Keep Moving

by Dick Van Dyke

“I have something to ask you,” I said.

  Again Arlene asked, “Yes?” only now her smile was larger, amused and interested. Then, for the twelfth or twenty-seventh or sixty-fifth time, I asked her to marry me.

  It wasn’t a joke, but it had become a sort of through-line of the past year of our relationship. I had popped the question only a couple of nights earlier, in fact, while we watched Jeopardy after dinner, and as always, she laughed at me.

  It was a laugh filled with love, and though not exactly a rebuff, it was more or less a response that said, “Are you crazy?” Yes, in fact, I was crazy—crazy about her. What is that old saying about the definition of insanity? Doing something over and over again and expecting a different result? Well, I guess I was partially insane. But I was also an adherent of the old English proverb about perseverance.

  ’Tis a lesson you should heed:

  Try, try, try again.

  If at first you don’t succeed,

  Try, try, try again.

  So I had tried again—and this time, after I asked, she looked up from the pool and said, “Where’s the ring?”

  “Do you want to go to Tiffany’s today?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Okay.”

  The reason Arlene finally said yes? As she later explained, despite her fears about our age difference and worries that a marriage as far-fetched as ours would never work, her gut told her to take the risk. Stranger things happened to people. Plus, her feelings, like mine, were genuine.

  So later that afternoon we walked into Tiffany’s on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Arlene said she felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. I felt even luckier. Another couple was also at the counter picking out a ring. They appeared to be in their early thirties and quite indecisive. The bride-to-be tried on every diamond ring in the case.

  By contrast, Arlene, whose knuckles were still tinged with blood, studied the options for a few minutes, then tapped the top of the display case and said, “That one.” It was a platinum band with tiny diamonds all the way around. We were out of there within twenty minutes. The other couple was still trying on rings.

  Back out on Rodeo Drive I held Arlene’s hand and walked with a spring in my step. I was tickled as I thought about what had just happened. I was engaged. Who would have guessed? However, after ninety years on this planet, I can confirm one absolute, fundamental, inarguable truth about life: it is an endless series of surprises. We old people—no, make that us folks who have lived a long time—have learned this basic truth: no one knows what is going to happen next. It’s all a mystery wrapped in a gift box that you only find when you least expect it.

  Think about it: life starts as a surprise, we spend our childhood pretty much in the moment, and then, after a certain point, we spend a good amount of energy planning for the future, wondering but never actually knowing when, how, or why we will head for the exit. All the years in between are best summed up by that oft-quoted line, which I will say again here: if you want to amuse God, make plans. If anyone who tells you they have everything mapped out, check back with them five years later. You can say, “I told you so.”

  Philosopher Alan Watts said as much in The Wisdom of Insecurity, a favorite book of mine that postulates that security does not exist, not in life and definitely not in the way people want and spend their time trying to ensure it—my younger self included. Watts argued what he called “the wisdom of insecurity.” He said that in order to live with less anxiety and a freer mind, you have to accept that insecurity is the rule. The best you could do, he said, was be fully present in the here and now—and get ready to be surprised.

  As I always say, my life has been a series of surprises—lucky breaks, I call them—starting with what was and remains one of the best experiences of my life. I was a freshman in junior high, and my dad was transferred in his sales job, from Danville to Crawfordsville, Indiana. We lived across from Wabash College, and on Sundays they had track meets there. I was on my school’s freshman track team, and our coach was one of the officials at those weekend events. I always went over and watched the races. One weekend I went there to see Wabash run against Purdue University.

  As I sat on the wall, my coach came over and asked whether I would help out. “The anchorman on the relay team just turned his ankle,” he said. “Do you want to run it?”

  Even though I wasn’t yet fifteen years old and would be running against guys eighteen years and older, I said, “Sure.”

  I had to run in my bare feet because I didn’t have any shoes, and luckily I was wearing short pants. But none of that was even remotely on my mind as the guy from Wabash handed me the baton. I could have been wearing a three-piece suit at that point, and it wouldn’t have mattered. My only thought was to run and to run fast—and I did.

