I had been working all that year, between projects at the theater, compiling material, hoping to create something related to the Goddess culture for the stage. I met with Scott McVay from the Dodge Foundation. Scott had long supported us at the Whole Theatre, and during this annual meeting he happened to ask me what I was reading these days. I thought, Do I tell him? Run the risk of alienating him? Then, trusting that he was indeed a man of vision, I told him about my research into prehistory cultures. I told him I was uncertain how to synthesize this material and present it in a way that would have meaning for people today. On the spot, he offered financial support if I came up with a way of putting it on the stage. I found a writer and continued working, now with her on board. I traveled to her summerhouse on the Cape, where I realized I would be only a few miles from Ma’s East Coast ashram in Cohasset. Also nearby was a place where you could swim with the dolphins, an idea that had great appeal to me.
On my way to Ma’s, I went to the dolphin swim. There was a group of people preparing to go in the water with the dolphin. We watched a video to learn some basics about dolphins and were told we should not assume there would be any interaction. There was one old, enormous white dolphin that lived there, but they told us he might not respond to our presence. We put on snorkels, masks, and wet suits. When I got in the water, I suddenly lost my enthusiasm. I was hoping the dolphin would ignore me. I felt vulnerable and unprotected. I floated there, on the surface, unable to move, and then slowly, a long white form passed by me, turned and hung in the water in front of me. I felt that the dolphin sensed my fear and was trying to communicate that I was safe. He then swam away and I spent the rest of the time looking for him. When we were called back to shore, everyone left the water except one man and me. At that moment, the dolphin broke the water and started swimming back and forth in front of us. We both started shouting, with delight, “You’re great! Oh my god, you’re great!” The dolphin, in a smooth white streak, disappeared beneath the surface.
When I got to the ashram, I realized Ma was not going to be as forthcoming and involved with me as she had been at Omega. I was expected to be on my own. I ate delicious food, read, talked with other visitors, walked the grounds, attended services, and listened to Ma’s Sunday talk. Hearing her speak continued to move and inspire me.
Back home, The Goddess Project moved forward. I elected a director, and together with the writer we structured an evening in two parts. Part One was “Women’s Passages,” about the three stages of a woman’s life central to Goddess worship and culture: Virgin, Mother, and Crone. In Part Two, we dramatized a version of the Sumerian myth of Inanna. In this story, the goddess Inanna, who reigns supreme in the world above, descends into the underworld to visit her exiled sister, Ereshkigal, who reigns over the world below.
One interpretation of the Sumerian myth is that Inanna and Ereshkigal represent two aspects of the female essence, one that is “acceptable” and therefore can live aboveground, and one that is “unacceptable” and must reside belowground. For me, Ereshkigal exemplifies that aspect of woman that is “buried in oblivion and covered in silence.” As we enact it, the two sisters are given an opportunity to see and know each other, becoming a tale of rebirth and regeneration. Our first performance was at the Whole Theatre; it was a physical, exhausting, exhilarating evening. At the end, the audience jumped to their feet and I went to find my mother. She looked at me in wonder and said, “I never thought I’d live to see anything like this.” My satisfaction in making this happen for her was profound.
In 1989, I went to Los Angeles to make the movie Dad with Jack Lemmon and Ted Danson. We had a week off, so I went to Ma’s West Coast ashram in La Crescenta, California. Again I was told to do what I would.
I remember one woman in her eighties who had spent a long career as a nurse, specializing in schizophrenia. She had elected to clear the leaves from the walkway by the shrine. I wanted to contribute but had no idea how. Then, during a long walk, I came upon a grove of trees and discovered some overgrown stone steps, leading to a small glade. I found a dirty marble bench covered with leaves and decided to clean it. I then noticed something covered by overgrowth directly in front of the bench. I cleared away vines and branches and uncovered a statue of the Virgin and Child. I realized I had found my job. It was to tend to this little grotto, to weed it and keep it clean so that others could come and sit with the Virgin mother.
As I sat there, I remembered a prayer that my mother and I would say together at bedtime:
Give me Holy Mother
Give me your help
And never never leave me
Far from thee, Holy Mother
Make me a good child
To love knowledge
And to my good parents
Always give them prosperity
During this stay at the ashram, I had a unique experience. While I was chatting with a fellow visitor, Ma’s assistant, Sudha, handed me a small vial; it was from Ma, water from the font of the Black Madonna, and Ma wanted me to drink it. Just as I swallowed, I heard a deep rustling sound. I looked up and saw a huge owl flying over me. I couldn’t help connecting the water with this bird of wisdom, hoping it was a sign. Someday, wisdom would come.
After I returned to L.A. and went back to work on Dad, I received a script from a Greek-American screenwriter who I agreed to meet with. During the course of our meeting, it turned out she had worked as a translator for the controversial archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. I asked that she introduce me.
