Keep Moving

by Dick Van Dyke

  So what do I think really matters?

  1. Family and friends: I would hate to think I was alone on this rock floating around the solar system. That’s why family and friends matter. Period. I never had a bachelorhood, I suppose. I had planned to marry my high school girlfriend, Nancy Frankieburger, but she dropped me when I came back from the service. Then I was with Margie for twenty-eight years. I spent thirty-three years with Michelle. Given that track record, I am counting on at least twenty to thirty years with Arlene. I have enjoyed being in relationships and raising a family. For me, life has always been about accepting responsibility for the well-being and happiness of the people I love. Even though I didn’t have any money, I embraced the arrival of each one of my children. They give your life gravity and meaning. They create a moral compass that is real, not abstract or theoretical. They have lives of their own, but you can always reel them back in. I’m thinking of the old joke about the couple who find themselves alone on Thanksgiving. The husband calls their children and says, “Your mother and I are getting a divorce.” Then he hangs up, turns to his wife, and says, “The kids will be over in fifteen minutes.” Friends enjoy a similar standing. They are also people with whom you share your life’s experiences. Do they enjoy you? Do you step up when they are in need? Do they want to check in with you? The way we interact with people is what defines us and how we come to be defined. How we spend our time with them is what gives life meaning. You can look in the mirror to see the way you look on the outside. But the way family and friends regard you is a real measure of the way you look on the inside.

  2. Questions. Early on, I wanted to feel that my life mattered, that my existence had meaning, and to do so, I had to figure out what mattered to me and then apply myself to it. I knew that I wanted to get into radio, and that led to performing in nightclubs, which opened the door to Broadway and television, and then movies. By that point I was beyond questioning whether I had made the correct choices in my professional life. In terms of my career, I knew I was applying myself the way I was supposed to. But even with success, I heard the constant refrain of my soul asking questions, some of which were within my grasp and others that soared way beyond my reach.

  I trace this restless desire to understand the big picture back to my childhood. At eleven, I went to Bible camp. For the next three years, I carried around a Bible which I read from cover to cover. The stories filled me with awe and curiosity, even though my intellectually immature mind strained to understand the meaning within the rich tapestry of allegory. I decided I would become a minister—that is, until I joined the high school drama club.

  Suddenly my plans changed. My Bible ended up on the shelf, and I started down the road that eventually landed me in Hollywood. But I never lost my curiosity about my place on this mystical, magical map, nor did I quit asking questions. In fact, success probably made me even more curious about the nature of my existence. I read constantly, mostly theologians and philosophers. Among those whose books I have turned to repeatedly are Søren Kierkegaard, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Paul Tournier, a Swiss physician and religious scholar I once met when I wrangled my way into a lunch he and his wife were having with people who brought him to Hollywood.

  Though he didn’t speak any English, we communicated through an interpreter. I managed to explain that I was impressed with the way he applied his biblical teachings to his patients. In a way I applied my principles to my work, making it a rule long ago not to work on any projects that my children couldn’t see.

  The thing these writers have in common is that they mostly ask questions, either of themselves or others, but especially of those who claim to know all the answers. Doubt shines through all of their writing, an unrelenting, resilient doubt that I relate to intellectually. As I have grown older and, hopefully, wiser, I’ve come to see that there are no sure answers, only better questions—questions that get us closer to the truth about whatever it is we want or need to know. Just knowing you don’t have the answers, in fact, is a recipe for humility, openness, acceptance, forgiveness, and an eagerness to learn—and those are all good things.

  All good things begin with a question. French fries or mashed potatoes? Red or white? Dessert? Chocolate or vanilla? Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? What about Paris? Do you want the job? Will you marry me? Do you want to try to have a baby? Why am I here? What am I supposed to do while I am here?

  In the early 1960s I sat alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a rally in Los Angeles. I was there because writer Rod Serling asked a simple question: “Will you help Dr. King?”

  At the rally I sloughed off warnings that someone might take a shot at Dr. King. “I’ll lean to the left,” I joked.

  If someone had taken a shot and the bullet had hit me instead, I suppose I would have been okay with dying for a cause like racial equality, though it would have been way too soon for me to go. I would have missed joining the NOH8 campaign for marriage equality, as I did recently. That also began with a question: “Do you believe in equality?” And it involved the converse: “Why do people hate?”

  Hate is such a terrible waste of time. I don’t think people who hate should receive the attention they seem to garner in the media. Entire cable networks have been created to hate each other. Our political system seems to have devolved into one side hating the other. I like to ask, “Why do you hate?” It is so much easier to help. It’s the easiest thing in the world. Help can mean writing a check. It can also mean sharing a smile or saying hello. One time when I was serving food to the homeless at the Midnight Mission in downtown L.A., a man seemingly in his forties recognized me and asked, “Why are you here?” It bothered me that we live in a world where he had to ask. “Why wouldn’t I be here?” I said.

  It’s important to ask questions. Questions matter. Good questions matter even more. If you don’t have any questions, here are some to carry around in your pocket:

  Why not me?

  What can I do to help?

  How can you be so sure?

