Katey Sagal - Grace Notes: My Recollections

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First Gallery Books hardcover edition March 2017

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Designed by Jaime Putorti

Jacket design by John Vairo Jr.

Jacket photographs by Melodie McDaniel/Trunk Archive

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sagal, Katey, author.

Title: Grace notes : my recollections / Katey Sagal.

Description: First Gallery Books hardcover edition. | New York : Gallery Books, [2017]

Identifiers: LCCN 2016039352| ISBN 9781476796710 (hardback) | ISBN 9781476796727 (trade paper) | ISBN 9781476796734 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Sagal, Katey. | Television actors and actressesUnited StatesBiography. | Women singersUnited StatesBiography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Entertainment & Performing Arts. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women.

Classification: LCC PN2287.S185 A3 2017 | DDC 791.4502/8092 [B] dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039352

ISBN 978-1-4767-9671-0

ISBN 978-1-4767-9673-4 (ebook)

This book is dedicated, with love, to Sarah, Jackson, and Esm.

Contents

January 2012

I am getting older.

Its time to write shit down.

When Im doing my best thinking, in my car,

I tell myself all the things I need to write down.

Because I am older.

I could lie before.

Knocking off years was easy, and I believed the lie.

Not so much these days.

Now its different.

I want to tell my kids things about me that one day it might be too late to tell them.

So they know where I started.

So they know where they started.

Without having to fill in the blanks from the dribs and drabs of distant relatives, as I have had to do.

As I am, even now, doing.

I might write it down for them, the three who think that Ive given them life.

When, really, its been the other way around.

They have given me life.

They have grown me up.

It is to them that I am indebted.

Cause time moves quick, and the teenagers arent home for dinner as much anymore.

And the five-year-old eats at five, and thats too early for me.

The conversations feel shorter lately.

The teenagers talk above me.

The little one screams a lot.

I just really need to write it out, so I will never forget.

And so they will always know.

I need to start now.

Because getting older makes me think a lot about the end.

Actually thats not new.

Ive always thoughtkind of obsessivelyabout the end.

Having parents die young does that to a person.

I have a keen sense of my mortality.

My shrink tells me all the time that not all folks have that. Who knew?

My keen sense of knowing that this amazing life I have could end at any time is a fucking pain in my ass. Seriously.

And always on my mind.

And because every year someone in my spherea manager, or an agent, or a friendtells me I should write a memoir, saying, Youve been through a lot, I began to take the idea more seriously. But I would need to do it my way, not a beginning, middle, and end recollection. These are my snippets, my musings, the moments that I think you should know. Theres more, Im sure, but Im not dead yet.

I have just about had my fill of lifes small distractions.

So it might be time.

Ive shopped enough. (I think?)

Moved enough, lived in enough new houses.

Ive traveled a bunch.

Ive dated and married enough times.

As much as I like to watch TV, even that cant hold me the way it used to.

In other words, I have time.

Time to write.

I can sit still now.

I meditate now. (Something I never thought possible!)

Two of my three kids are close to launch.

Sarah to college this year.

The boy, Jackson, behind the wheel of a car in March.

I can see that dreamy look in his eyes as he envisions, finally, the bit of breathing room that only your own car can provide.

He cannot wait to fly solo.

The baby, just five years old, will still be the baby for a while.

But still, one kid at home compared with three feels like Ill have more time.

A psychic (feel free to judge) once told me I would have a life of high highs and low lows, but not much middle ground.

Its been true.

Until now.

I now feel more grounded in the center of myself, with no desire for overstimulation or permission needed to wallow in wherever I am.

To be myself.

My children provide significance.

So Ill do this for the three of them.

For you, Sarah, Jackson, and Esm.

For you.

When I was ten, my mother taught me to play the guitar. We were living in the Westwood section of Los Angeles at the time. Dark and cavernous, the house seemed to me an enormous Spanish hacienda. (I went back years later, and it was more like a casita.) Mom and I sat in the living room, the dark wooden floors and rich red tiles providing the effect of an echo chamber. My mom, as always, was dressed in her simple way, with her hair cut in a short, unstuffy style that I understood later was meant to avoid adding complications to her life.

Darling girl! She called me to her. Let me show you. This is what I did at your age.

I sat on her lap, the guitar in mine, with her arms draped around me, and we picked and strummed in tandem, like one person. My hands hurt as I stretched and pressed my fingers into the strings. She rested her hands, bird-like and delicate, on top of mine and helped to mold my fingers into chord formations with one hand while strumming with the other. If I concentrate, I can still feel her small hands touching me. I was so much bigger than her, even as a little kid. She was happy then and suntanned, memorable because it was rare that she had color. She stayed inside so much of the time.