  When I took off, the guy from Purdue was five yards ahead of me. I caught him before the last turn then passed him on the outside and crossed the finish line five yards ahead of him. I was more excited than I had ever been in my entire life. I took my blue ribbon home and told my parents.

  My father never believed me. I knew it was far-fetched too, but it happened, and that night, as I went to bed, I thought, “My God, I am on my way to the Olympics.”

  That didn’t happen, but the surprises kept coming. As a high school junior, I was elected class president—and I didn’t even run! Someone else put my name on the ballot, and I arrived at school the next morning and saw my name on the bulletin board: Class President: Dick Van Dyke. The next year someone put my name on the ballot again, and I lost by two votes to Chuck Linley, a guy who said I hadn’t done a thing the previous year—and he was right! I was too busy socializing.

  A few months later, in the middle of my senior year, I left high school to join the Air Force—another unexpected twist. And so it has gone.

  I never had an agenda. I didn’t know I was going to sing or dance. I went from radio to nightclubs to TV to singing and dancing onstage in Bye Bye Birdie. It was all about feeding my family, not developing a career. I nearly got canned from Bye Bye Birdie; they considered letting me go as we workshopped it in Philadelphia. I had no idea.

  In my audition I had confessed that I didn’t know how to dance. Gower Champion, the show’s director, had said, “We’ll teach you.” Still, I was a novice—and nervous.

  A year and a half later I won the Tony Award as Best Featured Actor, which was not only a surprise but a total shock. Adding to that, by then I had left the play and was shooting The Dick Van Dyke Show in Los Angeles. Charles Nelson Reilly accepted the award for me, but he didn’t call afterward, and the telegram notifying me got stuck under our front doormat. Our housekeeper found it three days later.

  Mary Poppins is yet another example of life saying, “Surprise!” Walt Disney heard me say during an interview that I thought there was a paucity of children’s entertainment. From that, I got the job. And look at the way things worked out. Believe me, when I think of all the things that happened raising four children—the grades and graduations, the phone calls from family and friends about engagements, babies, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, jobs, promotions, and so on—the list of surprises that comprise life, my life, has been constant.

  And then came the latest: marriage. Eight months after getting engaged, on Leap Day 2012, Arlene and I drove up the canyon in the hills behind us to the Serra Retreat, a serene spot embodying the philosophy of its namesake, Blessed Junipero Serra: “Always go forward, never turn back.” I couldn’t have moved forward fast enough. As I told the retreat’s longtime priest, Father Warren Rouse, I was in a hurry—I wanted to make sure Arlene didn’t get away.

  I wasn’t joking either. Our prenup had taken longer than expected, then our marriage license expired and had to be renewed, and getting family and friends together was nearly as hard as convincing Arlene to say yes. In the end that extra twenty-ninth day in February proved useful, as we finally traded “I Dos” in front of a handful of family and friends. Arlene looked beautiful in a simple red dress, whi
le I went for understated elegance in a black suit with a festive silver tie.

  “This was one of the smartest moves I’ve ever made,” I told everyone as we celebrated at our house with high tea sandwiches, scones, clotted cream, and red velvet cake.

  In September we celebrated with family and friends in a blowout at our friends Fay and Frank Mancuso’s beachfront home. Arlene created what she called “a sea-foam circus theme” party: “It’s Jules Verne meets Moulin Rouge meets Fellini,” she told me. Under a giant tent the extravaganza featured a circus barker who changed accents and languages as the night went on, jugglers, fan dancers, a dancing bear, dancing jelly fish, special lighting effects, popcorn, cotton candy, a sea of cupcakes, a gorgeous mermaid playing a harp, and a contortionist who floated in a crystal ball in the swimming pool overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

  There was also a stack of hula hoops that all the guests took a spin with. Even the catering staff gave them a whirl! One of the many highlights of the evening was watching Arlene’s mother hula-hoop to the song “Walking on Sunshine” in its entirety. Arlene and I capped the evening with a duet of the Annie Get Your Gun tune “Old Fashioned Wedding.” It was the best wedding I’d ever been to—and best of all, I was in it!

