Vacuuming in the Nude: And Other Ways to Get Attention

THIS IS MY MOTHER’S THIRD book, and it is, without question, her best.

Conversely, this is my third foreword, and it is, without question, my worst.

The problem with this foreword began in May 2018 with a phone call from my mother, while I was filming an episode of Somebody’s Gotta Do It.

“Michael, I’m sorry to interrupt your shoot, but when you have a few moments, would you mind writing the foreword for my first book?”

“Of course, Mom! It would be an honor.”

My mom’s first book was a warm and funny collection of short stories about her mother, ingeniously titled About My Mother.

“I know you’re busy,” she said, “but the publisher says a foreword from a celebrity will boost sales, and you’re the only celebrity I know.”

I canceled my dinner plans that evening, went back to my hotel, and stayed up until 4 a.m. writing the best foreword I could possibly write. I mean, really, how could I say no? When your eighty-year-old mother asks you to write the foreword for her first book, you have to consider the possibility that it might also be the foreword for her last book. And so, I left nothing on the table. I not only raved about my mother’s persistence and determination, I shared some of my own stories about Nana and offered a few observations on the remarkable mother-daughter relationship she and my mother shared for sixty-seven years. Modesty aside, it was a foreword fit for a New York Times best-seller, which is exactly what About My Mother became the day it hit the shelves.

Naturally, I was thrilled for my mom, but I was surprised by the call I received two years later while filming an episode of Returning the Favor.

“Michael, I’m sorry to interrupt your shoot, but when you have a few moments, would you mind writing the foreword for my second book?”

My mom’s second book was a warm and funny collection of short stories about my father, ingeniously titled About Your Father.

“Well, Mom, to be honest, my last foreword was pretty thorough. I’m not sure what I can say that I haven’t said already.”

“I know, Michael, but you have such a way with words. Just a few lines, dear, when you have a moment.”

“What about Dad? He’s got a way with words too.”

“Your father’s a very busy man, Michael. And besides, you’re still the only celebrity I know….”

I canceled my dinner plans that evening, went back to my hotel, and stayed up until 4 a.m., writing the best foreword I could possibly write. I mean, really, how could I say no? When your eighty-two-year-old mother asks you to write the foreword for her second book, you can’t help but consider the possibility that it might also be her last book. And so, once again, I held nothing back. I not only raved about her persistence, determination, and natural talent, I also shared a few funny stories about my dad and the many delightful idiosyncrasies that have endeared him to so many people. Now, was my second foreword as good as my first foreword? No. The sequel is never as good as the original. But apparently, it was good enough for another New York Times best-seller, which is exactly what About Your Father became the moment it hit the shelves.

Once again, I was thrilled by my mother’s success, but surprised by the phone call I received two years later, while filming a new episode of Dirty Jobs.

“Michael, I’m sorry to interrupt your shoot, but when you have a few moments, would you mind writing the foreword for my third book?”

“You gotta be shitting me.”

“Michael! Language!”

“Sorry, Mom. I’m in a septic tank. Can I call you back this evening?”

“Of course, dear. But the publisher is in a terrible hurry. Do you think we could get a foreword from you sometime tomorrow?”

Again, how could I say no? If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the entertainment business, it’s never to turn your back on a winning formula. (Why else would I still be hosting a TV show from a septic tank?) And now, at eighty-four years of age, my mother’s discovered the same is true in publishing. And so, here I am once again, sitting in a hotel at 1 a.m., searching for something new to share about my mother’s lifelong obsession with the written word. Something I haven’t already told you twice.

Okay, how about this?

When I was baby, my mother used to write stories while she was nursing me. I don’t remember this, thank God, but Mom told me recently that I nearly choked to death one morning because she had left me “latched on” to the point where I could no longer swallow. Apparently, she was so immersed in whatever she was writing, she forgot about the baby on her boob, swelling up like a tick.

That’s the essence of the woman on the cover of this book. An aspiring author who never stopped writing. A distracted housewife who imagined herself a best-selling author, sixty years before she became one.

For as long as I can remember, my mother has been armed with a yellow legal pad and a #2 pencil, chronicling the world around her. To this day, she still writes everywhere she goes. Beauty salons, baseball games, state fairs, supermarkets, pool halls, and planetariums… you never know where she’ll whip out her yellow pad and start scribbling. Whereas my father still enters a bathroom with a book or a newspaper, my mother goes in with her pad and pencil and comes out with a screenplay or a sonnet.

“You never know when inspiration might strike,” she says. “Or when you’ll see something worth jotting down.”

My mother loves her three sons, but growing up, she never really talked to us—she interviewed us. When I came home from my first summer camp in 1975, she was waiting for me at the kitchen table with her pad and pencil.

“Welcome home,” she said. “I missed you. Now, tell me everything. Leave nothing out.”

I told her how much I had loved the woods, the wildlife, and the nightly campfires. I told her about canoeing down the rapids, winning the archery competition, and sleeping under the stars. The faster I talked, the faster she scribbled. I told her about navigating with a map and compass and cooking the fish I caught myself in a mountain stream. I told her about the bear that raided our camp and ate all our food and the hot air balloon ride that nearly ended in disaster when we missed power lines by inches before landing in a tree. Two days later, there was a story on my pillow called “A Dangerous Walk in the Woods,” with a daring young protagonist whose adventures were identical to my own.

