What I Know For Sure (2 page)

It was one of the most amazing surprises of my life. Layered with meanings I’m still deciphering. What I know for sure: It’s a moment I’ll savor forever—the fact that it happened, the way it happened, that it happened on my birthday. All … so …
delicious!

When was the last time
you laughed with a friend till your sides hurt or dropped the kids off with a sitter and went away for an entire weekend? More to the point, if your life ended tomorrow, what would you regret not doing? If this were the last day of your life, would you spend it the way you’re spending today?

I once passed a billboard that caught my attention. It read, “He who dies with the most toys is still dead.” Anyone who has ever come close to death can tell you that at the end of your life, you probably won’t be reminiscing about how many all-nighters you pulled at the office or how much your mutual fund is worth. The thoughts that linger are the “if only” questions, like
Who could I have become if I had finally done the things I always wanted to do?

The gift of deciding to face your mortality without turning away or flinching is the gift of recognizing that because you will die, you must live now. Whether you flounder or flourish is always in your hands—you are the single biggest influence in your life.

Your journey begins with a choice to get up, step out, and live fully.

Is there anything I love
more than a good meal? Not much. One of my best took place on a trip to Rome, at a delightful little restaurant filled exclusively with Italians except for our table: my friends Reggie, Andre, and Gayle, Gayle’s daughter Kirby, and me, eating as the Romans do.

There was a moment when the waiters, prompted by our Italian host, Angelo, brought out so many delicious antipasti that I actually felt my heart surge, like an engine switching gears. We had zucchini stuffed with prosciutto, and fresh, ripe tomatoes layered with melting mozzarella so warm you could see tiny cheese bubbles, along with a bottle of ’85 Sassicaia, a Tuscan red wine that had been breathing for half an hour, to sip and savor like liquid velvet. Oh my, these were moments to treasure!

Did I mention I topped all this off with a bowl of pasta e fagioli (made to perfection) and a little tiramisu? Yep, that was some good eating. I paid for it with a 90-minute jog around the Colosseum the next day—but it was worth every delectable bite.

I have a lot of strong beliefs. The value of eating well is one of them. I know for sure that a meal that brings you real joy will do you more good in the long and short term than a lot of filler food that leaves you standing in your kitchen, roaming from cabinet to fridge. I call it the grazing feeling: You want something, but can’t figure out what it is. All the carrots, celery, and skinless chicken in the world can’t give you the satisfaction of one incredible piece of chocolate if that’s what you really crave.

So I’ve learned to eat one piece of chocolate—maximum, two—and dare myself to stop and relish it, knowing full well, like Scarlett O’Hara, that “tomorrow is another day,” and there’s always more where that came from. I don’t have to consume the whole thing just because it’s there. What a concept!

It’s been more than
two decades since I first met Bob Greene at a gym in Telluride, Colorado. I weighed 237 pounds at the time, my highest ever. I was at the end of my rope and the end of hope—so ashamed of my body and my eating habits, I could barely look Bob in the eye. I desperately wanted a solution that worked.

Bob put me through my workout paces and encouraged a lifestyle built around eating whole foods (long before I’d ever heard of the store that shares that name and mission).

I resisted. But even as different diets came and went, his advice remained consistent and wise: Eat foods that make you thrive.

A few years ago, I finally got the big aha and started growing my own vegetables. And what began with a few rows of lettuce, some tomatoes, and basil (my favorite herb) in my backyard in Santa Barbara eventually became a genuine farm in Maui. My gardening interest grew into a passion.

I get ridiculously happy at the sight of the purple radicchio we’ve grown, the elephant kale that reaches my knees, the radishes so big I call them baboon butts—because for me it all represents a full-circle moment.

In rural Mississippi, where I was born, a garden meant survival. In Nashville, where I later lived, my father always cleared a “patch” by the side of our house, where he would grow collard greens, tomatoes, crowder peas, and butter beans.

