My usual morning routine was to wake up to the alarm and drag my alterna-girl Olive out of bed at 640 am, and get her ready for the bus. Turn on the kitchen TV. Then her sister Frankie would usually follow suit, as If she could smell the commotion. Frankie likes to yell at me for starting the day. I get an early morning gripe fest from this little blonde chicken. “why did you get out of bed?????” and I say “because I had to get your sister up” and she looks at me angry and indignant. Frankie doesn’t want to leave her nest in the mornings, as she is a cozy little bug. Olive sits there at the tiny kitchen island looking like central casting from some billie eilish video, agro and cool. I run around, the bus is coming, and the time melts like a Salvador Dali clock. I even had to show the girls a painting of his with the clocks falling over like liquid on the branches of trees in the famous artwork, so they could understand what visual and feeling was in my body every morning. then I get olive on the bus, and kiss her ands tell her I love her. Some mornings are easier than others. Some mornings are hell. Some smooth. Some just machine like routine. But wow do I miss them now. We are on spring break anyway, so the school thing hasn’t really hit yet, but as a parent, when they said schools are closed due to the virus, well, that is when I got really depressed.
I didn’t go to school myself. I am completely self taught. I would go to schools when I was a kid that were basically totally lenient about me being in and out because of filming. I started working when I was 11 months old. My first commercial was a Gainsburger puppy chow commercial. When my single mom who was a waitress saw another form of income rolling in, she put me to work! I have been paying rent since then. I guess I’m self made too? Either way, I love the life I had/ have, so I don’t have baggage about it. I had some serious pitfalls and mistakes and crazy and insane things happened, but since I wouldn’t trade it for anything, I will spare us all from the boo hoo. I can’t tell you how much I love not being held back by the shit that happened. It was another life. A life that made me who I am today. If it was different, I simply would not be who I am. I have made peace with all of it, and maybe that took time when was younger, but I am the type of person who doesn’t allow a ton of excuses or be held back by what my experience was. Make it your strength. Make it your super power. I can pay rent!!!! I have been able to since 1975! I didn’t go to school! But that may be my strength and I will explain why…
I was always in and out of schools, I did the required three hours a day of tutoring on film sets, and when the teachers I worked with would turn the work back into the burner schools my mom would register me in, I tended to get an F grade for anything I did well on. The schools did not trust that I really could name every capital in the world. I must have cheated. I didn’t! I loved remembering capitals. I had a strong memory, and I see that skill in my daughter Olive, and I was interested in the subject of capitals. I loved the names. Tallahassee! Who doesn’t want to say that out loud and proud! I remember getting a fail grade on that (20 years later I would land in Tallahassee, and give the finger up too the sky! True story!) Name every bone in the human body test, the patella and clavicle…FAIL. When I got constantly thwarted, it just made more rebellious. Ok I already have a huge rebel living inside of me. Seriously, it’s bad. The fires get stoked easily. I can often feel the waters rising inside at times, and no matter how optimistic I am, well, I also have this tiny spitfire that loves to just unleash! I literally go HULK and the clothes starts to shred on my body as the green giant starts to rip through the scenery, and boom! I am totally going off and trying to figure out why I am trying to take someone down for telling me something I don’t want to hear! When I find myself morphing into this form, I often wonder… is this because I didn’t go to school?
Not only did I not go to school, but then my mom threw me in an institution when I was thirteen. Too much disco not enough day care! I went basically off the rails. Look, I was paying the rent, going out to clubs, not going to school, hearing I was getting older and heavier by 9, and going through puberty wasn’t suiting me. I wasn’t getting hired anymore. I was a fixture on the 80’s party scene, and let’s just say obviously that was going to just explode at some point! And it did. It was then my mom hauled me in the middle of the night to a lock down facility in Van Nuys California at 13 years old. If you wanna talk rebellion? Well, try a full blown psych ward to fan the flames of my personal Hulk. I went from access to everything and anything, to getting locked in a room if I acted out! of course, did that teach me anything? No! Hell no! HELL NO!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would act out and that would get me locked up again for the day to cool out. For a long time it most certainly did not cool me out. it made me so much angrier. I would get all the other crazy girls to conspire to start riots with me. I thought how can they take 10 girls down? We would outnumber them. I would circle the wagons and convince everyone, especially the girls with good insurance, that we would be in here forever, so screw it! I was living in my own personal Wendy O’ Williams movie! Reform School Girls here we come! I would get them all riled up! I was like a coach revving up my team! “do these people give a shit about you?” they aloud scream back like a team in a locker room “NO!” I would rile them up by screaming “are we going to be forced to eat on trays forever?” NO! does anyone hate their insurance that keeps us in here? “NO!” “Do we want to be locked up forever?” “NO!” “Then LETS GO!!!!!!!!!!!” We would run through the halls and tear shit up until they basically took us all down one by one. Our own little personal storming of the psych ward beach, and then, we just got picked off one by one. I would see my friends get tackled in my periphery, and with each girl going down, I realized we were just not only outnumbered, the counselors were just bigger, and we didn't stand a chance. As they buckled me into stretcher restraints, I was secretly pleased that we ruined the staffs morning, sabotaging the schedule. For that alone I as pleased. No tray today bitch! Some days I would tell them to take the tray and shove it up their ass. They would look at me like, fight it all you want, but the rules are the rules (cue the Hulk) and to this day if I see buffet or a tray I get the serious yucks. By the way, my insurance was Screen Actors Guild, and it turns out that is very good insurance, and although I am so grateful now for it, when I was thirteen, I could have killed every member of the guild for keeping me in this place for a year and a half. So many of my fellow rioters would get out in 30, 60, or 90 days, but thanks to SAG insurance, I remained. My counselors would get that look in their eye of “don't worry, act out all you want, cuz you ain't goin nowhere!” and it was true. And I knew it. If I was never getting out, then why would I ever behave? Well after 6 months, I kinda just started to give in a little. I realized no one was coming to save me, and this was most certainly not a movie, but my harsh reality. I started to see the light. I saw that other kids that were the “good behaviors” would get to go on “store walks” which was to go with a counselor to the local convenient store and get goodies. When you got nothing that is something! The “good kids” would also get to go out on “day passes” which is where an adult could take them and they could spend the day on the outside. It turned out that no one was there to take me, so the very counselors I had been messing with all these months, started taking me out. Just like that, I softened.
