Might as Well Laugh About It Now (13 page)

Pictures of Elvis’s own mother, Gladys, show a resemblance to my mother. Both of them had dark wavy hair, a round, soft face, and lively eyes. Elvis had lost his mother in 1958 (she was only forty-six), and he never got over missing her. I understand that now. My mother could always sense when someone needed a mom no matter who they were, how old they were, or how thick their pork chop sideburns grew in! Elvis Presley became one of millions of people from around the world who called my mother “Mother Osmond.”

Often I would see her, late in the night at the kitchen table, or while waiting in an airport, handwriting a letter to one of our fans, someone she had never met. She cared about them all. As I watched her, I learned what it meant to be a truly loving presence in the lives of others.

In July of 2008, after Donny and I performed at the MGM in Las Vegas, a woman who was waiting outside the stage door handed me a letter, handwritten by my mother more than thirty years before. Though she had never met my mother in person, she told me of getting the letter in the mail as a fifteen-year-old girl, and how my mom’s words had given her hope in the midst of a horrible family situation. She wanted to return it to me, knowing how much I missed my mother. The letter was full of comforting words and positive thinking mantras for the young girl to tell herself. In addition to her amazing capacity to love, my mother was also way ahead of her time. She was ecstatic with the invention and growing popularity of e-mail, and she told me that she couldn’t wait for the day she could strap a rocket pack to her waist and zoom off to visit family and friends living on Mars.

Every month she wrote a “Mother Osmond Memo” (M.O.M.) to catch up family and friends on everything from our latest news to how well her sweet peas were growing in the garden. She would include good timesaving tips she had heard about, memorable quotes, organizational skills, and recipes. What began as a letter mailed to about fifty people grew to reach thousands of fans around the world by e-mail. She always wrote in the same heartfelt style, as if it continued to be read only by her loved ones. She would end some of her letters by writing, “I’d like to hear from all of you—would like to know who’s out there!!” She’d sign off with “Sing-cerely, Mother Osmond.” She would hear from them, thousands of replies, people writing back, updating my mother on their lives, attaching photos of their weddings, pets, and then kids. She would respond to as many as she could, especially to those who wrote to her of any heartache they were going through. Just as she had responded to Elvis Presley’s heartache as a son missing his mother and his humble need for motherly advice about his loneliness as a iconic superstar. She always seemed glad to hear from Elvis when he would call her to check in. He would ask my mother her thoughts and opinions on choices he was making in his career and even his personal life. He trusted my mother to keep his privacy. He had great intuition that way. He couldn’t have picked a better person. She never shared with us anything personal he would tell her. Though he passed away thirty years before my mom, she still took his confidences to her grave.

Even as a little girl, I understood how famous Elvis really was, and when I heard my mother talking to him on the phone, I would find any excuse to be in the same room. After a few moments she would shoo me out of earshot, but I would still try to listen from the next room to my mother’s counsel to him. Come on! It was Elvis!

She was always ready with some kind words, encouraging him like she did each of us, to pray for answers and read the scriptures.

Elvis, in return, gave us some life-changing show business advice.

One afternoon in Las Vegas, at the International Hotel, where Elvis was performing, he sat my family down and suggested a costume change for my brothers. He thought they should all wear sequined jumpsuits onstage, much like his own. Before this time no one wore a jumpsuit, except paratroopers!

Considering the success that Elvis was having with his brand-new look, my family jumped on the idea. The “barbershop” matching blazers and straw Kellies look went out and matching bell-bottom jumpsuits came in. Just as it had for Elvis, it was a look that defined the Osmonds. (I had a couple of mind-boggling jumpsuits that I sported myself in the midseventies. One was khaki colored and another an impractical cream color. They were both so tight that every time I bent over the snaps would pop open. Thankfully, that trend didn’t last long for women. You had to completely disrobe to use a rest-room. Who has time for that? No, thanks.)

“Make sure your kids always stay close to their fans” was the more experienced advice Elvis gave to my mother. He had regrets about following a suggestion to remain aloof. He told her that it had been a struggle for him to be himself on a day-to-day basis, because the fans didn’t really know him or accept him as a real person.

Elvis always felt a deep responsibility to entertain his fans, to make sure they left happy. My parents respected that about Elvis, and they encouraged us to apply a similar principle to our young lives.

My brothers and I weren’t raised to be celebrities. We were groomed to be entertainers—to make people happy. I was less than two years old when my brothers performed at Disneyland and were offered a contract on the Disneyland summer stage. Alan was twelve, and Jay was only six. I never knew a day of my childhood life where music wasn’t being played, practiced, written, or sung. Even on Sundays, we sang together as a family in church. Until I was about five years old, I had mistakenly concluded that every family must do the same thing we did: perform. This misconception was reinforced by the fact that our close family friends were, and still are, the famous Lennon Sisters. They are four sisters who appeared weekly on
The Lawrence Welk Show
for thirteen years. They were just like us. They wore matching outfits. They sang harmonies. They toured with Andy Williams. We were so busy, I obviously had no idea what type of lives other children led.