  In the weeks and months afterward I was asked the same question, repeatedly, but in umpteen different ways. Sometimes it came at me from behind embarrassed grins; other times it followed nervous hemming and hawing. Sometimes it was asked directly. Other times I had to decipher the round-about-ness of curiosity cloaked in a maze of modesty. But all wanted to know the same thing: Was there was still romance at my age? I’m sure my response gave a lot of people hope, as I said, “There’s a reason these years are called the golden years.”

  This is the biggest surprise of all, I suppose. Love is everything when you are thirteen. It is everything when you are in your twenties and thirties. Finding it again is everything if you lose it in your forties or fifties. You cherish it in your sixties and seventies. And it is just as powerful and intoxicating if you are lucky enough to have it in your eighties and nineties.

  It is all about love.

  Maybe that should not be a surprise.

  Love in the Afternoon

  For me, having lived for a long time, having been through relationships, I have gotten over the romantic notion about love. Oh, there is still plenty of romance—flowers, dancing, moonlight walks. What I’m talking about is the possessiveness, the jealousy, all the evil and vain things. Real love, as I have come to know it, is when you care about the other person as much as you care about yourself. You can’t make another person happy, but you can pave the way for them to make themselves happy.

  Old Dogs, New Tricks

  Though I am ninety, my wife has a thing for an even older man—my dog. Make that our dog, Rocky. A brown wire hair terrier, he is fourteen years old, which in dog years is equivalent to ninety-eight. They love each other. He especially loves Arlene. If he senses she has strayed too far or has been away from him for too long, he barks, and barks, and barks, until she comes around and pats him on the head, gives him a kiss, or cradles him in her lap while rubbing his belly. “I’m here,” she says, comforting him into submission, and quiet.

  She would never tolerate such demanding behavior from me or anyone else. But he is different. At night, when we are in bed watching TV, they are a pair. He sits directly in front of her, staring up at her with Jean-Paul Belmondo eyes: dark, droopy, lovelorn puddles of sadness and sensuality, demanding attention, waiting to drown her with affection. Either that, or he is struggling to make her out through thick layers of cloudiness (not cataracts) that have rendered his vision a misty morning fog. He doesn’t move until she returns his gaze and then purrs, “I love you, Rocky.”

  Theirs is another relationship that defies the odds. When I met Arlene, she was a cat person, and she still is. She brought her cat, Spider, into the house and kept him in a carrying crate to protect him from Rocky, who kept jumping at her out of curiosity. Michelle had been allergic to cats; Rocky had never seen one before. And Spider didn’t seem too keen on having a dog pawing at her. He’d let out blood-curdling screeches and foam at the mouth. In other words, he was not interested. I was discouraged. I wanted them to get along.

  “It’s going to take time,” Arlene counseled.

  That’s how it was with Arlene and Rocky. At the start of our relationship she said, “I don’t really like dogs.” It was matter of fact. A declaration. To me, that was like saying, “I don’t like Mozart” or “I don’t like ice cream sundaes.” What kind of person doesn’t like dogs? I found out. But I did not hold that against Arlene, and neither did Rocky, and fortunately Arlene did not hold being a dog person or being a dog against either of us.

  I understood the problem. Rocky was demanding. The first time Arlene came over to fix dinner, he dropped his plastic toy at her feet and waited for her to pick it up. She didn’t. The next time she came over he put his toy at her feet and waited. After a bit she kicked the toy about three feet. He hurried over, scooped it up in his mouth, and deposited it back at her feet. When she failed to kick it again, he trained his Belmondos on her, but without the desired effect.

  Over time she generously tossed the toy a few times. Rocky was grateful for the attention, I’m sure. But he was like an alcoholic with that toy. One toss was too many and a thousand was never enough. When Arlene began living at the house, she stayed in Michelle’s room, and late at night, as she was drifting off, nestled in that comfortable world between being awake and asleep, she heard the door creak open.

