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  * * *

  So Ed looks good, I think, after a careful and what I hope is an inconspicuous but thorough assessment. He’s wearing a red knit shirt and khakis, and with his hair short, he resembles a golf pro more than he does a rock god, and I think that he would be thrilled with a superstar golf game at this point in time.

  I sit down next to him and am inclined to put my arm around him and give him a friendly, affectionate squeeze, but as is often typical of me, I overthink this simple, natural, innocent gesture and sit there with my hands in my lap. I don’t want to appear inappropriate, do something that might be misinterpreted, or intrude on his space, though when Ed arrived, he gave me a kiss and a hug, and asked, “How ya doing?”

  It was so easy and natural for him.

  How come I am so weird and uptight?

  I am sure it has something to do with my awareness that his second marriage is basically over, as he confided a while ago, and also with the fact that my own second marriage is in trouble, which I haven’t told anyone. They are two unrelated situations, and there is no chance we are going to get back together. But I do know if one of us were to open up, the other would too, and I don’t want to get into that. Not here. Not now.

  I simply wish I was more comfortable letting him know how much I love him. The spinach and crab dip will have to suffice for now.

  A year later, I will think how stupid that was. I should have just put my arm around him. I should have. Ugh. “Should have” is a terrible place to live.

  Accidental get-togethers like this are more common than not for us. Other than Wolfie’s birthday, though, we don’t plan family time as much as we rely on it to just happen. I don’t think either of us were ever good planners and we haven’t improved over time. We also have our separate lives. It just happens that those separate lives frequently intersect. I think the last time I saw Ed was at one of Wolfie’s band rehearsals four or five months ago when both of us showed up without knowing the other one was going to be there.

  That was emotional. I could close my eyes and picture myself on the side of the stage at a Van Halen concert and watching Ed play with the biggest grin on his face. The only time I saw his famous smile get bigger was when he watched Wolfie play. He poured all the pride he never let himself feel about his own ability into Wolfie. I loved hearing him say, “You’re a beast. You’re amazing.” He meant it.

  In 2006, when Wolfie was only fifteen, he began jamming with Ed and his uncle Alex in 5150, Ed’s backyard studio. A year later, Ed brought him into the family business. It was a helluva way for both of them to grow up; for me, it was a fast track to more gray hair and meant giving up the control I was used to as his mom. More recently, the two of them were spending nearly every day together. Wolfie was driving his dad to all of his doctor appointments, and when Ed was in the hospital, Wolfie visited him two or three times a day. And sometimes even spent the night.

  I was so proud of the young man Wolfie had become. It was so fun to lean into Ed, and say, “Look what we did. Pretty good, eh?”

  This kid, who was not a kid anymore except to the two of us, was the thing Ed and I got right. He was the best of both of us. He worked extremely hard not only to learn Van Halen’s songs but to perfect them, because that’s the only level his father would accept, and he did it playing bass, an instrument that was fairly new to him. From the moment I got pregnant, Ed dreamed of playing with the baby growing inside me. Girl or boy, it didn’t matter to him. He wanted to play music with this child. And he did. They played together on three world tours and two Van Halen albums. Ed was in heaven; I had never seen him smile so much. He was playing alongside his brother and his son.

  Ed also taught Wolfie to ignore the naysayers and critics or give them the middle finger if he ran out of tolerance. I admired my son for never losing his ability to laugh off most things and shrug off the worst. He had more patience than either his dad or I had.

  Starting in 2015, Wolfie began recording his own music. However, before he ever recorded a single note, he spent years practicing and writing. He explored the music inside him and brought it to the surface, sometimes with ease and other times it came out kicking and screaming. Even when your first and last names are synonymous with music, art is not easy to make, and in fact, having names that echo greatness may make it harder to create.

