What I Know For Sure Read online

  I felt an instant connection with her. But just to be sure I wasn’t caught up in a moment of overwhelming puppy love, Gayle said, “Why don’t you wait and see how you feel tomorrow?” So I decided to wait 24 hours. The next day, Chicago had a whiteout blizzard—not a good day to bring a puppy home, I thought. Especially if you live in a high-rise. It’s hard to house-train from the seventy-seventh floor even when the sun is shining—puppies need to go outside a lot when they’re first learning when (and when not) to go.

  Nevertheless, Stedman and I donned our winter gear and used our four-wheel-drive to get across town. Just to “have another look,” I swore. Miss Sadie, the runt of the litter, spoke to my heart. I love making the underdog a winner.

  An hour later we were at Petco, buying a crate and wee-wee pads, collar and leash, puppy food and toys.

  The crate started out next to the bed. And still she cried. We moved the crate up onto the bed, right in the center, so she had a full view of me—I wanted to do anything I could to help her avoid separation anxiety on her first night away from the litter. And yet there was more whimpering and whining. Then full-blown yelping. So I took her out of the crate and let her sleep on my pillow. I know that’s no way to train a dog. But I did it anyway—to the point where Sadie thought I was her littermate. By the time I woke up in the morning, she had nuzzled her way to my shoulder, which was her most comfortable sleeping position.

  Five days after bringing her home, I lost track of good sense and let myself get talked into adopting her brother Ivan. For 24 hours, life was grand: Ivan was Sadie’s playmate, and I didn’t have to be. (It was nice to get some relief from games of fetch and rubber squeezy bunnies.)

  Ivan had one full day of romping in the sun with Sadie and my two golden retrievers, Luke and Layla. Then he refused dinner. And then the diarrhea started, followed by vomiting and more diarrhea. That was on Saturday. By Monday night, we knew he had the dreaded parvovirus.

  I’d been through parvo 13 years before, with my brown cocker, Solomon. It nearly killed him. He stayed in the veterinary hospital for 20 days. He was more than a year old when he got it. Ivan was only 11 weeks. His young immune system wasn’t strong enough to overcome it. Four days after we took Ivan to the emergency clinic, he died.

  That morning, Sadie refused to eat. Even though she had tested negative before, I knew she had parvo, too.

  So began the ordeal of trying to save her. Plasma transfusions. Antibiotics. Probiotics. And daily visits. I wish for every citizen of this country the kind of health care and treatment this little dog received. The first four days, she got increasingly worse. At one point I told the vet, “I’m prepared to let her go. She shouldn’t have to fight this hard.”

  But fight she did. By the next day her white blood cell count started to improve, and two days later she was happily eating bits of chicken.

  Shortly afterward Sadie came home, skinny and frail but ready to start life anew. She eventually recovered fully.

  During the time she and Ivan spent in the hospital, I was worried and restless and got little sleep—the same as it would have been with any family member. Which is what I know for sure pets represent in our lives: a connection to caring that’s unconditional. And reciprocal.

  Puppy love. Nothing like it.

  When you make loving others the story of your life, there’s never a final chapter, because the legacy continues. You lend your light to one person, and he or she shines it on another and another and another. And I know for sure that in the final analysis of our lives—when the to-do lists are no more, when the frenzy is finished, when our e-mail inboxes are empty—the only thing that will have any lasting value is whether we’ve loved others and whether they’ve loved us.

  Gratitude

  “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘Thank you,’ it will be enough.”

  —Meister Eckhart

  For years I’ve been advocating the power and pleasure of being grateful. I kept a gratitude journal for a full decade without fail—and urged everyone I knew to do the same. Then life got busy. My schedule overwhelmed me. I still opened my journal some nights, but my ritual of writing down five things I was grateful for every day started slipping away.

