Might As Well Laugh About It Now

by Marie Osmond

  My mother greeted me at the door, her face full of enthusiasm and her hands powdered with white flour.

  “Hi, honey. Are you ready to learn to bake bread? This will be a good skill to know when you have children. Singing to them won’t fill their hungry tummies,” she said, pointing me to an extra apron hanging from a hook near the stove.

  “It’s ten o’clock at night!” I protested.

  She replied, unfazed, “Remember the earthquake? Ten o’clock. It’s a good time to get busy.” We were always taught to respect our mother, no matter what. But it didn’t mean I couldn’t “think” things.

  Once I got past the thought “No one expects Olivia Newton-John to knead dough at the end of a long day,” I actually began to enjoy the process. Bread making is elemental: the flour, the salt, the yeast, the honey, and the water, very back to basics. In her wisdom, my mother knew that if I could appreciate the ingredients, then I would never take the finished product for granted. She was wise enough to engage me in an activity where working with our hands gave us the opportunity to speak from the heart. And once in a while we could take out some frustrations with a punch or two to the rising dough. I loved those times my mom and I would talk together.

  It’s a beneficial approach I’ve used many times with my own teenagers. The best way to get them to “download” is to get them busy with a project. (I use crafting, cooking, sewing, playing board games, rearranging furniture, making smoothies in the blender, anything that does not involve a computer.)

  Our bread, fresh from the oven, didn’t last long once my brothers picked up the scent. No wonder, to this day, I can never go to sleep before one a.m. My ingrained behavior pattern is coaxing me: “It’s ten o’clock!!! Let’s make something. Cinnamon rolls!”

  My father, with his military background, could be a tough taskmaster, as well. But he wasn’t just being tough for the sake of it. He always wanted his children to be able to handle any situation with common sense and some elbow grease. My brothers and I commiserated and laughed together about having to do things like stock the paper towels, put away costumes, sweep the floors, and carry out the trash, but no matter what the chore we were all still working together, persevering, figuring out the best way to accomplish a goal that served the entire group. I understand now that he was really working our heart muscles.

  A number of journalists, biographers, and entertainment professionals have commented on the Osmond endurance in show business, where fifteen minutes of fame is more often the rule of thumb. As I think about it now, we may have had a run of great “star” years if we had stayed in LA, but the move back to Utah and the chance to ponder the meaning of my life under those starry mountain skies changed me permanently. Those young, hard years gave us the backbone, determination and the kind of “work until it’s all done” ethic that gave us a shot at lasting in the entertainment business for decades.

  A year or two before my mother could no longer travel due to the effects of her strokes, she came for one of her many visits to be with her “grandbabies.” My kids loved to have Grandma stay at our house because she always had a fun project or two . . . or three or four . . . ready to go. One evening, I arrived home from the airport after signing dolls at a retail store in North Caro lina. It was past the kids’ bedtime, so I expected to come in to a sleeping household, climb the stairs and crawl into bed. Much to my surprise, Jessica and Rachael, who were preteens at the time, met me at the door, their shirts splotched with flour. Brianna and Brandon, the toddlers, were close behind and grabbed me around the knees with jelly-covered hands.

  “We made bwwwed!” Brandon grinned up at me. “Wiss Gwwwannma! And me. And Waychol. And Yes sika. And Bweeauna. And Bweeauna’s verwee messy.”

  And I said: “Wealwee?”

  With eight children, you learn to speak each of their languages. Is there a Rosetta Stone for that?

  The aroma in the air almost made me cry with joy. I couldn’t wait to sit down with my mom and kids and have a warm slice with melting butter and jelly. That’s when my mother walked toward me, drying off her hands with a dish towel, and said, “Take a nice, long whiff. Because that’s all that is left!” The bread that took ninety minutes to make only lasted for three minutes before being devoured by my children. It was okay by me. I was pretty sure that even though they had scarfed down every bit of fresh baked bread, they had hopefully ingested some of the extremely valuable age-old life lessons that I had learned from my mom too.

