Mom used to say, “You can marry someone with money or without. You might as well have with.” But all my friends’ mothers said this! One of my friends said to me, “Yeah, my mom’s version of that was, ‘It’s just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor man. You might as well marry the rich man.’” Then she added, “But I didn’t pay attention!” Ha-ha!
My mother had a funny way of demonstrating the concept. She used to take out this puny little toy ring and say to one of the girls, “Pretend I’m the man. Will you marry me?”And then she’d put the ring on the girl’s finger. I watched her do this.
The girl would say yes, and Mom would say, “Okay, we’re gonna do this again.” She’d put her hands behind her back for a minute, then bring out one hand holding her huge diamond ring and repeat the question, “Will you marry me?”
The girl would go “Oh!” and her eyes would pop, and then we’d all burst out laughing. It’s true, the big diamond added a lot of zing to the proposal!
I hope that story doesn’t make my mom sound terrible. As I’ve said, I don’t care about the money—I’d love Mauricio either way. But I have four daughters now, and I understand where my mother was coming from. She wanted the best for us. When my kids grow up I don’t want them to have to worry about money. I don’t want them struggling to pay the water and power bill or wondering if they can afford braces for their children. That’s why I emphasize education so much with them. Sure, I’d like my daughters to marry men who are intelligent and successful. What mother wouldn’t? But I don’t ever want them to have to rely on a man to get by. Marrying well should not be their life plan!
* * *
“Girls, always be aware who’s following you,” my mom told us. “Always watch in the rear-view mirrors!” What a scary situation! No wonder I was such a nervous Nellie when I was a kid—and no wonder I’m so neurotic now! Ha!
Finally my mother told the driver to pull over at a gas station, and the other car pulled right in behind us. Mom got out of the car and marched right over to their window and banged on the glass with her fist! I couldn’t believe it. I was cowering in the back of the car. All I could think was, Why can’t Mom just shut up?
These guys rolled down their window and looked at my mom like, What the hell? She put her ring right up to the tip of the driver’s nose and said, “See something you like?”
You have never seen two men more shocked in their lives. Then my mom just whirled around and marched back to our car. She turned to me and my sister and said, “Take that as a lesson, girls. Never allow yourself to be intimidated by anyone.”
Oh my God.
So, like I said, my mother wasn’t the type to keep her mouth shut, especially if someone was being treated unfairly. Mom had a fiery temper, but I always thought of myself as quiet and shy until one day when I was shopping at Neiman Marcus with Farrah and my then-mother-in-law. I was nineteen. A tiny baby was crying nearby and I heard someone saying, “Shh! Shh!” and not in a nice way. The baby kept crying and finally the person who’d been shushing her said, “Shut up!”
It turned out to be a stranger telling that baby to shut up. Can you believe it? So I went up to the woman and screamed at her, “How dare you!” I also used some four-letter words, and my poor ex-mother-in-law, who was truly shy and reserved, was absolutely horrified. She said, “Oh my, Kyle, please, you must not act like this!” Ha-ha!
That was the first time I realized, oh yeah, I definitely have my mom in me. I definitely speak my mind! Some of it must come from that confidence she encouraged in me and my sisters.
She also tried to encourage a sense of humor in us as much as she did confidence. Humor was a huge part of who my mom was, and it was impossible not to absorb some of her enjoyment of life. Some of her wicked wit no doubt rubbed off on us.
We were even able to find humor in things when she was dying. She had an amazing ability to see the comic side of life even when she struggled. At one point, the part of her brain that controlled motor skills didn’t always function properly. So we were at a party one night, standing around talking, and she just suddenly fell over, knocking me over too. We both landed on the floor and just lay there laughing and laughing. We couldn’t stop!
You might wonder, how could we be laughing at that time? But thank God we could. It’s a gift from God, really, to be able to laugh even in a time of sorrow.
My mom died of breast cancer. I’ll never forget when she called me on my thirtieth birthday and told me she’d found a lump. Being the worrier I am, I felt my heart immediately drop. Then I thought, That’s ridiculous, I know lots of people who have lumps and they’re nothing. And we didn’t have any breast cancer in the family. I said, “Mom, it’s not going to be anything!”
She said, “It’s pretty big.”
“Well then you need to go and have it checked, and you’ll be fine.” I told her.
She started crying. “Kyle, I’m scared!”
I was supposed to be going away for my birthday with seven couples to Mexico. I told my mom I was going to cancel. She said, “No, no, honey. You go and you have fun. I don’t want you to worry. I’ll go and have it checked.” Just like a mom to insist that her daughter go enjoy herself no matter what she was going through.
I did go on the trip, but I didn’t enjoy myself because, of course, I could never get Mom out of my head. When we came back, we found out it was cancer, a growth about the size of a nickel. They said it was somewhere between stage 3 and stage 4.
She hadn’t had a mammogram in five years. Immediately I realized there was a lesson for me there: you have to confront your fears head on. I know how scary it is to get a mammogram; I never get over the anxiety of it no matter how many times I do it. But a mammogram could have saved my mother’s life. They ended up doing a lumpectomy and radiation, but it was very aggressive, and the cancer kept coming back and eventually went to her lungs and her brain. She survived for three years, though, and I’m so grateful we had that time with her.