In December of that year, my father decided it would be foolish to buy another Christmas tree.

“Why pay good money for a tree” he asked, “when the woods out back are full of them?”

So my dad fired up the tractor, loaded the cart with axes and saws, and led my brothers and me on a quest to find the perfect Christmas tree. What we brought home, however, was not a fir, a pine, or a spruce. Honestly, I don’t know what it was. It looked like a hedge with a pointy top, and it took up half of our living room.

I remember mom scribbling away as my brothers and I were stringing lights and hanging tinsel. I recall Christmas carols playing on the transistor radio and the aroma of gingerbread wafting in from the kitchen. My dad was trying to affix the star to the top of our pointy hedge when suddenly, a starling flew out from the tangled depths and bounced off his forehead. I remember my brothers and me laughing as our dog took off after the bird, barking like mad and chasing it all over the house. Mostly though, I remember the script that appeared beneath the tree on Christmas morning—an elaborate radio play that chronicled the events of that day with individual roles for everyone in the family. Later that day, we recorded “A Christmas for the Birds” by Peggy Rowe on a newfangled reel-to-reel tape recorder, liberated from the AV department of the junior high school where my father taught. I’m pretty sure she still has that tape.

It was her fundamental inability to distinguish between “life” and “material” that compelled my mother to write. To her way of thinking, everything was content, and everyone fair game for a future story—including the dearly departed. I recall more than a few funerals when my mother was called upon to deliver the eulogy and left the mourners in stitches.

“It’s fun to write for dead people,” she says. “They’re so much more appreciative than publishers.”

She preferred to write about the living, however, and boy, did she. Every few days there was a new profile pinned to our refrigerator with a magnet. I recall the story about a cop who still patrolled the neighborhood on horseback, the crab fisherman who hadn’t taken a day off in thirty years, and the old man who lived down that road who had been awarded the Silver Star for action at Iwo Jima.

Mom’s stories often appeared in newspapers and magazines, but whenever she sent them off to a major publisher—with a proposal to turn them into a book—the only thing that came back was a rejection letter. There was just no appetite for a random collection of stories cobbled together by an unknown housewife in Baltimore. Unless you were my father, who preferred to read my mother’s stories aloud, oftentimes to total strangers.

“Pardon me,” he’d say, sliding into a crowded booth at Bob’s Big Boy, “but I’ve got a treat that you folks won’t find on the menu.” He’d then pull a few pages from his back pocket and say, “Have you heard the latest from Peggy Rowe?”

Most people had no idea how to respond to this kind of unsolicited entertainment, so they simply sat there, perplexed, as a short man with a loud voice began to read my mother’s latest poem, play, or short story. One day in a packed elevator, my father began reciting a series of limericks my mom had written that Sunday during the sermon.

“Pretty good, right? And she’s not even Irish!”

And that’s the way it was for sixty years.

Mom wrote hundreds of stories, the publishers rejected them all, and my father read them out loud to whoever would listen.

Imagine that if you can.

Six decades of, “Thank you for your submission, but not at this time.”

Six decades of, “Hey, my wife wrote a haiku on a Ferris wheel. I’ll read it for you!”

If you’ve read the forewords in either of my mother’s previous bestsellers, you know that her first “publisher” was me. Back in May 2018, I printed 10,000 copies of About My Mother and offered them for sale on Facebook. Seemed the least I could do for the woman who nearly drowned me in breast milk. Those first ten thousand copies sold out in no time, and that got the attention of the big boys, who took a closer look at my mother’s work; they finally realized what her husband had known all along—that Peggy Rowe is a hell of a writer. Which brings us to the book you’re about to begin.

Vacuuming in the Nude is the true story of one writer’s journey. It is not an attempt to teach you how to write or how to get published. And while it is a love letter to persistence and determination, it’s not a blanket invitation to “never quit” or “always stay the course.” Staying the course only makes sense if you’re headed in the right direction, and my mother has no idea where you’re headed or if your dreams align with your talents. Thus you will not find much here in the way of advice. What you will find is encouragement. The same kind of encouragement she offered me, as I struggled for years to produce a TV show that people would watch. The same kind of encouragement my dad offered to her, with every unsolicited public reading of her latest work.

When I asked my mother what she wanted her readers to take from this book, she said, “I want people—especially aspiring writers—to see me as a cheerleader, standing on the sidelines of a marathon, offering them cups of cool water as they stumble toward the finish line.”

Which is, of course, precisely how I have always felt in her company.

As always, I sent my mom a draft of this—my worst foreword to date—and as always, she corrected my spelling errors and called me to say thanks.

“See?” she said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Piece of cake,” I said. “I wrote the whole thing in half an hour.”

“I can tell,” she said. “And I love the way you put so much of yourself into it! The way you mentioned all those different TV shows you work on. So clever!”

“Well, you know what they say, Mom—celebrity sells!”

“Oh, good,” she said. “Because my fourth book is nearly finished, and I was wondering….”