  My mother put a pan of milk on the stove to make me some hot chocolate as a consolation prize. And though she was yawning and tired from giving hours of time and attention to my young children, she still wanted to hear all about my day. As we dunked marshmallows under the warmed milk in our mugs, she said, “It’s ten o’clock. We can talk while we clean out the storage room.”

  I miss you, Mom!!!

  Let in the Joy

  The perfect final appearance for my brothers’ Fiftieth Anniversary in Entertainment tour and celebration. We had the great privilege of performing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. As pictured, from left to right, all of my dear brothers. Seated: Tom, Alan, Wayne, Virl. Standing: Merrill, Jimmy, Donny, Jay.

  “Who is that?!” my preschooler, Abby, asked me, crinkling her nose in confusion as she pointed to a man who looked absolutely lost in the middle of Chicago’s Midway Airport. He was smoothing down his wispy white hair across the top of his head as his eyes intently took in the crowd. His face looked eager and endearing in a way that I recognized well.

  “He’s your uncle,” I said, hoisting a Dora the Explorer wheelie bag onto the security scanner. “Remember?”

  “Another one?” Abby asked me, astonished.

  “Yes, sweetheart. Your uncle Wayne.”

  “Uncle Wayne,” Abby repeated, very seriously. “Why does he keep going around in circles?”

  I told her, “Oh, he’s just looking for someone who will listen to his jokes.”

  “Don’t smile at him, Abigail!” my older teenager instructed her youngest sister. “I’ve already heard all of the jokes and I can’t fake laugh right now.” Rachael tugged her newsboy cap down almost over her eyes, which were suffering from a five a.m. wake-up call. Knowing that Wayne takes any eye contact as an invitation to spill out his endless library of one-liners, she attempted to discourage the barrage.

  Abby tucked her face behind the hem of my coat and peeked out at Wayne with engrossed curiosity.

  “Rachael, stop,” I said. “You’re going to make Abby think Wayne is crazy.”

  “Me?” Rachael responded. “Me? You always introduce him as ‘My Crazy Brother, Wayne.’ You did it on Oprah, Mother!”

  She’s right. I did. But it wasn’t meant as an insult. After all, it takes one to know one.

  Wayne walks, talks, and breathes jokes. He consumes jokes like my kids consume pizza-flavored Goldfish crackers, by the mouthful. Voice mails from Wayne are always three or four one-liners, followed by the real reason for calling. Wayne loves the sound of laughter as much as I do. I couldn’t love him more.

  “I’m entitled to tease him. I’m his sister,” I said, defending my behavior.

  Abby tugged on my purse strap. “Mommy, Uncle Jimmy is your brother, too. Right?”

  My little Abby was trying her best to figure out her family ties, and our trip to Chicago to appear on Oprah’s show was like a two-day crash course in Osmond connections.

  Oprah had us on her show to commemorate the Osmonds’ fiftieth anniversary in entertainment. She chartered a large commercial jet to fly our family all together, had three huge buses to transport us, rented out an entire hotel to house us, brought in a “mile-long” buffet table and trucked in acres of food (!) to feed us: over one hundred Osmonds, plus about twenty extra people, including mothers-in-law, assistants, managers, and a babysitter or two.

  As Oprah had reminded her audience: It all started in 1961 with Alan, Wayne, Merrill, and Jay performing in their first appearance at Disneyland. Since then, me
mbers of the Osmond family have collectively sold over 150 million records, had numerous number-one singles (individually and together), hosted scores of television episodes, founded national charities, produced touring shows, headlined Las Vegas shows, opened a theater in Branson, written books, and started multiple businesses.

  The branches on our family tree have never been pruned! It all seemed impossible to describe to Abby how her grandma and grandpa had nine children: eight boys and one girl, her uncles and her mommy. And those nine children went on to have fifty-five children, Abby being one of the youngest. And those fifty-five children have now had forty-nine children of their own, with one or two or seven new ones appearing every year.

