Make It Nice

by Dorinda Medley

  “Andy, it sounds like I’m being fired,” I said.

  Andy insisted it was a pause, and a friendly one.

  I still didn’t understand what was going on, but there was no point in fighting. “Thank you for the opportunity,” I said. “It’s been a fantastic six years.”

  Honestly, I felt like a big fat loser. Being rejected is painful. And I’d never been fired from a job in my whole life. I have an excellent work ethic and I take pride in that. I believe that any job, big or small, should be treated with total respect. That’s how I’ve treated all my jobs. When I was a waitress, I never missed a waitressing shift. Even if I was dying, I would still show up for work. In six years, I rarely missed a day of filming for The Housewives. I was never late. I was fully devoted to it in the same way that I fully devote myself to anything I’m doing. The Housewives had become an enormous part of my life, and I was heartbroken that it was ending for the moment.

  I didn’t ask why I’d been put on pause. I didn’t want to know. To me, that part wasn’t important, because it wouldn’t have changed the result. The decision had already been made. But, of course, since I’m only human, I had to wonder why. Had I done something wrong? If so, what?

  I knew that because it had been a hard year for me, I hadn’t shown up as my best self. I also knew that I’d never been a passive character on the show. My honesty is one of my greatest strengths, so I’ve been told, but it also gets me into trouble sometimes. I’m not always nice in my delivery. Once in a while, I hurt people.

  I don’t like injustice, and when something unjust is happening around me I can’t stop myself from calling it out. When I was a kid, I used to stand up for the kids at school who were being bullied. I’ve always spoken the truth, even when my opinion isn’t popular. And that’s what I did on the show.

  Here’s a little saying I enjoy: Believe half of what you hear and all of what you see.

  For so many people, what they see is not connected to what they say. The mouth is not connected to the heart. I think this is especially true for women, because there’s so much pressure to pretend. Sometimes I think my life would be easier if I were a woman who was willing to pretend. If I just went along with things and stayed quiet, people would be less angry with me. But it’s not in my nature to go along with things that are just plain incorrect. I hate pretending. I find it unbearable. When there are lies in a room, I feel like the room is full of elephants. I can’t ignore them. I have to speak up. What I’m trying to work on now is how I speak up, because I realize I can come across as abrasive at times.

  I’m fully aware that I’m more abrasive when I’m drinking. During this rough year in my life, I was drinking more than I wanted to be. When I’m in a good period of my life, I drink to have fun, but when I’m in a dark place, it just makes things darker.

  So, after I got fired, did I have some regrets? Yes. I also knew I couldn’t have done anything differently. The past was the past, and there is no point in wallowing. I did allow myself to be upset the night I got those calls, though. I sobbed like a child and called my mom, who talked some sense into me, as she’s been doing all my life. Then I invited a few friends over and drank wine and kept sobbing.

  The next morning, I woke up knowing that a new chapter of my life had begun. I posted a picture of myself on Instagram with a caption about gratitude. I thanked Bravo and NBC for the opportunity and wished them success in the new season.

  I felt good about my public reaction. Even though I believe in honesty, there are times when it’s best to just say thank you and walk away. And I’m good at walking away. Even though I hate change, I’m able to let things go quickly and move forward.

  When the news of me being put on pause went public, friends started calling me and asking, “Are you okay? What are you going to do now?”

  The truth is that I’m not doing anything differently than I would have been doing otherwise. Yes, we’re in a pandemic, so that sort of changes things, but otherwise, my life is the same as it’s always been. Hannah asked me if I was still going to decorate for Christmas last year, even though it wouldn’t be filmed, and I said, “I’ve been decorating for Christmas for forty years, Hannah. Of course I’m going to decorate this year!” Beneath all the changes in life are the things that never change. I’m always going to love being a part of my family. I’m always going to love decorating. I’m always going to be outspoken. I’m always going to be essentially myself. As I told Bethenny Frankel on her podcast, The Housewives didn’t make me. I was a fully baked cake when I arrived, and I gave them a slice.

