Mother’s Day — A Storytelling Extravaganza

Mother’s Day — A Storytelling Extravaganza

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Kim Greenhouse from It’s Rainmaking Time. I’m very excited to do the first commentary of 2022, and I thought Mother’s Day would be the perfect time to do this. Now, of course, Mother’s Day this year falls on my birthday, on May 8th. So it’s very exciting to be able to do a commentary celebrating both my mother and me coming into the world through my mother.

I will say, before we begin, that I was an Rh-positive baby. My mother was Rh-negative. And at the time of my birth I was jaundiced, and I was kept in the hospital for three weeks, given seventeen blood transfusions. And the doctor said to my mother, “She’s going to be very bad in school, and she’s going to be very slow and terrible in sports — so be easy on her.”

Whenever anybody prophesizes over your child, put it to the side. If it’s not good, put it to the side. Don’t internalize it — that’s somebody’s opinion. Nobody knows how it’s going to turn out in life. Okay, I was great in sports. I’m not slow. And whatever else they said about me is not true.

So this commentary is not only for you and all the mothers in the world — and all of the mothers that both have their children and don’t have their children, who may not be alive anymore, or mothers who maybe prematurely lost their children, and for mothers who have a sense of loss with their children, who feel the relationship didn’t work out, or something happened. Mother’s Day is for all mothers — whether your child is with you or not, whether your child is in communication with you or not. Let this be a kind of healing — a healing, nurturing communication, storytelling.

And I’m going to start with my mother. First of all, what is a mother? A mother to me is a nurturing, feminine female who stewards the care, the love, the concern, and the well-being of her son or daughter. That’s what a mother is — who has a primary commitment to see that child into full completion. That’s what a mother is. It is a non-stop, endless commitment that never ends, even when their children go away from them.

So happy Mother’s Day to everybody. Happy Mother’s Day to my mother in heaven, and to all the mothers in heaven. Here we go — let’s see, what do I want to share with you first? Well, let me tell you about Joanne Greenhouse.

First of all, my particular mother was a wild, funny, short-tempered, hot-tempered, playful, fun-spirited woman. And she had a terrible temper, but she was funny — I mean, she was funny. She played pan, she played mahjong. She entertained a lot. We always had people over the house, we always had people over for dinners. The Greenhouse family was a very fun, active place of entertainment, hospitality, laughing, storytelling, insane comedy.

Now, the behind-the-scenes on that — there are all kinds of issues going on, like in every family. My mother sat at the head of the table, my father sat at the other head of the table. I sat right here, my sister Jackie I think sat here, my sister Karen sat across.

And we had this phone number in the family that was one digit away from the cab company. Our phone number was 271-6611, and the cab company was 273-6611. So a lot of times, during the dinner hour, we would get a call for someone to be picked up, and my mother would go out of her mind — totally out of her mind. So she would serve the dinner — she was a very good cook — and we’d all sit down, and the phone would ring, and she would look at my father across the table and go, “Jesus Christ, buddy, this has got to stop.” And I’d say, “I’ll get it, I’ll get it.” She’d go, “No, I’m gonna get it.” And then my older sister would go, “No, I’ll get it.” Oh my god — my mother would pick up the phone, and it doesn’t matter who it was, she would say, “Do you understand we’re at the dinner hour? We’re at the dinner hour. Don’t call here anymore.” She doesn’t know who it is — they’re just trying to get a cab. We would all die at the table, die.

So a lot of times, when the phone would ring, I’d go, “I’ll get it.” So my dad says to me, “Just tell him you’ll be on your way — you’re right on your way. Take their address, say you’re coming right over.” I go, “Oh my god” — my father was pretty wild too. So I answered the phone and I’d say, “The Greenhouse family.” And they’d go, “Oh, I need a cab at the following address,” and all that, and I would say, “What is your name, sir? Okay, and your address, and your phone number — we’ll be right over.” And then we’d hang up.

