My therapist and I talked about eating as a way to fill in the emotional hole that I had in my soul. The hole wasn’t just about Aaron’s illness. It was much older than that. It went way back to my childhood and the ways in which I was programmed to be perfect.
It was hard to hear, but it was all true. Eating replaced so many things that I wasn’t facing up to. It was a way of avoiding what I really needed to own up to and tackle. I suppose it was another way of compartmentalizing. I gained quite a bit of weight. It was so frustrating because eating was the only thing that made me feel happy and satisfied. At least it was in that moment.
Afterwards, I always felt terrible about myself. I wish I could have shared my feelings with my girlfriends, but I didn’t want to sound like I was complaining. I also just wasn’t at all comfortable sharing those sorts of personal issues, even with people I was close to. Thinking back on it, it makes me sad.
It was no coincidence that my issues with food flared at the same time Aaron got sick. I felt so out of control, not just with food and my weight but with so many other aspects of my life. I felt particularly helpless when it came to my husband’s illness. It was a vicious cycle: eat because I’m depressed, and then I became depressed because I was gaining weight.
I went to see Hermien Lee when I first began putting on serious weight. Hermien was a prominent nutritionist who died in 2009 at the age of ninety-two. According to her obituary, she took a fall while visiting family in Nashville, Tennessee, over the Christmas holidays. She broke her elbow and her hip and needed surgery. It was after her operation that she had a heart attack. It was sad but still, she made it to ninety-two. Her health regimen must have been a good one.
Hermien was so insightful. She completely understood what I was going through. She knew all about the psychological reasons for an attachment to overeating. The first round of sessions with Hermien worked for me. She worked out a nutrition plan for me and held me accountable when it came to sticking to it. I listened to her, followed the regimens, and lost the weight. Then I gained it right back. I went back to see Hermien, and this time she passed along some tricks that she used when she was very heavy. First of all, she admitted that she had replaced her eating with seventeen-hour workdays so that she barely had time to eat. Well, I was just sitting at home worrying about my sick husband, so working harder was not an option. That’s when Hermien gave me what she thought was a great psychological device.
Hermien’s downfall was always chocolate cake. She explained that in order to stop craving and eating chocolate cake, she envisioned a big, disgusting cockroach embedded in the chocolate cake. It repulsed her so much that even if the cake was right in front of her, she wouldn’t and couldn’t eat it.
I gave the cockroach trick a shot. The problem was, if I pictured the cockroach in my comfort food—let’s say it was a chopped liver sandwich—I just pictured myself eating around the cockroach, no problem. When it comes to dieting, everybody is different, and you have to do what works for you. The second round with Hermien wasn’t helping, so I figured I would just give it a try on my own.
The first thing I did was just cut down on my food. I really kept track of what I was eating and stopped with the late-night eating. I made a point of eating dinner three hours before I went to bed and not one hour. Exercise was an obstacle for me. I have never liked exercising, and even though I didn’t exercise, for most of my life I had a perfectly flat stomach. I didn’t have any real core strength, however, which isn’t good for the back, especially as we age.
I developed back-pain issues when I was fifteen. Of all things, I was taking a driving lesson and got rear-ended. My instructor was badly injured, and I was also treated in the emergency room. The doctor said that they didn’t want to do anything surgically until I was an adult. I was only a teenager, so I didn’t take it seriously. Youth makes you feel invincible. It wasn’t until after I’d had two children that I started developing serious back problems. I had several back operations, including a procedure to fuse my discs, but I still have back pain.
For a long time, I used my back problems and more recently my carpal tunnel syndrome as an excuse not to exercise. If I’m being really honest with myself, the truth is, I didn’t exercise before the car accident. I have such a mental block about it that I didn’t even try to find a way around it.
I started planning walks and pictured how lovely it would be to walk down the beach in Malibu. I tried my best not to focus on the pain I felt when I walked on the beach and what hard work it was to trudge through the sand in tennis shoes. It was hard for me to stay motivated, and just as I was about to slip on my sneakers and get outside or jump on the treadmill, I was so depleted from the mental exercise of staying positive that I was too tired to walk.