Marija Gimbutas was a feisty, clear-headed, and brilliant woman. She was an impeccable scholar with a sense of humor and a reverential respect for the mystical. When we first met she was skeptical about me: after all, I was a movie actress. But she soon realized that my interest was genuine, that I wanted to learn more about her and her work.
Marija’s book Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe is considered a classic text, spearheading the study of Goddess cultures and prehistory as a legitimate discipline. Through her scholarship, Marija created a portrait of life during prehistory. She showed that in Goddess cultures, there was no separation between the secular and the sacred, and that societies were built around the realities of the cyclical nature of life: the processes of birth, death, and regeneration. These civilizations enjoyed a long period (several thousand years) of uninterrupted peaceful living, and they predate the ages of weaponry and male-established hierarchical systems. What first struck Marija was how no weapons were ever found from earlier cultures, which were highly sophisticated and productive. They were built on patterns of sexual equality and nonviolence. Central to these cultures was a queen or priestess who encouraged and promoted unity and an understanding of the divinity within all living things. Her work had a major influence on my thinking, and meeting her turned out to be one of the most important encounters of my life.
During the time I was in L.A., I got a call from a speakers’ bureau asking if I would appear as the keynote speaker at a women’s expo, a daylong series of seminars and talks on women’s issues. I was intrigued, and not at all sure what they wanted me to talk about, but I had a sixth sense about it and decided to do it.
Two hours before I was to speak, I was frantically trying to write an outline for a speech about how hard work had brought me success, or something—anything. What on earth did I have to say to a roomful of women I didn’t know? After two hours I had written only a single paragraph.
The courage and determination to claim our lives, however we wish to live them, is at the heart of the matter—to honor the spirit within that seeks to know and realize itself is at the heart of the matter—to value consciousness that reaches out to nurture and love is at the heart of the matter—to raise the voice that can and will speak up, changing and shaping the lives of young people, is at the heart of the matter.
With this one short paragraph in hand, I walked onto a stage to face an audience packed with women of varying ages, ethnicities, and economic backgrounds, all of whom were looking at me w
ith great expectation. Clutching that slip of paper, I made my way to the podium and began. I read my paragraph, and then just started talking.
I began talking about the Oscar and the role of Rose Castorini. I spoke about how strange it was to be an overnight sensation—after working for thirty years. I shared some highly unglamorous details about show business, including how frustrating it had been to confront the ethnic thing on a day-to-day basis. How my agent would get calls from people who said, “Can she speak English?” or “Will she change her name?” And these were just for auditions. I talked about living from paycheck to paycheck, month to month, and how I nearly went broke during my first weeks in New York. But I also talked about how, after I signed my first Broadway contract, I treated myself to a steak and baked potato at Tad’s Steakhouse.
I talked about all the time I thought about quitting but stuck with it anyway. About being scared to try new things and doing it anyway. About the years of therapy and different approaches and how it was all part of the mix.
Some of these women had never worked outside the home, others had worked since their early teens, and most had devoted their lives to raising their children and supporting their spouses (if those spouses had stuck around). All of them wanted to know how I had managed—in their eyes—to have it all. They wanted to know how I had managed to have a career as an actress while also having a family and holding a marriage together. My first response was (and always is) two words: Louie Zorich. I told them the only way I could do any of this was because my dreams were supported by a man who loved me and wanted me to be happy. I also told them that having it all is an illusion, or at least “all” means the good and the bad. I told them about Louie’s accident and how it decimated our family. And how we came back from it.
They asked me what the high points of my life were and I said there were three: Christina, Peter, and Stefan.
As I spoke, I saw heads nodding in recognition and heard murmurs of affirmation. Meeting and talking with women has helped me to know and understand that in a very real way, I am no longer an outsider.
As I was expanding my circle of women friends, the most important woman in my life began to drift away from me. My mother was doing odd things: she would put the paper towels in the oven to dry. She was starting to forget and misplace things. She would eat only toast. She began to forget our names. I tried to ignore this, to chalk it up to old age, but we couldn’t ignore it for long: it was especially painful for my mother. One day, while Louie and I were sitting in the kitchen, my mother burst through the door, clutching her hair and shouting, “My mind! My mind! What are we going to do about my mind?” Just as suddenly, she stopped, looked at us, and very sensibly announced, “What am I telling you for? What can you do about it?” Little by little, she was losing the independence she had held on to so proudly.
I traveled to Greece during a break in shooting the film Ruby Cairo in Egypt. I wanted to see where my mother and father came from. Karavella, the village where my mother was born, is in the southern part of Greece, known as Mani. Life there is anything but easy: it’s all about hard, physical work and scratching out a basic subsistence living. Even knowing this before I got there, I was stunned by how barren it all was—rough-hewn streets of small houses built around a tiny square, one little store, and a small church. As I made my way around town asking, no one remembered the Christos family name. The main square was knee-deep in mud and water, and a local shopkeeper, a very old and frail man, told me that recently the town’s only water main had broken. I met three women and we started to talk. I asked them what had happened to the village. One of them chopped the air with her hand and cried in Greek, “God has hit us!” I felt at home. I realized they all had hazel eyes—just like mine, which is unusual for Greeks. As this recognition set in, I began to weep. One of the women moved closer and began to stroke my arm.