When I saw the people I originally saw as the “warden” bad guys were actually kind and not the enemy, it changed me forever. Maybe first impressions would not be my only marker on anyone! Maybe my own stubborn attitude would have to make an adjustment, and I could see these people as friends and not just wanting to kill them? It was an aha moment for sure. Also, this was the parent and the lessons I clearly needed a crash corse in, and so with months of time, I became the old shoe in this crazy old place. To this day I laugh when i see places that flaunt a beach like setting for 30 days to fix you. Rehabs for the fabulous? This place was so not that, but I think this military like setting with severe consequences, and never ending insurance, saved me. Instead of fighting, I started to fall in line. When I saw new crazy kids filling in now, I woulds look at the counselors with a knowing eye. The same counselors I gave a hard time to, who were now my friends who I appreciated and respected! I had a new found calmness, like we all knew these rookies where in a for a rude awakening! Ha! I felt like a wise old hen now. A fixture. A vet! After one and half years, my counselors got me a date in court to get emancipated. Once again, they were helping me. They were a state owned facility, they had that power, and my mom willingly agreed that for me to live on my own would be for the best. Hey, I already knew how to pay rent?!
We went to court, and the judge allowed me to become a legal adult right then and there. He saw our case and felt it was better for me to live on my own as well. He also said that now being a legal adult, 18, by the state, I no longer had to attend school either. The hulk was pleased. Screw school and all the teachers who didn’t bother with me me. Good! PS see ya! Wouldn’t want to be ya.
After a few months, it didn’t matter that I was 14 and washed up. Blacklisted. Parentless. Living on my own with no clue of how to really take care of myself, other than paying rent. I was paralyzed with fear!!!!! I was absolutely terrified that naming capitals and bones in the body may just not be enough. I was street smart. I was human behavior smart. I was travel and film, music smart. I could disco and I could work my ass off, but what did I know in my brain ? I had never gone to school! What if I never got hired again as an actress? I spiraled big time. Then I asked the scariest question of all…what if I couldn’t pay the rent????????????????
I went straight to the bookstore, and went to the isles, and it was then and there that I fell in love. I think it was truly my first love too. the spines of the books were hypnotic. I was not just some 14 year old has been in Hollywood, I could now discuss a work of literature! So I asked myself what would I start with? My mind immediately got drawn into the classics. What makes a classic? Why is it such? I had recently read Catcher the rye when I was about to be freed from my cage in the institution, and it was certainly a book everyone could discuss. I loved with all my heart so then and there I started my journey. I bought something way less fun that JD Salinger, and quickly realized I didn’t know any of the words, so I then went a bought a dictionary. I had to read this novel literally with the dictionary, it felt like every other word. I was struggling. I would NOT GIVE UP. In my hulk like way, I would show all those teachers that I was actually doing the work and not lying about it like they thought. When I finished my book I felt like Rocky mounting Everest. Like I was in a cap and gown, still with my middle finger in the air, and screaming SUCK IT!!!!! I did it! I believe it was the greatest sense of accomplishment I had ever known at that point, which was strange considering all I had seen already in life, but who cares. I was going to be smart. I was going to teach myself, and literature was my salvation. I would go back the book store to over and over be to be smart. As in, thank you miss may I have another with a dash of catholic reform school gratitude.
So I did that for the next 20 years. I also started acting again , I created my own production company. Found and met my partner Nancy at 19, and we hit the books together. We started our company Flower Films. and we started kind of like a school. We read everything, swore we would not party with the pretty people, and would become friends with literary agents ands writers. Nothing exists until it’s written. To this day, writing is the most sacred thing to me. Reading is my heaven. I often hope that if I don't go straight to hell, that my heaven would be a comfortable chair and a large room of books. I could just sit there for eternity and read.
