Hey Mom Page 16

  More than once, Mom, you actually said, “Be a good child, Louie. Don’t cause problems. Don’t act up. We don’t want your father to start drinking.”

  If you’ll pardon my French, Mom: what bullshit.

  One part of you that I’ve thoroughly incorporated into Christine: passive-aggressiveness. No one does it with more genius than a Middle American, middle-aged woman. That way of sliding something in that’s really pure competitiveness and often vindictiveness and a kind of showing off, but is supposed to look nothing like it. Is anything more passive-aggressive and Middle American than the expression, “Well, isn’t that something?”

  In my act, I used to say that Midwesterners will cut you with a razor, then say, “Oh my word, let me go get you my first aid kit, I don’t know what got into me!” My theory? It’s so cold, we stay in the house too long.

  And then you lived by a code that has always left me puzzled, maybe enough to make me want to write a whole book to figure it out, while also celebrating how much I love you. That code?

  Everyone should tell the truth as long as it doesn’t hurt people’s feelings.

  Is that even possible, Mom?

  I used to blame you, Mom. Why did you put me—us—through this horrible time with our father? Why wouldn’t you protect us? Why wouldn’t you call the National Guard, the militia, the police? I used to blame you. Why didn’t you do that, Mom? What were you thinking? What kind of a mother would do that to her children?

  But that was a younger Louie, a less empathetic Louie. A less life-experienced Louie. A Louie who had experienced less loss, less disappointment, less success. Once I started looking at myself, I understood. It came into greater focus just how hard it must have been for you. I bet you agonized over it all, internalized it enough to cause eleven ulcers in your one stomach. I wonder if the sleeve operation helps you get rid of ulcers?

  You took the blows for us. You stood in front of the firing squad every day for us.

  I hope you won’t be angry with me for pointing out these flaws. We all have them, most of us way more than you. It only makes you more human and lovable, really.

  With apologies,

  Louie

  Writers Need Deadlines

  Hey Reader,

  I started out writing these simple letters to my mom but then I sent them to a few friends and they seemed to enjoy them and said I should write a book of them, which you’ll remember I was sort of thinking about but not with great seriousness. So I said okay, because “okay” didn’t mean I had to do it; “okay” is about as non-committal as you can get. (“We’ll see” is the king of non-committal. But “okay” is close.) Then I sent a few of the letters to a few publishers and each of them I met with wanted the book. Which was a good feeling and a bad feeling, because it meant they liked it and it also meant I had to finish it. If you commit to writing sixty-five thousand words, then you’ve got to write all sixty-five. Thousand. Words. Down. And—get this—they’ve got to be in the right order! And make sense! So I went from being anxious if anyone would even want to read these letters to anxious about producing them and finishing them. And even more anxious as the days went by because I now have to have this book done by November 1 and it’s already October. I have my phone on mute a lot these days. Anyway, if I didn’t have a deadline, I probably wouldn’t finish it, so fortunately (ha!) I have one. I think deadlines were started by moms and dads. There are soft deadlines, maybe more from moms: “Clean your room, honey, because I don’t want to keep walking by here and seeing this mess.” And then not-so-soft ones, maybe more from dads: “You’re not leaving this house until you finish mowing the lawn!” (“How am I going to mow the lawn if I can’t leave the house?”) There are office deadlines: “I’d like to have that report by Friday, Louie!” (“I’m sure you would, and I’d like to have an ice cream sundae but there’s no ice cream and it’s not Sunday!” “That’s good, Louie, just get the report to me by Friday.”) And there are show business deadlines: “We have to finish shooting this scene by four thirty, drop-dead latest.” “Why?” “That’s when the sun starts setting.” “But the scene takes place in a basement.” “It’s just a basement. There’s no house there.”

  We need deadlines. I’m glad I have a deadline to finish this book.

  I have a question for you—you, reader, not my mom, but you: When are you going to contact, surprise, hug the people you love?

