Thirty Two: 2003
31 December 2003- Excerpt from Diana’s journal entry entitled: 2003 Summary
“…overall though, I’m glad the acoustic tour didn’t last too long. My children are my world, and when they’re not all here, my world isn’t complete. I’m not used to being apart from them all for so long. It was the first tour they did mostly on their own and I admit I was relieved to see Isaac and Taylor brought Zac back in one piece. I suppose I should be more worried about Jessica who went with them on this tour to sell merchandise, but somehow I know the boys will look after her. With Zac… he says he doesn’t like drinking or drugs anymore and I believe him… but sometimes I’m afraid Taylor and Isaac, who I know for a fact drink after every concert, are going to corrupt him. Sometimes I think I’m crazy for letting my barely 18-year-old, sometimes irresponsible son travel around the country without any supervision. Kate makes him mind when she’s on tour though, so that’s at least a bit comforting… I think.
I don’t know how I would have survived this summer with the boys, Jessica, Natalie, and Ezra gone if it weren’t for Gabrielle. It was a relief to have Gabrielle home all summer- otherwise I might have gone crazy out of loneliness and boredom. It’s strange to think it’s almost been two years since she came into our lives. Sometimes that feels like such a long time… it feels like she’s been here for forever… as if she’s a child I gave birth to just like all the others. And then other times I look back and I feel like it all happened in the snap of a finger… one day I had no clue who she was, and the next she was someone I came to consider a daughter.
I really do. She treats me like a mother these days and in return I treat her like a daughter… or perhaps it was the other way around. The other day we were driving back from the grocery store together with Zoe in the back seat. Zoe whined something like, “Mooom… I’m hungry. Is dinner gonna be when we get home?” and Gabrielle in return rolled her eyes, and said to me, “Yeah Moooom… forget the fact that you’ve spent all morning taking us shopping and getting groceries… dinner better be hot when we walk through the door.” What struck me about the statement was the way she called me Mom. I knew she was just mocking Zoe, but at the same time it seemed significant to me. I like to think she really does see me like a mother. She sees her own mother less and less these days… I think every three months or so. Amy Carter finally agreed to start coming over to our house for dinners sometimes, but I think the masses of people all talking and reaching for things at once intimidates her. Her expressions remind me of those on Gabrielle when she first started eating dinner with us nearly two years ago.
Gabrielle still watches Mackenzie and Zoe for me even though she is part of the family. This past summer we had an agreement that she would spend 4 hours a day entertaining the kids while I relaxed. Sometimes she takes them out to the pool, sometimes to the mall… I don’t care where she takes them as long as I get some time to read a book or get some chores done. She also is expected to help me prepare dinner too which I’m thankful for because it gives me someone to talk to in the kitchen. We talk about everything… except for Taylor, that is. I continue to pay her every week like I always have because I appreciate her help and I know she needs the money to pay for her expenses during the school year- including gas. It gets expensive for her to drive home every other weekend, but she still continues to. If she doesn’t, Zoe starts moping around the house almost as much as I do. I know how sick of the dorm life Gabrielle gets, so it’s nice for her to have weekends to just relax in the comforts of her own home.
Sometimes I think it’s hard for her to relax at home- considering the situation with Natalie and Taylor. It’s been a year and a half since the wedding and for the most part everyone has completely adjusted to it. I wouldn’t say Natalie and Gabrielle are friends, but they’re civil to each other and even sometimes make fun of Taylor together. That’s the way everyone in this house seems to bond- making fun of my second eldest son. It’s too easy. Gabrielle even watches Ezra sometimes when Natalie and Taylor want some time to themselves, although they never ask her to. They know better than to ask her, but sometimes she volunteers. It says a lot about her character, really. She adores Ezra probably more than she likes to admit. She loves him as much as the rest of us do, although I’m sure it bothers her to think about him being Natalie and Taylor’s child—the child that caused everything to change. I asked her about it once… tried to get her to reveal to me how she felt but I got almost nothing out of her.
“Is it ever hard for you to look at him?” I asked bluntly, because that’s often the only thing Gabrielle will respond to. Taylor taught me that a long time ago.
“Why would it be? He’s a one year old boy. Of course not,” she replied so casually that I knew she was lying. It sounded so feigned to me. I knew Gabrielle better than to drop the subject there. When pushed, she will eventually cave.
