The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son On Life, Love, and Loss (23 page)

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Authors: Anderson Cooper,Gloria Vanderbilt

Anderson, you have a loving partner, a fascinating career, and independence. Who could be more blessed?

I think of my own life and the circles that it has taken. It’s so amazing to me that I went to live at 10 Gracie Square in New York when I was married to Leopold Stokowski, and then I moved, and then, decades later, quite by chance, lived there again with you and Carter. Now I live in a building your father once lived in long ago. No one knows what lies ahead.

Go to the top of the Empire State Building. Gaze down as far as the eye can see, way down onto the streets below. People
by the thousands, each going to their destiny on the streets of New York, each related to you and to me in some way, some aware of this, others not, or not yet.

A woman in a red jacket turns the corner. Later today, she may be dead. This is the battle. No one escapes. So be kind.

I want to write one final letter before we turn the corner on this conversation we’ve been having. Early on you remarked that we both shared the fantasy that a letter from our fathers might one day arrive.

It’s not the same, but I thought I would write you a letter that you can read from time to time after I have departed. Keep it somewhere in a box, knowing that when you are reading it, I am close by, closer even than you think. It is not the same kind of letter we both imagined, but I hope it is something that will remind you of me and the love I have for you.

Darling Anderson,

I need not try to find words to express how proud I am of what you have made and are making of your life. And Daddy—WOW. But he always knew it would happen this way. Watching him with you and Carter, seeing the father he was and is to you, was a revelation to me. He showed me what it meant for a child to have a parent.

Wyatt Cooper was the most honest person I met in my life. That honesty reflected his intent in the way he lived his life, his values, and what he hoped for the family he created when he married me.

I not only sense, I
know,
these values reside in you. I fervently hope that you will become a father. If this is to be, don’t wait too long. When Wyatt and I were talking about getting married, I had what I considered chic streaks of gray in my hair.

“I want us to be young parents,” he said. Immediately I took the hint and started coloring my hair.

You have already achieved so much in your life that it would be hard to imagine that you could ever doubt yourself. And you did it
on your own.

But I understand and know too well that no matter what one achieves, it is never enough. Whenever this restlessness, this lack of contentment hits, remember what Billy Wilder said to Jack Lemmon: “You’re as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.”

Anderson, in your case, that’s pretty damn good.

As for your mom—she’s failed so often, in so many ways, struggling to keep afloat in dark seas growing up. I only hope that you will try to understand and, in doing so, forgive in any way I may have failed you. It was certainly not my intent. It is good to know at this point in my life that you have become as
close to me as you are to Daddy, and that makes up for all the times I failed.

Success and the money it brings are a great high, but the greatest high of all and the most difficult to achieve is a happy family life. Consider making a loving partner and a family your true foundation of success. Please give it serious thought. Who knows, I hope I’ll still be around if it happens.

If not, please keep a photograph of me somewhere nearby for your son or daughter to glance at now and then. Only tell them the good things about me, how much I loved you, the happy times we had together as a family. And that someday, they’ll grow up, and if they choose, make a family of their own, and be happy, too.

We are told the fable ends with a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But does it? I have no answer, except to say, I know the rainbow comes and goes, and really, isn’t that enough?

Your Adoring Mom

Epilogue

A
s my mom’s ninety-second birthday approached, we decided to conclude this conversation we had begun one year before. But a conversation like this never really ends once it has started. In the weeks since, we have spoken often and with a level of understanding that is deeper and truer than ever. Something fundamental changed between us this past year. I think of my mother differently, and I know she feels the same.

When I remember all those I have lost in my life, I think of all the questions I wish I had asked them, the things I wish I had told them. I will have no such regrets with my mom, and for that I am very thankful.

The other day she sent me the following e-mail:

Willa Cather wrote, “The heart of another is a dark forest, always no matter how close to one’s own.”

How close have our hearts come together in these pages?
If nothing else, it can be said: Closer than before as light shines through.

I’m not quite sure what that last line means, but I like the way it sounds, and it has stuck in my head.

When I called her to see what she wanted to do for her ninety-second birthday, she told me she didn’t want to celebrate the occasion. At first I found this sad, but then I realized she no longer has any need to celebrate just one single day of the year. At ninety-two, each day is a kind of celebration, a chance to read a new book, begin a new painting, or simply reflect on all she’s lived through. When she wakes up, she takes a moment to make a wish, then gets out of bed and makes it come true.

The day of her birthday, I picked her up from her apartment and we did something we have not done together for quite a while, but something we often did in the past, in good times and bad.

We went to see a movie.

As I mentioned previously, after my father died, she and I used to go see movies together a lot. It was a way for us to be together and yet also forget for a few hours the sadness we felt.

As I grew older and got busier with school we saw movies together less and less, but after my brother killed himself
we were faced with the dilemma of oncoming holidays and how we would get through them. Neither of us wanted to observe Thanksgiving or Christmas, or any other kind of day requiring a celebration. When you are grieving, the holidays, with their cards and constant commercials, remind you of the holes in your heart and all that you have lost.

So after my brother’s death, we once again returned to the movies, and that is how we got through holidays for several years. No tree on Christmas, no turkey on Thanksgiving, no exchange of presents—just the other’s company in a darkened theater waiting to be transported for a few hours to another world.

This trip to the movies on my mother’s ninety-second birthday was different, however. As we sat sharing some popcorn and chatting before the film began, I realized we were not avoiding a painful holiday; we were celebrating together all that we had been through.

During the film, I occasionally glanced over and saw her not just as a woman of ninety-two, but as a girl of thirteen watching a movie with Tootsie Eleanor, dreaming of what her adult life would one day be like.

I remembered that I had sat with her in that same theater when I was thirteen and we were still getting to know each other after my father’s sudden death, and it was the same theater we had come to the first Christmas after my brother
died, both trying to imagine how we would get through the day.

After the movie ended, we headed slowly back to her apartment. We spoke a little about the film, but much of the way was spent in silence, walking down the street arm in arm. There was no need to talk.

I know her. She knows me.

She is my mother. I am her son.

The rainbow comes and goes.

About the Authors

ANDERSON COOPER is the anchor of
Anderson Cooper 360°
on CNN and a correspondent for CBS’s
60 Minutes.
He has won numerous journalism awards and nine Emmys, and his first book,
Dispatches from the Edge
, was a number one
New York Times
bestseller. He lives in New York City.

GLORIA VANDERBILT is an American artist, writer, and designer. Her artwork can be found at GloriaVanderbiltfineart.com. She is the author of eight books and has been a regular contributor to the
New York Times, Vanity Fair
, and
Elle.
She lives in New York City.

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Credits

COVER DESIGN BY ROBIN BILARDELLO

COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY BEN BAKER

THE RAINBOW COMES AND GOES
. Copyright © 2016 by Anderson Cooper. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cooper, Anderson. | Vanderbilt, Gloria, 1924- author.

Title: The rainbow comes and goes : a mother and son on life, love, and loss / Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt.

Description: First edition. | New York : HarperCollins Publishers, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016000369| ISBN 9780062454942 (hardback) | ISBN 9780062454966 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062466730 (large print)

Classification: LCC PN4874.C683 A3 2016 | DDC 070.92—dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000369

EPub Edition APRIL 2016 ISBN 9780062454966

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