Teri Hatcher - Burnt Toast: And Other Philosophies of Life

To Emerson, whose birth was the sole source of my personal evolution over the last seven years. Thank you for giving my life meaning. I will try not to eat as much burnt toast as my mom didand maybe you wont eat any ever.

And to my mother, for doing her best and for giving me material to write a book.

Contents

Introduction
Burnt Toast

Toast. Think about it for a moment. It probably has the simplest recipe in the world: one ingredient, one instruction. Still, you know when youre trying to make it and you just cant get it right? Its too light or too soft, then... totally burnt. Charred in a matter of secondsnow its more like a brick than a piece of toast. So what do you do? Are you the kind of person who tries to scrape off the black? Or do you smother it with jam to hide the taste? Do you throw it away, or do you just eat it? If you shrug and eat the toast, is it because youre willing to settle for less? Maybe you dont want to be wasteful, but if you go ahead and eat that blackened square of bread, then what youre really sayingto yourself and to the worldis that the piece of bread is worth more than your own satisfaction.

Up til now, I ate the burnt toast. I learned that from my mothermetaphorically if not literally. I cant actually remember if she even likes toast or how she eats it. But what I know for sure is that although she was a loving and devoted wife and mother, she always took care of everyone and everything else before herself. This habitual self-sacrifice was well intended, but ultimately its a mixed message for a child. It taught me that in order for me to succeed, someone else had to suffer. I learned to accept whatever was in front of me without complaint because I didnt think I deserved good things.

I can toast bread just fine. I dont know about you, but my toaster only has one button. Its a no-brainer. And still, Ive been eating that metaphoric burnt toast all my life, and I think other people do too. Then I hit forty. Jules Renard said, We dont understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it. Admitting that there were things I still needed to figure out made me see this new decade as a chance to reconsider some of my behaviors. Did I really want to spend another ten years this way? The easy answer: no. The harder realization was that in order to change, I needed to stop eating the burnt toast. I had to be done anticipating failure. I had to be done feeling like I didnt deserve good things, tasty things. And I was. I decided I was too old to continue this way. I didnt want to do it anymore, and I dont want other people to do it either. There is a way for us to value ourselves without taking away from anyone else. We should settle for nothing less than being good to ourselves and others. But its hard to break old habits. You can make a new piece of toast in a couple minutes, but happiness takes work. Thats why I wrote this book. Its my wacky, serious, skittish, heartfelt attempt to share my jagged route to happiness with other people like me.

Toast is small and simple, and maybe eating a lousy piece of it doesnt seem like the worst thing in the world. Agreed. I can think of far worse things. But this isnt a book about surviving worst-case scenarios. Its about weathering the small challenges that we encounter every day. This scar that I have on my left shin might give you an idea of what Im talking about. I got it when I was at the beach with my daughter, Emerson Rose. It was the first morning of our trip, and Emerson and I spent it playing in the sand and walking along the beach. In front of our hotel, about fifteen feet off the shore in a calm area of the ocean, there was a floating trampoline. Pretty cool, huh? Id never seen that before. It looked like it was intended to be fun, but was it something I really wanted to do? Not so much. I didnt want to be bouncing around in front of the whole beach in my less-than-supportive bikini. Nor did I want to plunge into the deep, dark ocean to swim out to the trampoline. Wading was just fine with me. Before I was a mother, I wouldnt have gone near something like that. But I am a mother now, and I could see that Emerson was afraid, but curious. As a single mom I find myself in this situation a lottheres some adventure that doesnt appeal to me, but theres no one I can turn to and say, Your turn, honey. Take Emerson out onto the trampoline. Same thing when theres a spider on the wall above the bed. That eight-legged intruders got to go, and its all me.

We swam out to the trampoline and bounced around for a while. Then Emerson wanted to jump off, but she was scared. I said, Oh sure, lets do it. Itll be really fun. Ill go first. Now you and I both know that I did not want to jump off that trampoline. I was scared. But I dont want to teach that to her. I dont want to project my overblown imaginative worries onto her wide-eyed innocent hope. Now the thing about this floating trampoline is that it wasnt very bouncy, and what little bounce it had was weird and off-kilter, so you couldnt really plan your trajectory. But my daughter was waiting and watching, so what could I do? I flew off the trampoline intoa huge belly flop. A belly flop looks funny. It even sounds funny. But Im here to say: Its. Not. Funny. My stomach, my arms, my legsall my skin burned. I was instantly red and tender all over, but I didnt want Emerson to see that I was in serious pain. That wasnt the lesson I wanted to teach. I knew she could do it and I knew that she, unlike her aging mom, would be fine. So I popped my head out of the water and said, That was so fun! Give it a try. She jumped straight off, loved it, of course, and did it again and again. When we got back to the beach, I saw that I had a long cut on my leg from the water (who knew that could happen?). Emerson noticed the blood, and I shrugged it off with some stupid excuse. I was in agony, but I didnt want to cry in front of Emerson. Instead, I got a rum-infused coconut beverage from the guy walking down the beach and subtly iced my wound.

Now I look at the scar on my leg and wonder if I did the right thing. Should I have let Emerson know that I was hurt? Should I have called over a (preferably cute) lifeguard for some first aid? Why didnt I do that? Why did I hide the truth about what was going on with me? Did I do it for her or for me? Was I trying to be cool or tough? Theres an emotional experience embedded in that scar. Theres a lesson locked in it. Im done making silent self-sacrifices. Im done hiding the truth. Here it is. Have at it.

I hope youll discover as you read this book that vulnerability plays a key role in my life. Its hard for meI have trouble admitting that I need other people. Ive always tried to be honest about my fears and insecurities and self-doubt. When I was doing the photo shoot for the cover of this book, I spent the first hour thinking, This is ridiculous. I havent even written the book yet. (I guess this is how they do things in the world of publishingthey need the jacket before the books done.) So I was up there posing and thinking, Maybe there is no book. Maybe I have nothing to say. Maybe Im just an idiot. Who do I think I am? Then I started talking to the photographer and the makeup guy and the wardrobe guy and the photo assistants. We were laughing and feeling good, and suddenly someone revealed that, like me, hed had no sex on his honeymoon. We both had felt embarrassed and inadequate, like we were the only people in the history of time who couldnt get it together to have sex on a honeymoon. And I said, See, we really are all the same! Maybe this is too much information for an introductionIm already telling you about my sex life (or sad lack thereof) and Im only on page 4. (It was the publishers mandatewrite whatever you want so long as you mention sex before Chapter 2.) But thats what this book is abouthow when we feel fragile and vulnerable and hopeful and human, were not alone. And if I can have these feelings and work through them then you can too. My hope for this book is that youll read it in the bathtub. Maybe with a glass of wine. And that youll laugh a little and feel a little inspired.