  That’s my deadline for everyone. Just like I should have been a lot nicer and more loving to my mom and should have done more for her, and then she was gone, here’s my deadline for whoever’s out there:

  Call your mom. Call your dad.

  Call your sister. Call your brother.

  Call your son. Call your daughter.

  Make plans for dinner with them.

  Go have lunch with them. It can be breakfast, if that’s your preference.

  Give them some of the time they’ve given you. Sometimes even give them time they haven’t given you.

  Don’t be one of those people who starts weeping with regret every time they hear Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle” or Fiddler on the Roof’s “Sunrise, Sunset.” I mean, if you’re over forty years old you’ll weep anyway but don’t be one of those people who weeps so hard that everyone within fifty yards starts getting uncomfortable.

  You won’t regret taking the time now rather than later. It’s impossible to regret that. But if you don’t do it now, when you can, you will regret it later, when you can’t.

  Trust me on that.

  One more thing I know for sure: Only a very small group of people are truly taking in what I just wrote. I hope you’re in that group. I was once one of those not in that group, and I didn’t listen until I was absolutely forced to, and in some ways it was too late.

  Can’t discuss this with you anymore—gotta get back to work. Sixty-five thousand words is a lot of words. But thanks for letting me spill about seven hundred more of them right here.

  Love you, whoever you are,

  Serious Louis, on deadline

  This Book Is Not About You, Dad, Except When It Is

  Hey Mom,

  Today, I got to see the ten scripts for Season 3 of Baskets and there’s a scene, in Episode 3, taken exactly from our life. Last year I told this story to Jonathan, the director, and the Season 3 writers, and they decided it was perfect to incorporate. Instead of happening to me, which it did, now it happens to young Christine Baskets, in a flashback. So, remember the time when Dad got so drunk (I know, which time, right?), then insisted on driving back home through the snow, with Tommy and me in the car? And I pleaded with him not to but he wouldn’t listen? And then, as he was nodding off, he accidentally floored the gas and the car shot through the wooded area in front of our house—where we used to pick raspberries in summer and slide down the snow in winter—and now branches were getting hacked off as our car plowed through the snowy woods until we crashed into a tree? And Dad just snored through it all, and I had to go get help from home before Dad and Tommy froze? I got out of the car and scampered up the hill but it was icy and I slid down, and I tried again and I slid down, and the third time I went up I knew I was going to slide down and I just went “Whee!” and almost forgot that Dad had just driven us into a tree and almost killed Tommy and me?

  Yeah, that time.

  Anyway, there’s a scene like that in the show now where young Christine is pleading with her alcoholic father to not drive, but he does, because that’s what drunks do, and she’s in the car with him, and they plow into a hospital. And she has to take charge and go get help.

  Fact and fiction.

  My own explanations of my childhood—what’s fact and what’s fiction?

  Dad was a veteran. That’s a fact. Doesn’t matter whose point of view. It’s fact. World War I. Bugler.

  But how much that fact affected his behavior, and how much he still controlled—that’s no fact anymore. Or maybe there’s more than one set of facts. No, forget that, Mom. I don�
�t want to put it that way. Sounds too much like “fake news.” (Mom, I won’t even bother explaining that to you this time around.)

  Dad was funny but I don’t think I can call that a fact because it was almost always mean-funny, which is not everyone’s cup of tea. “Louie, you’ve got a point. Too bad it’s at the top of your head.” Or “I think you’re a really great person . . . so far.” Funny, yes, but mean-funny.

  And when he maintained sobriety for the last decade of his life—it’s a fact that he didn’t take another drink. (Okay, that’s technically not true: there was that one time in the casino when he was so sick with cancer and he was playing the dime slot machine and they came around offering free drinks and he ordered a cold beer and I kept my mouth shut, though I was upset.) But is it a fact that we were better off this way? From whose perspective? In many ways, he was just as cruel, only in a different way. He was innovating new ways to be an a-hole!

