All My Life (13 page)
My mother phoned me one day at the studio to say that she thought Liza was on the verge of taking her first steps. This was a monumental occurrence I didn’t want to miss. I had seen the signs that she was getting close, so I held my breath and hoped that she would be able to wait until I got home before taking that first leap. Lucky for me, my mother held her off. Not only did she wait for me, she waited for her father, too. Later that night, we both had the absolute pleasure of watching our daughter take her very first steps.
Liza was quite a verbal child. She is extremely smart and was speaking in full sentences before she was two years old. She could also count to twenty in both English and German, which I thought was amazing. She was very creative, even then, and like me, she loved to put on performances. She and her best friend, Katie Howe, a little redhead born on the Fourth of July who lived down the street, would play with my hats, clothes, costume jewelry, and shoes. They’d put on fashion shows, jump on the furniture, and do all of the wonderful things my mother encouraged me to do at her age.
When Liza was just a little girl, she came twirling into my room one day. “When I grow up, I am going to be an ice-skater. Since you’re an actress, we can visit each other in our dressing rooms and we can share costumes.” I thought that was adorable. When she first began taking skating lessons, she was really good and she really liked it. She took her music with her everywhere we went so she could always practice her choreography routines. I even brought Liza to the set of All My Children with me when we were shooting ice-skating scenes. Erica was skating in Rockefeller Center as part of a “photo shoot” for some modeling job she had.
Erica Kane got to do something that I never had a real shot at doing myself professionally—she became a fabulously successful fashion model. I knew from the start that her foray into this field was going to be the only chance I’d ever get to do this type of work, which proved to be very glamorous and fun. Although I was approached to be a “head” model when I first started acting in New York, I turned it down. I’m only five foot two on a good day, even standing up tall, so that certainly prevented me from walking the runway, but it never stopped Erica from doing it (because she is five foot eight!). I accepted that modeling was never really in the cards for me, but I loved wearing all of Erica’s glamorous costumes while shooting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, twirling around the fountain at Lincoln Center, where I posed on a cold marble slab outdoors in the middle of December in nothing more than a chiffon strapless dress, standing precariously on top of the fountain at the Plaza hotel, and cruising on a Statue of Liberty–bound ferry, which I almost blew off of when the director told me to get closer to the rail!
The Met shoot was supposed to be a very high-fashion editorial piece for Erica’s magazine. I wore gorgeous hair extensions and Asian fan headpieces. For me, playing a high-fashion model for a full editorial layout was really fun. It was at the Plaza shoot that I discovered that sometimes you have to suffer for the sake of art. The crew were all dressed in down parkas as the temperatures hovered somewhere around thirty degrees before a steady wind kicked in, and I, of course, was dressed in a little spaghetti-strap dress. There were men selling roasted chestnuts on the street and I was frolicking in my skimpy day wear. Let me tell you, it’s really hard to be glamorous in the cold! That was some of my best acting.
It was wonderful to have Liza there on the ice with me, skating around as I shot my scenes, but it was such a cold day that I worried she might get frostbite. The director asked everyone to stay on the ice to do another take, although one of the producers came over to me and said it would be okay if Liza wanted to go inside. When I told her she didn’t have to stay with me in the cold, she turned to me and said, “No, Mommy. The pernouncer said we have to stay on the ice.” And that just about sums up my daughter, who is and always has been so independent, capable, and strong. She was such a trouper and always has been.
It felt like it was just a blink of an eye between then and the day I found myself driving Liza to college in 1993. She was attending the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Liza and I are as close as mother and daughter can be. I was very sad that she was going to be living so far away. Helmut and I drove her from our home in New York so we could help her get settled. As we were leaving, Liza stood in front of her dormitory waving good-bye to us. There was my darling girl, so smart yet vulnerable at the same time, getting ready to start the next phase of her life. I continued to look at her as we drove away until her image faded in the distance.
