Getting Waisted (26 page)

We were back home in Los Angeles after a far less eventful trip, having taken the southern route to avoid most of the big peaks. Once again, I was given a baby shower, which was not like the other in any way. First of all, one of my closest friends, Arlene, who had recently relocated to L.A. from Toronto, saw to it that all the girls were wearing, “Monica’s Best Friend of the Month”
T-shirts. This was all about my intense affection for whatever girl-crush I had going on whenever I made a new friend. It’s true, I loved my girlfriends and considered us to be each other’s Jiminy Cricket truth-tellers, to have each other’s backs and be each other’s backup singers, whenever necessary. To my mind there was nothing more important. A girl without girlfriends was as suspect to my mind as someone who didn’t like chocolate, and a man without female friendship was just plain missing out. The excess showered upon me and my unborn child was insane, in a good way, as well as being overwhelming; I think it was, in part, because we didn’t have any blood family in California that we felt so blessed with all of our surrogates.

It was hot, as only hot in October could mean in Los Angeles; dry, smoggy, and smoky from the fires burning in the hills surrounding us. My feet looked like hams. My overly pregnant tummy could be seen from space and there seemed to be a giant clock embedded in its middle. It ticked slowly and loudly but it had no desire to ring its alarm. Our baby was apparently very happy with the accommodations and had no desire to check out. The phone never stopped ringing from both coasts, everyone asking the same question: “When?” I stopped answering and left a message on the machine: “The toll bridge is closed and the baby doesn’t have the correct change to be able to use the automated exit. Please send money or go away and wait like I have to!”

Two weeks later, my lovely gynecologist told me that my baby probably weighed around seven and a half pounds. He also said it was time to induce. That word did not make me happy. I liked that the kid was content; it made me feel that he already liked me. That was the upside. The downside was I was sick of peeing, creaking, and not being able to find a single comfortable position. He wanted to put me into labor right away, but in spite of my discomfort I told him I wasn’t ready. He smiled knowingly; he had heard that line before. After striking a bargain that I would return by six the next morning, he let me go home to have the last supper.

As per my promise, I was back at 6
am.
Josef Mengele, my anesthesiologist, was eager to get going. He stuck a nine-foot needle in my spine, a line into my arm, and said, “Enjoy! Your baby won’t put up a fight much longer.
”
Twenty-four hours later, my kid showed him who was boss. He was staying. My gyno and Mengele had other plans. They knocked me out, made the cut, and went in . . . it
was
a boy! And he came into the world at just under eleven pounds. I wanted to put an apple in his mouth, lay him on a platter, and have a dinner for fourteen. He was the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, with hair the color of piss on snow—a vibrant day-glow yellow. His skin was pink and mottled and he had arms like German sausages. He was not what I was expecting. He was even better!

24

Jelly Belly Mama

Diets #2
6
–
29

The Caveman Diet, Eat Nothing White Diet, Fen-Phen & The Cookie Diet

Cost
My hair

Weight lost
47 pounds

Weight gained
Zero and holding

We were parents!
This was an amazing revelation that neither of us seemed able to get over. We named our son Remy. We had always wanted a French name, but one that was pronounceable, unpretentious, and hopefully easy enough to not screw up. Having a newborn was overwhelming and completely uncharted territory, especially for me. I had been around very few babies for any real length of time. But I took to nursing easily, loving the power of being someone’s sole food supply. I was officially America’s Dairy-land and whenever Gilles approached, I held my hand up, “Uh uh, don’t even think about it. These are no longer pleasure orbs, these are working boobs.” And it never got old; it was our time, Remy’s and mine. I thought about never giving my son any real food; I had no idea what one gave babies besides the stuff in those jars and nursing him was just so easy. No cooking or dishes to wash.
If I never fed him, then he wouldn’t ever be fat, but of course, I’d be hauled away by child protective services.

