night for two hours. Ed was adorable in overalls that matched the design of his Frankenstein guitar. David Lee Roth was obnoxiously brilliant. The whole experience was like a crazy dream, the craziest, wildest, best dream you could have.
Thirty-seven years later, I was in my backyard looking out at the wide-open view across the valley while picturing that scene, and all of a sudden laughter was seeping out of me. I shook my head the way Ed had in the helicopter. Disbelief. Did that happen? Yes, that really happened. Oh my God.
A blessing.
So here I sit today, right now, in sweats and a T-shirt, with no idea how much I weigh and no intention of getting on a scale this week or next.
Yes, I could lose ten pounds, and I wouldn’t complain if I lost twenty, but my outlook is not dependent on it. I don’t need to fit into a bikini. Physically, my goal as of this moment is to be healthy enough when I am eighty to climb the stairs to my bedroom without assistance or breathing heavily. Obviously, I am more of a realist than an overachiever. In the meantime, I am still counting . . .
* * *
Blessings:
My family.
Getting a job as young as I was on One Day at a Time, thanks to Norman Lear, the greatest producer in the history of television, whose track record could have made him an intimidating tyrant. But he turned out to be kind, gentle, nurturing, sweet, and loving.
Working with Bonnie Franklin, Pat Harrington, and Mackenzie Phillips. Each of them taught me lessons in their own way. Bonnie, so gifted, taught me the subtleties of acting. Mac, though only six months older than I was, had grown up much quicker and was a model of strength and wisdom and resiliency. And Pat taught me the art of timing.
Meeting Ed was a blessing.
Not having any social media at the time was also a blessing. Otherwise I probably would have posted some stupid things or been videoed behaving like an idiot and would still be paying for it today.
Wolfie.
Hot in Cleveland was a gift that turned into five years of pure joy. Do you hear that? I used the word “joy.” Not just that. I called it pure joy.
And it was. The script came to me at the end of 2009. I had not heard of TV Land, the cable channel that was producing it, which had previously been a home to reruns and movies. But I was told that they were now producing their own original content. I read the script about three LA-based women working in show business whose plane to Paris makes an emergency landing in Cleveland, Ohio, where they decide to stay and rent a house that comes with an eccentric older caretaker living a full and active life despite her age.
I loved the script. I was told the show was talking to Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick and that Betty White had already been cast as the caretaker. Though I didn’t know which part they wanted me to play, I heard the names of these other women, and said, “Okay, I’m in.” I had no idea the producers were telling Jane and Wendie the same story and getting the same response. Everyone signed up. In February 2010, we had our first table read, which was magic, and we were on the air in June.
The five years I spent on that series were the best working years of my life. Jane had been one of my good friends since Faith Ford introduced us when Wolfie was a toddler. Wendie instantly became a close friend, too. And Betty White was exactly the way people imagine—funny and quick-witted, with an outlook that inspired me every day I was around her; the woman literally glowed. She was truly a light. And our guest stars—Carl Reiner, Mary Tyler Moore, Tim Conway, Cloris Leachman, Carol Burnett, Joan Rivers, and so many more—were a who’s who of performers that turned me into a fangirl every week.
Blessings all—and too many more to count.
* * *
The month before my mother died, I won two Emmy Awards. Mom was not able to watch because the 2019 Daytime Emmy Awards were streamed live on Facebook instead of being shown on regular TV, and at her age and in her condition, that was more than she was able to handle. I called her with the good news afterward.
“I am so happy for you,” she said. “You deserve it.”
Did I? Was she right? In 1981, I won a Golden Globe for my work on One Day at a Time. In 1982, I won again for Best Supporting Actress in a Series. The first year I took my mom as my date. The next year Ed was with me. I remember being shocked both times. I don’t remember anything else. An Internet search of those occasions only reminds me that life is a series of hairstyles that get less embarrassing as you get older, especially if you lived through the eighties. Somewhere in those blow-dried locks is a life lesson.
The Globes always sat on a bookshelf somewhere. After Ed and I redid our house, I put them in the library. Then they moved with me to my present house, where they rested on a shelf in my office at the back of the house. They made for nice bookends. Sometimes I saw them. Most of the time I paid no attention to them.
I always wanted an Emmy, though. It was something that meant your work was accepted and that your talent was respected by your peers, and deep down I was always searching for something that would provide the validation I wasn’t able to feel on my own. When I watched the award shows, I would imagine what I would say if my name was ever called. I didn’t want to be one of those people who read names off a list.
It turned out that I didn’t have to worry. Despite numerous series and dozens of movies, I managed to squeeze by without a nomination. The pressure wasn’t merely off. It was never on. I had fun, but I was able to tell myself that I wasn’t any good. Then, after trading acting for an apron, I was nominated for not one but two Emmy awards.