Now, this was my family — I know I’m going into a little bit more than my mother — but if my mother got the call, these poor people would be so petrified to call the cab company again. It was frightening.

So that’s a part of my mother. The other thing that my mother used to do is sometimes in the family we would have water fights. Now, we had a lot of dogs all the time — a lot of beagles coming in and out. And my mother was really, really good at planting the garden. She had the most beautiful plants in the backyard and the front yard. She was doing that every morning, and she always had her dog — whoever, whatever the dog was at the time.

And let’s see, where was I — okay, so my father would play golf every weekend. He was a golfer, really, really good golfer — don’t even ask, on Father’s Day I’ll tell you what he used to do, the people he played golf with. Now, that was the scene — my dad would leave the house, we would all have breakfast, and depending if I was to play a tennis tournament or not — but when I wasn’t playing, sometimes in the summer, like my mother — we also had balloons that would fly in the house with water in them. I mean, sometimes we went crazy.

Well, one day, I think Karen, my older sister, threw a balloon and it landed on my mother’s foot or something, and so my mother chased Karen around the house. I was laughing, my sister Jackie was laughing, and finally my mother picked up an entire bowl — the dog’s bowl of water — and threw it on Carol, and there was screaming in the house. It was fantastic, it was wild. The thing was, we all had to clean up — the place was drenched, we all had to get towels, there was water everywhere. The dog was running, I was running, my sister Jackie was running, Karen was running, my mother was running. It was like I Love Lucy let loose on steroids. Anyway, my mother was that kind of a spirit.

Let’s see, all right, this is getting very personal now.

I went to Hawthorne Elementary School, okay, and I had a pretty bad temper too — I don’t know where I got it, probably from my parents — and I was a tournament tennis player as well, so that didn’t bode well — it doesn’t bode well if you’re cracking rackets in half. But anyway, one day, there’s this bully on the playground, and her name is Amy — I won’t share her last name because I’m sure she grew up and she doesn’t do this anymore — but she would constantly ruffle me up, like bump into me, push me when I walked by, in the halls. I was kind of scrawny, and one day she stole something out of my locker — I knew she did.

And so we were out on the playground playing softball, and I hit the thing, and I’m running to the bases, and I run to first base, and I run to second base, and I get to third base — and just as I’m running, and I mean I’m running really fast, she trips me, and I fall on the cement, and I slide, and I skin my knee. And I got up, and I took her by her gym outfit and I threw her on her head.

So all the girls descended on me like I was the worst thing that ever walked — apparently you’re supposed to be abused, but you’re not supposed to respond. And she was crying, and I threw her on her head, and the playground supervisor came — it was a big brouhaha. Anyway, I was sent to the principal’s office, whose name is — priceless — Mr. Puffer.

So I come in, he goes, “It’s a terrible thing that you did to this girl, she could have died.” I said, “So could I have died — when I’m running full speed and she trips me on purpose, that’s not part of the sport.” So he calls my mother — “Mrs. Greenhouse, we have a terrible thing that has happened here, your daughter threw a girl on her head, and I don’t know what to do — we’re gonna have to suspend her.” And my mother’s talking to him — I don’t know what’s going on, but I know my side of the story is not being told at all. He doesn’t say she tripped her and Kim responded.

So my mother must have said to Mr. Puffer, “Put her on the phone.” So I get on the phone, my mother says — I said “Hi” — she goes, “This is Joanne Greenhouse. Did you have to throw the girl on her head? Did you really have to throw her on her head?” I said, “Mom, she called me the F word, and she tripped me — I mean, what was I to do? I had to.” And she goes, “Oh, Jesus — put Mr. Puffer back on the phone.”

So we put Mr. Puffer back on the phone, and they send me home. Now, I did not get punished — I got reprimanded, I got a talking-to. It may have been a little excessive to throw her on her head, but trust me when I tell you that her tripping me, going into stealing books, trying to bully me — it actually ended. All right, so that’s that.

