Might as Well Laugh About It Now (7 page)

It stopped me for a moment, wondering what she had possibly said that she was worried about.

“I’m afraid the kids might think I was being insincere, but I truly meant what I said to each one,” she continued. Tears spilled onto her blouse.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” I consoled her. “What did you say?”

Her eyes scanned the noisy room full of children being helped by parents and volunteers to get ready for the evening event, where each child gets an award and a standing ovation as a Champion.

“I said: You will probably never remember me, but I will never, ever forget you.”

I understand, completely.

Hot Property: Great Open Floor Plan,
Full Mountain Views

This was the front of the Christmas card I sent out in 2005. Talk about your warm holiday wishes!

The floor plan was perfect; the kitchen was big enough for all of us; it had bright, spacious bedrooms, plenty of bathrooms, a fenced-in backyard for kids and pets, and a large finished basement, just right for my teenagers to have their own space. We had been living bunk-bed style in the house we bought in Orem, Utah, when there were only five of us. Now there were nine of us, with number ten on the way with the upcoming arrival of Abigail that September.

I was even able to acquire some gorgeous pieces of furniture from the woman who was selling her house. I was astonished at her willingness to part with everything so easily. She shrugged about their significance, waving them off as if they were pesky cats trying to entangle her feet, limiting her movement. I wasn’t sure why she was being so generous with her belongings, but I wasn’t going to question it, either.

For the first time in my life, I was going to be able to have a full room for my home office. “Office” was my shortened name for the room that would be used for my doll display, crafting, scrapbooking, computer work, rubber stamping, gift wrapping, photo framing, painting, sculpting, quilting, sewing, journal writing, reading, meditating, archiving, storing memorabilia, making private phone calls, getting away, taking a deep breath, collecting myself, and finding some peace. (Whew!)

I loved the space, which was by itself at one end of the house, over the two-car garage. I was crazy about it all, from the floor space, large enough to lay out a queen-sized quilt, to my black leather couches, to the vaulted ceilings with what seemed to be mile-high windows. I had enclosed glass shelving holding many of my porcelain dolls, all of them limited editions. Thirty years of my personal journals were stored in cabinets near my desk.

I saved an area for things my mother had left to me: her favorite scriptures, books, photo albums, an antique sewing machine, embroidered pillowcases and tatted handkerchiefs, business ideas written out in notebooks, a set of her treasured china, and other sweet remembrances of her. I also found a way to store most of the memorabilia of my career: framed photos, platinum records, awards and letters from presidents, along with boxes of gifts from fans.

I declared it a kid-free zone, which my children seemed to interpret as “free to any kid, any time.” They instantly began to inhabit my sanctuary, turning the couches into trampolines, adjusting their skateboard wheels on top of my sewing table, adding glitz to their jeans pockets and my pretty oak tabletop, and teaming up for pickup games of Nerf basketball. When I opened my knitting bag and found a hamster wheel with a gerbil still using it, I decided the door needed a lock.

The first week the office door was latched, my youngest son, then two and a half, managed to break in and superglue my heavy crystal elephant (a gift from when I performed
The King and I
on Broadway) to my brand-new end table. To follow in her brother’s footsteps, Abigail, at around the same age, jimmied the door and decided to personalize my computer screen with some purple passion nail polish and about ten “Whassup???” stickers. I’ll tell you what’s up!!!!!

This is one of the continuing mysteries of childhood that really should be scientifically studied. How is it that children who find it impossible to close any of their own cabinets, closets, or drawers until they are about nineteen years old can, at twenty-seven months of age, open any and all “kid-proof” locks with complete ease?

One day in September of 2005, I was in my office thinking about my mother. She would have loved a room to call her own, let alone a room this size. With nine of us kids, her personal space was, at best, a corner of the kitchen counter or a small desk crammed at the very end of a hallway between bedroom doors. She never complained about a lack of private time, though I think she must have craved it. I was reading one of her journals from thirty-five years before and came upon this entry: “It’s eleven p.m. I can’t seem to get these children to go to bed!” It made me laugh, first, and then broke my heart a bit. As much as she loved us, she must have felt she never had time to just be “Olive.” (Olive is my true first name, as well. Thank heavens I’ve always gone by Marie, my middle name. I don’t think the
Donny and Olive
show would have held much punch.) As I sat on my couch, looking down at her sweet handwriting, I wished my office could have been hers.

The very next day, I was wishing it could be mine, again. My room and almost everything in it was totally gone in less than an hour. I was driving with Patty and my two youngest daughters to deliver a speech at a girls’ camp in the Angeles National Forest when I got the call.

It all happened quickly, I was told. Though the cause was never really verified, it was assumed that a very young curious child with a fireplace lighter had set a broom ablaze in the garage. Frightened of getting into trouble, the child dropped the broom and came into the house.

