From ABC News:

Excerpt: Valerie Bertinelli’s ‘Finding It’
TV Star, Van Halen Ex Remembers the Difficulty of Explaining the Facts of Life to Rocker Son
Oct. 6, 2009

The following excerpt from Valerie Bertinelli’s new book, “Finding It –
and Satisfying My Hunger for Life Without Opening the Fridge,” a follow-up
to her memoir “Losing It — and Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a
Time,” comes courtesy of Simon & Schuster publishers.

Watch Chris Connelly’s interview with Valerie Bertinelli on “20/20″ Friday
at 10 p.m. ET

Chapter One

The Sex Talk

The only time I enjoyed being fat was when I was pregnant. I weighed
nearly 180 pounds, and I was in heaven. As I ate Italian subs that my mom
made to tide me over between meals, I would smile at the thought of the
miracle of bringing a life into this world, a life that I would raise and
nurture, guide and fill with love and wisdom. It was a special time in my
life.

I did not think the same thing when that miraculous creation of mine
called on the phone from the road where he was touring with his father’s
band and said, “Hey, Ma, can I sleep at my girlfriend’s house?”

I wanted to vomit.

Actually, I wanted to open the fridge and eat everything on the second
shelf, the third shelf, and then the top shelf. Not even the old brick of
cheddar with the mold on it was safe from the surge of anxiety and
uncertainty I felt at that moment.

I kept my head on, though, and said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

After we’d said goodbye, I held the phone at arm’s length in shock.
Wolfie’s question lingered in the air, like a smoke signal in an old
western portending imminent danger.

I looked around for Tom to ask him how I had gotten to this place. He had
gone outside, which was lucky for me. With gleeful sarcasm, he would have
reminded me that this situation was the result of one night nearly
eighteen years earlier when I had gotten frisky with my then-husband, Ed.
Now I had a sixteen-and-three-quarters- year-old teenager who wanted to
sleep with his girlfriend. Then Tom came through the front door whistling
his happy tune. I was still debating whether to eat or throw up. I filled
him in on the news.

“Tell me again–what did Wolfie say exactly?” he asked.

“He said he wanted to sleep at Liv’s house,” I said.

“Well, that’s not exactly saying he wants to sleep with her,” he said.

“You’re talking semantics,” I said. “I’m thinking sex.”

“You are?” he said, his face unfolding in a giant smile.

“Oh, shut up,” I snapped. “What is it with men? I’m in a quandary, and
you’ve somehow turned this around and think you’re going to get lucky.”

“I’m not?” he asked, with a sad face.

“Come on,” I said. “Help me think this through.”

We sat down at the kitchen table and talked. Tom pointed out that Wolfie
had called home to ask permission. He hadn’t slept over at Liv’s house,
even though he was halfway across the country and traveling as part of a
rock-and-roll band. Tom suggested I think about how Wolfie’s dad had been
at that same age, something that made me say a quick prayer of thanks.
Wolfie knew right from wrong, Tom pointed out. If he didn’t, he was trying
to figure it out and had looked to his mother for advice. He was a good
kid. Ergo, what was I worried about?

“Losing him!” I said with an exaggerated whimper.

At the time, I weighed 132.2 pounds, down 40 pounds from when I had begun
a very public diet earlier that spring. I had already surpassed my
original weight loss goal of 30 pounds and at some point — I had failed
to note it on my calendar — I had gone from losing weight to being on
maintenance.

I had talked about maintenance for months as if it were a change of life.
But I had no idea what it was really about. I figured I would learn once I
got there. Then I got there and wondered what it was that I was supposed
to be maintaining. My life was in flux — it wasn’t a work-in-progress as
much as it was simply work. As I would find out, maintenance was exactly
that — more work.

And it was life work, not losing-weight work.

If my weight was a barometer of the rest of my life, I still wasn’t where
I wanted to be. In addition to concern about my weight, I also knew that I
could be better, kinder, smarter, more disciplined, compassionate,
patient, and loving. I wanted to feel like I mattered. I yearned for a
lightness of being that couldn’t be measured on a scale. I wanted to feel
whole, peaceful, and connected to a Higher Power even if just for a few
moments.