  Can I do better this time rather than next time?

  What don’t I know that I should know?

  What do I need to do next so that I don’t worry about not having done it?

  Do I have everything I need as opposed to everything I want?

  Am I using my time productively?

  How can I use it better?

  Do I like my work? If not, what would I like to do?

  What’s missing? How can I fix that?

  Am I okay with myself? If not, why?

  Am I doing better?

  How can I help other people do better?

  Is my heart open?

  Have I said I’m sorry to those who need to hear it?

  Have I said I love you to those I want to tell?

  3. Music. Why does music matter? In the most personal terms, it gave me a relationship with my father. He didn’t understand me, but we liked the same music, and it was always something we could talk about. Music also played a crucial role in my career, starting with my first job as a disc jockey. For as long as I can remember, though, music has been a part of my daily life, whether it was playing with the band in school, singing or dancing to make a living, or playing the piano in the early morning or late at night, as I do nowadays, filling the quiet with chords that give, as Plato said of music, “soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”

  Listen to Bach, Benny Goodman, or Cole Porter, and then try to tell me music doesn’t make life more delightful, delicious, and de-lovely. I know for a fact it does. A few years ago I was singing with my quartet the Vantastix at a children’s hospital on the East Coast. We went from room to room, singing songs to groups of kids, roommates, and families. If we found a kid, we sang.

  Doctors, nurses, and the kids themselves said the songs were the best medicine they had received, adding fun to the otherwise dreary and depressing routine of their hospital stay. The last room we entered was ne
arly dark, with just a small shaft of light sneaking in behind the drawn shades. A boy who looked to be about fourteen years old was lying on top of the bed, a single IV attached to his arm. He was painfully thin and bald. His eyes were closed. He was obviously very sick. Even though it seemed as if we might be disturbing him, the nurse who led us into his room nodded that it was okay to sing. We did a couple of songs, singing very softly, our voices careful to soothe and not disturb. He didn’t respond, didn’t open his eyes, and didn’t stir until we finished and started to tiptoe out. Then we heard a quiet voice, barely a whisper, say, “Would you please sing another one?” That alone is why music matters.

  4. Books. I love ideas and stories. I always have at least one book going and am on the lookout for the next one. They feed the brain and fuel the imagination. I can’t imagine life without them. As a kid, I read all the way through Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan books. I liked King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and of course, I loved Mark Twain. Booth Tarkington was another writer I liked when I was growing up. He wrote the Penrod series, Penrod and Sam and the two other books in the trilogy about the adventures of a twelve-year-old boy. I identified with those stories.

  I also enjoyed stories about the Civil War and sea adventures. I used to have dime novels. They were printed on rough paper and only cost a dime, but some of the writers were among the greats, such as Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov. Only a dime—that’s how much it cost to time travel. Can you imagine? I read those books by the handful. The collection I had as a kid is the one thing I wish I still had. In fact, the only thing I have saved from my childhood is my copy of King Arthur. It wasn’t deliberate. It seems to have followed me around. But I am glad to have it.

  5. A Sense of humor. I once heard someone say that if you can’t laugh at life, you’re missing the joke. I agree. As far as I’m concerned, a sense of humor is the way we make sense out of nonsense.

  A Separate Plot

  There was a young man from Dallas

  who overdosed on Cialis.

  His body was laid

  to rest in the shade

  with a separate plot

  for his phallus.

  I Was Supposed to Go First

  We spoke about it a handful of times, none that stand out for any particular reason. We did not dwell on it either. As far as I was concerned, I was being practical and preparing my longtime partner, Michelle, a woman of deep and wild dispositions, for what seemed inevitable: that I was likely to die first.

  I did not want to die, obviously. But I was six years older than Michelle, and it made sense to me that I would go before her. Starting in childhood, we are programmed to believe the oldest ones are supposed to go first. It’s the natural order of things. It doesn’t always happen that way, of course. Many factors come into play, such as smoking, genetics, luck. But it’s a waste of time trying to cover all those variables. I focused on the statistics. I was older, and women generally outlive men. I think the average expectancy these days for women is eighty-one, compared to seventy-six for men. This is actually good news for survival of the species. In an evolutionary sense, women are more essential than men. In a practical sense, they make plans, write thank-you notes, and remember birthdays.

  Bottom line: I was going before Michelle. Up the ladder to some unspecified rung, then . . . adios.

  We were never maudlin about it. Saying “good-bye” when I left for work or ran out to the grocery store did not take on additional weight. In fact, we only had the conversation a few times before folding it up and putting it in the back of the underwear drawer. Things were understood. Beyond making sure she was provided for, I had only one concern about her quality of life without me, and I was very clear to her about it. I did not want my death to turn her into a professional widow. I didn’t want her to spend the rest of her life grieving. I didn’t even want her to mourn for a year, which is supposed to be the respectfully appropriate time to wait. I wanted her to fall in love again. I wanted this woman who was a rare force of passion and humor, a powerhouse of pure energy, to continue to live life to the fullest.

  “Make sure you get on with your life,” I said.