  She peered through the darkness, unable to see or hear anything—until suddenly a twenty-five-pound wire hair terrier jumped up on the bed and curled up on her pillow. “Get up, you dog!” she said, only to be met by a woozy grunt and a repositioned paw—body language that said, “I ain’t moving.”

  Not long after that fateful night, Arlene came out for breakfast one morning—followed closely by Rocky—and said, “Okay, we have a dog now.” She quickly added, “But I’m still a cat person.”

  Though her cat Spider was wary of this new relationship, I was delighted. Rocky, well, he was in love. He wouldn’t leave Arlene alone. He followed her everywhere. One afternoon Arlene picked up the leash. Rocky was right behind her. I was at the dining room table and overheard her talking to him.

  “I love cats,” Arlene said. “But the thing I don’t like about cats is you can’t take them for a walk. So, yeah, Rocky, I’ll take you for a walk.”

  Thirty minutes later the front door opened. They were back—and Arlene was smiling.

  “How was it?” I asked.

  “Fun,” she said. “We had a good walk.”

  Soon Arlene acknowledged she’d become a dog person. But she was not the only one who had changed. Rocky and I were living different lives, too. Aside from being married and upbeat again, I was ushered (or dragged) into the twenty-first century. I was on Twitter. I starred in six-second videos called Vines. I listened to music with Pandora, whose algorithms were like magic to me. I had no idea how that app did what it did (true confession: I don’t even know what an app is), nor did I understand why, when I created the Tomaso Albinoni station, they never played any of the Italian Baroque composer’s music. Nevertheless, I played it for hours.

  Through Arlene I found new music from Lady Gaga, who sings great, and Amy Winehouse, who impressed me as part Billie Holiday, part Ella Fitzgerald, but with a sound of her own. She had clearly done her homework. The impact all of this had on me—from going to belly dancing class with Arlene to discovering new music to using apps—was an elixir all its own. I sang and danced constantly. It was like the wind suddenly picked up after being becalmed for a period of time.

  I was moving again, invested in the future, growing, learning, and doing all the things that should not stop just because you get to a certain stage in life, or a ripe old age. Old age shouldn’t be considered ripe; neither should it be thought of as overripe. It takes nine mo
nths to have a baby. People go to school for twelve to twenty-five years. Becoming educated takes even longer. And learning is—or should be—a process that spans an entire lifetime.

  I was reminded of this recently when I read that Stewart Stern had died. Stewart was the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Rebel Without a Cause, The Ugly American, Teresa, Sybil, and many other movies. But this man, who lived to be ninety-two, impressed me most with the way he lived his life.

  I met him in the 1960s through Edna McHugh, one of Eddie Cantor’s five daughters, and composer Jimmy McHugh’s daughter-in-law. She was one of those sophisticated characters who knew everyone, and she hosted fabulous dinner parties where she gathered the most fascinating mix of writers, actors, artists, and musicians. The dinners I attended at her house inevitably ended with some kind of intellectual brain game. There was no sitting around chatting; after dessert it was a competition of cleverness and wit.

  Stewart was among the brightest and most entertaining people there. He loved animals, and I remember him telling a story about how, while on a hike, he came upon a pasture of grazing cows and laid down in the grass among the animals. Another time he related being on a safari in Africa, wandering into the jungle, and camping solo among the wildlife. He was a gentle, quiet man who gave me the sense that his writing was about his own personal search for something other than show business, perhaps something purer and closer to his soul.

  Indeed, he ended up a beloved writing teacher in Seattle after moving from Hollywood in the late 1980s, according to his obituary, in order to “get away from all the outside voices and pressures, and back to what inspired me to write in the first place.” I was about that same age, my middle sixties, and in Denver, working on the first season of Diagnosis Murder, when I heard about this thing called Toaster from Amiga that let you create animations on your computer. I was a life-long cartoonist—or amateur doodler. I drew caricatures of people when I was on the set. So I couldn’t resist this new toy.