  Here’s what I was grateful for on October 12, 1996:

  1. A run around Florida’s Fisher Island with a slight breeze that kept me cool.

  2. Eating cold melon on a bench in the sun.

  3. A long and hilarious chat with Gayle about her blind date with Mr. Potato Head.

  4. Sorbet in a cone, so sweet that I licked my finger.

  5. Maya Angelou calling to read me a new poem.

  A few years ago, when I came across that journal entry, I wondered why I no longer felt the joy of simple moments. Since 1996, I had accumulated more wealth, more responsibility, more possessions; everything, it seemed, had grown exponentially—except my happiness. How had I, with all my options and opportunities, become one of those people who never have time to feel delight? I was stretched in so many directions, I wasn’t feeling much of anything. Too busy doing.

  But the truth is, I was busy in 1996, too. I just made gratitude a daily priority. I went through the day looking for things to be grateful for, and something always showed up.

  Sometimes we get so focused on the difficulty of our climb that we lose sight of being grateful for simply having a mountain to climb.

  My life is still crazy busy. Today, though, I’m continuously grateful for having the stamina to keep going. And I’m back to journaling (electronically, this time around). Whenever there’s a grateful moment, I note it. I know for sure that appreciating whatever shows up for you in life changes your whole world. You radiate and generate more goodness for yourself when you’re aware of all you have and not focusing on your have-nots.

  I know for sure: If you make time for a little gratitude every day, you’ll be amazed by the results.

  “Say thank-you!” Many years ago, those words from Maya Angelou turned my life around. I was on the phone with her, sitting in my bathroom with the door closed and the toilet lid down, weeping so uncontrollably that I was incoherent.

  “Stop it!” Maya chided. “Stop it right now and say thank-you!”

  “But you—you don’t understand,” I sobbed. To this day, I can’t remember what it was that had me so far gone, which only proves the point Maya was trying to make.

  “I do understand,” she told me. “I want to hear you say it now. Out loud. ‘Thank you.’”

  Tentatively, I repeated it: “Thank you.” And then snuffled some more. “But what am I saying thank-you for?”

  “You’re saying thank-you,” Maya said, “because your faith is so strong that you don’t doubt that whatever the problem, you’ll get through it. You’re saying thank-you because you know that even in the eye of the storm, God has put a rainbow in the clouds. You’re saying thank-you because you know there’s no problem created that can compare to the Creator of all things. Say thank-you!”

  So I did—and still do.

  Being grateful all the time isn’t easy. But it’s when you feel least thankful that you are most in need of what gratitude can give you: perspective. Gratitude can transform any situation. It alters your vibration, moving you from negative energy to positive. It’s the quickest, easiest, most powerful way to effect change in your life—this I know for sure.

  Here’s the gift of gratitude: In order to feel it, your ego has to take a backseat. What shows up in its place is greater compassion and understanding. Instead of being frustrated, you choose appreciation. And the more grateful you become, the more you have to be grateful for.

  Maya Angelou was so right. Whatever you’re going through, you will do just that: go through it. It will pass. So say thank-you now. Because you know the rainbow is coming.

  The amount of time and energy I’ve spent thinking about what my next meal will be is incalculable: what to eat, what I just ate, how many calories or grams of fat it contains, how
much exercise I’ll need to do to burn it off, what if I don’t work out, how long will it take to manifest as extra pounds, and on and on. Food has been on my mind a lot over the years.

  I still have the check I wrote to my first diet doctor—Baltimore, 1977. I was 23 years old, 148 pounds, a size 8, and I thought I was fat. The doctor put me on a 1,200-calorie regimen, and in less than two weeks I had lost 10 pounds. Two months later, I’d regained 12. Thus began the cycle of discontent, the struggle with my body. With myself.

  I joined the dieting brigade—signing on for the Beverly Hills, Atkins, Scarsdale, Cabbage Soup, and even the Banana, Hot Dog, and Egg diets. (You think I’m kidding. I wish.) What I didn’t know is that with each diet, I was starving my muscles, slowing my metabolism, and setting myself up to gain even more weight. Around 1995, after almost two decades of yo-yoing, I finally realized that being grateful for my body, whatever shape it was in, was the key to giving more love to myself.