  As kids, Dad and his sister were taken away from their parents after a murder occurred in their home during a party, with the parents nowhere to be found. Dad and Olga were put up in front of the local church. (That’s the root of the phrase, “put up for adoption.”) They were chosen by separate families and split up forever. Dad’s new “family” basically wanted an unpaid farmhand. They made him live in the attic. In some important ways, he was a better person than either of his reckless parents, biological and adoptive.

  But what do I do with these facts or fictions? Do I forgive him? Yes, I forgive him. Do I think I understand him? In some ways, yes, in some ways, never. Is it better, Mom, that you didn’t leave him, didn’t divorce him, didn’t get on with your life and our eleven lives? Only you can answer that. For years and years I’ve told myself that I understand why you didn’t, it was the times, and we were poor, and there were just so many mouths to feed and—and this is not a small thing—you still loved him. In a way, you always adored him. But I didn’t get the nurturing, quality encouragement that a kid needs from a dad, that a son needs from his dad. I did get to be in his sunlight, though, and even sunlight that doesn’t always shine bright is better than no sunlight at all. Would I be as funny as I am and as successful as I am, and be doing this thing that I absolutely love doing, if I hadn’t been exposed to him and the relentlessness of his cruelty to us? I doubt it. If he hadn’t treated me like that, would I have searched so long and hard to find something to explain it all or something to make me feel better? Maybe that’s what makes the comedy. Your stick of butter, Mom, plus his gallon of vinegar. Should I cut him slack simply because he was also the kind of guy who would get into a big fight with someone, then go buy groceries and leave them on the doorstep of someone else who was struggling worse than we were?

  I don’t know, Mom. He was the good, the bad, and the ugly, rolled into one.

  Maybe that’s who all of us are, only in different measures.

  I know I can’t get him out of my head, either, and writing a book about him didn’t change things completely, like I could put that all to rest. Just this week I met with producers from the Strand Theater in San Francisco, and they offered me the chance to “workshop” Dear Dad and help me to take it from the page to the stage. Crazily, I said yes. And I have this idea where at each performance we ask a few theatergoers to be part of the show by each reading one of the letters I wrote to him in that book. And in the lobby would be a display of the letters and all these photographs from Dad’s life and when he was a younger man and a trumpet player in Hoagy Carmichael’s band and things seemed a little brighter for him, or maybe not, given what his own childhood was like, and there would be a trumpet player playing me on and off stage and during crucial scenes, too. A trumpet blaring while I’m reading about being tortured by my father.

  If things go well, maybe that journey will end up taking me and Dad, and you and the rest of our family, to Broadway.

  I know this, Mom: when that book came out, I did a bunch of interviews promoting it, and one interviewer asked me, “Louie, would you trade all that happened then and since for a normal childhood?”

  And to that question, then and now, I always say . . .

  Yes.

  Simple: I’ve already had the unhappy childhood. Why not give the happy one a go?

  Sorry—though I don’t think I need to apologize,

  Louie

  Reunion

  Family gathering in Woodbury, Minnesota

  Hey Mom,

  I just returned from our Anderson Family Reunion! What a beautiful day!

  Jimmy and Janice set it up. We had it at Keller Park and because it rained most of the day, it was a good thing we were under one of the pavilions. It was a great setup. Jimmy had it catered, then everybody put in some money to help. Jimmy, my last remaining brother, has the perfect makeup for helping to pull this all together—a loving soul with a great work ethic. And—again—he’s your favorite, Mom.

  We had quite the turnout!

  It always makes me happy to see everyone. We had a photographer come and take pictures and then my friend took video of the whole thing so there’s an archive of it. I love that. Mom, you and Dad spawned more than half of the nearly one hundred in the family, though there were closer to eighty at the gathering. Starting with the next generation, by last count it was twenty-seven nieces and nephews, twenty-two great-nieces and great-nephews, ten great-great-nieces and great-great-nephews. It was so cool to see different versions of your face or Dad’s face in so many of the young people. Oh, God, he looks just like Mom when he laughs . . . Wow, she has the same gait that Kent does . . . That’s the spitting image of Sheila . . . He’s got the same complexion as Dad . . . that sort of thing. And all of them, or anyway all but those who married into the family, carry on the tradition of being good, bad, and indifferent Andersons, and always interesting Andersons. (And maybe some of those who married in, too.)

