Back to blog

Life is trade-offs….it is probably nothing but trade offs, if the truth be known.

I traded a conventional life with kids and homemaking to be a performer on the broader stages of Broadway and other parts known and unknown. I married a man i thought was straight who turned out to be gay but we had a serious and meaningful love relationship for many years…then i married a man who finally suits me in every way, and he is twenty five years younger than I am and he chose me over having his life be a conventional one with kids…i am sad because i feel his love for me – as grateful as I am for it had deprived him of the opportunity to be the wonderful Dad i know he would be.

My first husband Paul used to joke that if we’d had kids, they would have ended up in foster care and he would have ended up in prison and i would have ended up in an insane asylum..laugh as I might at what could be considered a quip, i also think he may have been right.

I was not cut out to be a mother.
After much therapy, i truly understand the understatement of that statement! I was too needy and terrified myself – of myself- to ever be of much use to a baby, an infant…i am destroyed by the pain of dogs in trouble…can you imagine how I would have been if a baby of mine had a cold and they got ill, even with the minor infections common among babies…i would be on constant watch for the worst to happen, and my stomach would never have been rested.

I traded off a life – a very conventional life – for life in show business. Now, there are those in show business who have managed to have large families, be wonderful parents, raise healthy ( who knows how healthy?) kids and seem to have led perfectly rounded out lives of contentment and success.

I was not destined to be one of those show biz luminaries.
I’ve had my hands full just taking care of my fragile self, and living to breathe another day.

My NYU students, of which there have been many, were sort of like children to me and it give me immense
pleasure to see so many of them have successful broadway careers…one of them-Ruthie Miles- however, a tony award winning young woman, had a child killed in a horrifying traffic accident and she has gone on to have other babies and a successful career to be proud of onstage and on television.

She has survived tragedy and gone on to thrive.
The loss of a child would have completely done me in.
And so i have always felt too fragile to be a mother. What if the child got ill and died?
Another of my students – Rob Delaney- lost a baby to cancer and went on to write a stunning sad and funny and deeply sad book about it, while simultaneously building an ever more successful career in film and television…he lived to not only tell the tale, he lived to thrive despite it.

My trade-off?
TO keep myself cocooned in a protected shell where the only one i have had to take care of is myself.
Fortunately i have a husband who seems to deeply enjoy taking care of me as well.
i do my best to care for him, not as if he was my child, but as if he was the best husband in the world.
Because he is.

I have had many trade offs…but I have lived so far to tell the tale of a happy marriage to wonderful Peter, and that trade off, as selfish as it may have been, is all I need to acknowledge and appreciate.

Trade-offs?
AN eternal truth.