  Ed and I were never happier than when we saw Wolfie dig deep into himself and the joy he got from playing us something he had made. I was transported back to the days when I volunteered in his elementary school classroom. He always wanted to show me his work, grinning as he said, “Look, Ma,” and eagerly waiting to get a hug. Wolfie’s dad saw and heard something more in his solo effort. To Ed, it was his own past and his son’s future. It was the passing of the torch, something he had started when he gave Wolfie a drum kit for his tenth birthday, then brought him onstage at Van Halen’s 2004 concerts for alternating guitar solos on “316,” a song that Ed had written years before and played softly on my belly all through my pregnancy. When Wolfie was born on March 16, it became his song.

  Wolfie finished his solo album in 2018 and formed a band, intending to go out on tour. But his plans were put on hold after we got the news that Ed’s cancer had spread and turned into stage IV lung cancer. This was the latest chapter in an ongoing story, but it was an ominous turn of events that made both Ed and Wolfie acutely aware that the clock was ticking. Most of us don’t bother to pay attention. Once you hear the ticktock of mortality, you can’t unhear it. It’s not a bad thing. Neither does it have to be a depressing thing. It’s a reminder.

  * * *

  All of us are mortal. Our lives have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It’s something that seems to happen without much consideration outside of life’s biggest and unavoidable moments: graduations, marriages, breakups, birthdays, and deaths. For most of us, life is a gradual climb up a ladder. It’s punctuated by different milestones, like turning forty, fifty, sixty, and so on. Our children grow up and move out and establish independent lives of their own. We become empty nesters and reevaluate our lives. We find ourselves taking care of our parents and, at some point, tearfully saying goodbye to them.

  I knew this firsthand. I had experienced all of the above.

  Inevitably, though, the ladder we’re climbing will wobble. Nothing bad might happen, but later it moves again, this time a little harder—or maybe a lot harder, hard enough that you lose your balance. For Ed, the wobble happened when he was first diagnosed with cancer. Then it got to where he was holding on so he wouldn’t fall off.

  At that point, he knew the most precious thing he had and the only thing that mattered was time. Wolfie, though only in his mid-twenties, knew that, too.

  I have the uncanny ability to not think about such things until I have no choice, then I can’t not think about them. It’s the reason both Wolfie and Ed keep some of the details about Ed’s illness from me. They don’t want me to worry more than I already do. So, although I don’t know the extent of Ed’s illness, I know it’s serious, and seeing the way he scarfs down my spinach and crab dip, I want to do something nice for him.

  “You should come over and I’ll make you bami,” I say.

  Bami is basically an Indonesian-Dutch stir-fry with noodles, pork, and veggies. There are multiple ways to spell it—bahmi, bakmi, and bami goreng—and even more recipes than spellings. I bet every Indonesian woman has her own variation. I got mine from Ed’s mom. After Ed and I got married, he went on the road to tour the band’s latest album and I stayed in LA. I had my work and career. I stayed with Ed’s parents as a way to get to know my in-laws. They lived in a house that Ed and Alex had bought them.

  Ed’s mom was a tiny, acerbic, outspoken Indonesian woman with very set ways that all boiled down to her way. She spent the boys’ childhood trying to exert control, and I sensed that she regularly came out on the losing end of that tug-of-war. Though the boys respected her, they still did what they wanted. Now that they were grown up, she ran the
house her way. She was a pack rat. She went to Costco and Kmart a couple of times a week and came back with more of everything. I was amused the first time I saw this, because it was only she and Ed’s dad in the house, yet the shelves were stocked with rows and rows of canned goods, paper towels, and toilet paper. She could’ve opened her own store.

  Or restaurant. When she cooked for Ed and me, she usually made gado-gado, a vegetable salad with hard-boiled eggs and a peanut dipping sauce; or a spicy chicken dish that I never got the recipe for and am still trying to perfect; or her bami. She might have had recipes lying around somewhere, maybe tucked in a drawer, but I doubt it. She just knew what to do. It’s the place where I have finally arrived when I make my Bolognese.