  As I said on Dancing with the Stars when asked if I thought I had a chance to win from the call-in votes: The show has 25 million viewers, and 22 million are Osmonds!

  However, as I kicked off my flip-flops to walk through the airport metal detector (I wore sandals for months after Dancing with the Stars, trying to help the skin grow back on my feet), I wasn’t thinking about the 25 million viewers who watch Dancing with the Stars, or the 7 million who watch Oprah each day. I found myself thinking about two people only—two people who are finally together again. My heart was so full of admiration for the two who were somehow responsible for every person boarding that private airplane to return to Salt Lake City. Whatever each Osmond has become individually has bloomed from the legacy these two built together. I was overwhelmed with missing them both: my mother and father, Olive and George Osmond.

  It had been the most bittersweet week of my life. On Monday, I was so excited to perform a Dancing with the Stars tribute to my parents, to one of their favorite songs, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” My dance partner, Jonathan Roberts, and I dressed in the military style that my dad wore when he first courted my mom by taking her to a Tommy Dorsey big-band dance. They were so good together that they would often win dance competitions, which supplemented their income in their first year of marriage.

  He loved that I was doing a show featuring ballroom dancing. As I always did, I called him an hour before the show aired to make sure he was watching. He always was.

  The next morning, Daddy got up, took a shower, got dressed, straightened up his room, lay back on his bed, and covered himself with an afghan I had knitted for him years before. He smiled and passed sweetly away at age ninety. He was supposed to be with us on Oprah’s show, celebrating our fifty years in show business, but I think he knew his earthly work was done. As I told Oprah, “My dad wanted to go dance with my mother again. They are Dancing ‘in’ the Stars.”

  I ran my fingertips through Abby’s silky baby hair. I thought about how the next day she would go to my daddy’s funeral with me. As sad as Abby would be about saying good-bye to Grandpa, I knew that within a year or so her memories of time spent with him would fade. At her tender age, her growing mind expands by the minute with all the new discoveries and knowledge that will carry her into her future. One day, along with all of God’s children, she will be the hope of the future of the world, too. That didn’t seem possible as I watched her, flapping her arms and perching on one leg, like a flamingo with a Cherry Twizzler hanging from her mouth, crazy for a good laugh. My brother Wayne looked on with a grin of approval. And I thought, “Ah, yes . . . the Osmond legacy lives on.”

  My heart was rushed by an emotional whirlwind from accepting that I no longer had my parents, and from an awareness of a new place I would now fill in the family, the matriarch of the Osmond men.

  When I felt I could finally explain the Osmond family to Abby, she had completely lost interest and was kneeling on the floor, whispering secrets that were obviously hysterically funny to her cousin Bella, my brother Jimmy’s youngest child. As I watched the two little girls giggling together, I could feel the warm presence of my parents. It was like they were with my brothers and me the entire time, in the same way that they had told each of us that God is watching over all of His children. I could feel them lovingly watching over their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all together. I would have loved to have been Daddy’s little girl and my mother’s only daughter again, if only for a moment, but I knew they were comforting me. I could almost hear them whispering in my ear: “This is the cycle of life, Marie. Let in the joy.”

  Borrowed Bling

  The only photo of the necklace I’ll never forget.

  I’m a woman who feels something is missing if I’m not wearing jewelry. Before I leave the house I always check to make sure that my nose and forehead don’t shine but that something on my neck and ears does. Bling! I never go to a pharmaceutical counter for a mood elevator; I go to a jewelry counter. A twenty-eight-dollar pair of earrings is bliss when you’re having a bad day.

  I’m pretty certain it was Elizabeth Taylor who launched the bling competition between celebrities. It was her red-carpet walk at the 1970 Oscars, when she wore a 69-carat Cartier diamond pendant that had the world asking, “What violet eyes?” Nothing within five city blocks could take the attention away from Liz Taylor ’s ice. I was about ten years old that year and pretty impressionable, too. I have to wonder if Liz’s megadia mond planted the seed of my own fascination with all things that sparkle.

