MAY 2021
WELCOME TO MY BEACH house. The four-bedroom Cape Cod–style home sits atop a cliff, though you wouldn’t know that from the street. But pass through the door between the garage and the guest house and you come face-to-face with a view that stops people in their tracks. It happens every time no matter how often people have been here, including to me—and I bought the house in 1984 back when I was twenty-four years old, had few expenses, and could afford it after a decade on a top-rated TV series.
A long, steep staircase leads down to the sand. Wherever you stand, it’s a genuine wow, especially when the dolphins and whales swim within view, which is fairly often. It’s as if they know us and come by to say, Hey, what’s up? Even with your eyes closed, you can hear the waves, and when the swells get big and break hard, the ground shakes, and once again you can’t help but stop and exclaim, “Wow!”
I drove here yesterday and met up with Wolfie, Andraia, Patrick, and Stacy, all of whom have been staying here for a while. I have no idea how long they have been here and they have lost track, too, which happens at the beach. Patrick says it’s impossible to be productive here, and he’s right. Your head goes into vacation mode, and your body operates in slow motion. Everything takes thirty minutes longer. Except for cocktail hour. Somehow that gets earlier and earlier.
But I have an agenda that includes more than chilling. Despite the magnificent setting, the house is in desperate need of work. Pipes leak, some rooms have water damage and mold, and there are major structural issues; that’s on top of the corrosion from exposure to sun, wind, fog, and salt water plus the problems of age. In its present state, the house reminds me of a senior citizen who, after suffering through one of those terrible, convulsive coughing fits, realizes that she made a tactical error by going decades without seeing her doctor.
The neglect is my fault. Like everything else in my life, I let the problems pile up until they took over. That’s about to change finally. Years of work and conversations with my architect have turned into an actual plan. At the end of the summer, the existing house will be torn down and a brand-new house will be erected. It has taken three years for me to come to terms with the design. Pictures of my architect’s renderings are on my phone. That’s the reason I have driven to the beach. I am ready to show them to Wolfie and my brother.
Why it has taken me so long is typical of me. Actually, given the pace at which I normally move, this timeline is downright brisk. How it happened is also a perfect reflection of what I have been going through and where I hope to be. About five years ago, I was looking for something in the kitchen. I opened several drawers and was overwhelmed by clutter. The same thing happened when I looked through the cabinets. There was too much stuff—too much that I didn’t need or want crammed into every available space. Ultimately, I gave up my search and decided I had to redo the kitchen—and maybe a few other rooms.
I met with my architect, the same person who redid my house in the hills, so he knew me well and knew what he was getting into. I was honest and transparent as I showed him around, explaining that the house had a lot of problems I had let pile up over the years. I might as well have been talking to my therapist as I discussed what worked, what didn’t work, what I liked about the house, what I didn’t like, and the things I wanted to change. It was my life.
“I’ve let some things go,” I said.
“Everyone does.” He smiled.
“I was pregnant with Wolfie the last time I redid anything here.”
“How old is he now?”
“Almost thirty.”
“Wow, then it’s time.” He smiled again.
“I love this house,” I said. “I don’t even know how much needs to be changed.”
“How much do you want to change?” he asked.
“We can tear down some walls. But I don’t want to change the footprint.”
“Okay. The footprint stays. It works for you.”
“Yes.”
“What doesn’t work for you?”
* * *
Thank goodness he already knew how painful change of any type was for me. But this house was in a category of its own. I was deeply sentimental about it and intent on holding on to its past. So much had happened in it. When I first saw it, I fell in love instantly. The house was empty. It had been rebuilt after a recent wildfire had roared down the hills, jumped Pacific Coast Highway, and burned it and the neighboring homes.
But I sensed that it was in shock. I promised to take care of it and fill it with full and happy lives. At first, my parents lived there full-time. My brothers and their wives came and went. Ed and I were there on weekends and holidays. In 1985, I suffered a miscarriage in the upstairs bedroom. A few years later, my dad and Ed got into their infamous fistfight there. Dad and Patrick painted and repainted the exterior numerous times. Even after I changed the original blue color to yellow, I referred to it as the “blue house.” We threw great Super Bowl parties there, played volleyball, and romped on the beach.
