Hey Mom Page 13
I think you and I are on the same page with this stuff, Mom. We wanted and want to believe in a life after this one but only you know for sure now. I’d love for you to break into a phone call, and go, “Louie, it’s your mom . . . ,” and then I would completely blow off whoever I was talking to and I would talk to you forever, and see how it’s going up there, or wherever you are, and I’d ask if there’s anything I should be watching out for.
Every time I return home in mid-January (I leave Vegas from the end of December through the middle of January when the crowds are mostly underwhelming), I come back to lots of piled-up mail. Bills, junk mail, some interesting things—anyway, there was this one package that I opened and it was from Gayle, a very sweet, devoted fan of mine from the South who in the past has sent me letters and cards. Enclosed was a book titled Jesus Calling by Sarah Young, a devotional that has a passage for every day of the year starting on January 1. Gayle had inscribed the book, “Louie, May you live the one exceptional life only you were born to live. Love, Gayle.”
It was January 16 when I opened the package but I started reading it from the first passage . . . and, Mom, it’s a book I find comfort in. I have found myself reading the same passage for each particular day several times a day, because each time I read it I find something new. For instance, here’s the very first passage, for January 1:
Come to me with a teachable spirit, eager to be changed. A close walk with Me is a life of continual newness. Do not cling to old ways as you step into a new year. Instead, seek My Face with an open mind, knowing that your journey with Me involves being transformed by the renewing of your mind. As you focus your thoughts on Me, be aware that I am fully attentive to you. I see you with a steady eye, because My attention span is infinite. I know and understand, completely; My thoughts embrace you in everlasting love. I also know the plans I have for you: plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Give yourself fully to this adventure of increasing attentiveness to My Presence.
[Romans 12:2, Jeremiah 29:11]
The author of the book dedicates it to her mother, who “demonstrated her appreciation of my writing in poignant ways. She kept my manuscript beside her bed, so she could read it every morning. Once, while away from her home, she even asked me to fax her the readings day by day. After she died from cancer, I found portions of my writings that she had hand-copied into a journal . . . There is a sense in which she has written—through me—this book.”
Sound like anyone you know, Mom?
We didn’t do much religious stuff growing up. Dad would “pray” when he was mad—“Oh, Jesus! . . . Oh, Lord!”—or when he was trying to get back in your good graces because he had been such an a-hole after drinking. But we never really practiced any religion. We didn’t have a family Bible. I went to confirmation class at the Lutheran church on Saturdays only because my friend Tony Johnson did, so I tagged along. I got a lot out of it, though, and some of it must have stuck with me. Is that why I’ve been reading this book every day? As I said, I get comfort from it. And I want to believe you’re up there, you’re with God, you’re with someone, you’re with my brothers and sisters, you’re with Dad and he’s turned out to be the nicer guy he could have become. Maybe we don’t go up there as the individuals we were, maybe we’re just souls who are comforted and waiting for re-entry . . . I don’t know. Mom, do you believe in reincarnation? That’s kind of a dumb question to be asking you but I want to ask it anyway.
Hey Mom, let me share the first lines in Jesus Calling for January 4, the day you died:
I want you to learn a new habit. Try saying, “I trust You, Jesus,” in response to whatever happens to you. If there is time, think about who I am in all My Power and Glory; ponder also the depth and breadth of My love for you . . .
You feel how soothing this can be to me, down here? It helps give me faith. And I need faith to get through.
Love,
Louie
What Are We Waiting For?
