The Beginning of Everything
Chapter 13
When Your Healer Jumps the Shark
Acknowledgments
About the Author
A New York magazine cover story in the summer of 2018, simply entitled 2008, examined what’s happened in the United States since the financial crisis, including a glossary of terms that have emerged as a result of the Great Recession. Along with One Percent, the Sharing and Gig Economies, Millennials, Occupy, and Survivalism, the term Wellness went mainstream.
The World Health Organization defines wellness as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being.” According to the Global Wellness Institute’s website and various studies they have conducted, the global wellness industry was a $4.2 trillion market in 2018, up from $1.9 trillion in 2010.
While I was on my decade-long Zen Bender, I made a generous contribution to this sector.
When I look back at my childhood, I feel nothing but profound happiness and gratitude. My upbringing was simple and uncomplicated, but pleasant and warm, thanks to my parents.
My mom, Julia, was born to be a mom. My dad, Don, is a man of few words, but they are usually potent ones, with lessons buried within. Both have always been incredibly supportive.
When I told my dad at a young age that I was going to be an actress, something that many parents might find objectionable, he simply said, “First learn to waitress.”
My dad was outnumbered. He (mostly) patiently put up with three yappy, opinionated, and strong-headed girls—Jackie (older), Jennifer (younger), and me in the middle. He carefully navigated our all-female household. Briefly, my dad had another guy in the house, my male tiger fish, Otto (I assumed he was male, not sure why). Otto was the only pet I ever had.
Rarely did my mom or dad interject in the bickering of the three of us. We were left alone to settle disputes on our own, probably in an effort to teach us to get along with other people later in life. While we didn’t fight a lot, there were all-out wars over what we were watching on the television in our brown-wood-paneled rec room with wall-to-wall teal rug and textured plaster ceiling. Skilled at TV warfare, we would pull the knob off the wood-encased television set to prevent anyone else from changing the channel (long before TV’s had remote control), thus preserving our viewing choice for as long as we wanted.
Jackie loved Little House on the Prairie reruns. I remember, vividly, walking in as she sat two feet away from the TV set, sobbing over Laura Ingalls Wilder and family. Jennifer loved The Love Boat, and the soap opera Santa Barbara—the latter so much that she viewed the Capwells, the Lockridges, and the Castillos basically as family. I couldn’t get enough of Wonder Woman and The Bionic Woman.
Eventually, of course, that knob used for changing the channel got lost, probably slipped down the side of the textured green-and-blue-striped couch. My father replaced it with a set of pliers that he set on top of the TV, but that required some seriously fine motor skills to hook onto the internal prong inside the broken channel-changing mechanism. He urged us not to lose them. We did not—they were too critical to our lives—but those pliers, in a pinch, doubled as a weapon when hurled across the room. Nobody lost an eye.
In the summers, we went on big camping vacations. To me, it always felt high-end, even though it was not. Even when camping, the lessons and skill-building continued. One in particular was in confidence, and lumberjacking, I suppose. My dad, much to my mother’s horror, during a summer trip to Western Canada, handed me an axe at age eight, and offered me a few bucks to chop a big log in half. I did.
Later, with the cash stuffed into my blue and red patent-leather snap wallet, I stopped to fold T-shirts at the local tourist shop in Banff. Don’t ask me why—I just did. Satisfied with my impromptu clean-up, I left the store, and my wallet and my cash behind. We all quickly ran back in; the wallet was there, but the money was gone. I was never big on folding laundry after that.
Every family has its own brand of humor, which might at times seem totally off the mark to other people. Ours was no different. When my sisters and I reminisce about the crazy things my dad used to say to us growing up, we always have a good laugh. We used to laugh when he said them back then, too.
When we were kids and we finished eating dinner, if we asked, “What’s for dessert?” my dad would say, “Close your eyes.”
We would.
“What do you see?” he would ask.
“Nothing,” we would say, eyes closed.
“That’s what’s for dessert.”
We eventually got savvy.
He taught me, in his own ultra-direct way, to “use my head” and think through a problem or a task. If I did something ultra-stupid, which I did from time to time, he would tell me with a chuckle, “For a smart girl, you’re pretty dumb.” (Prime example of us thinking something was funny while other people might think “Uh, child abuse.”)
And there was his very unique way of teaching me the value of a dollar. Once, when I spent fifty dollars on a Ralph Lauren button-down denim shirt (which was on sale, half price, okay?), he told me I had “more money than brains.” That sentiment has proven correct many times over.
Despite ours being an ordinary middle-class upbringing (my dad was a high school teacher and my mom a secretary), I didn’t feel like I missed out on anything, not a toy or an outfit or an experience. I begged them to name my younger sister Ronald McDonald; that appeal was foolishly denied. But there was a Lite-Brite under the tree the year that it was the hot Christmas item, and a Cabbage Patch Kids doll named Ivy Marlene for me when they were all the rage (and people were fighting over them in the toy store). Everything was wrapped by my mother, so meticulously and perfectly; I have to this day never seen such professional wrapping skills.
One of my most vivid memories of sheer joy was when I was four or five and my dad drove up, home from work, and pulled a red, used, rusty bike from the back of the cream-colored VW camper. I watched as he walked it to me. It was mine. He had brought it home for me. My heart swelled with pride because he had gotten me something all my own, not for my birthday or Christmas, and not something that had once belonged to my older sister.
Of all the things I learned growing up, the one that started to ring in my ears later in life, was, perhaps, an early lesson in gratitude, not that I saw it as such then. Once, I desperately wanted a toy called a Lemon Twist. It was a black plastic cord that you attached to one leg, then whipped it around in a circle, repeatedly jumping over it with the other leg, while the lemon on the end swirled. I begged for it and eventually got it, but I remember my dad’s initial response to my request.
“Why can’t you just be happy you have two arms and two legs?”
Good question.
