town car instead. I put up a halfhearted fight, but again, to keep peace, and because it didn’t occur to me that he was up to something, I finally agreed to it . . . after which Harry promptly sold my woody convertible and used the money to pay off a debt to his brother.
So there I was, without my own car anymore, seeing less and less of my close friends and family, and having my phone calls and messages carefully screened without even knowing it. Or, to put it another way, becoming more isolated and less independent but still grimly determined to prove that my investment in Harry Bernsen was worth the time and effort I’d put into him.
And no one was more surprised than I was when it turned out to be worth all that and more. (Didn’t see that coming, did you?)
T here’s nothing quite like the words “you’re pregnant” when you’re not expecting them to shock you into an instant reevaluation of your life.
To be honest, I had no business being as shocked as I was. I’d been sexually active and irresponsible about it for years, apparently assuming that not intending to have children was all the birth control I needed. I’d honestly started to think that maybe I couldn’t get pregnant. And after a year and a half with Harry, neither of us using any protection at all, I believed his claim that he’d been told he would never be able to father a child.
Of course, my single actress friends and I had talked many times about whether we wanted children. We were almost unanimous in our position that children could and should wait until later in our lives, when our careers were either well established or over. Our theory was that a combination of a career and children meant that inevitably, sooner or later, one or the other would have to come first, and none of us would have put our careers ahead of our children. So the idea of children was always coupled with another abstract idea: someday.
All of which was blown right out of the water with the news that I was pregnant (as was that theory that career women can’t be good, attentive mothers, needless to say). And to my amazement, I found pregnancy to be one of the warmest, fuzziest, most fulfilling experiences I’d ever had. By sheer instinct, decades before there was such a wealth of information available, I became the most health-conscious pregnant woman you’ve ever seen. I maintained a very strict diet, helped considerably by the fact that while I’d had several pregnant friends whose cravings consisted of things like hot fudge sundaes and angel food cake, I lucked out—all I craved throughout that pregnancy and the two that followed were tomatoes. I gained so little weight that I never even had to invest in maternity clothes, and I was able to work until two weeks before I delivered.
Corbin Dean Bernsen was born on September 7, 1954. It was such an easy delivery that the nurses had to wake me up to tell me he’d arrived. At the time, it was common practice for nurses to whisk newborns away after birth. However, baby Corbin was inexplicably kept from me for a few hours after he first entered this world.
I couldn’t understand for the life of me, nor could I get anyone to explain, why the nurses were so obviously avoiding bringing my son to me. I wanted to see him, and I wanted to see him now , or someone had better damned well give me a good reason why not.
Finally, trying to calm me down and reassure me that Corbin was a fine, healthy baby and there was nothing to worry about, a nurse told me that Harry had asked them not to show him to me because he was “deformed.”
I predictably went berserk, offered a few thinly veiled threats if there were any further delays in my holding my child, and informed the nurses (along with probably most of the hospital and a few low-flying planes) that they had no right to let Harry’s orders override mine.
They brought Corbin to me. Even before I first laid eyes on him, I knew that whoever it was who said
So there I was, without my own car anymore, seeing less and less of my close friends and family, and having my phone calls and messages carefully screened without even knowing it. Or, to put it another way, becoming more isolated and less independent but still grimly determined to prove that my investment in Harry Bernsen was worth the time and effort I’d put into him.
And no one was more surprised than I was when it turned out to be worth all that and more. (Didn’t see that coming, did you?)
T here’s nothing quite like the words “you’re pregnant” when you’re not expecting them to shock you into an instant reevaluation of your life.
To be honest, I had no business being as shocked as I was. I’d been sexually active and irresponsible about it for years, apparently assuming that not intending to have children was all the birth control I needed. I’d honestly started to think that maybe I couldn’t get pregnant. And after a year and a half with Harry, neither of us using any protection at all, I believed his claim that he’d been told he would never be able to father a child.
Of course, my single actress friends and I had talked many times about whether we wanted children. We were almost unanimous in our position that children could and should wait until later in our lives, when our careers were either well established or over. Our theory was that a combination of a career and children meant that inevitably, sooner or later, one or the other would have to come first, and none of us would have put our careers ahead of our children. So the idea of children was always coupled with another abstract idea: someday.
All of which was blown right out of the water with the news that I was pregnant (as was that theory that career women can’t be good, attentive mothers, needless to say). And to my amazement, I found pregnancy to be one of the warmest, fuzziest, most fulfilling experiences I’d ever had. By sheer instinct, decades before there was such a wealth of information available, I became the most health-conscious pregnant woman you’ve ever seen. I maintained a very strict diet, helped considerably by the fact that while I’d had several pregnant friends whose cravings consisted of things like hot fudge sundaes and angel food cake, I lucked out—all I craved throughout that pregnancy and the two that followed were tomatoes. I gained so little weight that I never even had to invest in maternity clothes, and I was able to work until two weeks before I delivered.
Corbin Dean Bernsen was born on September 7, 1954. It was such an easy delivery that the nurses had to wake me up to tell me he’d arrived. At the time, it was common practice for nurses to whisk newborns away after birth. However, baby Corbin was inexplicably kept from me for a few hours after he first entered this world.
I couldn’t understand for the life of me, nor could I get anyone to explain, why the nurses were so obviously avoiding bringing my son to me. I wanted to see him, and I wanted to see him now , or someone had better damned well give me a good reason why not.
Finally, trying to calm me down and reassure me that Corbin was a fine, healthy baby and there was nothing to worry about, a nurse told me that Harry had asked them not to show him to me because he was “deformed.”
I predictably went berserk, offered a few thinly veiled threats if there were any further delays in my holding my child, and informed the nurses (along with probably most of the hospital and a few low-flying planes) that they had no right to let Harry’s orders override mine.
They brought Corbin to me. Even before I first laid eyes on him, I knew that whoever it was who said
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