Mid- to late-1970s

SAM RADER

My mother, Sally, started her TV career as a five-year-old, climbing inside an old empty television and putting on shows to make her family laugh. She was whip-smart and thought she might become a physician like her father, until at the last minute she decided to go to theater school in Pasadena, California, leaving behind everything and everyone she knew in Portland, Oregon. She was a ringleader, a mischief-maker, and she loved to dance and sing. She told me she would scan the crowd at a party for the one person awkward and alone and try to make them feel special. She is the patron saint of castaways. I grew up in a house with seven bedrooms, which were always occupied with people who had nowhere else to go. Holidays were my mother’s favorite. When I was five, she woke me in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to see “Santa.” She had hired a man to dress up, eat cookies, and deliver presents. Others were up on the roof stomping like reindeer. I peed my pants. When I was nine, my mom hosted a birthday party for herself and asked everyone to gift her with a drinking glass. A hundred people showed up, and our kitchen cupboard was forever filled with beautiful statement-piece water cups that LA’s creative elite had scoured the city to find. In my twenties, my mom said to me, “I can’t believe I gave birth to a hippie.” I retorted, “I can’t believe I came out of someone who likes air-conditioning and mayonnaise.” I’ve never laughed harder with anyone than I have with my mother.