Today that’s my favorite meal; add some cornbread and I’m clicking my heels. But when I was a girl, I saw no value in eating freshly grown foods. “Why can’t we have store-bought food like other people?” I’d complain. I wanted my vegetables to come from the “valley of the jolly—ho, ho, ho—Green Giant”! Having to eat from the garden made me feel poor.

I now know for sure how blessed I was to have access to fresh food—something not every family today can take for granted.

Thank you, Lord, for growth.

I’ve worked hard to sow the seeds for a life in which I get to keep expanding my dreams. One of those dreams is for everyone to be able to eat fresh food that goes from farm to table—because better food is the foundation for a better life. Yes, Bob, I’m putting it in print: You were right all along!

I met Gayle King
in 1976, when I was a news anchor at a station in Baltimore and she was a production assistant—both of us from circles that rarely interacted and certainly weren’t friendly. From the day we met, Gayle made it known how proud she was that I had the exalted position of anchorwoman and how excited she was to be part of a team I was on. It has been that way ever since.

We didn’t become friends right away—we were just two women respectful and supportive of each other’s path. Then one night, after a big snowstorm, Gayle couldn’t get home—so I invited her to stay at my place. Her biggest concern? Underwear. She was determined to drive 40 miles through a snowstorm to get to Chevy Chase, Maryland, where she lived with her mom, in order to have clean panties. “I have lots of clean underwear,” I told her. “You can use mine, or we can go buy you some.”

Once I finally convinced her to come home with me, we stayed up the whole night talking. And with the exception of a few times during vacations spent out of the country, Gayle and I have talked every day since.

We laugh a lot, mostly about ourselves. She has helped me through demotions, near-firings, sexual harassment, and the twisted and messed-up relationships of my twenties, when I couldn’t tell the difference between myself and a doormat. Night after night, Gayle listened to the latest woeful tale of how I’d been stood up, lied to, done wrong. She’d always ask for details (we call it “book, chapter, and verse”), then seem as engaged as if it were happening to her. She never judged me. Yet when I’d let some man use me, she’d often say, “He’s just chipping away at your spirit. One day I hope he chips deep enough for you to see who you really are—someone who deserves to be happy.”

In all my triumphs—in every good and great thing that has ever happened to me—Gayle has been my boldest cheerleader. (Of course, no matter how much money I make, she still worries that I’m spending too much. “Remember M.C. Hammer,” she chides, as though I’m one purchase away from following in the footsteps of the rapper who went bankrupt.) And in all our years together, I have never sensed even a split second of jealousy from her. She loves her life, she loves her family, she loves discount shopping (enough to schlep across town for a sale on Tide).

Only once has she admitted to wanting to trade places with me: the night I sang onstage with Tina Turner. She, who cannot carry a tune in a church pew, fantasizes about being a singer.

Gayle is the nicest person I know—genuinely interested in everybody’s story. She’s the kind of person who will ask a cabdriver in New York City if he has any kids. “What are their names?” she’ll say. When I’m down, she shares my pain; when I’m up, you can believe she’s somewhere in the background, cheering louder and smiling broader than anyone else. Sometimes I feel like Gayle is the better part of myself—the part that says “No matter what, I’m here for you.” What I know for sure is that Gayle is a friend I can count on. She has taught me the joy of having, and being, a true friend.

Getting three new pups
at the same time wasn’t the smartest decision I ever made. I acted on impulse, charmed by their cute little faces, intoxicated by that sweet puppy breath and the underbite on Puppy No. 3 (Layla).

Then I spent weeks getting up at all hours of the night with them. I picked up pounds of poop and spent hours puppy training so they would have good manners.

It was a
lot
of work. I was sleep deprived—and constantly frazzled from trying to keep three at a time from destroying all my worldly goods. Whoa, did I gain a big new respect for mothers of real babies!

All this puppy love was starting to get on my nerves, so I had to make a paradigm shift. One day while walking them, I stood and watched them frolic—and I do mean frolic: rolling, tumbling, chasing, laughing (yes, dogs laugh), and leaping like bunnies. They were having so much fun, and seeing them that way made my whole body sigh, relax, and smile. New life discovering a field of grass for the first time: What a wonder!

