Life Is Not a Reality Show (14 page)

Oh right—time-crunched. Here I’ve been telling you all about The Tao of Child-Rearing According to Kyle, but I haven’t yet answered the original question! Ha-ha! The juggling question—how to do it all?

Well, lately it’s been pretty hard for me to juggle, I confess. The way it goes around our house is this: I try to get up early in the morning so I can have time for some coffee and the newspaper. But as soon as I hear, “Mom!” I know one of my kids is awake, and I think,
No, no, not yet!
Because once they’re up, that’s it for me for the rest of the day. If I jump into the shower, then one of the kids usually jumps in there with me, and … it goes from there. Sophia and Alexia used to, and now Portia likes to. We had an open shower at our old house, with no doors, so whenever I was in there, people would just wander in and start talking to me. The dogs would be in there too, staring at me. I was like, “Oh my God, can’t I shower alone for five minutes?”

And now that I’m doing
Real Housewives
, things are
really
ridiculous. It seems like we’re filming all the time. I miss the days of just taking my kids to school and picking up odds and ends at the store and going to yoga. God that would be so relaxing! You don’t know how much I love going to Target, but I hadn’t done it in so long that last week I was determined to. So I spent the day there with Portia and my niece Brooke, Kim’s daughter. We got the big carts and shopped. We ate lunch there, and a couple of people looked at us, like, “Is
that
the girl from
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
?” Ha-ha! I was so excited to be there that I didn’t want to leave! It was the best day. It reminded me of when I used to go to K-Mart, and they had the machine air-popping the popcorn and the Icees. I don’t know why I loved that so much, but I did. I guess Target reminds me of when I was a little girl.

But there’s just not much time for that these days.

Part of my problem is that I need to learn to delegate more. I think some moms are better at that, and I’m trying to learn from them. So my advice is to delegate, and do as I say, not as I do! I mean, some things your husband can do, right? Or even your kids. And some things are worth paying someone else to do, like hemming your kids’ clothes (if you’re as bad at that as I am, at least).

I found a dry cleaner that will pick up and deliver, and I made sure they weren’t too expensive. Same thing with the dog groomer. You do have to do your research, though, because some businesses will charge way too much for that convenience. Basically that means getting on the phone or online and comparing prices. You have to find the affordable ones.

Perhaps most important in managing my time is the ability to create boundaries between my work and personal life and stick to them. It isn’t always easy, particularly because
Real Housewives
is all about putting your personal life on camera. But sometimes I let it go too far, and I think this is a common issue for all women, especially mothers: you just take too much on, and you hate to say no, but you have to.

I went through a very upsetting experience not long ago that illustrates this perfectly.

First, a little background: I believe you can look at certain things as a coincidence or a miracle—like after you’ve lost both parents, and you see things and wonder, is that a sign? Okay, I know people are going to think I’m a nut job here, but after my mom died, I went to a psychic and she told me that my mom was always around us, but she would come to us as a hummingbird or we would see white feathers when she is around. I’ll get to the hummingbirds later on. But the white feather plays a part in this story.

This was one of my very worst moments as a mom. Nothing like it had ever happened before, and it made me feel like such a bad mother. And I pretty much see my entire purpose in life as being a good mother.

One day, while the
Real Housewives
crew was at the house, there were deliveries of furniture and flowers and food, and we had recently moved into our new house, so a chandelier was being installed that day. Then a light fixture broke and had to be fixed and there were literally about thirty-five people in the house coming in and out all day. It was complete mayhem.

The phone rang. It was Sophia calling from school. She said, “Hi, Mom, it’s okay, you don’t have to come to school because I already got the award.”

Oh my God. Oh my God
. I’m going to start crying all over again just thinking about it. Sophia received an award they give all the kids at one time or another; it’s for being a good person. The parents are supposed to go to school in the morning to see their child receive it. I started sobbing. I couldn’t breathe. I had to call Mauricio because I’d forgotten to tell him too. The dates had been switched, and there was so much going on with the show that I was simply overwhelmed.

I was just doing too much.

I cried my eyes out and for a minute I thought,
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do the show anymore
. I had never before missed any of the kids’ games or awards or anything.

So I ran out and left everyone at the house and bought Sophia some flowers, picked up her favorite food, and drove straight to her school. I pulled her teacher out and started crying again. I couldn’t stop. I said, “You’ve only known me since I’ve been working on this show. I’ve never had this happen. Oh my God. What do I do?”

She said, “Oh, honey, Sophia knows how much you love her.”

I told her, “I need to take her out early and be with her. Is that okay?”

I took Sophia out of school early and said, “We’re going to have a picnic.” Again with the tears.

She said, “Mom, why are you crying?”

“I feel so bad. I’m sorry. I made a mistake.” I just held her and she started crying too.

She said, “Mom, you don’t have to cry.” And then she bent down. There was a huge white feather at her feet, and she picked it up. I’m starting to cry right now just telling it. I thought,
That’s my mom letting me know that even though I missed it, she was there.
She was there for Sophia. I believe that with all my heart. The feather is taped to Sophia’s vanity now.

All right, I’ve got to collect myself before I go on.

The thing is, I was just doing too much. When I missed Sophia’s award, I said,
Slow down, Kyle. You have to slow down!
I can be forgetful sometimes—that’s why I have a million alarms every day on my Blackberry. But that was an all-time low for me.

So I’ve been trying to draw my boundaries and say no when I need to. I was supposed to go to Las Vegas to shoot
Housewives
on a weekend after I’d spent part of the week away in New York and part of it in Chicago giving a speech to the United Jewish Federation. But I said, “No, I just can’t do it. I’ve been away from my children too long. I can’t do it!” I broke down.