I threw Ed a surprise thirtieth birthday party in this house, but we arrived four hours late because I couldn’t get him out of the studio. “Why do I have to go all the way out to the beach to celebrate my birthday?” he kept asking. I wanted to clobber him. I can still hear myself sneaking a phone call to the house. “We still haven’t left yet.”
“But you said that two hours ago.”
“Tell that to the birthday boy.”
MTV shot here before Van Halen went to Cabo. Sammy Hagar bought a house two doors up. It was a great place to hang out and decompress, which Ed did so well here. Patrick would marvel at the way Ed could lie on the sofa watching TV with a guitar on his lap while playing “the most insane stuff without even seeming to think about what he was doing. He wasn’t even paying attention,” my brother would say. “And yet you could see him staring off into the distance pulling these ideas in from some other planet.”
After Wolfie started kindergarten and I became friendly with some of the other moms, this became the perfect spot for us to meet on a Friday afternoon and sit on the cliff with a glass of wine and watch the sun set while our kids played in the yard. When Ed and I divorced, he kept the Coldwater Canyon house with the studio and I got the beach house, but I still let him use it whenever he wanted. One time I went out the day after he had been there and found that he had forgotten to turn off the burner on the stove. He felt terrible. He could have burned down the house—along with the entire neighborhood.
I married Tom on the patio on January 1, 2011. Ed was there that night, along with my parents, my brothers, and my dearest friends. Everyone in my life has been there and helped create memories, and when I look around, I can still see and hear them. I can go there, sit on the bluff, and feel my parents. I can talk with Ed. I can see Wolfie running around with his friends. Everyone is still there. And that’s what has scared me most about this remodeling project. I can be alone there and I am still with the people I love.
I am fine with adding new people and new memories, but I don’t want to lose anything from the past. I can’t let go.
* * *
“That’s always the problem,” my architect said. “What do you keep? What do you change? What do you throw out altogether?”
We were seated at the dining-room table, and he was about to show me his new plans for the first time. He pushed his iPad toward me, explaining that he had created three-dimensional animations of the new house that would let me visualize the street view outside and the different rooms inside, including the view of the ocean from various balconies. Nervous, I took a deep breath and began to scroll. Moments later, I started to cry. Neither of us had expected that reaction. I think I went into shock.
“It’s not my house,” I said. “It’s not the blue house.”
Not even close. From the front, it looked like the exterior of a covered bridge in the Vermont countryside. The back was wide open, modern, and barnlike, an homage to family and the outdoors done in wood and glass. Inside, everything was about light and space and seeing the ocean, with numerous spots for gathering, including a ground-level patio that seemed to flow out of the kitchen and reminded me of alfresco dining in Italy via Malibu.
When I finished going through the pictures, my tears were replaced by a look of awe and I was speechless. It was one of those rare moments when the future reveals itself, and though I was not ready to commit to anything definitive, I liked what I saw. Not only was I impressed, I was also excited—and scared. My architect had studied me, listened to me, and returned with his interpretation of my journey from the time I had purchased the house to the present. He gave me a picture that showed change, growth, and possibilities.
Actually, what he did was show me my potential.
“I love it, I think,” I said. “It scares me. In a good way. But I want to sit with it for a while.”
* * *
A while turned out to be three years. Now I am ready to show Wolfie and my brother. It is Sunday afternoon, and the sun is out and turning the ocean into a display of sparkling diamonds. Wolfie is finishing an interview with a radio station, and Patrick and Stacy are getting ready to return to their home in Arizona. Barefoot in the kitchen, I set out a late lunch of grilled jalapeño peppers stuffed with ground turkey and cheese. Someone asks for hot sauce. Another wants water. I laugh. I am cook, waitress, mom, sister, and just plain Valerie—exactly as I like it, especially out here at the beach house.