There’s another story coming, I’m feeling it. When I went to high school, I felt that — when they told us school’s really over, too, but you have to stay till 3:30 and you have to hang out, you can’t leave yet. Technically you can’t leave — in other words, it’s over, but you can’t really leave. I called my mother and I said, “This rule is completely a disaster, it’s a non-rule, it doesn’t make any sense — I would rather relax, come home, go hit tennis balls. What are we doing here?” And she said to me, “I’ll be right over.”

Then I went to one of the guards at the high school grounds — this is very revealing — and I made a deal with him. I said, “You gotta get me out of here, my mother will pick me up every day, can you sneak me out of this place?” And he did — every day he snuck me out. I think it was like 1:30, so I didn’t have to do time doing nothing at the school waiting for the bell to ring. But my mother was really cool, and she didn’t agree with wasting time, she didn’t agree with the rule, and she supported it.

So is my mother irreverent? Was she irreverent? Was she a rebel? Was she wise? She was very wise. She was a wonderful artist — she would make these incredible tennis skirts and dresses for me, handmade, custom — she had her own line that she did. She just started to do it, then she did angora sweaters — beautiful — and silk sweaters, and she had a business out of it later in her life. But my mother was an artist — and an artist that didn’t really claim her art until later in life, kind of like her daughter.

If you would have told me I was an artist years ago, somebody told me that, and I said, “Don’t you ever talk to me like that again — I’m a business person, don’t you ever tell me I’m an artist, you understand me, don’t ever call me an artist.” I guess I didn’t like that word — but I’m fine, I’m an entertainment artist, I’m a storyteller, I’m a writer and a speaker. It’s good, it’s fine, it’s fine — I accept. I’m also a businesswoman, and by the way, not bad.

All right, so the next Joanne story. All right, I was a tournament tennis player for thirteen years, in the earlier part of my life — quite a devoted one, a serious one, state-ranked, nationally ranked, both in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles — I don’t know if I was ranked in mixed doubles, but I played a lot of mixed doubles too. And we would get up very, very early to go to a tournament — really, really early, like 6:00 or 5:30. I barely even knew I was alive at that point. And my mother would get directions — she’d usually call AAA — we’d get in the car, we’d go on our way, whether it was Santa Ana, Buena Park, wherever we were going. She’d get in the car, and about twenty minutes into it, she’d turn to me and say, “Kim,” I said, “Yes,” she goes, “Where are we going?” I go, “What do you mean, where are we going?” “I don’t know where we’re going.” “What do you mean, you don’t know where we’re going? You’re the driver, you’re the adult, don’t you have the directions?” “Yeah, but I don’t know where I’m going.”

So here I was, terrorized first thing in the morning on the way to a tennis tournament — my mother doesn’t know where we’re going, we’re going somewhere. So sometimes we would stop if we saw a police officer — she’d go, “Officer, can you help us? I don’t know where we’re going.” She had the directions — what is — what happened, he tells her, he tells her what to do, she goes, “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” he’d walk away, “Thank you so much, officer.” She’d get in the car, she’d drive a minute later, she’d turn to me and say, “What did he say?” I said, “You can’t be serious — he just told you the whole thing, you’re the adult, I thought you’re supposed to know this.” It was so terrorizing, I can’t even tell you. So that was another thing that she would do.

This is crazy — you may think you’re dealing with a crazy person, but that’s okay, I come from a kind of interesting tree of kookiness. So my father, Lloyd, used to be an MC — he was in the war, he was in radio tower communication, and he loved being an emcee and introducing people — I guess I got that from my father.

And so one day we all get in the car, and we’re going — it’s some Sunday, we jump in the car and we’re going out to dinner, mind you this is a family occasion, now it’s five o’clock in the afternoon, we’re traveling around, we’re driving, everything appears to be okay — except there’s one problem: nobody can make up their mind where we’re going for dinner. So we start at five — my father would go, “Okay, Joe” — my mother’s name is Joanne — “Okay, Joe, what do you think of this one?” And then my older sister would go, “I like it.” Jackie would go — and then my younger sister would say, “Nah.” And then I go — and then it would come to me, I go, “Who cares, let’s just do it.” Okay, 5:45, same thing — six o’clock, 6:30, 6:45, seven o’clock — we’re two hours, we’re traveling within a twenty-mile radius, nobody can make up their mind where we’re going.

