by Marie Osmond
In the weeks that followed, I had many sleepless nights, wondering if I was being wise. I knew that divorce couldn’t resolve our relationship problems. We have seven children together, and many other choices would have to be made as a result of this one choice.
I felt that God’s answer to my ongoing plea for guidance was to remind me always of the gift of free agency. I was the one who had made the choice to be in the marriage, and now that I found my feet to the fire, it was for me to fix the mess. I wasn’t going to be rescued. The only way I would ever learn and grow was to make the next decision on my own, too.
My heart was heavy and I wished I had my mother with me still. To say to me firmly: “Gather yourself together! You have children who need a happy mother.”
Imagining her saying this to me suddenly gave me the clarity I needed. I would never be that happy mother if I stayed in my marriage. I would never be the best person I could be for my children or for myself. I knew I had my answer. The next morning I called an attorney and said I wanted to file for divorce. Though I knew it was right, I still longed for my mother to tell me that it would be okay, to give me encouragement.
I went downstairs, listening to the voices of my little children getting ready for school. As I turned into the kitchen and went to the refrigerator for the orange juice, something caught my eye. On that February morning, a new beginning was announcing itself once again. My mother ’s Christmas cactus had bloomed overnight and was covered with dozens of bright fuchsia flowers.
Needled
I’m wearing the diamond stud earrings my dad gave me for my sweet sixteen. If you use a magnifying glass you can see them.
I had to wait seven long years to get needled. I had asked for it every year for my birthday, starting at age eight, but my father didn’t think that I was old enough to handle it. I couldn’t figure out why it was such a big deal.
“It doesn’t hurt,” I tried to convince him at age ten. “It’s fast. No blood.”
“You might regret it,” he told me. “You’re still too young for those types of long-term decisions.”
“Now they use a gun!” I pleaded with my dad when I turned thirteen. “They won’t miss.”
“When you’re sixteen, you can decide,” he told me. “Not before.”
It could have been the words like “blood” and “gun” that bothered my father, a war vet, but I think it was more about what ear piercing would signify to him. His only daughter would no longer be a little girl.
So for me, and obviously also for my dad, having a teeny-tiny hole punched into each earlobe turned into a rite of passage, a bridge from girl to young woman.
Needle-less to say, in my own mind, I was already a full-grown woman by age twelve, and my sixteenth birthday seemed like a torturously long, almost eternal time to wait. I knew that I was going to forever love my pierced ears. I was right about that. I wear earrings every day. But I was wrong about the grown woman thing.
My teenagers have tried to talk me into accepting that getting a tattoo should be no big deal. Though it may be true that everyone seems to have one now, from the preschool teachers to soccer coaches, I’m not crazy about the thought of any of my children having permanent dye injected into their skin with needles, no matter how old they are. They’re my babies! I pampered that skin they’re in.
I tried the most logical reason, sounding very much like my father: “Tattoos are permanent! What if you change your mind?”
They insisted that they never would.
“Tats will always be cool. I would never regret having one,” they tried to tell me.
Did I have an answer for that: “When I was your age, everyone thought that wearing leg warmers with jeans and Let’s Get Physical headbands would always, always be cool. Good thing they weren’t permanently attached. Right?”
At this point, my daughter offered up one word that blew away my reasoning, unquestionably: eyeliner.
How could I defend my position about tattoos when I had not only one, but two? They have now faded away to nothing, but at one time you couldn’t miss them. I had one on each eyelid. They were Cleopatra black. Tattooed eyeliner.
It seemed like the perfect solution at the time to an upcoming makeup dilemma. I was going to be one of the parents on a three-day rafting trip with my daughter’s youth group. We would be sleeping in a tent overnight and could only take a small knapsack, one that wouldn’t weigh down the raft. There would be no spare room for a makeup bag, and even if I could wear makeup, I knew I’d probably end up being dunked under water at some point.
I was telling this to a friend of mine who has a beautician’s license.
“Look at my eyes,” she said with some excitement. “It’s tattooed eyeliner! I did it myself.”
It looked really good on her.
“I never have to worry about being caught without makeup,” she told me, “even on our houseboat on Lake Powell.”
“I need that!” I told her. “It’s the perfect solution to this rafting caper. I won’t have to resort to using a permanent black Sharpie for my eyeliner.”
That afternoon, after doing my radio show, I went to her house, where she was all set up and ready to go. She numbed my eyelids with some gel and got out a tiny microscopic syringe filled with dark ink. I think getting a tattoo on your arm or ankle must be a lot easier. I don’t know about other people, but if you saw a needle coming toward your eyeball, you’d flinch! Right? And then flinch again! Not to mention the twitching. I mean, it’s a NEEDLE, by my eyeball!!! It’s a good thing my friend has such calm hands and meticulous aim. I could have ended up looking like Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) in the pirate movies. Arrrrrrrrgh!
I loved the results, until the next morning, when I could no longer see the results. I couldn’t see anything. My eyelids had swollen shut. Every eyelash follicle felt like a porcupine quill.