“It doesn’t bother you? To look at him and see Taylor’s mouth and Natalie’s eyes?” Perhaps it sounded insensitive that I was asking her all of this, but you have to understand that we’ve grown incredibly close. We talk about things that we can’t always tell other people about.
“No,” she lied again and then added, “Sometimes. But he’s too cute so I hardly let it bother me.”
I know it’s hard for her to watch Natalie and Taylor go about married life. I keep waiting for the day that I can look at Gabrielle and think to myself- you know what? She is over him. But I know my children better than anyone else in the world, and I know she isn’t. I think the rest of the family has slowly become convinced that she no longer loves him. They are so good about being casual around each other these days… he almost treats her like a sister. But I know Gabrielle better than the rest of them and I can tell how she tenses up when he kisses Natalie before leaving for the studio. It’s very subtle and you have to look closely, but if you do look you’ll notice it.
I’m just relieved to see them being so natural around each other. Although they seem to never spend time by themselves, they interact quite a bit in groups. The other day Gabrielle, Taylor, and Jessica all went to a see a movie together that no one else wanted to see. I thought that was a big step. For Gabrielle’s 20th birthday, Taylor gave her a fancy digital camera that surprised us all considering he usually gave the rest of us twenty dollar bills in construction paper cards. They’ve found a way to make this work. Sometimes I just sit back and am shocked that it’s worked out… that Taylor can live with his wife under the same roof that Gabrielle lives under… well during weekends, summer, and holidays at least. I find myself wondering how she is so strong and level-headed that she can stand to stomach it, and I find it admirable that Taylor does such a good job of being sensitive to her. He never does anything openly affectionate towards Natalie in front of Gabrielle.
And yet sometimes that worries me. Maybe I am contradicting myself, but is it right for a husband to withhold affection for his wife because he lives under the same roof as another woman who loves him? Is that fair to Natalie? I’m not sure… but I guess no one is going to be completely happy ever, because the situation isn’t completely ideal. I think that the reason Taylor doesn’t shower Natalie with kisses and declarations of his love might be because that is not the way he feels. It pains me to consider that my second-eldest son is married to someone he does not love… not in a romantic way at least. I always expected all of my sons to marry women they are hopelessly devoted to. I already have a feeling Zac is going to. It’s not that I think Taylor doesn’t love her. I know after a year and a half of marriage and almost four years of knowing each other, Taylor loves Natalie. She is the mother of his child and his base. He cares about her a lot and he wants what’s best for her. But I’m not entirely convinced he loves her the way he should… in fact, I’m almost certain he doesn’t. When they got married, I had a notion in the back of my head that they might fall in love with each other over the years… passionately in love. But the chances of that happening are decreasing by the day.
What hurts me more than anything in the world is seeing my children in pain, and each day that I look at him I see that he’s sad. It’s as if he will never be entirely happy unless he’s with Gabrielle, and I can see how it pains him to know that just isn’t possible. Still, he puts on a brave face and tries to be the best husband he can be. He takes marriage quite seriously probably since he’s seen how good Walker and I have been to each other over all these years. But sometimes, his best isn’t good enough.
Taylor’s too busy. With going independent and the touring and having to make all of their own decisions now, the boys are just swamped with work- especially Taylor. Taylor has this tendency to throw himself into something so much that he’s completely drowning in responsibility. He is a perfectionist. We all know that about him. He is often afraid to let people assume a lot of responsibility for things in fear they will mess them up. He likes to have a lot of influence in band decisions to make sure they are made right. Between recording music, picking venues, flying around the US doing interviews, making decisions about merchandise, meeting with song writers and producers… well, he just doesn’t have enough time sometimes to be a great husband and father. When he is with Ezra he devotes himself completely to his son, but sometimes it seems that days will go by and Taylor doesn’t have even a second to sit down and actually enjoy Ezra. He gives even less of himself to Natalie. She knocked on my bedroom one Friday night in tears, thankfully before I’d fallen asleep. She said she needed to talk. We sat together in the kitchen as she told me how Taylor had just told her that he’d have to cancel his plans to celebrate their June 8th anniversary so he could fly out to Chicago and meet with a singer/song writer. He said it was very important and although he offered apologies, he said he couldn’t change the date. Taylor has so much passion for his music and his career that it’s hard to get him to slow down and dedicate time to his family. We all respect his passion, but at the same time it would be good to see him have a little bit more passion for his wife and child.