I was truly shocked. I was about to shoot the ninth season of Valerie’s Home Cooking, and even then, though I had shot nearly one hundred episodes, an equal number of short video tutorials, and grown more comfortable in the kitchen, I read and reread the online notification and the text messages that came in and kept asking myself, Really?
It was amazing, and no one was more amazed than I was. I still had so many days—way too many days—when I felt like an imposter. It wasn’t that I was pretending or that I lacked the skills to do the job or that I wasn’t working my ass off every day to always learn and improve. No, I was afraid some online troll would call me out for playing the part of a TV cook, and even though there was nothing disingenuous about my work in the kitchen, that one criticism, even if it was the lone negative comment out of a thousand compliments, always triggered a rash of self-doubt and upset me for days.
It was that old childhood gremlin, feeling that nothing was enough.
Feeling . . . not deserving.
I wish I had the willpower to ignore the comments in my social media. I know better and I still can’t keep myself from looking at them. In general, they are overwhelmingly positive, friendly, and kind. They make me smile and feel as if I have amassed thousands of friends over the years. The sick part is that I search out the Negative Nellies as they are confirmation of the worst I think about myself. Ah, they have seen the real me.
Except the real me was in the tenth season of my cooking show, grateful for the nomination, and just maybe and quite probably deserving of it.
Enjoy, I told myself. On the day of the Emmys, I was 99 percent sure I wasn’t going to win, so I was able to relax and enjoy getting dressed up and going to the party. My biggest worry was whether my pants were going to fit. Sound familiar to anyone? Earlier in the week, Lori, my stylist from the show, had brought over a black tuxedo jacket and pants for me to try on, had them altered, and brought them back. But things change. However, this was my lucky day. They fit.
I’ve known makeup artist Lisa Ashley and hair stylist Kimmie Urgel since our Hot in Cleveland days, and we’ve become friends, so hair and makeup were a breeze. That left one last concern: hoping that my shoes wouldn’t be too painful and cause my feet to throb midway through the show. Did I worry about these things when I was twenty-three?
My husband Tom and I took a car to the theater with executive producers Jack Grossbart and Marc Schwartz, who was also my longtime manager. There I was, seated next to Giada, who was nominated in my same categories, and I thought, I’m going to watch her go up and accept the award and I’m going to be okay with it because she deserves it. She’s amazing. Moments before the show began, I was moved to the aisle, where I sat next to Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek, who had once guested on Hot in Cleveland and was a very funny and kind man.
When it was time for my first category, Outstanding Culinary Program, Rachael Ray, a friend and early inspiration of mine, appeared onstage to read the nominees and announce the winner. I was thinking about how cool it would be if I won my very first Emmy and got it from Rachael, because I adored her and knew she would be very happy for me. I had even worked as a correspondent for her show. Then, in the brief pause before she read the winner’s name, I saw the joy in her face and knew it was my turn, and I burst into tears.
I was in shock. Blinded by tears, I somehow made it up the stairs and onto the stage without tripping. Then, despite years of thinking about what I would say if I ever did get an Emmy, I realized that I did not have anything prepared. I was so sure I wasn’t going to win that I didn’t bother. What did come out of me was genuine disbelief, which I expressed succinctly in two words: “Holy [fill in the blank].” A few moments later, I picked up my second Emmy of the night for Best Culinary Host. I asked all of my producers to join me onstage, then I tried to thank everybody I could think of. No one does anything by themselves, and my big insight, in retrospect, is that gratitude is the staircase you climb to get to joy.
* * *
The wins were followed by drinks that night and phone calls to my mom and brothers the next morning after my coffee and Advil kicked in. I did something unusual for me: I let myself bask in the validation bestowed by those statues, which I placed on the kitchen table, where they stood like superheroes ready to fend off an attack by the dreaded foe known as imposter syndrome. I let them buoy the faith I had in myself, as awards are wont to do, and gradually I stopped beating myself up and let belief and pride seep into my self-esteem. All the long hours, the learning, and my experience were paying off.
A few weeks later, I moved the Emmys onto the dining-room table so I could see them as soon as I walked through the front door. Hello, Best Culinary Host. Welcome back, Best Culinary Program.
* * *
Almost a year later, I moved the shiny statuary onto the top of a cabinet near the entry where they are not so in-your-face. I am able to see them, and they can see me, but other people don’t need to wear sunglasses every time they come through the door.
A few more months go by, and just the other day, on a whim, I bring my two Golden Globes out from hiding and set them down next to the Emmys. Suddenly, there is a crowd on top of the cabinet, a gathering of cherished acquaintances old and new. Emmys, meet my Golden Globes. Golden Globes, meet my Emmys. I am proud of them and all they represent, and that is okay. Even better is the way I think about myself. I hear my mom’s voice: “You deserve it.”
Sometimes, maybe even most of the time now, I believe her. And that, let me tell you, is a blessing.