  But although I made that connection intellectually, living it was a different story. It wasn’t until about six years later, after six months of unexplained heart palpitations, that I finally got it. On December 19, 2001, I wrote in my journal: “One thing is for sure—having palpitations at night makes me more aware of being happy to awaken in the morning, more grateful for each day.” I stopped taking my heart for granted and began thanking it for every beat it had ever given me. I marveled at the wonder of it: In 47 years, I’d never consciously given a thought to what my heart does, feeding oxygen to my lungs, liver, pancreas, even my brain, one beat at a time.

  For so many years, I had let my heart down by not giving it the support it needed. Overeating. Overstressing. Overdoing. No wonder when I lay down at night it couldn’t stop racing. I believe everything that happens in our lives has meaning, that each experience brings a message, if we’re willing to hear it. So what was my speeding heart trying to tell me? I still didn’t know the answer. Yet simply asking the question caused me to look at my body and how I had failed to honor it. How every diet I had ever been on was because I wanted to fit into something—or just fit in. Taking care of my heart, the life force of my body, had never been my priority.

  I sat up in bed one crisp, sunny morning and made a vow to love my heart. To treat it with respect. To feed and nurture it. To work it out and then let it rest. And then one night when I was getting out of the tub, I glanced in the full-length mirror. For the first time, I didn’t launch into my self-criticism. I actually felt a warming sense of gratitude for what I saw. My hair braided, not a stitch of makeup on, face clean. Eyes bright, alive. Shoulders and neck strong and firm. I was thankful for the body I lived in.

  I did a head-to-toe assessment, and though there was plenty of room for improvement, I no longer hated any part of myself, even the cellulite. I thought, This is the body you’ve been given—love what you’ve got. So I started truly loving the face I was born with; the lines I had under my eyes at age 2 have gotten deeper, but they’re my lines. The broad nose I tried to lift, when I was 8, by sleeping with a clothespin and two cotton balls on the sides, is the nose I’ve grown into. The full lips I used to pull in when smiling are the lips I’ve used to speak to millions of people every day—my lips need to be full.

  In that moment, as I stood before the mirror, I had my own “spiritual transformation/a root revival of love,” which Carolyn M. Rodgers writes of in one of my favorite poems, “Some Me of Beauty.”

  What I know for sure: There is no need to struggle with your body when you can make a loving and grateful peace with it.

  I live in the space of thankfulness—and for that, I have been rewarded a million times over. I started out giving thanks for small things, and the more thankful I became, the more my bounty increased. That’s because—for sure—what you focus on expands. When you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it.

  We’ve all heard that it’s more blessed to give than to receive. Well, I know for sure that it’s also a lot more fun. Nothing makes me happier than a gift well given and joyfully received.

  I can honestly say that every gift I’ve ever given has brought at least as much happiness to me as it has to the person I’ve given it to. I give as I feel. Throughout the year, that may mean mailing a handwritten note to someone who didn’t expect it. Or sending a great new lotion I just discovered, or delivering a book of poetry with a pretty bow. It doesn’t matter what the thing is; what matters is how much of yourself goes into the giving, so that when the gift is gone, the spirit of you lingers.

  My friend Geneviève once left a white bowl of bright yellow lemons with their stems and leaves, freshly picked from her backyard and tied with a green ribbon, on my front doorstep with a note that said “Good morning.” The whole presentation was so beautiful in its simplicity that long after the lemons shriveled, I felt the spirit of the gift every time I passed the place where the bowl had been set. I now keep a bowl filled with lemons to remind me of that “Good morning.”

