A Little Thing Called Life

by Linda Thompson

  We often did laundry and other household chores together. Bruce was not one to define certain tasks as my job because they were “women’s work.” Instead, he always jumped right in and was happy to help. He never criticized anything I did around the house and was always complimentary and kind.

  We never fought, or even argued, really. We only had one small outburst of anger in the six years we were together, and even that was a silly little nonevent. It happened when we were living at the beach, before we bought our house. We were doing laundry together. I was pregnant, and I was walking upstairs with the laundry basket while he came up the stairs behind me. He playfully slapped me on the behind, and although it had been a joke, I was startled and it stung. I had a knee-jerk reaction.

  “Don’t ever do that!” I yelled.

  “Geez, I’m sorry, I was only playing,” Bruce said, looking crestfallen.

  And that, literally, was just about the only time we ever had the slightest bit of friction between us. We really got along beautifully, and I thought of him as my best friend. I happen to be very even-tempered, and so was Bruce back then. Neither of us was a “drama queen,” if you will, and neither of us relished conflict. In that respect, I don’t think he was behaving in a way that was contrary to his true nature, in order to keep me from delving deeper and really knowing him. Yes, he had a secret. A big one. And he was pretending to be someone he was not in one major area of his life. But the core of who Bruce was, and is, I believe to be authentically the same.

  Yes, I did love Elvis with more abandon. And after Bruce, I did subsequently love David longer. But in some ways, Bruce and I were the most inherently alike (which holds its own irony).

  Bruce and I had carved out as a picturesque life together. One of the most rewarding things about the relationship was my ability not to lose myself or give up every part of myself in my relationship. Rather, I now only shared as much of myself as it was healthy to offer. I realized this didn’t mean I loved my partner any less; in fact I had come to determine that it was actually a more sustainable way to love. As we are instructed each time we fly, you have to put on your own oxygen mask first, in order to be of any use to yourself or anyone else around you. It’s empowering and healthy to know that you can survive without another person. That, for me, is a more mature and healthier way to love another. It takes away nothing from the sheer bliss of romance, or the excitement of embarking on a shared life together, and yet there is no diminishment of your own self-worth and personal power, and no clingy desperation to off-put your beloved.

  After our wedding in Hawaii, Bruce and I went house hunting in Malibu. We found a relatively modest home on a small one-acre estate, where I planted roses, fruit trees, and flowers, and where many wonderful, lasting memories were made. My very dear friends Kenny and Marianne Rogers had bought a fourteen-acre estate called “The Knoll” around the same time. So I named our little home “The Knest.” Yes, with a K for sheer affectation. Bruce and I loved the property because it was so private, and we felt nicely tucked in, as if we were in our own little nest. And so as we settled into our new home, I began setting up my nest in earnest, preparing for the birth of our baby.

  While I was pregnant, Bruce made me feel loved and sexy. He was not the kind of man who was turned off by a pregnant woman’s body. He thought it was beautiful, and he told me that I was beautiful, caressing me and making me feel that his compliments were based in reality. We continued to make love, and I felt very close to him and supported by him.

  Throughout my pregnancy, I felt so healthy and well that I foolishly climbed atop fairly high ladders to hang paintings in the living room. I felt so good I forgot I was pregnant half the time. I played tennis into the ninth month, stopping only a couple of weeks before Brandon was actually born. When I passed a mirror, I was surprised at the image of a pregnant woman I saw. That’s me!

  I think Bruce was a bit blown away by the ease with which my body was preparing itself. When I was pregnant, he even said to me, “This is the most athletic endeavor you will ever undertake. You’re going to have to push a baby out, so you want to be in your optimum shape.”

  He made a point of going to Lamaze classes with me. He did everything the instructor told him to do and was a good sport about it.

