But her physical ailments caught up with her. Though she was only in her late thirties, she was aging fast. She dyed her hair for a while before deciding “to hell with it” and letting it go white. Like her parents, she was fitted with dentures before she turned forty. Her dental and respiratory issues were partly a product of the advice of a Duncan doctor who told her when she was a teenager that if she wanted to be an actress, she should take up smoking to keep her weight in check. Mom finally quit smoking when she was forty-two, in 1969, but by then the damage was done. She dealt with emphysema and shortness of breath for the rest of her life.
Mom was also self-conscious of the weight that she put on as we boys grew. Dad was naturally disciplined in terms of physical fitness. He watched what he ate, seldom drank, and performed a set of calisthenics that he learned in his air force days: leg lifts, knee bends, crouches, jumping jacks, and other old-fashioned exercises that, he pointed out, could be done anywhere and didn’t require an expensive gym or trainer. Ron and I dubbed this workout routine “Hick-ercise.” We were busting his balls, but Dad proudly and defiantly embraced our term, taking the steam out of our suburban-boy jive. Dad occasionally tried to gently cajole Mom into looking after herself by improving her diet and inviting her to join him for an after-dinner walk. It always disappointed me when Mom begged off. But Dad betrayed no frustration or hard feelings. He loved Mom without reservation or critique.
I wish that Ron and I had been as kind. We were dumb, insensitive kids sometimes. In the same way that we joked to each other about Dad’s receding hairline, we snickered about the loudly patterned muumuus that Mom took to wearing to conceal her body. We also teased her about her worrywart tendencies.
As the sole woman in the house, she had to deal with a ton of male energy, which translated into roughhousing, nicks, bruises, and many close encounters with lamps and the corners of coffee tables. Mom lived in a constant state of worry that Ron and I were going to hurt ourselves tragically. This dated back to before I was born, when Ron was filming The Journey in Vienna and they toured a castle. As they walked along the low, ancient parapets, Mom was too concerned with Ron’s safety to enjoy the outing, constantly reminding Dad to hold Ron’s hand. Dad jokingly responded, “All right, Jean, I’ll hold his hands and you hold his feet.” This became a go-to callback in our family that even I picked up on. Every time Mom overdid it with the maternal fear, we would say, “I’ll hold his hands and you hold his feet.” We laughed. Mom didn’t.
She also had a tendency to pick at sores on her face, making them worse. This has now been classified as a disorder called dermatillomania. But back then, we wrote off such behaviors as the result of bad habits or character defects. To us, this was just a nervous tic and another thing that Ron and I teased her about, along with needling her about her smoking.
Dad was the arbiter of how far we could go in razzing Mom. If we overstepped, he shut us down, telling us firmly that Mom would quit smoking when she was ready to quit smoking.
RON
When Cheryl, my girlfriend and future wife, entered the picture in my teen years, she witnessed us winding up our mom and scolded me. It upset her, for good reason, that we took pleasure in making fun of our own mother. I needed that lesson in maturity.
I also didn’t fully grasp what she was up against. Were she alive today, Mom might be diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. As proficient as she was at sewing the doll clothes, managing our finances, and in general serving as the Howard family’s chief operating officer, she worked herself up into a lather of worry as a deadline loomed—which, again, was an occasion for Clint and me to give her grief.
There were times in my childhood that I was embarrassed about the visual disparity between Mom and Dad. He always looked the same, trim and handsome, while she started to look like a little old lady, with her white hair and pallor. One time, when we were all out Christmas shopping at the Woodland Hills Fashion Center, an early shopping mall, a woman recognized me and approached us with an Instamatic camera. She asked for a photo, and my parents, who taught me to be friendly and accommodating toward fans, encouraged me to oblige. As the woman lined up the shot, she turned to Mom, gesturing toward Dad and Clint, and said, “Can I get your older son and his boy to be in the picture also?” She thought that Mom was my grandmother, Dad my brother, and Clint my nephew.