Hey Mom,
You know how I wrote that the only real questions are Who? and sometimes When? I take that back. The big one is really Why? Why do we wait so long to take care of ourselves? Why did I wait until I was sixty-three years old to really start worrying about my weight? Why why why? I don’t know the answer. I know I thought about it a million times before. But why am I only now starting to take it seriously? Why did Roger wait so long to quit smoking? He knew he was sick and that smoking had contributed to making him sick but he didn’t seem to care. Why don’t the Andersons seem to care? Some people take good care of themselves. They learn it from their moms and dads. Do I have some sort of weird default setting, where even if I wanted to take care of myself, I would default to not caring? I can’t seem to take care of myself and now it puzzles me and it really bothers me. I know it’s deep-seated because if I could change it easily of course I would. But I know I have to work very hard at it, and it has to be very concentrated for me to get anywhere with it. I know I shouldn’t eat a sloppy joe. Just look at it. Look at all that grease. As I start to reach for the bun and ladle the meat on and close the bun on it, I’m thinking, Why am I eating this? Like I have no control over my hand or my brain. Must have sloppy joe . . . like I’m a zombie.
Why is it that when I’m trying to lose weight, if I weigh myself, it suddenly becomes so much harder? Recently, I was doing a good job of it, and eating better, and not weighing myself, and losing some weight . . . then I weighed myself. Bad move! Even though it proved I had done a pretty good job up to then, I was like, Damn! And, like that, it all got harder. Big mistake.
After you died, Mom, I got fatter. Then Rhea died and I got fatter. Mary died and I got fatter. Billy, Kent, then Roger, same thing. Then Sheila, which was a giant blow. Then Tommy, the caboose. I was thrown off the train when Tommy died. The train flew off the tracks.
It’s so hard to change, even when that change is so good. I really wish I could change my inability to change.
Anyway, Mom, just wondering if you knew why that is.
At some point you have to park your past and put yellow caution tape around it so you don’t keep going back to it. Because there’s nothing like lounging around in your past and all that self-pity.
Love you,
Louie
I Miss Them All
Hey Mom,
I miss my brothers and sisters to different degrees, and sometimes that makes me feel bad, but it shouldn’t because I was around them to different degrees. Some of them I was hardly around at all. But I loved them all and I miss them all. Kent, your firstborn, terrified me a little but I liked him a lot and I really miss his phone calls. He’d call and say, “What’s going on?” Then he’d lecture me a little, because that was his role in the family, to get people straight, even if he couldn’t always straighten himself out. Sometimes he picked locks and cracked safes, and he got caught doing that a couple times, but he got away with it a lot more than he got caught. He was like a second father. He would always start a conversation, “You know what you should do, Louie?” I know I rolled my eyes at that but he gave good advice. When something wasn’t going right in the family, I called Kent. We had lots of laughs. I wish I could have helped him more. I really miss him. Just for the record, Kent eventually turned his life around and he used to lecture at police departments.
I loved playing cribbage with Big Rog, hearing his voice, his jokes, his complaints. He complained just like Dad. “That guy’s a sonofabitch. He’s a crooked bastard.” I miss that about Roger: he was his own man. He didn’t care what you thought of him, and I respected that. I wonder if it was smoking that killed him or the fumes from resurfacing the lanes in the bowling alleys. Once I went on the job with him and I could hardly breathe. The only one who could beat Roger in cribbage was his wife, Nettie. He was easily the funniest in the family.
I miss Mary, that smiling face that was so much like mine. We were probably the most alike in the family—both overweight, easy smile, simi
lar temperament, good laugh. She was very funny. She was kind and I’d like to consider myself kind. A big, beautiful, redheaded girl who loved butter as much as you and I did, Mom. When she worked at Porky’s drive-in on University Avenue, I wonder if she got razzed a lot because of the name of the place. She married and moved away to Texas and it got more difficult to connect. I could have tried harder, though. I wish I could have got her on a list for a new liver. She was such a good mom. She did the best she could. I say that a lot in life: She did the best she could, He did the best he could. But what else can you say? If people could do better, they would, right? Her son, Eugene, sent me some of her jewelry and every time I wear it on Baskets, I get to honor her.