  “Now, listen, honey,” he told me. “When you go through labor, if you want to call me every name in the book, if you want to rip my shirt off, don’t even worry about that.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t want to get to that point. If I get to a point where I can get the epidural, I’m going for the epidural. I’m very secure that I’m a woman. I don’t need to prove that I can squat in a field and give birth. That’s why we have medical science, and fewer fatalities during childbirth in today’s more advanced world. But thanks for the offer to call you names and rip your clothes off in anguish. I appreciate that.”

  I went into labor at four o’clock in the morning. We called my doctor, Dr. Ed Cohen, and got ready to go the hospital. Around five thirty, Bruce pulled out onto the Pacific Coast Highway to drive us to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. I turned my head to look out my window and saw the beautiful gray ocean blending into the gray sky in the early dawn. Every time I see that gray ocean now, I think about our morning drive to the hospital, and the day my darling Brandon was born.

  We had a beautiful birthing experience. I was in labor for ten hours and Bruce was in the labor and delivery room with me the whole time. I was able to breathe through some of the major contractions. Bruce was great, very nurturing, kind and gentle, but he was still all guy, and a total jock at that.

  “Hey, you’re doing good,” he said, cheering me on as if he were my coach.

  We had a phone available and I frequently called my mother and father, who were in town and waiting in the adjacent waiting room during my labor, to keep them updated on the progress. My mother, in hindsight, was hysterically funny.

  “I know you’re suffering death right now, aren’t you, honey?” she kept saying to me. “You are just praying to die right now, aren’t you?”

  She was the quintessential Southern drama queen. I must have learned early in life to minimize my reactions, so as not to maximize hers.

  Brandon Thompson Jenner was born in the afternoon of June 4, 1981. I thought I knew what love was before giving birth to my baby. But whatever I had experienced in the past paled in comparison to the utter, unconditional love I immediately felt for the little bundle I now held in my arms.

  Burt and Casey came to the hospital and got to see and bond with their new little brother, Brandon, born just one year after Casey. Those were very happy days for me. I truly loved Burt and Casey, and Brandon was the absolute sunshine in every day of my life. This newfound motherhood thing seemed to be my natural calling. I recently read that when a mother gives birth, she in actuality gives birth to her own heart. Her heart no longer resides within her being, but is now out there in the world, in the form of her child. That expresses how I felt then and still feel today. My sons are my heart.

  I had already practiced mothering on Burt and Casey, since Bruce and I frequently had them stay over at our home, and they were still very young. I knew how to diaper, feed, and lovingly care for little ones, so I felt prepared to be a mommy to Brandon. I loved having this little ready-made family to spend time with and enjoy. When Brandon was born, I planted an avocado seed near our house, and that tree has grown into a fifty-foot giant, bearing delicious fruit.

  Just because Bruce and I were now married parents together didn’t mean that our lives slowed down any. If anything we were busier than ever.

  In many ways our lives followed his job and celebrity. Bruce’s contract with NBC Sports meant he had to travel frequently. I had become friends with one of their staffers, Linda Jonsson. I had taken Bruce’s last name after we married, so I was Linda Jenner, or LJ West, and she was LJ East. She thought I was great on camera, so she wanted me to travel to Nice, France, to cover the tri
athlon with Bruce.

  Brandon was a year old and I had just stopped nursing him. I wasn’t sure about leaving him with a nanny when he was so young, but Bruce really wanted me to go, and it would be a turnaround trip, taking only three days altogether. I always tried to balance being a wife and being a mother the best I could. I wanted to be there for my husband, but motherhood was and still is my number one priority, and the baby came first. It was difficult to be that far away from Brandon, but it was an exciting new challenge that brought Bruce and me closer together. We had a great time, except for my struggle to master French pronunciation on national TV.

  “Here we are in the South of France, in Nice,” I said. “Where they’re better known for their bouill … a … baisse, not for the triathlon that’s about to be held here …”

  I just could not get the word bouillabaisse correct, and we had to do take after take.

