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My father and I are still close. When I moved away for a long time we weren't really that close. He didn't understand what I was doing when I first moved away. First I was a dancer and I would call him and say, "Well, I'm dancing." He never, well, he's a sensible guy, and what's dancing to him? He can't imagine that you can make a living from it or work at it or be proud of it or think of it as an accomplishment. He could never really be supportive about it.
When I went to Paris, and I went from dancing to singing, I would call him . and say, "Well, I'm in France." And he would say, "What are you doing there?" and I said, "I'm going to be a singer." And he said, "What do you mean you're going to be a singer?" I would always tell him not to worry and that everything was O.K., and he would say, "How are you surviving? Who pays for everything?" I would say, "They pay for everything." And he wanted to know what I had to do for that, and I didn't have to do anything really. I lived a hand-to-mouth existence. I relied on friends and on money I could get here and there on short stints at jobs which I could never keep.
It wasn't until my first album came out and my father started hearing my songs on the radio that he stopped asking me questions. I think now he has some conception of my success. He reads about me and people bother him and he has to change his phone number all the time. All of a sudden he's popular, and my brothers and sisters are popular in school because of their association. If he didn't know then, he knows now. He still works for General Dynamics. He's an optics and defense engineer, and he makes a lot more money now. I never considered my parents incredibly wealthy, but at least now they can travel. They go to Europe, and they have enough to have a good life.
MOTHER. I was about six and a half or seven when my mother died. I remember her being a very forgiving, angelic person. I think my parents pissed a lot of people off because they had so many kids and they never screamed at us. My older brothers were very rambunctious and they would start fires in the basement or throw rocks at windows and my mother and father would never yell at them. They would just hug us and put their arms around us and talk to us quietly.
I have a memory of my mother in the kitchen scrubbing the floor. She did all the housecleaning, and she was always picking up after us. We were really messy, awful kids. I remember having these mixed feelings. I have a lot of feelings of love and warmth for her but sometimes I think I tortured her. I think little kids do that to people who are really good to them. They can't believe they're not getting yelled at or something so they taunt you. I really taunted my mother. I remember also I knew she was sick for a long time with breast cancer, so she was very weak, but she would continue to go on and do the things she had to do. I knew she was very fragile and kept getting more fragile. I knew that, because she would stop during the day and just sit down ! on the couch. I wanted her to get up and play with me and do the things she did before.