But real life made that seem impossible. Whether it was Wolfie being away
from home, Tom’s struggles to be a hands-on father to his children, my
career, the house falling apart, or my anger at Bush and Cheney for where
they had taken the country, I was unable to relax much less get a firm
grip. Then Wolfie fell in love and I felt as if part of the floor had
given way.

“What about condoms?” Tom mused one day.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“For Wolfie,” he said.

I looked at him, aghast at his insensitivity.

“Not funny.”

I liked Wolfie’s girlfriend, Liv, who was a friend of Tom’s oldest
daughter. Wolfie had met her the previous summer in Arizona, but he never
appeared to take any special interest in her. Nor did she in him. One time
he mentioned that she bugged him. I should have taken note.

Then Liv and her family moved to Kansas and we didn’t hear about her. In
the meantime, Wolfie went on tour. We talked every couple of days. He was
semi-good about keeping in touch. He texted me from Indianapolis and
phoned from Chicago and Detroit. He had a story about each city. Then he
called from Kansas, where in an unusually excited voice, he said that he
had the day off and that he and Matt, the young man who drove his tour bus
and watched out for him, had been invited to eat dinner at Liv’s house.

He asked if I remembered Liv. Had I developed Alzheimer’s since he’d gone
out on tour with Van Halen a few months earlier? Of course, I remembered
her. He said that Liv’s mom had invited them to have a home-cooked meal.

“Isn’t that nice of them?” he said.

“Yes, it is,” I said.

“I’m so excited,” he said.

Wolfie was never that effusive unless he saw a new gadget at the Apple
store. All of a sudden I paid more attention. My son hadn’t sounded like
himself when he had asked, “Is that nice of them?” He crossed the line
when he said, “I’m so excited.” I realized he was telling me that there
was more to this invitation than dinner. He liked this girl.

It was one of those subtle moments in life when you open your eyes and
discover that the pieces that have provided longtime familiarity in a
relationship have shifted slightly in one direction or another. It’s like
waking up in the morning and remembering that you rearranged a couple
pieces of furniture in the room. You have to create new walkways so you
don’t bump into things.

I’m not someone who likes change. I have had the furniture in my living
room for twenty years. I bought it with Ed early in our marriage. I have
been meaning to get it recovered for the past five years. It shows you how
fast I move. I wasn’t ready for my son to have a girlfriend and everything
that meant. Is any mother ever ready to relinquish her place as first in
their child’s heart? I wasn’t.

I told Tom, who digested the news with a calm nod. It made me suspicious.
I asked if he had known that anything was going on between Wolfie and his
daughter’s friend, Liv. I emphasized Liv’s relationship to Andie not to
remind him of who this girl was but to instead put him on notice that
everything that happened between them from here on out was his fault. He
understood and shook his head no.

“You can’t do that to me,” he said.

“Yes I can,” I said.

“I’ll find out what’s going on,” he said.

“Good idea,” I said.

Like a dutiful soldier in the age-old battle of parents vs. children, Tom
reported back that Wolfie was indeed tight with Liv. I felt a little like
an editor at a tabloid magazine. But so what. I wanted to know everything
Tom had found out. According to his source, they had been texting and
talking on the telephone for months. Wolfie had fallen into “deep like”
with this pretty girl, and from the information Tom had turned up, she
felt the same way about him.

“So it’s all good,” Tom said,

“All good?” I asked.

“I wonder if they’ve kissed,” he said, ignoring me.

“Stop!”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I don’t want to know if they’ve kissed or anything else,” I said.

“You don’t?” he asked. “Now’s the time when you want to know everything.
Well, not everything. But you want to know what’s going on.”

“I hate it when you’re right.”

Late that afternoon, Wolfie phoned home and reported on dinner at Liv’s.
His voice was upbeat and I could hear that he was happy, very happy.
Wolfie’s willingness to talk was a surefire indicator of his moods. When
his voice was soft and he used words as sparingly as a nomad would drink
water in the desert, I knew there was trouble. Now I couldn’t shut him up.
He told me everything Liv’s mother had served for dinner and every bit of
conversation at the table.