  Bruce and I also traveled to Toronto to host a show on bodybuilding. I was fascinated by these female athletes, with their ripped muscles, and even subtle beards. I believed some of them were clearly on testosterone. I knew women must have a certain amount of body fat in order to menstruate, and I couldn’t resist my urge to ask them if they still had their periods. Most of them didn’t have periods because their body fat was so low, something like 5 percent.

  As part of the show, Bruce and I had our body fat tested. Although he was good-natured about it, Bruce was being his usual highly competitive self.

  “Yeah, just wait and see,” he said. “I’m going to kick your butt in this body fat competition.”

  I smiled good-naturedly, sure he was right. Well, when they did the test, he had something like 20 percent body fat, and I had a mere 16 percent. I couldn’t help but indulge in a victory dance all around him because my body fat was actually lower than his.

  “Let’s see, you’re the former world’s greatest athlete, is that correct?” I teased him. “And I’m just a wife and mother?”

  Much as we had before Brandon’s birth, Bruce and I appeared on red carpets regularly and were perceived as a glamour couple, also lending our time to charitable causes. We were the national honorary chairpersons of the Juvenile Diabetes Association and regularly supported the Special Olympics. For several years Bruce and I even hosted our own celebrity tennis tournament benefiting United Cerebral Palsy Children’s Foundation. It was called the Bruce and Linda Jenner Love Match.

  Bruce’s fame opened doors to all kinds of experiences. One day we got a call asking if we would be available to meet President Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office of the White House as the national chairpersons of the Juvenile Diabetes Association. I was still nursing Brandon, and the timetable was “We would need you here in Washington the day after tomorrow.” We didn’t want to miss the opportunity for an audience with the leader of the free world. I barely had time to find something appropriate to wear, and get on a plane to the White House. It was a quick trip—we were back in Malibu in a matter of hours—but it made for a lasting memory.

  With an engaging personality, commanding countenance, and a ready, warm smile, President Reagan immediately put Bruce and me at ease. There is, however, something very daunting about being in the Oval Office, where so much history has transpired, and so many monumental decisions have been made. A keen sense of reverence would certainly not be out of order for anyone who’s fortunate enough to enter that room.

  And just because we now had Brandon didn’t mean that any of Bruce’s adventure sports ended, either. He owned a home at Lake Tahoe, and we went there often to snow ski, water-ski, Jet Ski, and participate in other sports and activities. Friends often accompanied us, as well as family. Bruce had an ultralight airplane, which he flew all around Lake Tahoe, until one of his friends crashed it into the lake. Bruce always seemed to be looking for that more highly charged thrill. He was definitely an adrenaline junky. I became something of a jock, too, just by osmosis. I often took the wheel of our boat, so Bruce could water-ski, and there’s even video of me piloting our boat while nursing Brandon. Crazy.

  Of course, as adept as Bruce was at every sport he attempted, it would have been impossible for such a daredevil not to have a few close calls. As a commentator for NBC SportsWorld, Bruce was regularly sent to cover the surfing championships. And so, our family developed an unusual Christmas tradition where we traveled to the north shore of Oahu every December while Bruce did his job. We stayed at the Turtle Bay Hilton and enjoyed wishing each other “Mele Kalikimaka” instead of “Merry Christmas.” One time, Bruce took a Jet Ski out in huge surf, and as I stood watching, he suddenly disappeared beneath the epic waves. As I lost sight of him from the beach, I became frantic. Thankfully, someone from the competition jumped on a Jet Ski and rescued him. It turned out that Bruce’s Jet Ski had died and sunk. He was fine, but I was rattled by the experience. I trusted Bruce to always be there for our family, and the possibility of him disappearing just like that had terrified me. I was overjoyed to have him back on solid ground with me.

  But for all the celebrities and adventure, the red carpets and Oval Offices, it was the quiet moments that I cherished the most—and in truth those are the ones that still resonate all these years later. Bruce was very handy around the house and a skilled builder. He and my daddy very craftily built a storage shed that matched the lines of our home precisely and painted it the same blue as the main house. I still cherish the times when Bruce and I were home together with Brandon, and eventually Brody, being there for each other as a family. I really felt like I had found where I belonged. I looked forward to spending the rest of my life with this man I loved so deeply, who had given me the family that was the purest expression of my heart.