And Rhea—God, I loved her. She said that when I showed up, Mom, you would get mad at her because when she came home late, she sometimes went to the room I slept in and pinched me awake so I would play with her. She used to dress me up like a little girl. I’m so glad I went to Connecticut after high school to stay with her for a while. She was so funny, like Roger, and so smart. She would get four or five newspapers every day and read them all. We’d get New York hard rolls and drink coffee. I think I learned about coffee light from her. She knew the history of the family. If she liked you, she’d really go to bat for you. So many of my sisters moved away once they married, and maybe the men wanted them to move, or maybe they did. So many of them chose men like the one you chose, Mom. Rhea was a great mom, too, very protective. She didn’t have an easy life. Once, when I was making a family reunion video and I asked Rhea if she could say one thing to Dad, after a pause she said, “I wish I would have been a better daughter.” I love Rhea’s kids, like I love my other nieces and nephews. One of hers lives in Nevada, so that makes things easier. That’s something I’m proud of—I’ve made an effort at being a good uncle.
Sheila was a stubborn girl. I really loved her. She was skinny, and she suffered, like we all did, from depression, though hers was more severe than some of the others’. Sometimes she left me long voicemails. When she got sick, I felt like she didn’t want to be around anymore. She wouldn’t quit smoking. I always wanted to scoop her up in my arms and hold her, and I would, and she’d say, “Stop it! Leave me alone!” But she secretly liked it. When her daughter was growing up, Sheila left notes in Tabatha’s lunch— “Have a great day,” smiley faces, that sort of thing. Sheila would tell her, “Life is good. You’ll figure it out.” She loved her daughter and adored her grandson and took good care of him. But she had a hard time loving herself, as we all do.
A lot of my older brothers and sisters didn’t have easy lives because Dad was even harder on them. When it comes to siblings, as much as you love them, you can do only so much. If they’re not going to take care of themselves, you can’t force them to. When Sheila would disappear and I’d find her, I’d ask, “Are you smoking?” She’d say, “Yes.” At least she didn’t bother to lie.
I love them all, Mom. I miss them all. I wish I would have done more, for each and every one of them. Say hello to them for me, if they’re with you.
Love,
Louie, Their Kid Brother
Fat Camp
Hey Mom,
I checked into a health “academy”—okay, let’s call it what it is, Fat Camp—that had been recommended to me by a friend who had dropped a hundred pounds and looked great. You know, Mom, that I’ve been through a lot with my weight, and more stuff since you passed. I’m trying to eat healthier, exercise more, see doctors who can help, follow a healthy path. Losing weight would make it easier to get through the TV shoots, because some of those sixteen-hour days are incredibly physically taxing. I’d like to give my legs a little bit of a breather. I considered the sleeve operation, where they cut your stomach in half, but decided against it because I could never get that back again and I wanted another chance to do this on my own. I acknowledged long ago that I’m a food addict, and I realize that I, and those like me, eat for a comfort that can never come from food. It’s all about familiarity. Christine Baskets does it, too.
I think Christine has a better body image than Louie Anderson does. Not that hers is great, just better than mine. Not the highest bar in the world.
Anyway, I checked into this health clinic–spa for a couple weeks. I always think I’m dying, so this was as good a time as any. And from what my friend Eddie told me about the place, and the results he got, and what I read, it intrigued me. When I got there I walked around the beautiful grounds. Big lizards running on their hind legs! Had I signed up by accident for Jurassic Park? Were the geckos on the same diet we would all be? It was incredibly hot, so hot my sweat had sweat. August might not have been the best month for this.
There was orientation, then a meet-and-greet circle, where everyone said why they were there. Then they told us not to eat anything because the next morning we would have our blood work done.
I didn’t do as much research on the place as I probably should have. Because I soon realized it was a raw vegan place. Yikes.
But what the hell! I would give it a try.
The next morning, we had to get our blood taken at 7:00 a.m. I would have preferred having them take it several hours later because I’m not an early-morning person. I think people need more sleep than they think. I know I do. I’m no believer in that “Less sleep is okay” theory.