It was a little overboard even for him. I wanted to ask, are you really my
kid?

“And guess what?” he asked.

“What?”

“They invited me to sleep over after dinner. Can I?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said.

“But Ma!”

“Wolfie, it’s very nice of Liv and her family to want you to sleep at
their house. But you have a hotel room and a show the next day. I’m sure
Dad’s going to want you there.”

Grudgingly, he agreed. I was sure his willingness to listen to me stemmed
from the newness of this relationship and the other circumstances of his
living situation. I reminded myself that he had called to ask my
permission rather than decide on his own, which was the way I had tried to
raise him. When you don’t know something, ask someone for advice,
preferably your parent–and that’s just what he’d done. But I wondered how
long he would continue to listen to me. I was a year younger than he was
when I got involved in my first serious romance and I worked myself into a
full steam of anxiety remembering what I had done and not told my parents.

If it had been possible, I might have flown to Kansas and brought Wolfie
back home for the night. I had the urge to have my little boy back, the
one who used to look at me with blind devotion and raise his arms high in
the air and say, “Mama up!” I didn’t want to think about him having a
girlfriend and all the complications that might ensure. But as Tom
reminded me when he got home, this wasn’t about me. Even though I wasn’t
ready for him to have a girlfriend, he was and I would have to deal with
it.

“I supposed that’s why God invented M&Ms and potato chips,” I said,
jokingly.

“No,” Tom laughed. “But I think it’s why He invented the phone, the video
camera, iChat, private detectives, and so on.”

Luckily for me, within a few days, Tom and I visited Wolfie on tour. The
trip had been planned months earlier, so it didn’t seem like I was
checking up on him. Though delighted to see us, Wolfie still needed a
little time to adjust to having his mom out there with him. I understood.
I upset the routine he got into of studying during the day, going to
soundcheck, performing, eating dinner late, and then staying up even later
as he wound down from the show.

It wasn’t exactly the day of a normal sixteen-year-old. But that’s the
reason I visited as frequently as I did. I thought whatever facsimile of
family time I could manufacture would be better than none.

On this trip, though, I had questions. I asked the obvious mom-type
questions before the show. I didn’t ask about Liv until the show was
finished and we were back at the hotel, playing cards in the two-bedroom
suite Wolfie shared with Matt. Wolfie was much more relaxed than he had
been prior to the show, which I reminded myself made sense considering he
had many things on his mind before performing onstage in front of twenty
thousand people. Finally, I asked how dinner at Liv’s had been. All of a
sudden he perked up. His eyes opened wide and he began to recount the
dinner in the same detail as he had on the phone. Except this time, in the
course of telling me the story, he mentioned that he liked Liv.

“Oh, really?” I said, drawing on thirty-six years of acting experience to
deliver that note of nonchalant curiosity.

“Yeah,” he said. “The way I felt about her last summer . . .”

“You liked her last summer?” I interrupted.

“Now it’s not the same, you know?”

“Good for you,” I said. “She’s a very nice girl.”

“Really nice,” he said.

We spent Thanksgiving with my parents and brother, Pat, and his wife,
Stacy, in Arizona. Wolfie was there with us, regaling everyone with
stories from the road and catching up with Tom’s son, Tony, and friends.
After the holiday, Liv flew in and stayed with us for a week. I was more
nervous than she appeared to be; in fact, I had to remind myself that I
was the parent, not the girlfriend visiting the boyfriend’s family. The
problem was, I didn’t know how to play my role, whether to be strict or
cool or super cool or what.

Pretty quickly I figured out that I really liked Liv, who impressed me as
a mature and together young woman. I could tell that she had been raised
properly. She was considerate and well-mannered. When she arrived, I had
her put her suitcase in Wolfie and Tony’s room and made it clear the two
boys would sleep in the plush tour bus parked in front of the house. She
thanked me for allowing her to visit.