I thought about motivating myself by setting an exercise date with a friend so that I would be accountable. I had had success with that in the past. But then all of the mental gymnastics started again, and it all got very complicated in my mind.
Aaron was not athletic either, but he liked to bowl and play tennis. I’m not a great tennis player and I also didn’t love it, but I learned because it was important for us to play doubles and network with other people in the business. I didn’t have that competitive edge, so I was grateful when we stopped playing doubles.
It all came down to being truthful with myself. I didn’t want to exercise even though it’s good for my health. My regimen with Hermien failed because it wasn’t and isn’t about food. It’s about resolving feelings. My relationship with food and my ability to discuss my feelings are a work in progress.
Last year, Tori dedicated her lifestyle book, celebraTORI, to me. The dedication was very sweet: To my mom, the master party planner. I learned everything I know from watching you throw the most amazing parties with so much love. Thank you for the gift of knowing it’s all in the details. I hope my parties make you proud! I love you, Tori xoxo
Not long after, Tori also wrote me a beautiful letter in which she shared that it was painful for her to hear how critical I am of myself. She is right and I know I need to learn to be compassionate toward myself and be forgiving of myself. It’s really hard.
Tori was trying to set me up on a blind date with the father of a friend of hers who had also lost a spouse. I looked him up on Google and saw that he was very handsome and extremely fit. I e-mailed Tori back.
“Did you tell him that I’m fat and one of my hands doesn’t work very well?”
“He saw you on HGTV, Mommy. He thinks you’re beautiful. You are beautiful.”
It was music to my ears, but instead of absorbing what she was saying, I thought, children have different eyes for their parents.
That’s just the kind of thinking I am trying to stop. Take today, for example. Instead of being hard on myself about the number on the scale, I am trying to focus on the fact that I walked on my treadmill last night and also did my exercises in the swimming pool. That’s quite an achievement for me.
Aaron once said to me that Elizabeth Taylor couldn’t stay married because she was too high maintenance. I find that since I entered my sixties, high maintenance is a necessity but not in that Elizabeth Taylor way. They call these years the “Golden Years,” and yet so far there is nothing golden about them.
Let’s face it, food doesn’t metabolize the way it once did, and when I gain weight, I seem to gain it everywhere now. It starts in my middle section but then seems to slide all over the place. My soft midsection is a new creation of the last five years or so. My chest is a medical mystery. Even though I had a breast reduction years ago, “they” seem to have made a comeback.
When I turned fifty, I was actually convinced I could lose weight as the hair was removed from places it never grew before. I have to laugh because one day you wake up and everything has changed. Some women suddenly notice they have the beginnings of a beard or mustache. Not even my feet look the same, and I have pain in places I didn’t have it in before. I feel like I am at war with Mother Nature.
It’s hard because there is such a double standard for middle-age women. Men can be overweight or bald, and they’re still considered attractive. Women, on the other hand, are held to impossible standards of beauty.
That being said, it sounds corny but beauty really does come from within. I have had my share of maintenance done, but I refuse to go crazy with Botox or collagen. I think a lot of women have taken the plastic surgery thing too far. I’ve actually had to stop friends from having too much done. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there are many women my age who would look better if they gained five or ten pounds.
I’m learning that our attitude is the most important thing. I need to be happy with what and who I see in the mirror. Regardless of what I do cosmetically and surgically, I have to be happy on the inside because if I’m not, then I won’t like the reflection looking back at me.
26
My Story with Tori (and Dean)
Tori and Dean walked into Aaron’s service and took seats in the back row. It was very emotional for me to see her because I didn’t know if she was going to show up. This was my first time seeing my new son-in-law, Dean. It was very uncomfortable. A friend of mine couldn’t bear the awkwardness.
“This isn’t right,” he said. Thankfully he got up out of his seat and brought Tori and her new husband to sit with the family.