My beautician friend had warned me. She told me to go directly home, and lie flat for at least two hours while applying ice packs. But I had a slight problem with her advice. When you’re wearing ice packs on your eyes you can’t see what your kids are up to!
I had to get my four younger kids through dinnertime, shower time, story time, and finally bedtime. It was about five hours later by the time I got to lie down. I remembered the ice packs about two seconds before I drifted off into a deep sleep. I may have dreamed about ice packs, but that didn’t help.
After the kids left for school in the morning, I decided to give my own “pupils” the cold treatment. I lay down with an ice bag on each eye. I had exactly twenty-four hours to look normal before grabbing a paddle and living the Hiawatha life for three days on a river.
About thirty minutes later my cell phone rang with a 9-1-1 call from another close girlfriend.
I picked up the phone to a long wail that I recognized from my own past.
“I can’t take this,” my girlfriend said. “My hormones are so out of control that I spent the night walking the floor. My heart is racing and I can’t stop crying.”
She wanted the name of the doctor who helped me through my postpartum depression.
I could hear in her voice that she was in no shape to figure out how to get to any appointment.
“Hang on,” I told her. “I’m coming for you. I’ll take you to the clinic. You’ll be okay.”
The swelling in my eyes had gone down far enough to see to drive, even though my eyelids were so heavy that blinking felt like weight lifting.
“I can’t go today!” my girlfriend cried over the phone. “I look like a wreck. You wouldn’t believe how red and swollen my eyes are. Don’t come for me. I’m not going.”
I could tell she would only go downhill. She needed some attention.
“Listen,” I said. “If I promise to look worse than you, will you go with me to the clinic?”
“You never look bad,” she sobbed.
“Just come get in my car when I get there. Okay?” She agreed.
As soon as she got in the car and sa
w me, I knew that she was going to be all right once she got her hormones balanced. The tears running down her face were now from laughter.
“At least if your raft tips over you won’t drown,” she said. “You’ve got two floatation devices on your head!”
I looked so awful that the clinic receptionist called a nurse over to check on me instead of my friend.
“I’m fine,” I insisted. “I brought in my friend. She’s having a hormonal meltdown.”
The nurse looked over at her.
“She looks perfectly fine compared to you,” she said.
And she did. My girlfriend seemed to be cheering up by the minute. As I waited for her to get her blood drawn, every nurse, doctor, and patient that walked down the hall stopped to take a long look at me. The word on the street was “Marie is experiencing a horrible relapse of her postpartum depression. She looks awful.”
When we finally got back out to the car, my friend’s dose of B vitamins, her hormone concoction injection in the tush, and her acupressure massage seemed to have kicked in fully. She appeared to be the picture of calm mental health. I, on the other hand, was exhausted from explaining to people that I was only having a reaction to tattoo dye. I didn’t know which was worse: the look of sympathy for my assumed relapse into PPD, or the look of horror at my lapse in judgment in having my eyelids tattooed.
As I pulled back into the driveway, I looked at my swollen, oozing eyes in the rearview mirror. I was thinking: “I should have called my brother Wayne. He would have talked me out of having this done.”
Wayne always thought I looked perfect no matter what. At this point in my life, I appreciate that more than I can possibly tell him. On my sixteenth birthday, though, his opinion made me want to disown him!
The day I turned sixteen, I was at the studio to tape the Donny and Marie show. I was waiting anxiously in my dressing room . . . not for the show to start, but for something much more life-changing: a complete earlobe transformation. The countdown to sixteen was over and I had arranged for a doctor to come and pierce my ears before we taped the show.
The scheduled time came and went. I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t happening. Then I found the cancellation culprit. Wayne. He was the one who had called off the appointment.
He pled his case to me, confessing that he couldn’t imagine that his baby “Sissy” was ready for pierced ears. He told me, “You weren’t born with holes in your ears, so you shouldn’t be putting any in them.”
I picked up my high heel and said to him, “You weren’t born with a hole in your head, either. But, if you don’t get out of my dressing room, you’ll be sporting a permanent Nine West shoe hat.”
I was so upset I couldn’t fathom making it through the day. I called my daddy, who was at home. Somehow he was able to understand various phrases through my sobbing: “you promised,” “why did this happen?” and “canceled.” My poor dad probably thought that the show had been canceled overnight.
He listened for about five minutes and then he stopped me.
Then he said, rather firmly, “Marie, you have to be a professional. People are counting on you right now to go out and do a show. There’s a studio audience waiting, so dry your eyes.”
I couldn’t believe it! Didn’t he understand how long I had waited for this day? Didn’t I have every right to be upset? It was my birthday!
“Marie. Pull yourself together now. I’ll be there in a little while,” he told me.
I finally stopped sobbing and said, “Okay, Daddy.”