Then it’s time. I gather everyone around the table, remind them of the road that led to the pictures they are about to see, then I hand them my phone. At first, Wolfie and Patrick are quiet. They scroll through the animations without saying a word. Then they can’t stop themselves from shouting one superlative after another. Oh my God. Amazing. I can’t believe it. Incredible.
Wolfie envelops me in his arms and squeezes.
“It’s so cool, Mom,” he says.
“I know,” I say. “It’s . . . it’s big.”
It’s not the only big change. There’s the situation with Tom. We have separated. Fissures in the relationship surfaced years ago, and like what happened to nearly everyone I know, the lockdown led to a serious reassessment of priorities. What do I want versus what do I need? What is helping me move forward in my life? What is holding me back? I had started asking those questions before Covid and I am still asking them. In my search to experience more joy, I have to identify and move past ideas and behavior that no longer serve me, and my eleven-year marriage to Tom is one of those things.
The decision has been a slow, painful one. But we have drifted from the interests that made us a couple and found that those differences can’t be fixed. He is a good man who is going through many of the same issues that I have faced: What can he do to add meaning and purpose to his life? Where can he find joy? What is he passionate about? What has he learned? And what does he do differently going forward?
The paths we thought we were on changed. It doesn’t make us bad people. It means we are human. I want only the best for him. As for me, I know separating could mean that I spend the rest of my life on my own, and if that’s the case, I am ready to try and will approach it without fear or regret. As many women will explain, being single doesn’t mean being available. It doesn’t mean unavailable, either. It can have a multitude of meanings, including independent, confident, content, adventurous, searching, questioning, working on things.
All of that is true, and I am ready to see what happens next.
I don’t want to waste time anymore. This past year has shown me and everyone else how precious time really is. I stopped looking for a magic number. I turned sixty. My second marriage is ending. My first husband and soulmate died. I dealt with grief—my own and my son’s. I went back to work. I got vaccinated. And I asked, What have I learned from all of this? How have I changed? What am I going to try to do differently going forward?
So many of us are feeling the same way and trying to figure out how we come out of this better and wiser. I think we got a good look at some serious problems that have been ignored for far too long and we know that it’s time to fix them—and fix ourselves. I think we know that we are supposed to be better and kinder to one another.
* * *
Later that afternoon, as we sit around talking and listening to the waves, Wolfie adds another special memory to the beach house when he tells me that he started writing his album here at the beach. I had no idea. When he got off the 2012 Van Halen tour, he moved out of his apartment and into the guest house here.
“I didn’t want to live with either you or Dad,” he says.
Moored out here in the middle of nowhere, he taught himself Logic Pro and wrote the song “Mammoth.”
He asks if I want to hear the demo.
“Uh, yes,” I say affirmatively. “Duh, I want to hear it.”
Wolfie tries streaming it on the living-room speakers, but it won’t play. He can’t get it to play on the smaller kitchen speakers, either. His frustration comes out in a childish growl: “The Internet here is messed up.” Eventually, he plays it on his phone and the original is not much different than the final version—a beautiful, powerful, and even upbeat song about dealing with depression.
“I love those lyrics,” I say. It’s not okay to get up and walk away . . . anything is possible.
“Thanks, Ma,” he says.
“That’s my boy,” I say.
A second or two passes before I correct myself. I look out the window at the clouds crisscrossing the sky, and say silently, Hey, I meant that’s our boy.
Then I get up and announce that I am going for a walk before dinner. I head toward the staircase leading to the beach. It is one hundred and four steps down to the sand, then one hundred and four steps back up. But you know what? It’s time to quit counting the number of steps and just enjoy the friggin’ walk.
You know what I mean?
Pay attention to what really matters.
Don’t change. Grow.
Be kind to yourself. Be kind to others.
Learn to forgive.
Be a helper, not a hater.
Be open to whatever happens next.
And look for love.
In the end, it’s only and all about love.