The day was starting to remind me of my father’s funeral. After my mother died, my father met his new wife on the set of The Love Boat. At his funeral years later, my father’s wife refused to let me sit with the family.
My father had remarried a few years after my mother passed away. There was a significant age difference between them, but who was I to throw stones considering the age difference between Aaron and me. They were still age appropriate for one another and they seemed happy in their new life together.
After they were married, they bought a house in Westlake Village. Once again, my father was living beyond his means, and yet again his wife had no idea. This all came to light in 1994 when my father passed away at the age of seventy-seven. Because of all his debt, his wife was not able to stay in their home and had to put it on the market. She asked Aaron and me to buy her a new house.
Aaron and I discussed it with our attorney and our business manager. They both strongly advised us against it. They felt strongly that this was one of those situations in which if we were to buy her a house, we would end up supporting her for the rest of our lives. We decided to compromise and offered to purchase her a condominium instead. She rejected our offer and refused to speak with us again. To this day she has all of our family photo albums and personal effects from childhood in her possession and refuses to return them.
There were lots of mourners at The Manor when I got back from the funeral. Randy, Aaron’s brother Danny, his nephew, his niece with her husband and kids. It reminded me of being a bride. For hours you are surrounded by these happy faces smiling at you, only this was the opposite. Everybody was somber and looked at me with grave concern. Time seemed to stand still as I noticed certain faces: Larry and DeeDee Gordon, Bill Haber, Lew and Willy Erlicht, Arline and Henry Gluck, Michael and Ernestine Young, Eli and Nancy Blumenfeld. Tori and Dean were there too.
I welcomed my firstborn with a big hug, but we still couldn’t hide how uncomfortable we both were. This was the first time I could remember seeing her since her postwedding brunch at the Bel-Air Hotel after her wedding to Charlie.
Dean was polite but made a point of acting protective of his new wife. I knew exactly how he felt. After Tori’s surprise visit a couple of weeks ago, Aaron repeatedly asked Randy if he’d heard from Tori again.
Aaron and I couldn’t figure out why Tori had disappeared after her wedding. Eventually word came through the television grapevine that she and Charlie, who was a writer and an actor, had sold their treatment for So NoTORIous to VH1. The show, written by Tori and Charlie, was a comedy based on Tori’s childhood. Loni Anderson played me, and in an homage to Tori’s father, Aaron was depicted only as an off-camera voice like Charlie in Charlie’s Angels.
Aaron hadn’t had his stroke yet, so he still had lucid stretches. I was devastated about Tori, and he was angry. He left her numerous messages on her cell phone. I tried reaching her as well. Not surprisingly, we didn’t hear back from her. One day Tori’s assistant, Marcel, finally answered the phone. It turned out that he was no longer her assistant, but he had kept the number.
“This isn’t Tori’s cell phone anymore, but I can get a message to her.” This left us without any way to contact our daughter except through e-mail.
Shortly afterward, we heard that Tori was getting divorced from Charlie and was romantically involved with her co-star from a television movie she had just done called Mind Over Murder. Before her wedding, Tori and I had discussed her reservations about marrying Charlie, so I wasn’t shocked. I had never shared these mother-daughter conversations with Aaron, so he didn’t expect this turn in their relationship. He didn’t take the news well at all.
Sometimes before you can go forward, you have to look back. That’s something I learned in therapy. With that in mind, I can see that my difficulties with Tori are shades of the same kind of tension I had with my own mother. She was a relentless perfectionist, and so am I. The difference, I suppose, was that my mother and I always spoke to one another. Admittedly, it was more of challenge once I married Aaron and was more focused on building a life with him. It took effort on my part, and there were some days when I would think, “It’s been a week since I’ve spoken to my mother. I’d better call her.” I thought of her often when The Manor was under construction. I vacillated between wishing she had lived to see it and knowing she would have found something to be negative about.