  While I was staying with her and Pa—we called Ed’s parents Ma and Pa—I began to marvel at the coffee she made in the morning. I only call it coffee because that’s what I saw her spoon into her French press, along with cream and sugar. The result was the most delicious cup of coffee I had ever had. I have tried countless times to replicate it and have never succeeded, which is why I have my reservations about calling it coffee.

  Whatever it was, I relished that morning brew, which she served with a piece of buttered toast and a paper-thin slice of ham and cheese (I think it was a hard white cheddar). I have no idea what magical way she buttered that toast and layered the other ingredients, but it was perfection. I would let that first bite linger on the top of my tongue in order to enjoy the mix of sweet and savory as if it were the good-morning hug I was missing from Ed. I asked Ma to teach me how to make these things, not the morning toast and coffee, but Ed’s favorites, her Indonesian specialties. She graciously agreed.

  We started with bami. But I quickly realized that her method of instruction was the same as my grandmother’s when she showed me how she made gnocchi. It turns out that there is no difference between little old Indonesian women and little old Italian women. Mrs. Van Halen essentially told me to do a little of this and a little of that, and when I looked up at her with uncertainty about the next steps, she patted me on the back, and said, “You can do it.” I might as well have been a six-year-old going off the high dive for the first time.

  Watching her make ketjap sambal, the sauce for the bami, was akin to watching Derek DelGaudio do a card trick. She magically mixed some soy sauce and brown sugar, then added a diced pepper into the simmering sauce as if she were sprinkling fairy dust over it. Once, we made spekkoek together. Spekkoek is described as an Indonesian-Dutch layer cake consisting of multiple thin layers of cake with alternating flavors like cinnamon and vanilla that are all drenched in butter. The list of ingredients includes egg yolks, butter, sugar, nutmeg, cardamom, ginger, cloves, and more butter. Every layer needed to be made individually, it took all day, and it was heavenly.

  * * *

  Before leaving Wolfie’s, I invite Ed to dinner the next day. “I want to make you bami,” I tell him. He responds with a grin that lights up his face.

  “Bami, oh my God,” he says. “I haven’t had that in forever. You’d make that for me?”

  “Of course, I’ll make it for you,” I say. “Do you want it with pork or turkey?”

  “Pork,” he says.

  “Do you remember the last time I made bami with your mom?” I ask. “It was Thanksgiving when I was pregnant with Wolfie. She came over to help me, and after a few minutes, she ended up shoving me to the side and making it herself.”

  We laugh.

  “It was delicious,” I say.

  Later, before saying goodbye, I mention again that I am looking forward to making him dinner. It’s like I want to take both of us back to a different time. Past invitations have been cancelled for one reason or another. But this time I sense that I no longer have that kind of luxury, and I think Ed feels the same way.

  Unfortunately, Ed calls a couple of hours before dinner and cancels. He says that he isn’t feeling well and that he hopes I understand.

  I assure him that I do understand and offer a rain check. Then I hang up the phone and cry.

  * * *

  The next time I see Ed is at Thanksgiving. I can’t remember the last time he joined the usual roundup of family and close friends for this annual November feast, but he gladly accepted the invitation and was chauffeured over by his friend and golfing buddy George Lopez. The two of them are unlikely besties who bonded years earlier over their mutually masochistic enjoyment of playing eighteen holes of golf. Ed’s caregiver, Leon, is also with them.

  When they arrive, the house is bustling with people, including Wolfie and his longtime girlfriend, Andraia; my brother Patrick and his wife, Stacy; and several others, including Matt Bruck, Ed’s longtime right-hand man, and Matt’s mother.

  Most of us are standing around the kitchen island talking and catching up, with the major topic of inquiry being Wolfie’s progress on his debut album. Some people make brief sorties into outlying rooms to get snacks and check on the scores of various football games. A TV is set up in nearly every room, a tribute to my obsession with football.

  Back when I was working on Hot in Cleveland, Wendie Malick once said, “Before we met, I had this impression of you as a sweet, timid little thing. But you’re actually quite the truck driver.” I can’t deny it. I am kind of a bull in a china shop.