I hung up the phone, dejected and a little angry. Then I looked at myself in the dressing room mirror. My face was splotchy from crying and my expression was that of a little child who didn’t get her way. Even at sixteen, I was embarrassed for myself and my ridiculous hissy fit.
My father had not been heartless. He was only trying to teach me about priorities. My rite of passage into being a young woman wasn’t prevented by my brother; it was only detoured. If I was mature enough to have my ears pierced, then I should be mature enough to deal with a temporary disappointment without dissolving into tears.
After the show, my father walked into my dressing room and said, “Marie, you’re a big girl, now. I want to give you something and let you know that I trust you to make your own decisions.”
My father placed in my hands a red velvet box. Inside were two perfect little diamond stud earrings. I cried again, but not from disappointment; they were tears of happiness that I had earned my father’s trust. I still have the earrings and the little box.
My eyelids and my eyeliner tattoos looked normal in about a week, but not in time for the canoe trip. I told my daughter that we could tell everyone else that I fell face-first into a wasp’s nest, even though I looked more like a fly.
Her suggestion was oversized, really dark sunglasses held in place with an elastic strap. I went with her suggestion . . . day and night! Not fun in the pitch-black when you’re trying not to fall face-first in the woods!
My first three children are all old enough now to make their own decisions about things like tattoos. As my father did before me, I’ve tried to encourage them to wait and to make consequential decisions until they feel they are ready to live with their choices. The true rite of passage is in understanding the markings and piercings of life. Every day something can happen that punches a tiny hole into our sense of self. Each experience can put a permanent etch on our hearts. So you have to be patient until you can trust yourself to make the right decision.
The Most Consistent Man
The safest place to be was always in my daddy’s arms.
My father and I share a birthday: October 13. We also shared octopus stew, sparrow spit soup, and a delicacy that was described as warm monkey brains. I hoped it was only the name of the dish . . . like Gummi Worms aren’t really worms . . . but it didn’t stop either of us from giving it a try. I was an adventurous eater, like him, which gave us some special one on one time to spend together. If that meant swallowing jellyfish tentacles, well, then pass the tartar sauce.
My dad and I were big fans of sushi decades before it became popular in the United States. Raw fish wrapped in seaweed was always an option for the two of us as we explored various Asian cities from the 1960s through the 1980s. Not one of my brothers or my mother would ever join us on our mystery menu extravaganzas. They were all too chicken to try anything, except chicken. They missed out on a lot of good memories. Ironically, my father and I never got ill, but my brothers would brush their teeth using the local water and come down with a horrible case of Montezuma’s revenge.
It wasn’t hunger that motivated my father ’s search for the favorite local restaurant; it was his endless curiosity about people, which I know has been passed on to me. He was fascinated by how people lived and worked, not so much culturally as individually. The food was secondary to hearing about how the cook learned his craft, or seeing photos of the cashier ’s new baby, or discovering that the person sitting next to us at the counter was a stand-up comic. It didn’t matter where we were in the world, my father could have a conversation with any person who made eye contact. Even with jet lag and exhaustion, my father would sit in the front seat of the cab and ask the driver about his life and goals. He knew the names of most of the crew at every venue, from the security guard to the spotlight operator.
In the last six months of his life, and three years after my mother had passed away, it became necessary for him, at age eighty-nine, to move to an assisted living residence because of a broken hip. One of my heroes, my oldest brother, Virl, had done everything possible to keep Daddy in his own home. Virl’s own children were all grown, and he chose to become the anchor for both of our parents in their final years. Their firstborn child became their last day-to-day guardian, for which the rest of my brothers and I are all so grateful.
Of the thirty or more people living at this residence, my father was one of only three men. He had nonstop visitors from our huge family, and all of the nurses and ot
her patients loved spending time with him.
One afternoon, he tapped on my arm and motioned with his eyes around the living room area.
“All of these women that live here are flirting with me,” he whispered. “Do you think your mother would approve of that?”
“Well, you are quite a catch, Daddy,” I said. “But you know, you might have misled them, asking them all about their lives. You’re going to have to deal with it.”
He chuckled, his blue eyes lighting up. “Sometimes they chase me down the hall,” he whispered, “running with their walkers.”
He wasn’t kidding. More than once I would come in to find two women in their nineties bickering over who would get to sit next to George Osmond. One would be rubbing lotion into his “dry arms,” and another would be trying to shove those arms into a sweater to “keep George warm.”
My father was humble. He had spent time being a serviceman, a shoe salesman, a taxi driver, a builder, a postmaster, and he ran his own real estate business with my mother. And, of course, he managed our young careers. But no matter how my father made a living, he always “lived” for his family, and he taught us to have respect for every living thing, too.
Father bought a small ranch in Huntsville, Utah, when my brothers and I were very young. It was the place we longed to be anytime we weren’t touring or taping shows in LA. It was the inspiration for my brothers’ song “Down by the Lazy River,” although we were never very lazy in Huntsville. As kids, we didn’t know what it meant to be idle because we never saw either one of our parents just hang out.