Very late that night, I woke up in a panic, wondering where Wolfie and Liv
were sleeping. They had not given me a single reason to suspect they
weren’t in the places I had assigned them earlier in the day, but my mind
was full of scenarios that filled me with concern. It was because I had
been a teenager once, and I knew what I had done at that same age.
Actually, I’d been younger. Was that beside the point? Or was it the
point? I had no idea. Nor did it matter. I got out of bed and crept
through the house like a guard on the show Lockup. As I tiptoed back into
the bedroom and quietly slipped back under the covers, Tom rolled over.

“And?” he asked.

“Everyone’s where they’re supposed to be,” I said.

“Except for you.”

“Touché,” I replied.

I shut my eyes and tried to go back to sleep while realizing something
that many parents before me had discovered: I was the one with sex on the
brain, not Wolfie or Liv. I knew that would change if they stayed
together, but for now this was more my issue than theirs. I supposed it
was part of being a parent. I had the wisdom and experience to know what
lay ahead, and to prepare for it. Was I prepared? I didn’t know; I’d have
to see when I got there, wherever that would be.

There was a more important question: Was Wolfie prepared? Had I done my
job as a parent?

I thought about two things: The talks I hadn’t had with him about sex and
love and maturity, and the discussions I should have had with him about
relationships, the highs, lows, joys, difficulties, and potential of
heartbreak. We had spent hours discussing favorite movies such as Galaxy
Quest and Lord of the Rings. We had also talked endlessly about the video
game Legend of Zelda. We had discussed school, music, favorite bands,
clothes, acne, friends — all the stuff that happened. I had at times even
solicited his opinion on stuff I had seen in the Pottery Barn catalog? How
had I managed to not talk to him about girls, sex, and love? What was
wrong with me? I felt like a bad mother. I worried that I had failed both
of us.

I still felt that way in the morning. As I made myself coffee, I thought
about handling those feelings in the way I had done so many times in the
past: by opening the fridge and eating my way into numbness. I didn’t do
it. I knew it wasn’t a healthy or productive way to handle a problem. I
had learned that I was an emotional eater, and as such, I had come to
recognize my desire to eat during times of upset or stress for what it
was–an emotional response to a feeling that is starved for action or
discussion, not a desire for a slice of leftover pizza at 9:30 in the
morning.

I heard Tom stirring and took him a cup of coffee. I asked if he wanted to
go for a walk, explaining that I needed to work off something that was
bothering me.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“I haven’t had the sex talk,” I said.

He put his hands on my shoulders, pulled me close and said, “Baby, we
don’t have to talk about it.”

I pushed him away.

“Not you, silly,” I said. “I haven’t talked to Wolfie about sex.”

“Doesn’t he know where babies come from?”

“I’m sure he does. It’s how they’re made that I’m not sure he understands
completely.”

“Or how to keep them from being made.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m sure he knows that part, too.”

“But I’m not sure,” I said.

“It’s a little late, don’t you think?” Tom said. “Besides, he’s probably
seen everything and then some in the movies or on the Internet.”

“Yeah, but I know seeing it and talking about it are two different
things.” I took a deep breath and sighed. “This isn’t fair.”

“What isn’t?”

“Wolfie’s still in bed, sleeping soundly without a care in his head other
than what he and Liv are going to do today–and I’m pacing the kitchen,
wondering if dipping Cheetoes in peanut butter might make me feel better
about not ever having talked to my son about sex.”

“Probably not,” Tom said. “I think we should take a walk.”

“Yeah, good idea.”

I had a good, albeit sardonic laugh as I thought of being on maintenance
in the context of my life. First, let me say that I wasn’t yet on
maintenance. I was looking ahead. In reality, thanks to a handful of
macaroons, I was up one third of a pound, which meant I still had a pound
and a half to go before I reached my weight loss goal. On my blog, I
wrote, “Guys, what if I’m on maintenance next week?”

What if I was?

That’s what made me laugh.

What was I trying to maintain beyond my weight — and even that wasn’t set
in stone?