  I am also a diehard New Orleans Saints fan, and they are in one of three NFL games being played Thanksgiving Day, so I am among those who slip in and out of the room for updates.

  It’s on one of these trips that I run into Ed as he walks through the front door. I give him a hug and a kiss, and note that he looks good, no different than he had a few weeks earlier and maybe even a little better. I see a brightness in his eyes that conveys his happiness at being with us at the house. I am really glad that he has come, that he is feeling well enough, and that he is able to participate in the rituals of being together as a family—acknowledging our connections, re-establishing our ties to each other, debating, reminiscing, laughing, and eating as much as we can possibly hold.

  Ed is already smiling and nodding at people as I encourage him to settle in and remind him that I have made bami for him. He inhales deeply, savoring the various aromas wafting from the kitchen, and says that it smells delicious.

  “I hope so,” I say.

  * * *

  The meal has not been without last-minute concerns. The pumpkin pie—Wolfie’s favorite—which I made the night before, didn’t turn out because I mistakenly used sweetened condensed milk instead of evaporated milk as called for in the recipe. When I cut a slice and tasted it early in the morning, it was way too sweet and just godawful.

  In the morning, I make an emergency run to the grocery store and buy ingredients to make a whole new pumpkin pie, including a store-bought pie crust (no judgment, please—I am trying to save time). Back home, I am a blur of activity. I make the pie, get it in the oven, and start on the ketjap for the bami. Knowing the pie bakes for an hour, I set the timer, put the ketjap on simmer, and run upstairs to shower.

  When I come back down, my heart sinks a little. The pie smells amazing, but I can smell the ketjap burning. I react by screaming a few choice words. Wolfie and my brother come into the kitchen to see what has happened, and I snap, “Couldn’t one of you have turned off the flame under the ketjap?”

  They shrug.

  “Oh, that’s what that smell was.” Patrick laughs.

  “Yes, that’s what that smell was,” I say.

  “Sorry. Guess you burned it.”

  It’s lucky that I have enough ingredients to make another batch of ketjap. And this time I keep an eye on the simmer.

  Such is Valerie’s home cooking, Thanksgiving edition.

  * * *

  By the time we sit down at the table, everything is on track. I kick off the feast with a toast to family, the blessing of food and health, and my beloved Saints, who are in the process of serving the Falcons some Thanksgiving whoop-ass. The noise level swells as we rip into the meal. Everyone eats w
ith a gusto reflective of people who have waited a year for this favorite meal. The turkey, which started off at twenty-six pounds, disappears off the platter. The mashed potatoes are a hit, too. I love the stuffing, and Ed is happy with just the bami.

  Every time I glance at him, he is nibbling a little bit more. This is the magic of food and the reason I delight in preparing it. In the right context, like this one, food is more than a meal. It is a joyous ride back to tables of the past. One bite opens the door to a chorus of memories from childhood and family and special occasions. It is comfort and love.

  Not all of our family holidays have been like this. At one New Year’s Eve dinner at our beach house, my dad punched Ed. My then-husband, having imbibed a prodigious amount of Jägermeister, wanted to go for a drive. He was clearly not fit to get behind the wheel. But Ed ignored my stern objections, insisting that he wanted to cruise up and down the coast, and he rather gruffly pushed past me.

  My dad stepped in front of Ed, said a few words with paternalistic authority, and attempted to take the keys from his hand. When Ed resisted, my dad punched him. The force of the blow cracked Ed’s cheekbone. When Ed blew his nose, his entire cheek puffed up. Joyriding on Pacific Coast Highway was no longer an option. I had to take him to the emergency room.

  After forty years together, we have learned to appreciate the good times and laugh through the more difficult moments. Both of us have remarried—Ed in 2009, and me two years later—yet one thing never changed. Every time we saw each other, we made it a point to say I love you. Now more so than ever.

  I figure that this is what Ed wants to tell me when he pulls me aside after dessert, and says, “Hey, can I talk to you privately?”