  You may have heard about the time I gave away a bunch of cars on my show. Pontiac G6s. It was the most fun I’d ever had on TV. But before the great giveaway, I sat meditating in my darkened closet, trying to stay in the moment and not get anxious about the big surprise that was to come. It was important to me to fill the audience with people who really needed new cars, so that all the excitement would have meaning. I wanted the gift to be about the essence of sharing what you have. I prayed for that, sitting in the dark amongst my shoes and handbags. Then I walked downstairs to the studio, and my prayers were answered.

  I’m a country girl at heart, having grown up in rural Mississippi—where if you didn’t grow it or raise it (as in hogs and chickens), you didn’t eat it. Helping my grandmother pull turnip greens from the garden, then sitting on the porch snapping beans and shelling peas, was a routine I took for granted.

  Today my favorite day of the week in spring, summer, and fall is harvest day. We go out to the garden to gather artichokes, spinach, squash, green beans, corn, tomatoes, and lettuce, along with basketfuls of fresh herbs, onions, and garlic. The bounty of it gives my heart a thrill!

  I’m in awe every time: By planting so little, you can reap so much. In fact, my problem is volume. I can’t eat it all, but I don’t want to throw away anything that I’ve watched grow; discarding food you’ve grown from seed feels like throwing away a gift. I readily share with my neighbors, and still there’s always more growing.

  All good food comes from the earth. And whether you get that food from a farmers’ market, your local grocer, or your own backyard, this I know for sure: The pure joy of eating well is worth savoring.

  I once sliced a fresh peach that was so sweet, so succulent, so divinely peachy that even as I was eating it I thought, There are no words to adequately describe this peach—one has to taste it to understand the true definition of peachiness. I closed my eyes, the better to enjoy the flavor. But even that wasn’t enough, so I saved the last two bites to share with Stedman, to see if he affirmed my assessment of best peach ever. He took the first bite and said, “Mmm, mmm, mmm … this peach reminds me of childhood.” And so that small thing got bigger, as all things do when shared in a spirit of appreciation.

  I still remember the first time I stepped outside my box of giving only to family and friends, and did something significant for someone I didn’t know. I was a reporter in Baltimore and had covered a story about a young mother and her children, who had fallen on hard times. I’ll never forget going back to their home and taking the whole family to a mall to buy winter coats. They so appreciated the gesture, and I learned how good it feels to do something unexpected for someone in need.

  Since that time in the late 1970s, I’ve been blessed with the ability to give truly great gifts—everything from cashmere sheets to college educations. I’ve given homes. Cars. Trips around the world. The services of a wonderful nanny. But the best gift anyone can give, I believe, is the gift of themselves.

  At my fiftieth-birthday lun
cheon, every woman in attendance wrote a note sharing what our friendship meant to her. All the notes were placed in a silver box. That box still has a treasured space on my nightstand; on days when I’m feeling less than joyful, I’ll pull out a note and let it lift me back up.

  About a year later I hosted a weekend of festivities to honor 18 magnificent bridge-building, boundary-breaking women and a few dozen of the younger women whose way they had paved. I called it the Legends Ball, and after it was over, I received thank-you letters from all the “young’uns” in attendance. The letters were calligraphed and bound together in a book. They are among my most valued possessions. And they inspired me recently, when a friend was going through a rough time: I called all of her friends and asked them to write her love notes, which I then had bound into a book.

  I gave to someone else, in the same way that someone had given to me. And I know for sure that’s what we’re here to do: Keep the giving going.

  The table next to me was making a lot of noise, celebrating a special occasion—five waiters singing “Happy birrrrrthday, dear Marilyn…” Our side of the room applauded as Marilyn blew out the single candle on the chocolate cupcake she’d been presented with. Someone asked if I’d take a picture with the group.

  “Sure,” I said, and casually asked, “How old is Marilyn?” to no one in particular.

  The whole table laughed nervously. One person said in mock outrage, “I can’t believe you’re asking that!”

  Marilyn ducked her head modestly and told me, “I dare not say.”

  I was at first amused, then taken aback. “You want a picture honoring your birthday, but you don’t want to say how old you are?”