  When Brandon was just over a year old, we began discussing how it would be nice for him to have a younger sibling. Bruce had commented that I had gotten myself into great shape, had a good “childbearing body,” an easy pregnancy with Brandon, and the timing was right for a second child. I was completely on board for another baby. Bruce was not the most hands-on father, but this was largely because like many new moms, I was happy to bathe and care for my child myself. Mothers immediately respond to an infant, and sometimes fathers want their children to come out at about three or four years old so they can relate to them better. I perhaps became a little overly protective when I saw Bruce unwittingly handle Brandon like a sack of potatoes. Even so, Bruce enjoyed fatherhood and looked forward to the time when the kids were older and could join in our active, outdoorsy lifestyle. As soon as we said, “Let’s have another baby,” the stars aligned, and within a month or two, I was delighted to be pregnant once more.

  Early on in the pregnancy, I was offered a nice part on Spelling’s ABC show The Love Boat. I’d still been doing some acting, both on Hee Haw and other television shows. For a time, I had an old-school talent agent, Meyer Mishkin, who also represented Richard Dreyfuss and Lee Marvin, among others. And I also worked with an agency called the Artists Group. I always preferred comedy. While many people say it’s more difficult than drama, I always found it easier and more fun. But I also enjoyed doing Aaron Spelling’s shows, my favorite perhaps being Vegas. One of my most enjoyable roles involved getting run over by a car. I had to give a dramatic scream. #Emmyconsideration.

  Although I again didn’t have any morning sickness, I wasn’t sure how I’d do on the boat when I was pregnant. But primarily, I didn’t want to leave Brandon, who was only eighteen months old. I asked if I could bring him with me, but the producers said he was too young. So I turned down the part. My kids always came before my career.

  During the nine months that I was pregnant with Brody, I again enjoyed a model pregnancy, playing tennis into the ninth month and even winning a tennis tournament. Pregnancy agreed with me—I wasn’t ever nauseated—not even a single morning, and I gained the recommended textbook twenty-five pounds.

  I was two weeks overdue and entering my tenth month of pregnancy when my doctor decided he would induce labor that Sunday morning. Bruce an
d I went to La Scala restaurant the night before I was to go into the hospital to deliver. There, in the booth next to ours, sat Paul Newman. We had met him on several occasions at different races he and Bruce had participated in. We stopped to say hello, and Paul reached out to rub my round tummy.

  “How far along are you?” Paul asked.

  “I’m two weeks overdue,” I said.

  “Are you serious?” he asked, visibly startled.

  He quizzed me with his impossibly translucent blue eyes, opened wide.

  “You look amazing,” he declared, words that would stay with me a lifetime.

  It was Paul Newman. I joked to Bruce that it would have been like a comedy skit if I had just thrown Paul down in that red leather booth when he touched my stomach and lay on him like a beached whale. We laughed about that imagined scenario.

  The next morning, Bruce drove me to St. John’s Hospital, and I was given an IV to induce labor. After only a few intense contractions I was sure the baby was in the birth canal. The attendants hurriedly rushed me into the delivery room with me panting and blowing the whole time. They administered an epidural, but not in time for the birth. Sam Brody Jenner entered the world with a loud yelp on the morning of August 21, 1983. He was mighty for his six pounds and seven ounces. I named Brody after my brother, Sam.

  They were the most adorable cherubs, from the moment they were born. Every morning, when the boys were small, I’d start their days by addressing them in their cribs, “Good morning, my precious angels.”

  One morning, when Brandon was only two years old, I was sound asleep on my side of the bed, which was closest to the far wall of our bedroom. I was awakened by something gently touching my cheek. I opened my eyes and there was Brandon’s adorable little face right in front of mine, his eyes staring into mine intently.