Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story

At six o’clock on Christmas Eve, my father would turn down the radio, and there would be total silence. My mother would say, “Let’s listen, because remember Christkindl always comes around six o’clock.” Soon we would hear a little bell ring: one of the ornaments that decorated the tree. Obviously the neighbor girl had crept up the rear stairs and in the back door of our bedroom, but we never caught on to that until later. For years, Meinhard and I would race to our room, skidding on the throw rug on the hardwood floor and wiping out before we even got to the door, and the next thing, pushing and shoving, we would storm in. There was great, great joy.

Maria and I didn’t do the secret tree because that’s not the American tradition. The tradition here is to set up the tree three or four weeks before Christmas, and I didn’t want to insist on waiting and have the kids constantly ask, “How come we don’t have a tree yet?” Instead, we’d have friends over American style, where each friend hangs an ornament. As the kids got older, they did more and more until they were in charge of putting up the angel, or the star, or Jesus or Mary, or whatever the highest ornament would be, and deciding on the look of the tree.

We made a big deal of the other holidays too. Easter always came during my mom’s annual visit. She’d arrive as early as mid-February and live with us for two or three months, depending on the cold and snow in Austria. Besides wanting to spend time together, part of her motivation was to escape the harshest part of the winter. For Easter she was the perfect grandparent to have on hand, because the big traditions all trace back to that part of Europe: the bunny, the baskets, the eggs, the chocolates. She always colored eggs with the kids; she was an expert, and they’d have their little aprons on. My mother would take over the kitchen and make pastry, covering all the counters with dough rolled so thin that no one could figure out how she did it. Then she’d lay out the apple slices and fold up the dough and bake the most delicious apple strudel in America. On Easter the festivities would go on all day: first big Easter baskets and an exchange of small gifts, then Mass, and then an Easter egg hunt and a feast, followed by visits from relatives and friends.

Maria made a big effort with my mother, and they really got along. And of course I was in heaven when Eunice or Sarge would come stay with us. So we never had in-law problems. The kids called my mother Omi, and she spoiled them, and they loved her. She’d picked up English over the years and had even taken some classes, so by now she was fluent enough to have conversations with the kids, even though talking to kids in your second language is never easy to do. She and Christina especially sought each other out—Christina whose middle name is Aurelia.

My mother spoiled our dogs as well. Conan and Strudel were not allowed upstairs, but after we went to sleep, my mother would sneak them into her room, and in the morning the dogs would be curled up on the rug by her bed. She was in LA enough that she established her own life and her own circle of friends—other Austrians and European journalists—to shop with, have lunch with, and hang out. I’ll never forget seeing her at an awards banquet once, deep in conversation with the mothers of Sophia Loren and Sylvester Stallone. They were probably all claiming credit for our success.

Mom was seventy-six when she died in 1998. It was my father’s birthday, August 2, and as my mother always did, she walked to the cemetery on a hill outside town to spend time at his grave. She would hold imaginary conversations with him for an hour, telling him everything she’d been doing, asking questions, as if he were right there but on the other side.

The weather that day was humid and stiflingly hot, and the cemetery was a steep climb up. People who saw her said that when she reached the grave, she sat down suddenly as if she felt faint, and then slumped to the ground. The medics tried to revive her, but by the time they got her to the hospital, she was brain-dead from oxygen deprivation. She’d never had her heart repaired, and it had failed.

Maria and I flew to Graz for the funeral. My nephew Patrick and Maria’s brother Timmy and Franco came along. I’d missed the funerals of my father and my brother, but for my mom’s we got there a day in advance and helped organize. We saw her in the casket, wearing a traditional Austrian dirndl dress.

She had been fine and cheerful as always during her annual spring visit, staying all through May, so of course this came as a terrible shock. But later, looking back on her life, I felt that by the time she passed away, I had no regrets. None, because of the relationship that I’d nurtured with her after I came to America, as I learned to think a little bit more about my family rather than just myself. Now that I had kids, I realized how my leaving must have upset her. I’d appreciated her earlier as a devoted mother, but I’d never thought about the pain my leaving caused. That maturing happened too late for me to reconnect with my brother or dad, but with my mother I built a good relationship where she and I really communicated.

I offered many times to buy her a house in Los Angeles, but she didn’t want to leave Austria. In addition to Easter and Mother’s Day, she came for all of our kids’ christenings. She saw every movie I made and came to a lot of the premieres. Starting with Conan the Barbarian , I brought her to the set of every one of my movies. She hung out on the set, hung out in my trailer, watched me film. When I was on location, in Mexico or Italy or Spain, she came and stayed sometimes for a week or two at the hotel. No one else brought their mom to the set, but mine was a natural tourist and this was something she happened to enjoy. It was partly because she got so much attention from everyone. We’d have breakfast together, and then my driver would take her wherever she wanted to explore, so she always came home with photos to show her friends: a marketplace in Mexico, the Vatican while in Rome, museums in Madrid. I brought her to the White House to meet Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and she attended the Great American Workout at the White House with George Bush. He was really, really nice to her, talking up a storm and complimenting her by telling her what a great job she’d done raising me.

I loved doing things for my mother not only because I wanted to make her feel that she’d done a good job as a parent, but also because it was kind of a reward for the hardships of her earlier life. When I look at the photographs of her at twenty-three or twenty-four, when my brother and I were born, she looked haggard and skinny. It was after the war. She was begging for food. She had a husband who got crazy and drunk every so often. She was in this little village. The weather was shitty a lot of times, with rain, snow, and gloom, except in the summer. She never had enough money. It was a struggle all along.

So I felt that in her remaining years, she should have the best time possible. She would be rewarded for carrying us kids at midnight over the mountain to the hospital when we got sick, for being there when I needed her. Also, she should be rewarded for the pain that I caused her by leaving. She deserved to be treated like a queen.

We buried my mother at the gravesite where she died, next to my dad, which was very sad but also romantic. She was so connected to him.

If Easter belonged to my mom, Thanksgiving was a special Sarge and Eunice holiday from long before we got married. Shriver children, spouses, and grandchildren would always converge on their beautiful white Georgian mansion outside Washington. It was like a three-day family festival. Many couples have to negotiate about whether to spend a holiday with the in-laws, but this arrangement just fell into place naturally. I said to Maria, “Let’s stay with this because we have a great time at Thanksgiving with your parents and then we can always have Christmas at home. It doesn’t mean your parents can’t come, but we’ll have Christmas on our turf.” She liked that as well. I was always sensitive that our marriage had taken her far from her family and that she often missed them and wanted to hang out even though she also wanted her independence. So I always told her, “Remember that any of your family you want to invite is automatically a guest of mine too.” Welcoming my in-laws was easy because I liked them a great deal, and they always brought laughter and fun.