Gilles’ mother arrived to help out. She was the loveliest, most respectful mother-in-law a girl could ever ask for; nonetheless it was the first time I had ever felt so totally lioness-like: protective, possessive, and territorial.
Back away, he’s mine!
ran through my head whenever she approached. But I always handed him over, even if I didn’t really want to. She had had three children and several grandchildren and knew what she was doing. She would walk him around, explaining in French what every appliance could do, naming the colors of everything they passed, and she would stop in front of every painting, telling him the story of what he was looking at. He was completely fixated on her soothing presence and completely content to be in her arms. I wished so much that my mother could have had the privilege of knowing our son. She would have loved him to pieces. She wasn’t the most attentive of mothers, but she was a rock star as a grandmother.

It wasn’t long before we became eligible for the “Legion of Obnoxious Parents Award.”
We were exhausted, sleep-deprived, and never happier. Almost everyone in Beverly Hills had a home movie theater and, seeing as we were spending all our time at home falling asleep in front of the TV or staring at our baby, we put two comfy chairs at the foot of our bed—only ours were rocking chairs—and
voila
, we had one, too. We were as obsessed with our child’s development as any new parent and we couldn’t shut up about him or stop comparing his virtuosity to the other babies we knew.
He always won.

At a dinner where mostly everyone was a parent, we were all resoundingly put in our places by a couple there that didn’t have children. After listening to us brag, burp our wee ones, change their diapers, and discuss descriptively what was in them, they had had enough. The husband, having anticipated this kinder-hell zone, whipped out a puppet from a bag and began rocking it and bouncing it as he and his wife shared a ten-minute litany of their puppet-child’s accomplishments and bowel movements. Point taken, but we knew it wouldn’t stick.
Oh my God, we had become those people . . .

Both Gilles and I worked mostly from home and in, what had become our tradition, we turned our garage into a more useful and far prettier space—Gilles’ studio. Our car was not fancy enough to be stolen and was perfectly fine parked on the street. It was California, after all, and the only weather to worry about was smog. I worked in our bedroom office and since we did have to earn a living, it meant we needed child care. Our first
au pair
, Ariane, was the twenty-one-year-old sister of one of our friends who was thrilled to leave Belgium and come and live with us. She was funny, feisty and, as a bonus, she typed. Not only did I get a great nanny, I also got an assistant.

For a small window of time I was at peace with my body, I was far too busy being one of those overly smitten and obsessed mommies I had always made fun of. Remy was now fourteen months old, walking and talking, and I was still nursing a couple of times a day. But when he stood before the dairy-bar known as me and I thought I saw him snap his little fingers and say, “Mama, booby,” that was it and I was done. Our next
au pair
was German, very kind, very caring, and very homesick. I could hear her crying every night in her room. We called her mother, who sent her a ticket, and we sent her home. The timing was perfect. I was hired, along with my then-writing partner, to write an animated movie and the studios were in Dublin, Ireland. Guy and I were in Ireland, working, for about two weeks but I was having a terrible time sleeping and I couldn’t concentrate. I missed my child so much that I begged the producers to let him and my husband come and join me. I promised the producers that would get so much more from
me
if
my loves
were in the same country. It wasn’t that I had to be with Remy all the time, but I needed him and Gilles in the same country, in the same time zone. It was the best money they ever spent. Gilles took a leave of absence from his clients. He was never worried that they wouldn’t be there when he returned. They always were. He and Remy walked Dublin while Guy and I worked, and on the weekends we explored every inch of that magical green isle. It was our last week when I was introduced, by one of the animators, to Claire, a young Irish colleen who desperately wanted to come to America. She was smart, well-educated, and loved being with Remy. We were thrilled to invite her into our home for a year. We didn’t know it yet, but we were well into the parade of nations. There was a stunning Swede, a feisty Israeli, a powerhouse from Prague, and the princess from Paris who thought it was an acting job. We sent her to a casting director and away from us.