We’re in the car going insane — then my father says, “How about this Chinese restaurant, Joe?” She goes, “We’ll probably die — they’re food poisoning, forget it.” My mother was so wild. Eight o’clock, nine o’clock, we’re delirious, we’re screaming in the car, we’re laughing, nobody can make up their mind, we’re going nowhere — okay, we’re going in circles. Ten o’clock, eleven o’clock — we end up at a Bob’s Big Boy, out in our car, ordering from a little machine — we’re desperate, we’ll eat anything at this point. And that’s the Greenhouse family for you. That’s a little touch of that — that’s what I grew up with. My mother was very much like — naughty, like I Love Lucy, like Lucille Ball.

So one day my mother really wanted to marry my father, and my father was a player, and he loved my mother, but he was a player, and my mother had men all around her wanting her and offering her engagements, dates, the whole bit — she was a beautiful model. So she concocted this scheme and told my cousin that she’s going to pretend she was in a terrible accident and could die, and she was going to wrap herself up like a mummy — I’m so embarrassed telling the public this, but my mother really did it — and that surely my father would propose to her at that point, I mean, she’s near death.

So my mother wrapped — I don’t know how it happened, I wasn’t there — she gets herself all wrapped up, literally, face except the eyes showed, mouth — you know, wraps from head to toe. My cousin Carol is there, and my cousin Carol, which is my dad’s cousin, calls my dad and says, “Buddy, you gotta get here — Joanne’s been in a — I don’t know what happened, she’s been, I think, in a terrible accident, she’s all bandaged up, you gotta get here, buddy.” He goes, “What are you talking about?” So he comes — I’m relaying the story that Carol told me — and he comes in, and he pats my mother, and he goes, “What happened, Joanne, what’s going on here?” And he’s tapping her, and he’s tapping her, and he’s tapping her, he goes, “How’s this, how’s this, is this doing okay?” And all of a sudden my mother starts to break up laughing, and all the stuff starts coming off.

That’s my mother. That’s — that was Joanne Greenhouse, and she would pull stuff like this. She would do stuff like this — in fact, she got engaged to Peter Lawford. She was so mad that my father would not propose to her that she dated Peter Lawford, and she dated other producers in Hollywood to make him jealous. It was wild.

And my mother worked two jobs, and she worked at William Morris, and I think somewhere else — I can’t remember, she went to — I think she went to Fairfax High or Hollywood High, one of them — went to Fairfax. My father, I think, went to Fairfax. My mother went to Hollywood High. She worked two jobs — writing, you know, working for a script department, she worked very hard.

And she came from a family where her father and mother — the mother divorced the father — but had taken my mother secretly and disappeared with her, and then told my mother that her father disappeared and that they were divorced. So my grandfather, on my mother’s side, was never in my mother’s life, and my mother always felt terrible about it, because she lost her daddy at like three or four. And how that impacts somebody’s life — we didn’t find out until later what the real truth was. So when my mother had Alzheimer’s, late in life, we found out what the real story was about her parents.

But anyway, my mother was very stealth about certain things, very mysterious about other things — like, I would call and there was no caller ID — you couldn’t see a caller ID — my mother would pick up the phone and say, “Hi, Kim,” out of the blue — like, how would you know who’s calling? She was very mysterious that way. Or if I was dating somebody and she didn’t like them, she would say, “Forget it, no good for my daughter, not gonna happen” — like, she would speak this into existence. And very, very mysterious. And I remember her saying to me, “You either have class in life or you don’t. You either have class or you don’t, there is no in-between — it’s kind of like you’re either pregnant or you’re not.” My mother was very emphatic about things. Always dressed well, she wore eyelashes, and she was always made up — she always looked really like a model, even late in life.