  I sometimes say I’m 20 percent Norwegian, 80 percent butter. That we’re from the Land O’Lakes tribe.

  But this is who I am, Mom. These are our people.

  You’d be really proud. Several of the kids are in college. One of your descendants is starting medical school. And so many others have turned out to be quite something. The sky’s the limit. Every generation seems to get healthier and better, and gatherings like these are really important so that we can all know each other, connect with each other, love each other.

  It was truly a wonderful day. Like I said, it rained for most of it but the skies cleared later and Jimmy renewed his vows with his sweetheart, Lela, whom he met in his seventies. Can you believe it, Mom? I was the best man. Jimmy’s son David married them—he got ordained just so he could do that. A really lovely exclamation point to a lovely event, and I’m so glad to see Jimmy so happy and Lela so happy and she’s been so good to the boys.

  You would be thrilled by it all, Mom—“proud as punch,” as Minnesota icon Hubert Humphrey used to say.

  And, Mom: one of the babies in the family is named Ora Zella!

  You did it! You’re still alive! So there’s a baby with your name, and a son who plays you every Tuesday night on FX.

  Mom, are you having a partial family reunion? Tell everyone we miss them and I hope that Dad has straightened out, and everybody is happy and loving and caring up there.

  I want to believe there are lots of good things to come. There was lots of hugging and kissing at our reunion, Mom.

  Lots of love,

  Louie, just one of many descendants of Ora Zella Anderson

  Season 3

  Hey Mom,

  The cast and director and writers all did a table read of Season 3 of Baskets at Zach’s house. It was a wonderful experience. We had pizza brought in for the gang. Me, I had lots of salad.

  A year ago it would have bothered me to not have any pizza. I would have been thinking about it the whole time we were reading each of the ten scripts. But it’s okay now. Writing all these letters to you has made me realize something: Life is finite. (Duh.) Time is valuable. (D
itto.) And so am I. I’m valuable. I’m starting to treat myself as if I’m valuable. I don’t get the potato chips. I go right for the celery, the carrot, the cucumber, the cauliflower—our favorite vegetable, Mom. Who doesn’t love cauliflower? I’m in a different frame. I love vegetables once I get going with them. I don’t graze. I don’t get the sloppy joe. I don’t get the doughnut—Mom, I’ve lost count of how many hundreds, maybe thousands, of doughnuts I’ve passed up from the Baskets Craft Services setup. (Though, for historical purposes, let me tell you that they had Cronuts the other day, and I know you would love a Cronut, a flaky doughnut that didn’t exist when you were alive but, thanks to breakthroughs in pastry research, brought together the croissant and the doughnut.)

  I am figuring out a way to heal, to “work the steps,” as we say in the program. I reach out to others for help when I need it.

  I’m back in Los Angeles for the next three months. I heard from the producer that they’ve made me a wig for Season 3 that cost nine thousand dollars. Can you believe it? Nine thousand dollars! (And it’s not like we’re a big-budget show.) Why so expensive? They hand-tie every single hair individually to a mesh shell that has thousands of tiny holes. Supposedly it will look more like my hair than my hair does. I can’t wait to see it. Christine is moving up in the world.

  I found this little apartment over in Studio City, in the Valley, because I know we’re going to be doing a lot of shooting in the Valley. You remember Studio City, Mom? I’m pretty sure you were there with me once. I should have taken you to a lot more places. I should have done a lot more nice things for you. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t a better son. But I’m trying not to play that song over and over.

  Love,

  Louie

  The Sorrow Sparrow

  Hey Mom,

  Am I a sorrow sponge?

  I leave myself wide open. I was heading out of town for a gig in Chicago and I saw a young woman at my airport gate who weighed well over three hundred pounds. She was short, too. And all I wanted to do was wrap my arms around her, just wanted to hold her because I knew how much pain she was probably in.