I made a list in my head, and the things I needed to fix or change
outnumbered the things I was content to merely maintain. Who came up with
this concept of maintenance?

I realized my life was similar to my closet. No matter what time or year,
it could always use a little straightening or cleaning. The job was never
finished. Motherhood was the same. The problems changed, but they didn’t
end or get any easier. At one point when Tom and I were on our walk, I
looked up at the sky and mused, “Oh really, God. Why didn’t you tell me
that it wasn’t going to ever end or get easier — or that the poopy
diapers were just a warm-up?”

The following afternoon, I had an opportunity to talk with Wolfie. I found
him on the sofa, watching TV. Alone! Miraculously, he wasn’t with Liv. The
two of them spent more time together than conjoined twins. I seized the
moment.

“Hey, I want to talk about you and Liv,” I said, trying to sound casual
and relaxed as I plopped down on the sofa.

“Yeah, Mom. What’s up?”

“We’ve never officially or even unofficially talked about sex,” I said.
“You know, the sex talk.”

“You mean where babies come from?” he asked.

“No, more like how babies are made.”

“Ma!”

“What?”

“Please don’t go there,” he said.

“Really?”

“It’s gross.”

“But you’re in a relationship.”

“It’s gross.”

I took a deep breath. I agreed with him. I was uncomfortable and
embarrassed talking about sex with my son, not that I would characterize
what we were doing as talking about sex. But I wanted to make a point.
Unfortunately for me, I hadn’t thought that part through to a conclusive
place I could articulate. In my head, I had only gotten as far as “we need
to talk.”

So I just looked at Wolfie until he said, “What? What are you looking
at?” How could I explain what I was looking at? I was looking at sixteen
years of life, his remarkable growth, my frustrating inadequacies, and the
fact that in the beginning it had been just the two of us and now here we
were, the two of us brought together yet again by the miracle of life. I
could have, and probably should have, just been forthright and said that
from the little intelligence I had been able to gather, I knew that he and
Liv were still as chaste as the Jonas Brothers, and I wanted to keep it
that way, at least for a while. But if things were to change, here’s what
I wanted him to know. Here’s what I had learned about men and women, sex
and responsibility. But there wasn’t a chance in hell of that coming out
of my mouth.

I also thought about asking if he would take a vow of chastity and I would
take a vow of silence and the two of us would meet back here in a few
years. But that didn’t happen either. Instead, I blurted out that I was
looking forward to being a grandmother someday. But he was way too young
to start giving me grandchildren.

Wolfie responded exactly as I would have if I had been sixteen and sitting
cross from me after that ridiculous statement. He stared at me with a look
of startled bewilderment. I shrugged. I thought it was a nice try–the
best I could do.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Mom, let me just talk to Dad about it,” he said. “How about that?”

“Fine.”

Relieved, I walked out of the room. About two minutes later, I was kicked
in the butt by reality. I couldn’t believe what I had agreed to. Had I
lost my mind? God only knew what kind of information Wolfie might get from
his dad. Getting your sex talk from Eddie Van Halen wasn’t recommended in
any of the parenting books I read.

A few days later, Liv flew back home, Wolfie went back on the road, and I
reached my goal of losing 40 pounds. I celebrated the milestone at the
kitchen table in my sweats, asking myself what now? Maintenance? Ha!
Instead of throwing myself a party for hitting my goal, as I had always
expected to do, I went for a hike with Tom up and down Pinnacle Peak, a
rugged mountain outside of Phoenix.

As we huffed and puffed, I asked Tom if his parents had ever talked to him
about sex. They hadn’t, he said. He had learned about the facts of life
from friends on the playground. I had discovered that information the same
way, separating fact from fiction as I went along. Did anyone get the
formal, sit-down sex talk? Or was that just a chapter in the parenting
books that everyone skipped?

“I’d like to think that I progressed beyond my parents,” I said.

“Well, I have always spoken pretty openly about sex to my girls,” Tom
said. “They even told me when they got their periods.”

“Aren’t you evolved,” I said.

He grinned.