  Michelle worked as my agent’s assistant at the William Morris Agency when we met in the early 1970s. I would call to speak with him and found myself chatting with her until he was available. Pretty soon I was calling just to talk with her. At the time Michelle, a former singer and actress, was embroiled in a “palimony” lawsuit against her former companion, actor Lee Marvin, whom she met when she got a small part in his 1964 movie Ship of Fools. They lived together for six years.

  After breaking up in 1970, he sent her a small monthly sum, reportedly to help get her back on her feet. But when those checks stopped, she filed suit for half of the money he had earned while they were together. Her lawyer called it palimony, and every media outlet in the country followed it. Although the lawsuit was a landmark case, it created a notoriety that overwhelmed Michelle. The legal battle also saddled her with significant additional expenses, as she employed a very expensive attorney, Marvin Mitchelson.

  We started living together in 1978. A year later her lawsuit went to trial. Media coverage ran the gamut from the New York Times to the National Enquirer and prompted fierce debate on the obligations of men and women who enter into relationships without marrying. Michelle stood tall and strong throughout the public ordeal—not surprising to anyone who knew her. After ultimately losing the case, she famously told reporters, “If a man wants to leave his toothbrush at my house, he better bloody well marry me.”

  And that’s what I wanted to do from the first day Michelle moved into my place in Marina del Rey. We got along perfectly. We ate and drank, took long walks, and went to movies and parties. She made me more social. In turn, I took her on adventures aboard my sailboat, which was like a second home. I was a confident skipper in those days, and she was an enthusiastic passenger who was quite clear that, with a cigarette in one hand and a cocktail in the other, she was more than occupied and not interested in learning the skills that would have elevated her to capable first mate.

  Once, in one of our more memorable adventures, we flew to the British Virgin Islands, where I rented a forty-foot sailboat. We threw some groceries on it and took off for two weeks, sailing wherever our whims and the wind took us. Though I knew it was futile, I was still trying to teach her the basics of sailing, especially how to anchor. After all, we were on our own.

  “Keep it into the wind while I drop anchor,” I remember saying.

  She gave me one of those looks that said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Then one day we were out, and the wind was blowing hard, about forty knots. I was up front getting the anchor and lowering the sail while Michelle had hold of the steering wheel. In those conditions, though, I was having trouble, in part because of the wind but mostly because Michelle was steering us in circles.

  “Starboard!” I yelled. “Starboard! Take us starboard!”

  She looked directly at me, shaking her head. I wasn’t sure whether she couldn’t hear me or didn’t understand. I was focused on the tedious job at hand: the lines and sail were wrapped around the mast. I needed help. I issued another command, “Starboard!” and looked directly at my first mate to see whether she could hear me.

  Michelle heard me all right. She snapped, “Don’t give me that Navy crap! Just say right or left!”

  When we moved to Malibu from the Marina in 1990, I discovered something new and wonderful about Michelle. She had a green thumb. It wasn’t just green; it was the greenest thumb I had ever encountered. Whatever she planted in our backyard—a big, sloping hill—or in one of the many flower beds seemed to grow and bloom. Sometimes she tossed seeds willy-nilly or took cuttings from plants she saw along the road when we were walking, and they always grew.

  She spent hours outside planting and pruning. The gardens she created were glorious, and they still are. The yard continues to bloom year-round. She left her green thumbprint everywhere. The anim
als and the insects, the birds and the bees appear to appreciate the plants and flowers as much as I do, if not more. It is a testimony to the impact we humans have on the earth—our little patch of dirt or the big blue orb itself. We can destroy it, or we can make it even better than we found it. Michelle definitely made it better.

  She had a similarly positive effect with people. She was a strong, aggressive woman, and I liked her because of this. She was also a fiercely loyal friend. If she was your friend, you could count on her for anything, and people did. She knew everyone and introduced me to a world of new people, from Dick Martin and his wife, Dolly, to Barbara Sinatra and so many others who became my close friends. I was lucky she dragged me along. It was this large, closely knit social circle of hers that provided comfort whenever I thought about her going on without me.

  “There will be no sitting around in the dark,” I said. “No wasting time. No waiting a year before resuming life—and hopefully love.”

  She nodded, and I knew she would take care of things in my absence and that people would take care of her. I would have left her comfortable too. That was also paramount in my thoughts. Like a good Boy Scout, my campsite would be cleaned and tended to when I left, which was important to my peace of mind. My loved ones wouldn’t have to worry. In those private moments when I did my estate planning and thinking, and just thinking minus the estate planning, I wanted to know my exit would be on favorable terms.

  I am not saying it wouldn’t be sad. But there would be no sense that I had dined and dashed. Maybe I wouldn’t have sung all the songs I wanted to sing, but I wouldn’t have missed many, and just as importantly, because life wasn’t all about me, the bills would be paid, my slippers put in their place, and everyone told they were loved.

  The thing neither of us anticipated or even considered was that Michelle might go before me. We ignored that she didn’t take care of herself. She drank, smoked, and was overweight. She treated life as if it were a party. Sometimes she was the guest. Other times she was the hostess. And other times she was the headliner, belting out a couple of tunes. She enjoyed herself.