It broke our hearts when we had to return home without her. Helmut and I both felt like we were in mourning. I knew at that moment that I needed to stop and see my best friend and the godparents to both of my children, Patty, and her husband, David. Thankfully they live in Washington, D.C., which was on our way home. I called from the road to say we were coming. When Patty opened the door, I fell into her arms and broke down into tears. I don’t remember her walking me to the sofa, but I sat there and cried for hours.
Patty’s daughters Emily and Katie are a little younger than Liza, and they are my “fairy God-daughters.” When they saw me so distraught, they turned to their mother and said, “We will never go away to college, Mommy. We will go to school right here in Washington.” Those girls, Emily and Katie, made me smile as they distracted me from my otherwise broken heart.
I often imagined what Liza was going to be when she grew up. I knew from an early age that she had loads of talent. I thought she might become a dancer or choreographer because she was a natural and that’s how she played. She was always putting together shows for her friends to be in. She was especially unique for her age because she had the ability to see the larger view of things, even when she was as young as eight years old. She would see more than the dance, the word on the page, the lyrics to a song, or the music that was playing around her. She instinctively got the big picture. That is the trait of a born director. She enjoyed every part of the process of performing, so I knew she’d want to do something related to it. I had no idea what it would end up being, though.
When she was eleven years old, she began to show a strong interest in acting. She had a wonderful drama teacher at her school who agreed that Liza had something special.
Liza set her sights on auditioning for her school production of Annie, which is not an easy musical to do because the lead character, Little Orphan Annie, sings throughout the show and the music isn’t easy. Liza hadn’t done anything like that before. The audition process lasted for nearly a month. She practiced every day on our sunporch, teaching herself the songs from the show so she would be ready.
Liza’s teacher was very smart in guiding her throughout the process. She didn’t want there to be any prejudice for or against Liza because she was the daughter of an actress. She had each little girl put on a red wig and anonymously sing to the people who were casting the part. Liza did a great job and had tremendous natural instincts. She had rehearsed standing on a platform, pretending it was the stage. When it came time for her audition, there was no platform present. But she instinctively knew where to stand without missing a beat. We were absolutely thrilled when she was selected to play Annie.
I sat in on her rehearsals whenever I could. I wore dark glasses so she wouldn’t see me tearing up. One day she finally said to me, “Mom, even though you are wearing those glasses, I can see the tears!” I was so filled with joy and appreciation for her talent. It was heartwarming to watch my daughter blossom into a fine actress.
She subsequently did many plays in community theater and at her school. She ended up studying communications in college, where she continued to learn about acting on both sides of the camera, and about writing, too. My interest has always, and only, been in performing. Even when I was forced to direct at Marymount, I had to exercise every ounce of self-control within me to focus on the entire creative process and not the acting. I enjoyed it, but not nearly as much as I did performing. But Liza was spreading her wings much wider than I ever did so she could test the waters to see where she wanted to swim.
Liza made her official television debut in the 1995 Lifetime original movie I starred in called Ebbie. The movie was a loose remake of Scrooge, where I played a woman who, like the original Ebenezer, didn’t have an appreciation for Christmas or the holiday season. Liza also appeared with me in a Ford car commercial. It was about that time that Liza made it clear she had been bitten by the acting bug. In 1999, she was cast as Gwen Hotchkiss on a new daytime soap called Passions. In 2000, Liza was asked to be Miss Golden Globe, an honor the Golden Globes gives each year to the daughter of a celebrity. This is an honor that is usually extended to second-or third-generation actresses, and usually to someone who is from the Hollywood film community. We were completely shocked and delighted that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association decided my daughter would receive this title, because my career had only been New York–based. I was so proud that she was asked and extremely proud of how she conducted herself throughout that show and in everyday life. Liza chose her own gown for the awards ceremony, a pale green halter dress, and she looked like a tall, blond Greek goddess. She wore her hair pulled back and looked absolutely gorgeous. Liza’s job was to escort everyone who came on and off the stage. She walked with dignity and grace as she showed tremendous warmth to each person she came into contact with that night.