“I just recently told your mother that I’ve seen your penis,” I said.

“What?” he said. “What’d she say?”

” ‘Oh, honey. I’ve seen it too. It’s no big thing!’ ” I said, laughing.

By the time we returned home, I had put all joking aside and decided to
speak to my son again and make sure we had the kind of talk that I knew in
my heart was right. I wanted to make sure he was prepared, responsible and
sensitive — and informed — if only for my own peace of mind or just to
prove that I could do better than my parents. I knew that I would beat
myself up if I didn’t do it.

Later that day, after working up my determination and thinking about what
I wanted to say, I called Wolfie at his hotel. He was waiting for Matt to
finish bundling gear before they headed to the arena.

“Do you remember the talk I wanted to have with you after Thanksgiving?” I
said.

“Maybe,” he said.

“The one about sex,” I said.

“Ma!”

“Have you spoken with your dad about it yet?”

“No.”

“Good,” I said. “I wanted to get to you first.”

“Ma, it’s gross — and whatever happens between me and Liv, it’s none of
your business.”

“You’re right,” I said. “That would be gross, as you say. I don’t want to
know about the two of you. This isn’t about Liv, in fact. It’s about
you.” I paused momentarily, waiting for him to cut me off. He didn’t– and
I knew right then I had him and this was my time.

“Look, I just want to tell you that as far as you and Liv or you and
anyone else that comes into your life goes, it’s about your heart and
hers. Don’t give your heart and self away easily. But when you do, don’t
protect it to the point where you don’t open yourself up to your feelings.
Always be kind and treat other people the way you want to be–”

“Ma, I know,” he said, cutting me off. “Treat people the way I want to be
treated. You say it all the time. I get it.”

“One more thing,” I said.

“What?”

“Babies come from storks.”

Relieved, I told Tom about the conversation. I don’t know if it was
helpful, but I felt better.

A few days later, all of us rendezvoused at the Van Halen concert in San
Diego. Before the show, I pulled Ed aside and asked him to speak to Wolfie
about being responsible and sensitive in relationships. I didn’t come
right out and say he was serious about his girlfriend and we needed to
make sure he was well informed. But Ed understood. I saw him take it in,
think about what he should say, and then he looked at his girlfriend
Janie, at me, and at Tom, and nodded.

“Got it,” he said.

I was nervous about what he might say, because he could be crude even when
trying to be sensitive. But I felt like I had run out of options. God help
me, I turned it over to Ed.

A little before the show, I was standing with Tom in the hallway outside
Ed’s dressing room when I thought I overheard him having the talk. I
shushed Tom and inched closer to the doorway. Tom was right behind me when
I turned around and we heard Ed tell Wolfie to listen to his heart, to be
careful of who he gave it to, and then “when you give it away be careful
of their heart, too.”

Then he added, “Treat each other with kindness.”

I gritted my teeth at Tom.

“That’s what I tried to tell him,” I said.

“Shush,” Tom said. “They’re still going.”

We listened closer and heard Ed finish: “. . . and be wary of all the
sluts and skanks and whores who will want to be with you because you play
in a band and have a famous last name.”

I shrugged. I wouldn’t have said that last part. But it was essentially
the same talk I had tried to have. I wanted to praise Ed, but remembered
that we were eavesdropping and quickly grabbed Tom and guided us away from
the door. Then Wolfie strolled out and into the hall. He was in a good
mood.

“Hey, Ma,” he said.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just talking to Dad.”

I watched him walk back to his dressing room. All of us were learning
about the facts of life.

Notes to Myself

Drink more water! Thirst is different from hunger. Thirst for knowledge,
thirst for health, thirst for love . . . lots of water.

Today, my mind and body are in conflict about going to the gym, but I’m
telling them to get on the same page! How? I’m thinking of all the times
I’ve wished I’d worked out but couldn’t. And the times I’ve wished I’d
felt good about myself but didn’t. Now that I have the time to get
exercise . . . is forty-five minutes such a big deal?

Tom says I snore. He doesn’t. We’re an odd couple.

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