  It’s funny that I was a Housewife for six years, because that time span marks a pattern in my life. Every six years or so, things change in a drastic way. I lived with Hannah’s father, Ralph, for six years before we separated; I was later with Richard for six years, and then with John for about another six.

  Since I was raised Catholic, it’s hard not to draw a parallel between the number six and the devil. Every six years, it’s like the devil invites me for a little dance. At first it’s horrible, but then it becomes a place to transform. Funnily enough, the devil card in tarot signifies transformation.

  When major shifts happen, after I get over the initial blow I sink into a quiet, determined place, where I reconnect with my soul and my purpose. The reason I’m able to do this is that I’ve built myself a strong foundation. My family is a foundation for me, and so is my connection to my soul, or to something greater than myself. It’s easy to get lost in the drama and hoopla of life, but in the end, none of that matters very much.

  What I remember in every moment of change is that I don’t need to define myself by one label. Labels aren’t helpful, and I see a lot of women getting stuck on who they think they should be rather than looking ahead to who they can become. I’ve had many labels in my life so far. I’ve been a waitress, a salesperson, an aerobics instructor, a clothing designer, an expat, a mother, a wife, a hostess, and a Housewife, to name a few. I’m not any one of these labels, though. I’m just a woman moving through her life creatively.

  After the shock of getting put “on pause” wore off, I realized that it wasn’t a failure. It was freedom. I’ve never had a “pause” in my whole life. And failure isn’t real anyway. It’s just an opportunity to rise up again. To be honest, there’s something I enjoy about getting knocked down. I do well when I have less. It gives me energy. It makes me curious about the future. What can I learn during this time? What are the next six years going to look like?

  Right now is a strange moment in history. The whole world is on pause, wondering what’s going to happen. Of course, I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I do know that no matter what the future holds, I’ll always be me, Dorinda Cinkala from Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

  If you don’t know yourself, no one will be able to know you.

  Chapter Two HOME

  I was born in 1964 to an Italian mother and a Polish father. My parents met at eighteen in a very classic and romantic way. My dad saw my mom walking down the street and said, “That’s a beautiful woman and I want to marry her.” Within eight years, they had four children: Johnny, Dean, Dorinda, and Melinda. We’re each two years apart.

  Growing up, we weren’t raised as individuals in the way kids are today. Let’s just say there weren’t options, like children have today. In the Cinkala household, my mother was the captain of the ship. We did what she said without questioning it. She set the tone and we followed. For example, if it was cleaning day, we cleaned. If it was yard day, we were outside. We weren’t picky about our food, because there was no room to be picky. We accepted what we were given, and with gratitude. When we would go to restaurants and be given menus, we would look at them the way people normally do, but when the waiter came it was no surprise that we all got the veal cutlet Parmesan special. We didn’t think to challenge it; that’s just the way it was.

  Recently, I saw a child literally pull down his pants and show his bum to everyone in the middle of a
Starbucks—but that wasn’t the horrifying thing. The horrifying thing was that when it happened the mother crouched down eye to eye with the boy and was like, “Use your words.” My siblings and I never would have been this defiant—not even close. It wouldn’t have even crossed our minds to enter into a negotiation over what size hot chocolate we were getting. Our family could best be described as the segments of a caterpillar with my parents at the head. When they moved we moved; it rippled through all of us.

  The weird thing is that my siblings and I were all totally different to the point that people probably questioned whether we were even related when they saw us playing in our driveway.

  First there was Johnny, who was nothing like the typical tormentor older brother. He was kind and encouraging—the person who brought us all together and acted as the intermediary between us and our parents. But even though he was the most responsible and organized of us all, he was also the wackiest.