In fact, when my mother passed away — which, I was there with her when she passed away — and when I went to the funeral home with my sisters — um, the one thing, a couple things I want to say before I share this one piece, about the way she looked in the casket — you don’t always know, when a parent passes away, in different levels and layers of the process, how you’re going to feel at the time. Something that may seem like something you wouldn’t care about, all of a sudden really cares.

For example, the funeral home asked myself and my sisters, “Would you like your mother’s body washed and prayed over?” I was the only one that said yes. I did it — it didn’t matter to my sisters, and that’s okay, it didn’t need to matter to them, but boy, did it matter to me. And so I just felt like that was the right thing to do — it’s a holy thing to wash your parent’s body after they’ve passed, and to have it done properly and prayed over. So that was done.

And when I looked at the casket — her in the casket — she wanted to be buried with her dog. Now, it happens to be that six months before she passed, I had to put her dog to sleep, Candy. So I had Candy cremated, and I had Candy in a can — and then in a very velvet bag, I poured Candy in the bag and put that in my mother’s hand in the casket. My mother looked incredible — in fact, I remember looking down in the casket and saying, “I can’t believe you’re not in your body — what is going on here, lady? What is it — you’re not even here, and you look great.” I’ve never seen anything like it in my life — we didn’t have any embalming, nothing like that — she looked incredible, except she wasn’t there anymore.

So sometimes, you know, she got what she wanted — she wanted her dog with her, her dog was with her — at least Candy wasn’t in a can. But, you know, everybody — both parents actually got what they wanted at their burial, funeral, or cremation time. My mother was buried.

But you don’t know what decisions you’re gonna make for a parent. What I can tell you is my mother knew I loved her. My mother and I had a lot of difficulty in life due to some of my decisions about my career and my personal life and my creative life — you know, she wanted me protected, as her young daughter, and married at a certain time, and having children at a certain time, and that didn’t happen for her — and so she was worried for me in my life, and it was the root of a lot of unrest between my mother and I. But we loved each other dearly, we laughed like there’s no tomorrow — she was my biggest supporter, no matter what, no matter what.

The interesting thing too, I think, with mothers, is that even when you go away from your mother, they’re still your mother — and even when they pass, they’re still your mother. You still have a relationship with your mother, and that still exists, and is either transforming, or it’s stuck, or it’s whatever — it’s going through its own alchemy after a parent passes.

So I want to take time today to acknowledge my mother, Joanne, who I feel really taught me about the human spirit, and taught me about how the heart works, and taught me about certain things socially, that are nuances in social navigation. She didn’t — she didn’t promote me throwing that little girl on her head when I was a child, when I was a young child — but she also wasn’t empowering me to be a victim, and to be beat up upon, and to be bullied, and to be tripped and falling and injured and preyed upon either. She had a kind of spirit of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth — but she would also have major issues with me sometimes with my temper, you know — it’s like, as the parent, you can have a bad temper, but the children are supposed to kind of learn not to do that — but I don’t know that I learned not to do that.

So I want to say that when I got into preparing in television in Los Angeles, and when I started to do radio, she was very supportive. I will tell you that I lived with my mother during a part of her Alzheimer’s experience — that was very, I have to say, part traumatic, but part very funny — very, very funny. I remember going on stage in Altadena, at a coffee house — there was like fifty people there — and I wanted to — my mother was in full-blown Alzheimer’s — and I remember going on stage, and before I started the event, I said, “We’re calling my mother now.” I did tell them she’s got some Alzheimer’s going on, and we don’t know how it’s going to turn out. So I got my cell phone, we called Mom, and I said, “Mom, I just want you to know I’m about to start a storytelling event, and you know, you’re here, and it’s It’s Rainmaking Time.” And she starts laughing, and she goes, “You’re crazy.” So everybody started laughing, and that’s how the show started.