* * *
My Dad, Ken Richards
My father was an incredibly loving, attentive father. I used to spend every weekend with him at his house in Santa Barbara. He loved cooking, and I remember so many happy dinners with him.
He was so sweet and devoted. Sometimes when I had terrible growing pains in my legs that would make me cry, I would call him and he would drive the hour and a half down from Santa Barbara to wrap my legs. He was already retired when I was born. I just knew he was a wonderful dad.
* * *
My mom was always in denial when it came to doctors. After her cancer diagnosis, my sisters and I would sit in the doctor’s office listening to him talk and she’d just look out the window, not even wanting to hear what we were saying. I think she wanted to pretend it wasn’t her he was talking about.
She had never taken care of her health. She smoked (and I hate smoking, by the way!). And I told you above about her chats with the girls late at night when they came home from their dates. Well, the second she snapped on the light she’d grab her cigarettes and light one up. She also didn’t exercise or pay attention to what she ate, so she was a little overweight. I wished I could have made her do the things that would have helped her stay healthy.
My mother gave wonderful advice to her daughters about men, but I used to say to her, “I wish you could give yourself the same advice!” She was divorced three times, and she dated again, but nothing ever worked out in the long run. As much as my mother loved being a mom and was happy in her life, I really think she always wanted to find somebody to love and build a lasting relationship with. And yet whenever there was a man around, well, she wasn’t exactly the most adoring wife! I’m not going to lie! Ha-ha!
My mother actually decided to get married for the fourth time while she was battling breast cancer. I found it so funny. I said to her, “Mom, why are you getting married if (a) you’re sick and (b) you don’t even like being married?”
We had the wedding at Kim’s house, and when the
priest said, “Do you take this man … ,” Mom looked at me and rolled her eyes and said, “Ugh … yes.”
I started laughing. “Mom, you can’t do that! You’re getting married!” She was just one of the funniest women you’d ever want to meet. Right to the very end, even though she was terrified of dying and hadn’t accepted it at all. She fought it all the way, and it was very painful for us to watch, but she never lost her sense of humor.
We had insisted on taking her from the hospice so she could spend her last days with us. After a ridiculous amount of red tape, we finally brought her to Kim’s house where we set up a hospital bed for her. One day we were trying to bathe her and she started to fall off the bed. Kim shouted, “Kyle! Kyle!” and we struggled, and it was kind of hilarious. My mom couldn’t even move, but she started laughing so hard! I said, “Kim! Kim! Get the leg!” Here we were, all of us laughing, with my mom just days away from dying!
Mom’s best friend, Diane, joined us in those last days. The two of them loved to eat and always teased each other about it. But at this point my mom wasn’t eating anything and wasn’t really able to talk anymore either. Finally the doctors told us to stop giving her Ensure or even water, because we were prolonging her passing. God, when you’re told to cut your mom off from water, that is so, so difficult.
We did have some swabs that we would soak in water and then put in her mouth to ease the dryness. One day we gave her a swab and she just clamped on to it, gripping it with all her might. Diane said, “Darling, relax. It’s not a chicken bone!”
My mom immediately burst out laughing, and the two of them laughed so hard and so long that even Diane couldn’t talk! That was Mom’s last amazing laugh. And maybe her last living lesson to me—a reminder that attitude counts for so much. Even in the most painful times, you can laugh, and you should, because it can lighten your heart and maybe even give you a bit of extra strength.
Then at the very end, she communicated loud and clear without using words.
I had been laying by mom’s side the night before she died, but the hospice nurse said, “Honey, your mom’s not going to let go if you’re there right beside her.” I didn’t want to miss her final moments, but the nurse said she would come and get me.
At about 5:00 in the morning, Kim woke me up and said, “It’s time.”
We had put on a CD with sounds of the ocean to make everything as peaceful as possible for her, and we were soothing her, telling her, “It’s okay, Mom, you can go.”
Suddenly we heard loud clattering sounds in the kitchen. I figured it was Mauricio, and I thought, If he knows my mom’s dying, why doesn’t he come in here? And what is he doing with the silverware anyway?
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why he’s in there making noise,” I said.
The hospice nurse said, “I’ll go get him.” She left, and when she came back she just stood in the doorway, wide-eyed.
“What?” I said.
“There’s no one there,” she said. But we could still hear the noise. “It’s your mom.”
I’ve heard stories about things like that but I’d never experienced anything like it firsthand. We all looked at each other and nobody could believe it.
Then the noises stopped. And in the very next moment, hand to God, my mom made a sound like she was gasping for air, and that was it. She took her very last breath, and then she was gone. I swear on my life.
And then all of a sudden the door to my sister’s room slammed shut! I ran to look into my room, but my husband was sound asleep with the kids. How could the door have slammed shut on its own? Maybe it didn’t. I know that was Mom on her way out.