  When we were little and my mother would take us to the grocery store, she would make sure that we all held on to the cart because she was petrified of us getting kidnapped. Everything would be fine and well, the Cinkala unit moving smoothly through the aisles, until suddenly Johnny would take his hand off the cart and go into spaceship mode. It would start small with him putting his hands to his sides and then he would start making a quiet revving noise to indicate that the ship was preparing for liftoff. We all knew what was coming and my mother would tell him to stop, but the launch was happening whether she liked it or not. By the end of it, Johnny would be in the middle of the aisle with his hands in the air (his arms would be stiff and vibrating), rumbling and spouting off crackly throaty noises. “Khheee-oooohh, khoo, khee-oooh.”

  When he was young, my second brother, Dean, was very much a stereotypical boy. He collected baseball cards, slept in a Steelers sleeping bag, and did all the very boyish things that you would expect. He was also a real pain in the ass and spent most of his time pushing our buttons, which probably had something to do with the fact that he was just smarter than we were. Dean was also incredibly sensitive, which made him a ticking time bomb. We spent a lot of time playing board games in the basement, and after hours of Monopoly, Dean would get up and flip the board over because he hated losing. One time Johnny, who was a gentle giant, got so fed up that he dragged Dean around the pool table by his legs until he got rug burns. I think it was because Dean was so sensitive that he was mischievous and disruptive as a kid.

  Dean grew out of his mischievous side, and his sensitivity evolved into something far more earnest. Less carefree than Johnny, Dean was serious and thoughtful, always thinking one step ahead. He was the type of kid who would give unsolicited advice that you would want to reject but couldn’t because deep down you knew he was right. Dean became my protector, particularly in high school when I was most vulnerable. He didn’t like the idea of me dating. He protected me fiercely from the boys and was always looking over my shoulder to make sure I didn’t get into trouble. He would drive me to and from dances, dragging me out of them when I wanted to stay longer—which I hated. Dean’s thoughtfulness was the thing that made him a good big brother. He genuinely cared and showed it by never being afraid to tell you the truth, even if it was something you didn’t necessarily want to hear. It’s hard to be the villain sometimes, but it’s the people who aren’t afraid to be the villain when it means telling the truth whom you can depend on the most.

  Melinda, my sister, will always be the baby of the bunch. Unlike me, who could be a bit of a bulldozer (surprise, surprise), Melinda had a gentleness and naïveté that made her more susceptible to getting hurt. She has no guile. The fact that she was the only one of us who got sunburned when we went to Florida as teenagers is a perfect metaphor for who she is. I can still remember her sprawled out on the hood of our car with sunstroke when my mother insisted we attend a four-hour service at an Evangelical church.

  When I was a teenager, the fact that we were so different used to really drive me crazy. After I got a job at the Red Lion Inn, they were so impressed with my waitressing skills that they brought my sister on. It was a nightmare. There was one dinner service where we were serving beef au jus, and were expected to bring it out on a tray in this larger-than-life way, which I loved. Well, at some point I looked back, and Melinda was not only not using a tray (but rather just her hands), she was also pinching the side of the gravy boat with her thumb and forefinger—with her thumb literally inside the gravy boat. Melinda doesn’t have a mean bone in her body and is very intelligent. She’s simply not of this universe and her priorities are not material. She’s pure of heart and now runs a hospice for dogs out of her home in Sheffield, which says it all.

  Melinda and I couldn’t have been more different, but she was in many ways my best friend. There was a yin and yang quality to the two of us. She was my partner in crime or maybe more like my sidekick. I often took advantage of her good nature. When we got Barbie stuff and were dividing up the clothes, I would convince Melinda that the bad clothes were the best and she would just accept it without question. I don’t know if it was because we were both girls or because we shared a room together growing up, but I always felt like Melinda got me in a way that others didn’t.

  When I was seven or eight years old, I started talking through my pointer finger, which I referred to as “Pinky,” moving it up and down like a finger puppet and speaking in this raspy, nasal, creepy voice. My mother hated it. Of course she did! It was totally bizarre. If Hannah ever did the same thing to me, it would freak me out. The only person who engaged with my game wholeheartedly was Melinda, who would have full-on conversations with Pinky before we went to bed.