So at 7:00, they weighed me. I was so fat, more than four hundred pounds, and so tired. Then they took my blood.
I was nervous about what they would find. Which of my several overflow hundred pounds were the problem? When you’re that overweight, it means you’re sick on some level. Also, it means you eat too much and don’t exercise enough.
After the 7:00 a.m. blood work came the 8:00 a.m. breakfast. (There was a schedule for everything.) Lots of vegetables. We got fruit on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, that’s it. Fortunately, it was Friday. I had buckwheat, which tasted sort of like grape nuts only not as good, then some fruit, plus the squirrel stuff you can eat whenever you want. No salt, of course. I think it may be easier to get through life as a raw vegan than as a no-salter. (At least the ocean wasn’t far.) There was no sugar, of course. No fat. You couldn’t even warm up your food. During my time there, no hot food was allowed except for hot soup. Some people could have hot oatmeal in the morning but almost none of us were part of that privileged class. Actually, it wasn’t oatmeal. It was gruel. It was papier-mâché.
They told us that basically everything is bad for you.
Not that I disagree—probably everything is bad for you, at least the way America eats—so maybe lots and lots of rules and regulations are exactly what we all need, what I need. The intentions of the people who worked there and ran the place were admirable. They really want their guests to get healthy. They’re also suspicious of the medical world and the use of drugs for everyone and chemicals and additives in everything. They believe in focusing on the way we live and what we do, not just what we eat.
After breakfast I spent the next couple hours obsessing about what I was going to have for lunch.
• • •
My blood test results were actually not too bad. My cholesterol could be a little better, and my hemoglobin count put me in the pre-diabetes range. But all in all I wasn’t terrible. They recommended I drink twenty cups of water a day, as well as three small cups of some green ginger liquid twice a day, and a couple ounces of liquid blue-green algae.
You can’t eat meat, of course. Soon enough I was eyeing the geckos skittering around the spa grounds. I mean, for some reason my room came with a toaster oven, yet we couldn’t have hot food. So did every single thing have to be eaten raw? If I could catch me one of them lizards and cook it up . . . oh, who was I kidding? On my squirrel diet I was too weak to catch a gecko. But I did save 15 percent on my car insurance with Geico.
Mom, why do you think it was so hard for me and all us Andersons to take care of ourselves? Were we missing a certain gene? I don’t know what’s wrong with us. I don’t know why we co
uldn’t do things in moderation, then just, you know . . . stop. Stop overeating. Stop all of our addictions. Addictions really are a disease.
After a week of fat camp I was indoctrinated to believe that all food is poisoning us. All food. Okay, not all food but I’m trying to be dramatic here. Anything that wasn’t living, really. If it was cooked, you were cooked. I did learn about some healthy foods that we should eat more of. Do you know how many nutrients are in sprouts? I had no idea. According to the people there, sprouts are at least forty times more nutritious than almost anything you can eat. Having a salad? ADD SPROUTS! And there are a hundred different kinds. And then they said that one kind of bean sprout, the mung bean, is the only plant, the only food, ever shown to be effective at halting certain cancers. No . . . Can that be true? I need to do a little research. Why hadn’t I heard of it before? Then again, I just learned how to make the text bigger on my iPhone. Now you tell me! After I buy a giant magnifying glass!
They didn’t talk just about eating sprouts and all the things you can do with sprouts but also about growing sprouts.
I got so fricking sick of sprouts.
I learned about lots of healthy foods (don’t forget about sprouts, though). A lot about taking care of myself. The greatest thing about the spa is that it gave me a chance to really re-think what I was doing with my life and how I was living it. It’s true that it’s probably much easier to follow strict rules in a very controlled environment because I didn’t have to think about the choices I was bombarded with every day, hour, minute, second, the way I do in the real world. Not everyone has the money to try this. In fact, almost no one does. Still, the spa was a very supportive environment, with lots of different things to do. Everyone there was geared to making me feel better, a very positive combination of body, mind, and spirit.