From Karavella I went to Mytilene, the island where my paternal grandfather and grandmother were born. The first thing I saw was a sign that said The ancestral home of Michael Dukakis. I asked a group of people in the street where this home of Michael Dukakis was and they pointed to the top of the hill. I paid a young boy a dollar to show me the way.
The house consisted of two rooms, one on top of the other, with a teeny stairway connecting them. The cooking was done outside. The man who had originally bought the house from my grandfather still lived there—he was ninety years old, and blind. I walked back to the town square thinking of my grandparents as newlyweds, living in that house, then moving to Turkey and then fleeing…to the United States.
I wanted to see more of the island they had come from. Erosso, in the southwestern part of the island, is famous for being the summer home of the poet Sappho. I had read about her and wanted to see this place. While I was there, a woman recognized me and said there had been an announcement on Greek television that Olympia Dukakis had to call her home in the United States. I found the nearest pay phone and dialed Montclair.
Chapter Eleven
THERE WAS A crisis with my mother. She had been running out of the house in her nightgown and stopping cars in the street. She was calling 911 to report men breaking into the house to rob and kill her. She was out of control.
Apollo had flown back from L.A. and once he saw the situation, he realized our mother needed twenty-four-hour care and had to be put in a nursing home. He wouldn’t do it without talking to me.
I argued with him, as he knew I would, but then Peter got on the phone and told me that he’d been unable to leave the house, leave her alone, the whole time I’d been gone. “Mom,” he said, “it’s gotten really bad. I can’t live like this.” I’d been in denial about the extent of my mother’s condition, but when I heard Peter’s voice, I realized it wasn’t fair to him or anyone else. So over the phone, from Greece, I agreed we should find a home for my mother.
Because of her diminished mental capacity, my mother qualified for the special Alzheimer’s unit of the best local nursing home. The care she received was superb. The nurses were especially compassionate. Almost immediately after being admitted, she seemed to improve. She even regained her sense of humor. When I would come to visit, she’d be surrounded by other patients. When she saw me, she’d go through a very elaborate and theatrical good-bye, raising her arms and saying, “Friends, I must leave you now: my daughter is here.” Then she would wave like the queen of England, grab my arm, and in a low, sinister voice she’d say to me in Greek, “Olympia, let’s get out of here!” and off we’d go.
We’d walk around the neighborhood, singing Greek songs together. Though often she couldn’t remember my name, I always felt like we connected when we were singing. Soon, though, she couldn’t remember how to sing and I had to sing alone.
In 1992 I went back to Omega for a week, along with three actress friends, Leslie, Remi, and Joan, with whom I’d been developing the Goddess material. We were going to do a workshop for women over forty based on the characters and conflicts from the myth of Inanna. This would be the first time we presented this workshop, and while we were all acting teachers, this kind of work would be a new experience for us.
One of the participants was Madie Gerrish, a psychologist specializing in family therapy and bereavement. We became good friends. And I continued to do non-Goddess-related work.
My agent called one day and said he was sending over a biopic about Frank Sinatra. About an hour later, an enormous package arrived at my door. Tina, Frank’s daughter, was producing the movie and wanted to get the project into production as quickly as possible. They offered me the part of Frank’s mother, Dolly Sinatra. The offer was very, very generous. I was intrigued.
The script was close to a thousand pages long, and I spent the rest of the day and well into the evening reading about Frank’s life. When I was done I reviewed just Dolly’s scenes; that didn’t take too long. I looked up at my assistant Bonnie, who simply raised an eyebrow to ask, “Well?”
“I can’t do this,” I said. “There isn’t
a part here.” Then I lifted the phone book–sized script and heaved it over the side of my desk, where it landed with a clang in the metal wastebasket.
I told my agent I thought it best that I pass on the project, but asked him to thank Tina for thinking about me. He called me back to say that the producers would double their original offer if I would reconsider. At that point, I thought it would be downright ungrateful of me not to take the offer, part or no part.
I called my friend Mary Lou Romano, who had spent her entire life trying to get rid of her North Jersey Italian accent. I taped her reading all my lines and listened to the tape over and over again. I began to enjoy the energy and aggression inherent in this dialect.
Dolly Sinatra, as it turns out, was quite a woman: she was feisty, in your face, authentic. She was also an immigrant struggling for a foothold in this country. She was even a bit of an outlaw. In the twenties she performed abortions for local girls “in trouble” and she’d dressed like a man to get into the fight clubs when her husband boxed. Later on, she worked for the local Democratic Party machine, delivering key blocks of votes as a ward captain. From her hairdresser I learned that she always looked like a million bucks. In the end playing Dolly Sinatra was great fun for me, and I was even nominated for an Emmy Award for my performance.
Ask Me Again Tomorrow Page 16