Her body now looked so different, so not like her, that it almost scared me. I realized Mom was saying to me in my mind, “I’m not in there honey, don’t worry. I’m not in there, I’m out here now.” It was the most incredible experience I’ve ever had, and it brought me so much peace.
The hospice nurse said she had seen similar things happen at the very end, especially when the person dying had a very strong personality. She told us, “That’s your mom saying good-bye.”
I know a lot of people won’t believe the story—some just aren’t open to that kind of thing at all—but I can tell it to you with confidence because so many people witnessed it. I’m so glad that I was open to the meaning of it all, because the experience made me feel so much better. I know it was Mom trying to make me feel better, just like always.
Before I finish my chapter about my mom, Big Kathy, I want to tell you the last part of the story about the ring. Mom gave it to me shortly before she died, partly because she knew Kathy and Kim had a lot of jewelry and I didn’t have as much. Kathy and Kim each have an incredible jewelry collection. But she also wanted me to have it because she felt I was always so responsible. I was always the nervous Nellie, worrying and wanting things to be right, even as a little girl, and my mom always said I was ridiculously mature for my age. She used to joke, “You know, Kyle was changing her own diapers and making her own bottles when she was one year old—and scheduling her own dental appointments at eleven!”
* * *
Spirited Conversations
I’m not embarrassed to say it: I believe that people can communicate with us from other realms and that some individuals here on Earth have a special gift for tuning them in and helping us understand our lives. But I was very puzzled during an episode of season 1 when we went to Camille Grammer’s house for a dinner party with a friend of hers who was a psychic. The psychic and I got into a disagreement, and she said some pretty harsh things about me and to me. As usual, I spoke quite directly to her. She told me I didn’t get along with women, which was completely off-base because I love the women in my life. I grew up in a house with all women. Are you kidding? I’m a girl’s girl through and through, just like my mom. She loved having her girlfriends over all the time, and they’d cook in the kitchen and laugh hysterically together.
So we had another psychic to dinner for season 2, and this time she got things so right it was almost scary.
I invited all the girls from the show to dinner at my house, and after dinner we all sat around the table and had a séance. (This psychic was also a medium.)
Yes, you can call me the Shirley MacLaine of Real Housewives! Ha-ha!
So the psychic was going around the table, and in the middle of talking to someone she all of a sudden stopped. “Wait, hold on one second!” she said. “Kyle, your mom is here. She’s really interrupting a lot. Okay, she wants me to let you know she’s here. But she is also saying that she wants all the girls to have their turns first!”
Everyone started laughing, including me, but I was getting shivers too. I’m having goose bumps just telling you about it now—because that’s something that my mom always used to say! She always had this thing about making sure that everyone got their turn and no one was excluded. My sister Kathy told this story of when she was a kid and some boys and girls were in her room playing spin the bottle. My mom walked in and saw a plain-Jane type of girl just sitting there in the circle and immediately said, “Now, is everyone getting their turn? How about you, sweetheart?” Here Kathy thought they’d be in trouble for playing spin the bottle, but my mom was only concerned that “plain Jane” would be left out by the boys.
So you see why I was freaked out, but also pleased, and kind of excited. My mom was there with us that night in my dining room, watching out for all her girls. Just like always.
* * *
When she gave me her ring, she told me to change the setting, because she’d never been wild about it. So I took it to Loree Rodkin, a well-known jewelry designer in L.A., and asked for something simple. I have small hands so I didn’t want it to be crazy big. It already made my own wedding ring look like a toe ring when it I wore it on the other hand. I would joke and put my wedding ring on my toe and show my husband. “You like my toe ring?” Ha-ha!
Plus I didn’t want it to cost a fortune. So I asked for simple, but simple was not what I
got! Mauricio picked it up from Loree and called me and said, “I can’t believe this. I feel like I’m carrying a Lamborghini in a box.” If you haven’t seen it, it’s quite big, antique or maybe gothic style, with swords on the side and cognac diamonds mixed in with the regular diamonds. I have it on my right hand in the cover photo. It looks like it would be clunky, but it’s so smooth on the inside. It’s perfect! I wear it all the time, every single day.
People have asked me, “Don’t you worry walking around with that? Aren’t you afraid someone will try to take it?”
“I dare anyone to try to get this off my finger!” I tell them. “I will take them out, believe me! This is not coming off my finger unless you take my whole arm!” Ha-ha!
Hmm. That sounds like something my mother might have said!
CHAPTER 6
Mom in the House
Of all the questions I’m asked, this one is my favorite: How do you juggle a baby and the kids and the show and everything else in your life?
The reason I like that question so much is that it means people see me as a real mom, completely involved in raising my kids. Because I am! I’ve never had a nanny. And that, my friends, is highly unusual where I live.
Being a good mother is the most important thing in the world to me. I’m a hands-on mom—like most moms outside the rarified world I live in—and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Moms everywhere are juggling and struggling to do the very best they can for their kids. I’d love to tell you how I do it.
A lot of people have said to me, “Oh, your kids—how did they turn out so nice?” I believe you get out of kids what you put into them.
Life Is Not a Reality Show Page 8