Five years after giving birth to my daughter, I became pregnant once again. My due date was February 29, 1980. Yes, it was a leap year. Recalling how difficult it was for me to deliver Liza naturally, my doctors suggested that I have a planned C-section for this delivery, which they thought would be less traumatic for both my baby and me. They gave me the choice of delivering on February 28, February 29, or March 1. Helmut and I discussed the options and decided to wait until the date got closer so we could be certain that the baby’s lungs were fully developed and that there would be less chance of complications. I wanted the baby sooner rather than later, but like my pregnancy with Liza, I didn’t want to know if I was having a boy or a girl. I wanted the element of surprise. When the baby was tested, its lungs were healthy and strong, so on February 28, 1980, I went into the hospital to give birth to my second child, a bouncing baby boy we named Andreas.
Initially, everything seemed fine. He was a little sleepier than Liza had been, but other than that, he was perfect. Thirty-six hours after Andreas was born, the nurses came to me and said, “Mrs. Huber. Do not be alarmed, but we will not be bringing the baby in to see you this evening.”
Needless to say, I was alarmed. Every warning bell in my body went off. The nurses explained to me that Andreas was being held in the “A” nursery just down the hall and I could go see him if I wanted to. Thankfully, I was recovering more quickly from my delivery than expected, so I was able to get out of bed and make the walk there with an IV on wheels. I ran—no, I flew—down the hallway so I could look through the window and see my son. When I arrived at the nursery, there were several doctors standing over Andreas, examining his tiny little body. I asked one of the nurses what they were doing. She explained that when my son had been in the main nursery, one of the other nurses noticed that he was turning blue around his mouth while drinking the supplementary water they often give to newborns. It’s not uncommon for babies to have an uneven complexion, but this particular nurse saw something more, as if something was wrong. I am eternally grateful to her for her astute observations, as she literally ended up saving my son’s life.
The doctors on duty weren’t sure what was causing the discoloration, so they ran every test they could to help provide an answer.
“We want to do a spinal tap on Andreas,” they said. These were not the words I had been hoping to hear.
I looked around, trying to make a decision about what to do when I noticed Dr. Greensher standing in the main nursery. He was the pediatrician I used to take Liza to before he left his practice to become the head of pediatrics at the hospital. I went into that nursery to ask him if he would look at my baby and what he thought I should do. We didn’t know what was wrong with my son and I didn’t know the doctors who were treating him, so I asked if he would consider taking a look at Andreas. Dr. Greensher immediately agreed. When he came out of the nursery, he said he thought Andreas should have the spinal tap. I wasn’t allowed in the room while the doctors did the procedure, but I am sure it wasn’t a pleasant experience for my little boy. I was assured he wouldn’t feel a thing, but I knew that the staff was just trying to comfort me in any way that they could.
When they finished, they put Andreas in something that resembled a space capsule so they could take pictures of his heart from every angle. From there, Andreas was placed in an oxygen tent called an isolette and kept in intensive care until we could get some conclusive answers. I was told it could take as long as three weeks to get the viral culture results. As you can imagine, that was an eternity to have to wait.
When my daughter was born, everything was picture-perfect. We spent a couple of routine days in the hospital and then took her home. I had no idea that just down the hall from the blissful nursery where she rested there existed a whole different world for parents of children with complications. I didn’t know anything about this other side of childbirth until Andreas was born.
The hospital staff was exceptionally caring and understanding. Parents were allowed to visit their babies anytime of the day or night. I was required to scrub like a surgeon, put on a surgical mask, and wear a gown over my clothes before entering the unit. I also wore special gloves so I could reach through the tiny porthole in the isolette Andreas was in. I wanted him to feel my touch. Every time I reached through the hole, he grabbed on to my finger and held it tight. I talked to him for hours at a time so he would know I was there. It was awful to see my baby with wires attached to his tiny little body. I ached with worry that his first impression of this world was of plastic and metal.
