Introduction

M y mother comes from a vanished world, a place and a

time that no longer exist. I have always thought of her
as a visitor stranded here; an emissary from a distant star
that burned out long ago.
Her name is Gloria Vanderbilt. When I was younger I used
to try to hide that fact, not because I was ashamed of her—
far from it—but because I wanted people to get to know me
before they learned that I was her son.
Vanderbilt is a big name to carry, and I’ve always been glad
I didn’t have to. I like being a Cooper. It’s less cumbersome,
less likely to produce an awkward pause in the conversation
when I’m introduced. Let’s face it, the name Vanderbilt has
history, baggage. Even if you don’t know the details of my

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Gloria Vanderbilt

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 introduction

mom’s extraordinary story, her name comes with a whole set

of expectations and assumptions about what she must be like.
The reality of her life, however, is not what you’d imagine.
My mom has been famous for longer than just about
anyone else alive today. Her birth made headlines, and for
better or worse, she’s been in the public eye ever since. Her
successes and failures have played out on a very brightly lit
stage, and she has lived many different lives; she has been
an actress, an artist, a designer, and a writer; she’s made for-
tunes, lost them, and made them back again. She has sur-
vived abuse, the loss of her parents, the death of a spouse, the
suicide of a son, and countless other traumas and betrayals
that might have defeated someone without her relentless de-
termination.
Though she is a survivor, she has none of the toughness
that word usually carries with it. She is the strongest person
I know, but tough, she is not. She has never allowed herself
to develop a protective layer of thick skin. She’s chosen to re-
main vulnerable, open to new experiences and possibilities,
and because of that, she is the most youthful person I know.
My mom is now ninety-two, but she has never looked her
age and she has rarely felt it, either. People often say about
someone that age, “She’s as sharp as ever,” but my mom is
actually sharper than ever. She sees her past in perspective.

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Gloria Vanderbilt

The little things that once seemed important to her no lon-

ger are. She has clarity about her life that I am only begin-
ning to have about mine.
At the beginning of 2015, several weeks before her ninety-
first birthday, my mother developed a respiratory infection
she couldn’t get rid of, and she became seriously ill for the
first time in her life. She didn’t tell me how bad she felt, but
as I was boarding a plane to cover a story overseas, I called
her to let her know I was leaving, waiting until the last min-
ute as usual because I never want her to worry. When she
picked up the phone, immediately I knew something was
wrong. Her breath was short, and she could barely speak.
I wish I could tell you I canceled my trip and rushed to her
side, but I didn’t. I’m not sure if the idea she could be very
ill even occurred to me; or perhaps it did, acting on it would
have been just too inconvenient and I didn’t want to think
about it. I was heading off on an assignment, and my team
was already in the air. It was too late to back out.
Shortly after I left, she was rushed to the hospital, though I
didn’t find this out until I had returned, and by then she was
already back home.
For months afterward she was plagued with asthma and a
continued respiratory infection. At times she was unsteady
on her feet. The loss of agility was difficult for her, and there
were many days when she didn’t get out of bed. Several of her

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 introduction

close friends had recently died, and she was feeling her age
for the first time.
“I’d like to have several more years left,” she told me.
“There are still things I’d like to create, and I’m very curious
to see how it all turns out. What’s going to happen next?”
As her ninety-first birthday neared, I began to think
about our relationship: the way it was when I was a child and
how it was now. I started to wonder if we were as close as we
could be.
The deaths of my father and brother had left us alone with
each other, and we navigated the losses as best we could,
each in our own way. My father died in 1978, when I was ten;
and my brother, Carter, killed himself in 1988, when I was
twenty-one, so my mom is the last person left from my im-
mediate family, the last person alive who was close to me
when I was a child.
We have never had what would be described as a conven-
tional relationship. My mom wasn’t the kind of parent you
would go to for practical advice about school or work. What she
does know about are hard-earned truths, the kind of things
you discover only by living an epic life filled with love and loss,
tragedies and triumphs, big dreams and deep heartaches.
When I was growing up, though, my mom rarely talked
about her life. Her past was always something of a mys-
tery. Her parents and grandparents died before I was

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Gloria Vanderbilt

born, and I knew little about the tumultuous events of

her childhood, or of the years before she met my fa-
ther, the events that shaped the person she had become.
Even as an adult, I found there was still much I didn’t
know about her—experiences she’d had, lessons she’d
learned that she hadn’t passed on. In many cases, it was
because I hadn’t asked. There was also much she didn’t
know about me. When we’re young we all waste so much
time being reserved or embarrassed with our parents,
resenting them or wishing they and we were entirely dif-
ferent people.
This changes when we become adults, but we don’t often
explore new ways of talking and conversing, and we put off
discussing complex issues or raising difficult questions. We
think we’ll do it one day, in the future, but life gets in the
way, and then it’s too late.
I didn’t want there to be anything left unsaid between my
mother and me, so on her ninety-first birthday I decided
to start a new kind of conversation with her, a conversation
about her life. Not the mundane details, but the things that
really matter, her experiences that I didn’t know about or
fully understand.
We started the conversation through e-mail and con-
tinued it for most of the following year. My mom had only
started to use e-mail recently. At first her notes were one or

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 introduction

two lines long, but as she became more comfortable typing,

she began sending me very detailed ones. As you will see in
the pages ahead, her memories are remarkably intimate and
deeply personal, revealing things to me she never said face-
to-face.
The first e-mail she sent me was on the morning of her
birthday.

91 years ago on this day, I was born.

I recall a note from my Aunt Gertrude, received on a
birthday long ago.
“Just think, today you are 17 whole years old!” she wrote.
Well, today—I am 91 whole years old—a hell of a lot
wiser, but somewhere still 17.
What is the answer?
What is the secret?
Is there one?

That e-mail and its three questions started the conversa-

tion that ended up changing our relationship, bringing us
closer than either of us had ever thought possible.
It’s the kind of conversation I think many parents and
their grown children would like to have, and it has made
this past year the most valuable of my life. By breaking
down the walls of silence that existed between us, I have

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Gloria Vanderbilt

come to understand my mom and myself in ways I never

imagined.
I know now that it’s never too late to change the relation-
ship you have with someone important in your life: a par-
ent, a child, a lover, a friend. All it takes is a willingness to
be honest and to shed your old skin, to let go of the long-
standing assumptions and slights you still cling to.
I hope what follows will encourage you to think about your
own relationships and perhaps help you start a new kind of
conversation with someone you love.
After all, if not now, when?

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