Our cranky chow chow had become old and even crankier, and had not welcomed Remy into her life, torn between wanting to protect him or eat him. She was arthritic, plus she could no longer go up and down the stairs as she had lost her sight. We became her seeing-eye people and that was before she really started to fall apart. She had been our first “child”
and it was brutal to watch her suffering. Our vet felt she was done and we had to make that awful agonizing decision to let her go. After delaying the inevitable, one day we were finally ready and had found the courage to say good-bye. We took her to the vet and watched her take her last breath. We totally forgot we were supposed to have dinner with our friends Martyn and Marcella, and when the phone began ringing over and over, we chose not to answer. But the calls were coming every five minutes so I finally picked up, barely able to speak through my sobs. Martyn was adamant that we come over for dinner as planned. He sounded annoyed; they had been cooking all day. I explained our situation, but he didn’t seem to care that our dog had died that very day. I couldn’t believe he was being so self-centered and hostile given the circumstances. I loved food but this was just one dinner and I was about to hang up when he shouted that we had to come over—they were throwing a surprise party for us because we were going away for the summer and their house was full of our friends!

It started far more like a wake than a party; morose and heavy- hearted with many tales of surviving near misses from our cantankerous dog. But soon our spirits lifted as the stories got wilder and the toasts to our dead dog got funnier and more outrageous. We stopped crying; we were doubled over with laughter despite our grief and, once again, we knew the power and gift of close friendships. By the time we got home, we were so emotionally spent from both laughing and crying that we slept better than we had in months.

By the time we got home from our summer away, I had gained weight. I tried ear stapling; it had worked for the Chinese for centuries, although it didn’t work for me. The Caveman Diet just made me want to club people, and the Eat Nothing White Diet just confused me. Was that before or after Labor Day? Then I heard about Fen-Phen. (It even had a cute name.) It was the magic pill we all had been waiting for, promising that body fat would simply just fall away, as would your appetite, and it was doctor-approved. After taking just a few doses, I saw the pounds disappearing, but I also had developed a severe case of shivering. My breasts seemed perpetually cold. I went down two dress sizes in a magic minute but I couldn’t shake the shakes. Everywhere I went I was complimented and admired; how could I stop? Then I saw the lead story on the evening news and it was all about the potential deadly side effects of Fen-Phen—the big one being death!

When I stopped taking the pills, I stopped shaking . . . I threw in the towel and gave up.

Our new life as parents passed in a haze of sticky fingers, Elmer’s glue, birthday parties, ski outings, zoos, science centers, drums, swords, Kung Fu classes, and mountains of pizza, much of it inhaled by me.

We couldn’t have been any happier until the day I almost lost my beautiful boy. We had a weekend ritual where we would drive up the coast to Gladstone’s, a sprawling restaurant right on the beach. It had barrels of peanuts and the floor was covered in the crunch of their shells. It was rustic and family friendly with a million dollar view. Remy loved it. He’d order giant cups of hot chocolate that came with little paper cups filled with chocolate chips and whipped cream and he could gather up fistfuls of peanuts to feed the ever-circling seagulls. It was our place and it was perfect. After breakfast we would wander down to the beach where there were always other kids to play with. On this Saturday Remy and a feisty little girl must have played at the water’s edge for nearly an hour, scooping up shells and sand in cups while the girl’s mother Caroline, whom I had met once before, stood watching over them comparing notes on our children’s emerging personality traits. It was a calm and typically beautiful California day when BANG! A rogue wave crashed to the shore and scooped Remy up and he was gone. My heart stopped but my legs kept moving. I ran into the water but Caroline, who was closer to him, leapt into the foamy waves with no heed to the rocks and somehow pulled him up and out—and into my arms. It all happened in a terrifying heartbeat.

I sat on the sand and cradled my little boy who kept repeating, “Mama, I’m sorry.” He was in shock. I was in shock. Caroline came to see if he was okay and that’s when I saw how cut up her legs were. I kept thanking her but she kept dismissing what she had done. I sat on that beach, rocking Remy for nearly thirty minutes until his body relaxed. I didn’t even notice Caroline and her little girl leave. I knew I would never bump into her again and yet, this woman had saved my son’s life and I didn’t know how to thank her. I put Remy in his car seat and before I could shut my door, he was asleep. I turned the key and drove home, seeing nothing but the replay of that huge wave snatching my child right off the shore.

I parked the car and carried my still sleeping boy to his bed. Gilles could see by my face something was wrong but I couldn’t speak. It wasn’t until I sat down that I burst into tears, shaking so hard from what might have been.