lenient than my dad. Nevertheless, those beds were made. I wasn’t looking for perfection, like in the military. But I didn’t want the kids to think that someone else was going to pick up after them. The epic struggle, though, was teaching the kids to turn off the lights when they left a room or went to sleep. It was me against the entire Maria clan, because the kids inherited keeping the lights on from her. When we first got together, she never went to sleep without the lights on. It made her feel secure. Then when we’d visit Washington or Hyannis Port, and I’d arrive late and they would all be asleep, I would walk into a house with the door unlocked and all the lights on. I could never understand it. It was the wildest thing. The next day the excuse would be, “Oh, we knew you were coming in late and wanted you to feel welcome, so we left the lights on.” But even if I was already there, and I went downstairs in the middle of the night, the lights would be on. Everywhere it was like Times Square. I’d explain to my kids, we have a shortage of energy, and there is only so much water in this state. You can’t stand under the shower for fifteen minutes. Five minutes is the limit. I’ll time it from now on. And be sure to turn off lights because when you’re not in the room, you don’t need them anymore.
To this day, my daughters won’t go to sleep without the hallway light on. I finally had to get used to the fact that they feel more comfortable that way. As for leaving the lights on when they’re not in a room, my father would have solved that with a smack, but we don’t hit our kids. When communication fails, our method is to take away privileges: canceling a playdate or a sleepover, grounding, not letting them use their car. But punishments like that seemed over the top for the light-switch problem. One of the boys was the worst offender, so I finally unscrewed one bulb in his room each time I found the lights left on. I pointed out that there were twelve bulbs in his room, and if he kept it up, soon he’d be in the dark. And that is what happened. Eventually my crusade was effective. Now when we’re home, I only have to turn off the lights after the kids maybe two days a week.
Among the joys that kids bring are the holidays that have been mostly missing from your life since your own childhood. Holidays become much more meaningful when you have a family, because now you see them in two ways. I remembered Christmas vividly from when I was a kid: my mother and father lighting the candles on the tree with the toys underneath, holding hands, singing “Heil’ge Nacht,” and my father playing the trumpet. Now I also saw Christmas through a parent’s eye.
I considered myself a tree-decorating expert. It was in my blood. In Austria, my father and the other men from the village would go out into the forest three days before Christmas and bring back trees. Kids were not supposed to know about it because the tree officially came from Christkindl: a female angel like the Christ child who was the Austrian version of Santa Claus. One time my brother mistakenly blurted out, “I saw Dad leaving with an axe,” and my father went nuts because my mother had not kept us away from the window. But normally it was the most fun thing. They decorated our tree with all kinds of candies, wrappings, and ornaments, so that the branches would droop down, with the presents underneath. The tree was always so tall that the highest ornament touched the ceiling. There were real candles mounted with clips on the outer branches, which meant that you could light the tree only for a few minutes each time.
At six o’clock on Christmas Eve, my father would turn down the radio, and there would be total silence. My mother would say, “Let’s listen, because remember Christkindl always comes around six o’clock.” Soon we would hear a little bell ring: one of the ornaments that decorated the tree. Obviously the neighbor girl had crept up the rear stairs and in the back door of our bedroom, but we never caught on to that until later. For years, Meinhard and I would race to our room, skidding on the throw rug on the hardwood floor and wiping out before we even got to the door, and the next thing, pushing and shoving, we would storm in. There was great, great joy.
Maria and I didn’t do the secret tree because that’s not the American tradition. The tradition here is to set up the tree three or four weeks before Christmas, and I didn’t want to insist on waiting and have the kids constantly ask, “How come we don’t have a tree yet?” Instead, we’d have friends over American style, where each friend hangs an ornament. As the kids got older, they did more and more until they were in charge of putting up the angel, or the star, or Jesus or Mary, or whatever the highest ornament would be, and deciding on the look of the tree.
We made a big deal of the other holidays too. Easter always came during my mom’s annual visit. She’d arrive as early as mid-February and live with us for two or three months, depending on the cold and snow in Austria. Besides wanting to spend time together, part of her motivation was to escape the harshest part of the winter. For Easter she was the perfect grandparent to have on hand, because the big traditions all trace back to that part of Europe: the bunny, the baskets, the eggs, the chocolates. She always colored eggs with the kids; she was an expert, and they’d have their little aprons on. My mother would take over the kitchen and make pastry, covering all the counters with dough rolled so thin that no one could figure out how she did it. Then she’d lay out the apple slices and fold up the dough and bake the most delicious apple strudel in America. On Easter the festivities would go on all day: first big Easter baskets and an exchange of small gifts, then Mass, and then an Easter egg hunt and a feast, followed by visits from relatives and friends.
Maria made a big effort with my mother, and they really got along. And of course I was in heaven when Eunice or Sarge would come stay with us. So we never had in-law problems. The kids called my mother Omi, and she spoiled them, and they loved her. She’d picked up English over the years and had even taken some classes, so by now she was fluent enough to have conversations with the kids, even though talking to kids in your second language is never easy to do. She and Christina especially sought each other out—Christina whose middle name is Aurelia.
My mother spoiled our dogs as well. Conan and Strudel were not allowed upstairs, but after we went to sleep, my mother would sneak them into her room, and in the morning the dogs would be curled up on the rug by her bed. She was in LA enough that she established her own life and her own circle of friends—other Austrians and European journalists—to shop with, have lunch with, and hang out. I’ll never forget seeing her at an awards banquet once, deep in conversation with the mothers of Sophia Loren and Sylvester Stallone. They were probably all claiming credit for our success.
Mom was seventy-six when she died in 1998. It was my father’s birthday, August 2, and as my mother always did, she walked to the cemetery on a hill outside town to spend time at his grave. She would hold imaginary conversations with him for an hour, telling him everything she’d been doing, asking questions, as if he were right there but on the other side.
The weather that day was humid and stiflingly hot, and the cemetery was a steep climb up. People who saw her said that when she reached the grave, she sat down suddenly as if she felt faint, and then slumped to the ground. The medics tried to revive her, but by the time they got her to the hospital, she was brain-dead from oxygen deprivation. She’d never had her heart repaired, and it had failed.
Maria and I flew to Graz for the funeral. My nephew Patrick and Maria’s brother Timmy and Franco came along. I’d missed the funerals of my father and my brother, but for my mom’s we got there a day in advance and helped organize. We saw her in the casket, wearing a traditional Austrian dirndl dress.
She had been fine and cheerful as always during her annual spring visit, staying all through May, so of course this came as a terrible shock. But later, looking back on her life, I felt that by the time she passed away, I had no regrets. None, because of the relationship that I’d nurtured with her after I came to America, as I learned to think a little bit more about my family rather than just myself. Now that I had kids, I realized how my leaving must have upset her. I’d appreciated her earlier as a devoted mother, but I’d never thought about the pain my leaving caused. That maturing happened too late for me to reconnect with my brother or dad, but with my mother I built a good relationship where she and I really communicated.
I offered many times to buy her a house in Los Angeles, but she didn’t want to leave Austria. In addition to Easter and Mother’s Day, she came for all of our kids’ christenings. She saw every movie I made and came to a lot of the premieres. Starting with
I loved doing things for my mother not only because I wanted to make her feel that she’d done a good job as