My brothers’ early career was similar to the path Elvis had been through in the midfifties, performing one local show at a time, city to city, venue to venue. There was no such thing as an
American Idol
road to fame or to a record contract in eight weeks.

The Osmond Brothers’ first tour bus was a used Greyhound. Not a refurbished Greyhound, just a used one. There were no couches or kitchenette, no microwaves or DVD players. It was only bus seats and an aisle and a closed-in toilet at the back. My family rode in the front half of the bus, and our band took over the back half. Now I understand why my mother always wore wigs in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She always had to stick her head out the window to catch a breath of fresh air! Then when we arrived at the next venue, she’d plop the wig back on to look good.

Donny, Jimmy, and I made little bunks by throwing blankets and pillows on the aluminum luggage racks above the seats and crawling up there for a nap. We practiced our songs from town to town and always did our lessons. Mother would walk up and down the aisle of the bus, checking our schoolwork, listening to us read out loud. This was the way we traveled, from show to show, from the Elks lodges to the county fairs to the outdoor festivals. As a family, we loaded and unloaded our own instruments, costumes, and microphones. We would set up on whatever stage was made available, using whatever amplification system was there, and play to the audience that had gathered.

My mother and I counted the unsold tickets, called “deadwood,” to help determine ticket sales for each show. I would walk into the box office with my mom and the personnel would say: “I’ve heard of you. The only sister, right? You’ve become famous across the country as the ‘ticket terror.’ ”

Yes. Before I found my passion to perform, I found it first in being the only one who could find the one missing ticket number in a bundle of five hundred.

The first couple of years doing shows in Las Vegas, our home base was an Airstream trailer my father had hitched to the car. We would get one hotel room and take turns using the shower. We would also take turns staying in the room so we could sleep in a real bed. My mother would buy sandwich bread and cold cuts (usually olive loaf—I guess she thought since her name was on it, she should buy it) and make lunches on the tiny countertop in the Airstream. Every night after the shows, we would gather in the trailer for our family time, learn the stories of the Bible, and then pray. With nine growing kids and two adults, we would squeeze around the little table, scrunch up cross-legged on the beds, perch on the steps, and even hang out of the bathroom door. (Want to play Barrel of Monkeys, anyone?)

Why we crowded into the Airstream and not the hotel room was somehow never questioned. But as long as we were crammed into the trailer, closeness was unavoidable, and for my parents, I think that was the point. For all of the successes that were to come, the hardships of those years hold the best memories for me. Even when the income from performing increased, my parents still chose humble accommodations. My father, especially, wanted to be certain that we never put ourselves above anyone else. After almost every show, my brothers and I would stand, greet our fans, and sign hundreds of autographs.

One time, on the edge of my teen years, we were doing a summertime show at a state fair. It was miserably hot, and following the show I grumbled at the thought of having to stand in line, shake hands, and take pictures for another hour.

My mother said to me, “Marie, many of these fans looked forward to this day for a long time. This might be the most fun they will have all year because their lives are so hard. Some of them probably had to save their money for months and months to come and see you. It’s only one more hour in your life, but it’s a lifelong memory for them.”

Okay. Fine! If you put it
that
way!!!

Honestly, I’m so grateful that she put it that way. Because of my parents, and perhaps first because of Elvis Presley, my brothers and I have had fans that are like our family. They are the ones responsible for giving my brothers and me such long careers. Elvis was a wise man.

When I was on season five of
Dancing with the Stars
, the producers told me that my fans jammed the phone lines voting for me. They sent bags full of letters to the show and thousands of e-mails to my Web site. Many longtime fans wrote to me of their support, but thousands of new fans, some as young as ten, also wrote to me with encouragement and a thank-you for helping them feel like it’s possible to take on a challenge. Every day, when I would drag my aching body to another dance rehearsal, I would think of them. I pushed myself because they made me happy and I wanted to give it my all because of their hopes in me.

When we danced the Viennese waltz to Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” my partner, Jonathan Roberts, choreographed a move where I did a death-drop spin on the floor. After fifteen hours of rehearsal, I had a huge bruise on my hip, and it started to take on various shapes and colors. By the day of the show, I noticed something about my growing bruise that made me stop in my tracks. I have heard all the various stories of people seeing an image of the Virgin Mary in things like a piece of toast, but there, on the side of my leg, life-sized, was the unmistakable profile of Elvis Presley. What an appropriate time for him to show up. Not that much has changed in thirty years. Here I was in a cramped trailer, in the parking lot of the CBS studios, in the blazing heat of a Los Angeles afternoon, going over performance notes. There was a knock at my door. It was my sweet brothers, who had come to watch the show.

The Frill Is Gone

Me at three and my youngest daughter, Abigail, at three.
Is poofy learned or inherited?