We all get the opportunity to feel wonder every day, but we’ve been lulled into numbness. Have you ever driven home from work, opened your front door, and asked yourself how you got there?

I know for sure that I don’t want to live a shut-down life—desensitized to feeling and seeing. I want every day to be a fresh start on expanding what is possible. On experiencing joy on every level.

I love building a fire
in the fireplace. What a sense of accomplishment it is to stack the wood exactly right (pyramid-style) and have the flames shoot up without using a starter log! I don’t know why that’s so rewarding for me, but it is—as a young girl, I dreamed of being a Girl Scout but could never afford the uniform.

A fire is even better when it’s pouring rain outside. And it’s absolutely the best when I’ve finished my work, checked my e-mail, unplugged, and am ready to read.

Everything I do all day, I do in preparation for my reading time. Give me a great novel or memoir, some tea, and a cozy spot to curl up in, and I’m in heaven. I love to live in another person’s thoughts; I marvel at the bonds I feel with people who come alive on the page, regardless of how different their circumstances might be from mine. I not only feel I know these people, but I also recognize more of myself. Insight, information, knowledge, inspiration, power: All that and more can come through a good book.

I can’t imagine where I’d be or who I’d be without the essential tool of reading. I for sure wouldn’t have gotten my first job in radio at the age of 16. I was touring the radio station WVOL in Nashville when the DJ asked, “Do you want to hear how your voice sounds on tape?” and handed me a piece of news copy and a microphone. “You oughta hear this girl!” he exclaimed to his boss. There began my broadcasting career—shortly thereafter, the station hired me to read the news on the air. After years of reciting poetry to whomever would listen and reading everything I could get my hands on, someone was going to pay me to do what I loved—read out loud.

Books, for me, used to be a way to escape. I now consider reading a good book a sacred indulgence, a chance to be any place I choose. It is my absolute favorite way to spend time. What I know for sure is that reading opens you up. It exposes you and gives you access to anything your mind can hold. What I love most about reading: It gives you the ability to reach higher ground. And keep climbing.

My primary and most
essential goal in life is to remain connected to the world of spirit. Everything else will take care of itself—this I know for sure. And my number-one spiritual practice is trying to live in the present moment … to resist projecting into the future, or lamenting past mistakes … to feel the real power of now. That, my friends, is the secret to a joyful life.

If everybody remembered to live this way (as children do when they first arrive on this planet; it’s what we hardened souls call innocence), we’d transform the world. Playing, laughing, feeling joy.

My favorite Bible verse, which I have loved since I was an eight-year-old girl, is Psalms 37:4. “Delight thyself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” This has been my mantra through all my experience. Delight in the Lord—in goodness, kindness, compassion, love—and see what happens.

I dare you.

Resilience

“Barn’s burnt down / Now I can see the moon.”

—Mizuta Masahide

(seventeenth-century Japanese poet)

No matter who we are
or where we come from, we all have our own journey. Mine began one April afternoon in 1953, in rural Mississippi, where I was conceived out of wedlock by Vernon Winfrey and Vernita Lee. Their onetime union that day, not at all a romance, brought about an unwanted pregnancy, and my mother concealed her condition until the day I was born—so no one was prepared for my arrival. There were no baby showers, none of the anticipation or delight that I see in the faces of expectant friends who rub their swollen stomachs with reverence. My birth was marked by regret, hiding, and shame.

When the author and counselor John Bradshaw, who pioneered the concept of the inner child, appeared on
The Oprah Winfrey Show
in 1991, he took my audience and me through a profound exercise. He asked us to close our eyes and go back to the home we grew up in, to visualize the house itself. Come closer, he said. Look inside the window and find yourself inside. What do you see? And more important, what do you feel? For me it was an overwhelmingly sad yet powerful exercise. What I felt at almost every stage of my development was lonely. Not alone—because there were always people around—but I knew that my soul’s survival depended on me. I felt I would have to fend for myself.