I’ve spoken to him about it a few times. I told him he needed to consider slowing down, hiring people to do some of the behind-the-scenes work for them, and focusing on what was really important- his family. He told me he was very sorry but he couldn’t discuss it with me any longer because he had a phone call he had to take on his cell phone. It was the perfect example of what I was talking about. My son is turning into a workaholic… and I think it scares all of us sometimes. He doesn’t sleep because he doesn’t seem to have time. When he finally gets a chance to get into bed, Natalie says he just lays there tossing for hours sometimes- going over work things in his mind. Isaac and Zac don’t take their career as seriously as Taylor does, but I think because Taylor has always been the front-man, he feels like he needs to assume so much responsibility.
During the summer, while the boys were traveling around the US and doing shows for the first time in years, I made sure Zac, Isaac, or Natalie gave me a report each week on how Taylor was doing. I worried about all of them, to be honest. I worried that Isaac was being left out, that Zac was reverting back to his own destructive ways, that Natalie was overwhelmed taking care of Ezra on her own, and that Taylor was giving himself a heart attack. The entire family flew out to be with them for awhile on tour, but most of time they were on their own and it had me worried sick. I knew how Taylor could sometimes go two nights without sleeping a wink. I wondered if he’d adopted chain smoking or was eating enough. Sometimes on tour he hardly eats he is so busy, and when he does eat all he eats is fast-food crap that will do nothing nutritional for his body.
The reports I received about Taylor lead me to believe he was surviving, but still keeping up his usual bad habits like smoking, drinking cups and cups of coffee each day, and staying up too late working on lyrics and staring out the window thinking. Isaac told me that Taylor had become really irritable during sound checks and even his performance was suffering. The fans seemed to have no clue that Taylor wasn’t performing as well as he could, but Isaac said he was forgetting lines, messing up chords, and even singing off key sometimes- something that sounds almost impossible for my only child with perfect pitch.
When they returned home for the fall it was good to have him back so I could give him healthy food and keep an eye on the number of cigarettes he smoked a day. He is the only one of my children that smokes regularly so far, thank goodness, but each time I see him shoving a pack into his pocket I can’t seem to ignore the fear of lung cancer in the back of my mind.
Enough about Taylor… I could worry about Taylor all day and get nowhere because he is such a stubborn child. He doesn’t seem to care that we worry about him… just waves us off and tells us he’s perfectly fine and he can get by perfectly fine on four hours of sleep every night. I have far too many other children to worry about to obsess over Taylor.
Gabrielle switched her major during her second semester at OSU from biology to psychology. She said she wanted to help people, but after spending the second half of her freshman year and the first half of her sophomore year taking psychology classes, she has decided that counseling is not her forte. She explained that she is not that good of a listener and sometimes she just doesn’t know what to tell people when they need help, so she no longer wants to do psychology. She knows that if she doesn’t pick a major and stick with it, she’s going to be in college for years and her scholarships only last four years. I’ve been encouraging her all Christmas break to sit down and look through all the majors at her college and really think about it, but I think she’s putting it off because she’s overwhelmed by it. Although she is still undecided about what she wants to do when she graduates, she is still doing as wonderful as ever in school. She maintains a 4.0 GPA, which surprises none of us, and as of this school year has taken an active role in a campus community service group. Even though I’m not her actual mother, I feel just as proud as if I were. I brag about her to my friends and show them pictures of what a beautiful young lady she’s become in her time at college. Sometimes I look at her and can hardly believe that the woman standing next to me is the same girl who wandered into my house with Taylor two years ago. She looks so different now… so much older and so much more put-together. The most obvious change though is Gabrielle is suddenly confident. She still has her own insecurities and I think she will always feel inferior to the rest of the American population, but perhaps she doesn’t feel quite as inferior. I celebrate any progress she makes.
She says that this coming summer she is thinking about getting a real job at our church instead of just babysitting for me. There is a position available for someone to work on a team of Christians that go into inner-city Tulsa and do community service. Since we met Gabrielle, she has found God and has really found peace through Him. It’s really good to see her developing faith. She’s far more liberal about God than the rest of us are, but God is God and it’s good to see her have some spirituality. She doesn’t go to the college support groups at church as much as I encourage her to in the summer time, but she does come to church every Sunday and I think she has a good chance at getting the internship. I hate to lose my favorite babysitter in the summer, but things have changed and I have to let her do what’s best for herself.
Ezra is turning into a beautiful child. He is walking, talking, and beginning to really notice the world…”