When the fire ignited the gas tanks of the two WaveRunners stored in the garage, the flames spread rapidly up the back wall. Neighbors who saw the billowing smoke ran into the house, first rescuing the children and also waking up their father, Brian, who was napping upstairs. My son Michael called 9-1-1 as my neighbors joined forces to carry whatever belongings could be saved out to the lawn.

Though smoke damaged every room of the house as it was suctioned through the air-conditioning vents, my quick-thinking neighbors did manage to save most of my favorite framed family photos, artwork, and antique furniture. What was impossible to save was my office and almost every single thing in it, as the fire burned through the roof of the garage and reduced the walls of my room to charred embers.

Patty was driving along the highway, looking over at me in shock every now and then as I described the damage to her after the phone call.

“What do you want to do?” she asked. “Should we cancel this talk today? Should we drive to the airport? Do you want me to keep the kids? Go with you? Where will you stay? Who’s going to help you?” Patty’s a person who takes action immediately once a plan is in place. Who doesn’t need a friend to help you think in a crisis?

This time, however, my thinking was very clear. My babies were all safe, which was all I really needed to know, and I had a commitment to keep. I did my talk to a group of about one hundred young women.

Looking out at their teenaged faces and their attempts to be so mature and independent in attitude and fashion reminded me of my own trial run at being a grown-up, and how uncool it really was. In fact, it was blazing hot!

It was the first time my parents were able to take a vacation together without any children along. My brother Jay had surprised them with a gift of a cruise and a guided tour of the Holy Land. We had convinced them to enjoy some vacation time, as Donny and I were in our late teens and Jimmy was always reliable, right from the start. He had already toured Japan and was being offered a television show there at the career-savvy age of fourteen. If the three of us could handle hosting national television shows, we figured we could certainly handle running a house on our own for ten days.

One of my girlfriends had come over to stay with us while my parents were out of town, and one day we decided to fry some hamburgers. As teenagers who were terrified of fat, or anything edible that wasn’t cooked to death, we decided to cook our burgers well, well, well done. Think Cajun before it was cool! I am sure we imagined that high heat would burn off the calories before we even ate them!

As we stood there talking, the top of the pan burst into flames from the overheated grease that had pooled around the burgers.

My girlfriend screamed and Donny came running in from the living room.

He jumped into action as soon as he saw the leaping flames.

“I’ve got it!” he yelled, grabbing a dish towel and wrapping it around the handle of the pan. He jerked the pan up off the stove and started toward the sink.

“Wait!” I shouted, afraid of what he was about to do. But it was too late. As he hurried across the room, grease slopped over the edge of the pan, sending flames to the floor. This probably wouldn’t have been a big crisis, but it was the seventies, when people carpeted their kitchens. (Ugly. No two ways around it.) The carpet began to burn.

As I stood there in disbelief, Donny tossed the pan into the sink and turned the faucet on full blast.

The fire flared up from the sink and ignited the bottom of the kitchen cupboards.

I grabbed the family-sized box of baking soda from the pantry and ripped it apart to spread on the smolder ing carpet before the flames could spread farther, while Donny slapped at the cupboards with a wet towel. When the fires were finally out we stood speechless in disbelief. I was sick to my stomach for the rest of the day, so upset that I had ruined the brand-new remodeling my parents had done in the kitchen.

My parents arrived home from Jerusalem about three days later. I can’t remember feeling worried that they would be angry. It probably would have made me feel better if they had been. I was mostly concerned about their disappointment at my irresponsibility—I looked for anger and disappointment on their faces when I showed them the kitchen, but it wasn’t there. What I saw was gratitude that we had been protected from physical harm.

I think, in their wisdom, my parents knew that I had punished myself enough. Of course, they left the hole in the carpet. I always thought they chose to do that as an unspoken reminder to be more careful, but now I wonder if it was because it was so ugly that it was discontinued, and they were unable to match it again.

I knew that my child who started the garage fire would be feeling the same way.

I prayed that when I stepped off the plane the next day and took that child in my arms I would have the same expression on my face that I saw on my parents’ faces.

When I arrived back in Utah and saw the house and the gaping hole that used to be my office, I had the most unexpected reaction. Though it was shocking visually, I was more shocked by what I was feeling: it was a strange relief.

I had fallen way behind on keeping a scrapbook for each child and had been feeling guilty about that. Now I could help them figure out a way to make their own.

My journals were all destroyed, but between my dyslexia and my exhaustion when writing them right before I fell asleep, I doubt anyone could have read them anyway. The memorabilia from my career wasn’t necessary; I still had the good memories without having to store so much stuff. Though I felt twinges of pain about losing some of it, like one-of-a-kind photographs of Donny and me with John Wayne, Groucho Marx, and Lucille Ball, I’ve never been one to hang on to past glory days.