I caused them some inconvenience because the crew was already there, which I hate to do, but in the end they understood. They told me, “The crew is packing up. You need to be with your kids.”

As mothers, I think we have to learn to say no. We want to do everything for everyone; we don’t want to let anyone down. But you have to know when it’s time to get rid of the unnecessary stuff and concentrate on what really matters: your family. And your sanity!

I guess part of the answer to how I juggle it all is that I enjoy it. I’m hardly ever alone. The other day the older kids were off somewhere and Mauricio had gone out for a few minutes with Portia and all of a sudden I realized:
oh my God—I’m alone!
That never happens. Everything was quiet. It was just me, myself, and I. I would be lying if I didn’t say it was quite the relaxing moment.

But I’m most happy when the house is full of kids and their noise, and I’m being their mom.

My mother always taught my sisters and me that whenever one of us accomplished something it was a feather in all our caps. We’ve grown up thinking that one sister’s achievement reflected well on all of us. We want the best for each other and we celebrate each other.

No one knows you like a sister does. You can’t love anyone quite like you can a sister, or
fight
with anyone like you can a sister. The sister bond has always fascinated me; it almost can’t be explained. I see it in my own daughters.

Kim and Kathy and I cry laughing at some of our memories from growing up, and we have so many inside jokes and expressions that sometimes people don’t know what we’re talking about. They think we’re talking gibberish. For example, when we want to alert each other that the paparazzi have shown up, we say, “Cameron is here!” We still get together all the time for family gatherings, and we sing, “We Are Family”—you know, the Pointer Sisters’ song? “We are family! I got all my sisters with me!” It’s our tradition.

I really am a frustrated singer. When I was about five, I remember getting up on the pool table and performing for my sisters. I sang that Donna Summer song, “Love to Love You Baby.” I had no idea what I was doing or that the song was really about sex. I was just imitating the way it sounded, so I was going, “Ohhh, mmm, ohhh,” and making the same kind of sounds Donna Summer does on that record, really low and moaning.
Oh my God! I was five
. My sisters just laughed and laughed. Ha-ha!

The way you have fun and laugh with a sister is just the best. But the way you can cry with a sister can be almost life-saving. At the most difficult times in my life, I’ve leaned on my sisters for support. Thank God for them. After my mother passed away, I don’t know what I would have done without Kim and Kathy. And when Farrah went off to college, I was so devastated that I would just call them up and cry and cry. “I just can’t take it!” I’d say, but they’d talk me through it. We all lean on each other for support. Any time one of us has a problem, we don’t keep it private. Everyone knows what’s going on. We have a family meeting and pull together and look after each other.

The three of us used to have so much fun together when we were kids. As I mentioned before, Kathy was born ten years before me and Kim five years after that. We’re all cut from the same cloth but have our own individual personalities. I was strong but sensitive, and quite emotional. I liked to joke around, but I worried a lot and was always responsible.

You know, I was born and raised here, and I stayed in the same community to raise my family, so I have some routines that I’m very attached to. I’ve been going to some places all my life with my family. First with my mom and sisters and now with my husband and kids and sometimes my sisters’ families too. Two of them are very close to my heart.

I’ve been coming to brunch here for as long as I can remember. There’s something so wonderful about walking into the lobby of this big pink hotel on Sunset Boulevard with all the chandeliers. It reminds me of my childhood. And I just love seeing the people I know at brunch, because everyone in town goes for brunch. It’s the best.

The first time I went to this restaurant I wasn’t even born. It’s true. My sisters and my mom used to go there when she was pregnant with me, and we kept on going after I was born. We never stopped. We used to joke about it; we were at La Scala so much we called it “the office”! We still go there all the time. I love it.

Kathy was always very funny, a prankster and practical joker. She still is. When I was born she of course loved to carry me around like a doll but when she was fifteen, who could be bothered with their five-year-old sister?

Kim was a child actor (she was on the TV series
Nanny and the Professor
and did other TV shows and movies) and didn’t have a lot of opportunity to make friends; as the middle child she was always eager to please. When my mom went out, Kim would vacuum and clean the whole house and then write a note, “Mommy, I was in bed at 10:01, I’m sorry. I know you said 10:00.”

Kim was also really good at saving her money, and she used to stash it in secret places in her bedroom. Kathy knew I knew where it was and she liked to steal it, so she would ask me, “Where does Kim keep her money?” I’d tell her and then get a commission! Ha-ha!

We tell the story all the time about how Kathy, being the oldest and the ringleader, used to play pretend store. My mom kept all the crystal she collected in the living room, and we weren’t even allowed to walk into that room except for on Thanksgiving and Christmas! But Kathy would go into the living room and take the Lalique and the Baccarat and bring them to her bedroom and announce, “The sale starts in ten minutes!” Kim and I would come running, so excited to shop! Kathy was such a good saleswoman. Kim would want a piece and Kathy would say, “No, I’m sorry, I’m not selling this, it’s an heirloom!” That made Kim want it more and it would go on like that until Kim was begging to buy it, and Kathy would finally relent—at a higher price, of course. Then we would take our newly purchased “goods” back to our room.

There are so many things I don’t know about my family, and now that both my parents are gone, I really wish I had asked them more questions. Hopefully my sisters will remember some details, but a lot of it is probably lost forever.

When we were little we found many of the things my parents used to talk about boring and ridiculous. Like, who cares about Aunt So-and-So and her big boobs? My mom told me once, “Your aunt has triple-D boobs. You never know, yours could end up that big.” I thought,
Why are you telling me that? You’re making me sick! I don’t want boobs that big!