  Today, every Hollywood red carpet is like a showcase for famous jewelry designers, who invite the stars who are attending to “borrow” some gems. And many of us, with the possible exception of Oprah, who probably never even borrows library books, usually do. It’s pretty fun to wear forty thousand dollars of Harry Win ston, Chanel, or Tiffany diamonds on each earlobe and a cool quarter million in precious gems around your neck. Of course, the possibility of a piece of borrowed jewelry falling off and your not realizing it is incredibly nerve-racking. Unless it’s heavy enough for you to tell it’s on without looking, you can end up touching your ears and neckline more than a third-base coach at the World Series. Besides that, the jeweler bodyguards follow you everywhere. I saw a pair of black men’s shoes outside of my stall in the ladies’ room at the Emmy Awards. Hey!

  Just like the World Series, it’s a relief to have it locked up until the next season.

  A Saudi princess once gave me the most valuable piece of jewelry I had ever owned. It wasn’t really a gift, per se, it was more like a “get.”

  Donny and I were headlining along with our brothers at the Hilton in Las Vegas. Every show was a sellout due to the popularity of our TV variety show. Being a young girl, I had no idea who the numerous so-called important people were that we were introduced to each evening, everyone from Vegas high rollers to film stars to foreign dignitaries. The reason it didn’t faze us was that our parents taught us that every person we meet is equal in importance in God’s eyes. It didn’t matter if the person had just stepped out of a Rolls-Royce in the City of Light or a pickup truck at the Iowa State Fair.

  As a teenager, I understood that every person was equal, but I could see that every piece of jewelry was not! I spotted her gorgeous necklace the moment I met the Saudi princess, who was a big fan of our variety show.

  Positioned perfectly in the clavicle indentation in her neck was a stunning four-leaf-clover pendant. It was 18-carat gold with a 1-carat diamond directly in the center of four leaves paved with diamond chips. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

  “Your necklace is absolutely breathtaking,” I told her. “I love it!”

  What really left me gasping for air was when she replied, “Then you must have it.”

  With great casualness, as if passing along a string of plastic Mardi Gras beads, she reached up and unhooked her necklace and dropped it into my hand.

  I’m pretty sure my mouth was insisting that I couldn’t accept it, though I doubt I was very convincing. I have no memory of chasing her down to give it back after she smiled and walked away.

  My first thought was, “This is really mine!” followed by what seemed incomprehensible to me: “Imagine having so much money that you can give away diamond necklaces.”

 
That four-leaf-clover necklace became my prized possession. I never had it appraised, but I’m certain it was worth thousands. More important than that, it made me feel like a million dollars. I wore it everywhere and with everything, except my show costumes. Every night, before I went onstage, I would take it off and put it in a little drawer in the dressing room. It was the last thing I took off and the first thing I put back on after the show.

  One night, while I was onstage, someone decided to clean out the dressing room. Literally. When I pulled open the little drawer, the necklace was gone. The possession that I thought I would never part with had parted with me!

  I tried to apply the advice my mother had always given us about items that had gone missing. She would always say: “I guess they needed it more than we do.” Her wisdom wasn’t working this time. I couldn’t have been angrier. Visions of my necklace being pawned by someone who didn’t care about what it meant to me stormed through my mind. Four-leaf clovers are for luck. This one was obviously bad luck.

  I was furious for days, observing every person backstage with total suspicion. Who was it? With about forty people involved in every show, on top of all the people who worked at the hotel, it would be impossible to ever know. Over and over I thought, “How dare someone take my diamond necklace? It was mine.”

  Then, unexpectedly, a thought tugged at my conscience: “You first took the necklace from her.” Even though I didn’t steal the necklace, I realized that I did take the necklace from the princess, never knowing if it held any special meaning for her. I never even asked. I wanted it, so I rationalized that she must be so wealthy that she could let go of her necklace and never miss it. Whoever took the necklace from me may have thought the same way. “Oh, she’s a celebrity. She can get whatever she wants.”