I’ve always said that mother-daughter relationships are even more complex than marriages. The umbilical cord is cut at birth, but I’ve learned that it’s very difficult for mothers and daughters to establish separate identities. I don’t believe I was in any way a better daughter than Tori. All mothers and daughters have misunderstandings and fights; it’s just not every mother and daughter whose disagreements become headline entertainment news or tabloid fodder.
Less than a week after Aaron died and just days after we buried him, US Weekly began publicizing their upcoming cover story. It was an exclusive interview with Tori, and the feature was called I Never Said Goodbye. A few days later the magazine hit the newsstands and reported the following:
“On the night of June 23, Tori Spelling sat in Betty’s restaurant in Toronto, Canada, when she received the heartbreaking news via BlackBerry that her father, legendary producer, Aaron, had passed away: ‘A friend of mine had seen a TV report and e-mailed me, ‘I’m so sorry. I just heard your father died.’ And I was just in total shock,’ Tori tells Us. Her sorrow quickly turned to anger.
“‘My first thought was, I can’t believe my mom didn’t call me!’ Actually, it wasn’t a total surprise since Tori, 33, and her mom, Candy have been in a longstanding feud. Because of the estrangement, the self-proclaimed daddy’s girl had only seen her 83-year-old father—whose health had been failing for months—on one occasion since last September.”
A month later there was another US Weekly feature story entitled Her Mother’s Revenge, and there I was inset on the magazine cover. Here is an excerpt:
“US has learned exclusively that the actress, 33, will get just 0.16 % of the Spelling fortune. Tori’s share—‘a cash inheritance payment of $200,000, combined with approximately $600,000 in private investments her dad set up for her’—is a brush-off Aaron Spelling would never have intended for his only daughter, says a family source.
“‘I believe Candy had a lot to do with what was left for Tori,’ the source says of Tori’s mother, who is sole managing executor of the estate.”
Soon every media outlet had copies of Aaron’s last will and testament. There were unfounded accusations that I had revised the will to disinherit my children. I was no longer the Marie Antoine
tte of The Manor. I had quickly been recast in the role of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth.
What nobody knew was that both Tori and Randy had already received disbursements from a trust while Aaron was still alive. In the meantime, the press were in copywriting heaven with headlines like Dynasty in Distress and Dynasty Duel. They also had a ball drawing parallels between Tori and Fallon Carrington.
On July 31, 2006, just over a month after Aaron passed away, Joel Keller of Huffington Post TV wrote the following:
“In today’s New York Post, resident yenta Cindy Adams mentions an article in the September issue of Vanity Fair that details the sad last days of TV legend Aaron Spelling, who passed away last month. According to the article, written by Dominick Dunne, Spelling was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and lived pretty much alone in his 123-room mansion. Apparently no one visited, including daughter Tori, which confirms the rumors that there was a rift in their relationship.
“According to Adams, Spelling would ‘dine in pj’s, go to bed at 9, had lost control of the company he’d founded and nobody—especially his kid—ever came over. The daughter he’d lived for learned of her father’s death on television.’ Wow. A guy with all this money and power, who was a major player in entertainment, and he went out with a whimper. It’s too bad.”
It made me incredibly sad that even Dominick, whom Aaron had considered a dear friend, was hungry for a byline. Aaron Spelling’s Season Finale appeared in the September 2006 issue of Vanity Fair. In his column Dominick wrote, “For years, their marriage has been a topic of conversation. I think of it as an unhappy house, a complicated marriage, and an unhappy family.”
In Dominick’s version, Aaron was more King Lear than he was the Scottish nobleman Macbeth. “Two years ago, with only two programs on the air, after having been the leader of the pack for almost two decades, Aaron was left with little control of his company.” Aaron had never lost control of his company, though. As early as 1988, production costs were soaring, so Aaron was already looking ahead and trying to a form strategic alliance with a wealthy parent company. He told business reporter Mark Frankel that production companies like his “would have to branch out and do other things besides just producing for television—become miniconglomerates—in order to make sure that we can keep doing what we do.”
Candy at Last Page 15