Now, see, even with Alzheimer’s, the human spirit transcends all of it — all of it. Even with full-blown Alzheimer’s, total dementia, you can tap the human spirit. And I know that my mother’s spirit shined right through — even in her final stages of Alzheimer’s, she remembered when I would call on the phone. But when Candy became Candy in the can, she didn’t know it — and we had a pet — we had like a statue of a dog, she would pet that dog as if it was Candy. So on one part, she had no cognition, which was sad and hard to watch — and the other part, she would be laughing and chatting and remembering.

And I remember when my father passed away — this is wild, okay — well, my father passed away, and we had caregivers that would come help, because I couldn’t do it all myself, no way — okay, there’s just no way. My mother would turn to me and say, the different parts of the day, “Where’s your father? Where’s your father?” And I’d say, “He died.” And then she would break, absolutely — start crying, sobbing, going absolutely — I mean, so upset, because she can’t retain it. How many times am I going to tell her he’s dead, he died, he’s gone? I’m not going to do that, because in an Alzheimer’s patient, it’s groundhog’s day every day. I’m not gonna upset her every day answering her question, “Where’s your father?”

So here’s what I did — this was the most loving thing I could do — she would say, “Where’s Buddy?” I’d say, “You know what, he’s still on the golf course.” I said, “I know, I don’t know what the problem is, I can’t get him off the golf course.” And she’d go, “That son of a — better get off the golf course and get home for dinner.” I said, “That’s right, that son of a — better get off the golf course and come home for dinner — let me see if I can contact him.” And we did this five times a day, every day, until she was in that casket. Buddy was eternally at the golf course — her husband was late for dinner — but better than him being dead, every day, five times a day.

My mother would do funny things — like, she knew that we would make phony phone calls when we were young kids. Like, we would call people in the phone book — my older sister was the main culprit and ringleader of this — but she would call people, and she would tell them that they ordered packages, they ordered packages from Neiman Marcus or Bullocks or one of the major — Macy’s, one of the major department stores — and they really need to pick it up because we can’t hold it anymore, the order’s been processed. And the person would say, “We didn’t order anything.” “Oh, ma’am, we have the entire order here, it’s all paid for, you know, we need you to pick it up.” So this was going on, and we’d call these phony phone calls — there were all kinds of things. My mother knew this was going on, kind of secretly, but she didn’t tell my father that this was happening — like, one part of her thought it was hysterical. So there’s all kinds of wild stuff like that in the family dynamic — it was pretty wild.

One time we were in a boat in San Diego, and all of a sudden the boat starts to sink — it’s a sailboat, we’re sinking — the whole family and friends, I don’t remember the total story of it, but I just remember we’re going down, we’re going down — the Greenhouse family is going down in this little boat in San Diego — and I don’t know how we got saved, but we did. You know, we’ve had some close calls — I have a lot of stuff for Father’s Day to tell you, that my father would do — I’m kind of wanting to get into it, but I’m not going to do it now.

So just to tell you that we all come from — my mother would also tell me — I would like bring recorders and ask her to tell me about herself, and tell me things that she wanted to tell me. And don’t forget to get your stories from your mothers while they’re alive. Don’t take their stories for granted — you may never capture them, you may never have them, you may have lost them, you may have to tell them, but it won’t be direct from your mother. Your stories are really important, and your parents’ stories are very important, and they shape and form who you are, and who I am, and all of that.

So I just wanted to share a little bit about my mother, Joanne Greenhouse, who was married to my father, Lloyd Greenhouse, for over fifty-five years — and not that she didn’t have difficulty with my father, as all marriages run into something at some point. At one point I think she didn’t want to leave him, but decided not to — late in life it was all about her having her freedom to be, and not to be stuck in the role so heavily — but she was a devoted wife and a devoted mother of three children, and she loved all of them very differently.

And I miss my mother. I miss Joanne Greenhouse. So happy Mother’s Day to all of you. Thank you very much, and that’s a wrap.