Now as I write this my children are going crazy. I don’t even know how i was able to write this much.
But before I am ripped back into my reality of no school, or structure for the time being, a space we are all stuck in together, (I still always think of together as being spelled TO GET HER, a way I was able to self teach that spelling) together we are all in this boat. This all leads me back to why I got depressed when the schools closed, as if somehow not only was that the temporary, it ran deep for me. My daughters school is an institution that has shown me that we do not have to do to our kids what happened to ourselves.
When I first went to the school my daughter was in, I was in awe. It was the same school that their dad had gone too and Aunty Jill, so it was a nice tradition. I loved it. I am ending five years there this year, and both my girls have gone there, three years each with a one year crossover. it is my safe space. it is wholesome. it is joy. and they helped me and guided me when I started looking for schools for Olive, it was like the exploration of my life!!!! MY KIDS WERE GOING TO GO TO SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!! I looked and looked. I was like goldilocks. This school felt a little fancy. This school felt a little progressive. This school felt too arty. And then… I found it.
The school is single sex, an asset I couldn’t believe I would be into? Hulk into tradition? Ok that was surprising. It has uniforms. I love it! They could scrape all that bullshit out of their mind of what to wear. This would not only be the great space saver for bigger and better things, it was the great equalizer. It went all the way through til 12th grade. Good! I wanted olive to see the older girls in the hall so she could see where she was going rather than just looking at only kids her age. Also the accountability of “make it work” because you are here for the long run was so awesome to me! She can’t trash this place and leave it in her wake. She would know this was hers to own and see through! But it was the brand of girl power at this institution that I loved. It was a School that touts the saying “BRAVE NOT PERFECT”. Yes. Hell yes. That is something I can get behind. The girls are into sports and academics and some have uni brows and it is more about being a truly capable girl. It is everything I wanted, not for myself but for her. This isn’t about me, it is Olive’s journey. But I’m not going to lie, I see the Hulk in her too. She is rebellious and yet sensible. She also like to hair dye pin and blue. I look with wide eyes as my daughter presents herself not far from things that look way too familiar, even though her life could not be more different than my own upbringing!!!! She is who she is.
No mater how hard I tried to do everything different, she is still her. Her life is still so different than mime ever was. It”s a consistent life. Bedtimes -bath -meals schools -friends -medical. She gets to be a kid. She has a very structured life, and it does not include studio 54. I love that her school is one that you cannot mess around. It’s a serious school with strict rules ands guidelines. I am proud to co parent with them, and I hold olive truly accountable with it. I explain that this school is something we have to make work. That there is no option. If I see her truly suffering I will make an adjustment of course. But she is thriving there. She is a bull and this school points her horns in the right direction. It is a way for both of us to play by the rules. I never had rules, and it’s probably why I hate them. I have even started to feel the Hulk coming on in a few parent teacher meetings and had to leave feeling terrible because I realized I probably acted less mature than the students themselves. Hey! I’m learning too! Sometimes I think they expect too much from everyone. Sometimes I want to tell them that all of this is not life or death. Sometimes, they just stoke the fires of my rebellion straight up! Then I realize that this school is one of the best assets I have going in my parenting arsenal, and I need to make it work. I want to graduate here as well. a proud mom who’s kids are not going down the paths I had to. Again, this is not about me, but I’m sure as hell going to give them the best shot I can.
So I got very depressed when the schools closed. I get it. It’s the right thing I know it. Then they said I would have to run the online schooling?????? whhhhhhaaaaaaaaaat? I’m the one who pays the rent! I’m not a TEACHER!!!!!!! BUT HERE WE ALL ARE! and this is so difficult fro so many families for completely different reasons. I was an ambassador to the UN school feeding division, I worked in Africa for many years and I have seen first hand how schools feed children. This is all so devastating. And although I want to see change come out of this time, I want school to reopen for so many people fro so many reasons. this is just so hard on so many families. I cannot tell you the tremendous empathy I have for everyone in this boat. I come from such an unorthodox background and childhood and this is a surprise to me that school is as important as it is. I have seen with my own eyes all over the world why school is so important. Education, meals and the structure is invaluable.
I know this is not permanent. I know that this is a scary time where we are forced to look at the alternative of everything. but I can only hope that kids are able to go back to schools soon. The amazing thing is, this will bring more attention to on line learning. I got mine from a dictionary and every book I could get my hands on. I’m actually a small tiny member of the new library being built at my kids school. I want to put books into kids hands regardless. Books are the thing that gave me my education. I am self taught. But wow did I grow up to love school. I await the day we get to go back. Learn. Rebel. And thrive.
Lock me inside! Don’t worry, I cant take it. Being locked up???? No problem, I got this! But school?! Oh how I miss that community! Can’t wait for back to school! And I am proud to finally be in a life, a chapter like a book, I’m here! And I love school!!!!!!