  The last sibling I need to tell you about is me.

  Dorinda is an old Italian name, and it happens to be my mom’s middle name, too. My mother wouldn’t allow anyone to shorten my name or give me a nickname. I remember when I went off to school she said, “Don’t let anyone call you anything other than Dorinda. You are Dorinda Cinkala.” There was a pride to the way she said that to me, and it was a pride that I internalized. We were proud to be Cinkalas.

  Everything my siblings and I had growing up was because my parents worked for it. Although we didn’t have a lot of money, we were comfortable and I never felt like we didn’t have enough. It took me a long time to realize how my mom, in particular, knew how to economize. When I got to college, for example, I was exposed to a new kind of orange juice. At the buffet were these enormous containers of it. The first time I poured myself a cup and took a sip, I spit it out. It tasted like pure sugar.

  And this was because my mother used to buy that canned orange juice concentrate that comes frozen in a tube, the kind you mix with water. You’re supposed to mix it with two cans of water. Well, my mother would mix it with eight cans. And that watered-down tangy liquid was my conception of orange juice. When I went home, I told my mom about what I had discovered at college and asked her why she had been fooling us with orange water.

  “I couldn’t afford to give you orange juice every day, Dorinda,” she said.

  This sounded strange to me because orange juice wasn’t exactly expensive, but to my mother, who was always two steps ahead, a sugary drink meant cavities, and at that time we simply couldn’t afford to get our teeth filled. My mom was crazy about our teeth. She used to line us up and have us brush and floss endlessly. Good dental care was important to my mom because she wanted to make sure we had every possible advantage going out into the world as adults. My father’s lifelong work as a telephone man for the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company thankfully covered those expenses. So while we didn’t have a lot, it didn’t matter because my parents made sure that we always had enough—and enough felt like everything to us.

  And yet there was also a sense that there was something more waiting out in the world for us. What it was didn’t matter so much as the fact that it existed. My parents never pushed my siblings and me to become anything specific, like doctors or lawyers, but they
taught us to have dreams and to always be moving forward in pursuit of our goals. The journey was more important than the destination. The pride of being a Cinkala meant that you could do anything so long as you worked hard enough to achieve it. Everything I am today is because of who my parents are.

  I wrote a paper about my father as a child that my mother saved in a binder called “Dorinda’s Memorabilia.” In this paper, I wrote: “My father is the best. I couldn’t say why he is the best, but he just is and I love him so much and he loves me.”

  I think I had a hard time figuring out why I loved my dad so much, because he was always working. He was a telephone man by day, and by night he’d pick up extra jobs whenever he could. But just because he wasn’t physically at home didn’t mean I couldn’t feel his presence. The fact that my dad worked so hard made him a hero to me. When he worked as a telephone operator at night, I would sneak down to the basement to call him when my mom wasn’t paying attention. It was the coolest thing to me. I could pick up the phone, dial 0, and there was my father. To me, my dad wasn’t just a worker. He was this giant person who literally ran the telephone lines in Great Barrington. My dad was like a king in my eyes.

  On the weekends, despite being so tired, he still would do activities with us like fishing and hunting. In a small town like Great Barrington back then, gender roles were real. There were certain things that boys did with their fathers, like hunting, and certain things that girls did with their fathers, like getting an ice cream. We never subscribed to those roles. My siblings and I did everything together. My parents raised me to believe that boys and girls were equal. I wasn’t freaked out by bugs, because my father would spend all night with us using mustard sauce to lure out the night crawlers so we could go fishing the next day. I picked them up and put them in coffee cans like it was nothing. We all caught our own bait and we all baited our own rods. With fishing and in all other areas of life, I was taught that if I worked hard and took the steps necessary to succeed (like collecting my own bait), then I would reap the rewards of my efforts.