AARP The Magazine - April/May 2012

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VERTICAL
Diane Keaton

(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 43)

never have intercourse before I was
married, and I did. I said I would
never go to a psychiatrist, and I spent
much of my life in psychoanalysis.
I’ve done all kinds of things I said I
wouldn’t do and, of course, now I’m
glad. Thrilled.”
For a long time Keaton believed she
would never have kids, but all that
changed when she turned 50. Happily-
ever-after wasn’t in the cards with
the three great loves of her life: Allen,
Beatty, and Pacino. “I never found
a home in the arms of a man,” she
writes in the book. Asked now what
held her back from ever getting mar-
ried, Keaton is cryptic. “I think it was
just my whole life. How I responded
first to boys and then to men. It had
nothing to do with reality.” She adds:
“Relationships are hard. You’re lucky
if you find someone.”
But instead of being alone, Keaton
filled her home with love. Dexter and
Duke entered her world as Dorothy
was fading from it. Simultaneously,
Keaton became increasingly attuned
to the realities of being an older
mother herself. “I’m very aware that
my dad died when he was 68, and my
mother was in her early 70s when her
brain really started to go,” she says.
“When I think about my kids in their
20s and 30s, and me in my 70s and 80s,
I worry about that, definitely. I want
to be there for them. I want my body
and mind to stay strong, and to share
all these life lessons. But I also know
they need to have the freedom and
independence to learn on their own.”
Not that it’s easy to stand back. “You
see them growing and perceiving and
changing,” Keaton says. There’s a look
of awe in her eyes. Being a mother is a
joy, but “love is work, too,” she says.
“It takes everything I have sometimes
to not snuggle with Dexter. You know,
at 16, you don’t want to be snuggly any
more. Sometimes I can pat her hair. Or
if I’m lucky, I get a hug.”
Dinner is Keaton’s favorite time of
day. With swim-team practice done
and all eyes off gadgets, phones, and
computers, the three Keatons sit and
talk. “Oh, sure, I drive my kids crazy
with, ‘What do you think about this?
What did that mean to you?’ They’re
like, ‘Stop, Mom!’ So I’m learning
to say less now.” You can tell by her
suppressed grin that Keaton isn’t suc-
ceeding. “That’s right. I’m learning to
zip it up.” Now she’s laughing. “Well,
I’m trying, at least. I really am.”
project isn’t
another book or movie, though she
admits she’d love to find “a really out-
there role where I let it all hang out.
Get totally enraged. Go to an extreme.
I have not really had that opportunity,
and I hope it will happen.” She’s also
not yearning for romance at the mo-
ment. “It’s not something I can visual-
ize right now. The best relationships
develop out of friendships. That’s the
shame. At this stage I don’t correlate
any of the friendships I have with
sex, and, honestly, once you bring sex
into a friendship—Ooh! Whew! Oh!—
that’s a slippery slope into disaster.”
So she channels her passions into
building a house. Known locally for
her restoration efforts, Keaton now
wants a new challenge. “The easy
thing—and part of me wants to do
this—is just to go buy a house and redo
it, but I’ve done that already,” she says.
It’s much harder, she says, “to create
something out of thin air. I never want
to stop growing and learning.”
A thoughtful look comes over
Keaton’s face. For the first time in the
long conversation, there’s silence. Not
that it lasts. It never does with Keaton.

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