was completely startled when I realized that my children were famous. It was something that crept up on me all of a sudden when I was least expecting it. And I wonder to this day why I wasn't expecting it, because I should have been, given the circumstances we were living in at the time. They were in New York with Walker for the Grammy Awards, leaving me with the other half at home. It would have been illogical, and certainly unhealthy for me to go with them, considering my ballooning belly and shrinking stamina. I wanted to go, to hold their hands backstage and embarrass them, to follow them around with cough drops and tissues and words of encouragement.

I was twenty-three and a half weeks pregnant at the time. In other words, I was about two pepperoni pizzas away from delivery. All four of them had been adamant that I stay home. This upset me, of course, because pregnancy is the state in which I have spent enough of my adult life so that I know what I can and can not handle. A trip to New York to see my three eldest children take the music industry by storm, I could have done. I really could have, and I will never let any of them forget it, because I did not feel the first uncomfortable pangs of labor until three and a half weeks later, almost my due date exactly. (Actually, there were two due dates. The one the doctor had carefully and scientifically calculated with all the wonders of modern medicine, and the one I had, with my own deductive reasoning. Mine was three days closer to the actual delivery than the doctor's. I won, and I'll never let him forget that either. )

Aside from the child that was occupying the space just above my abdomen, there was the small matter of the other three, all of which were very much alive and kicking in the open air, not to mention taking up more of my personal space than the one in utero would ever dream of doing. I would take care of them while the rest of the family, the bread winning half, was gallivanting in New York. I had argued that I could make the trip, that I would have enough strength to last through the five hour ceremony, that I surely could find something to wear from the DKNY maternity line. And they still left me home.

The kids were crazy all day. Absolute bedlam. I don't know if they were excited about seeing their brothers on TV, but they were used to that by then. I had no idea what was wrong, or in the air, or what planet happened to be governing the happenings in Oklahoma that day, but I certainly prayed that it would just cut it out. Avie and Jess took advantage of the time I spent picking up after Mackie's massive grape juice catastrophe by trashing their bedroom. After every shelf, every corner of every closet, every garment had been removed from every hanger, they thought it would be fun to have a fight with the softer items, including the sheets on their beds. Nothing that belonged together in nature, like pillows and pillowcases, stayed that way. Everything that could be opened, emptied, or turned upside down, was. This was after a morning that had included two fights, one that contained hair pulling, three tantrums, with tears, one without, phone calls from twelve newspapers, two local, five national and fiv e international, a call from a telemarketer that wanted to give me a free cell phone, and the first tornado warning of the season. And the three, four biggest kids in the family were in New York with limousines and a catered dinner and an invitation to hang out with Elton John after the show.

We turned on the TV an hour early, partly because I needed some reason to corral the brood in one place, and partly to watch the pre-show coverage on VH1. I wanted to see them on the carpet, to make sure that they weren't wrinkled. My husband is a magnificent father, but he allows his children to be wrinkled. It drives me batty. It takes two seconds with an iron, that's all. And for goodness sakes, I hoped he made them brush the bumps out of their hair. The last time they were on The Tonight Show, I was tempted to pick up the phone and force the on-staff stylists to fix them up during the next commercial break. They sat there, chatting away, with the remnants of the morning's ponytails still apparent, one colossal bump at the nape of each neck. I could hear the voices of mothers all over the country, peeping over the shoulders of their teenage daughters, sizing up their future sons in laws. "Now where is their mother? Why does she let them go out there looking like that?" They had promised me that this sh ow would be different.

"Mom, this is the Grammy's. They wouldn't let us go out there looking stupid," Zac said, his back to me as he packed his suitcase.

"Yes dear, but who exactly is the they?"

He turned to face me, shrugged and contorted his face in a single motion that plead absolute ignorance. Then he went back to his suitcase. Zac is a little more apt than the others to just accept the unknowns in life and move on.

And then there they were. Walker was nowhere in sight, as usual, and they stood there, my sons, looking positively old in designer clothes that they had gotten for free. Funny how they only make you pay if you can't afford it.

"Mom! Mom! Look!" All three of them jumped off the sofa and pointed wildly at the television, as though they had never seen those faces framed by the familiar black screen. I could feel their excitement now. It was true. The night did feel different from the Billboards, or the MTV Movie Awards. It shouldn't have. This should have been routine. But why was a knot forming in my stomach, the kind that makes me lose my appetite and wring my hands incessantly?

"We're really excited about the nominations." Taylor spoke first to the sequined, corseted spokes model and her microphone. He was in leather. Head to toe. The jacket, the pants, everything. When I realized it, I laughed out loud. My Taylor, my silly, Nintendo obsessed Taylor, was a fashion plate. There was a hint of sparkle in the black shirt he wore under the jacket. It matched whatever current mischief happened to be dancing just behind those eyes.

"Ew! What's he wearing? Mom, Taylor looks like such a dork," Jessica rolled her eyes at the television in disgust.

"Oh honey. He has to wear stuff like that. It's the Grammy's. I think he looks kinda stylish. Sort of. Well, I guess he fits in with the rest of the crowd."

They were beautiful, as usual, but the clothes turned them into something different, something larger than three boys from Oklahoma who had the good fortune to sell some records. Isaac stood smiling in a dark gray suit that made him look frighteningly tall. I had gone into a numb kind of denial when he woke up on his sixteenth birthday and could see clear over my head. The suit threatened to pull me out of it. Zac stood in front of the other two. His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of dark, shiny pants. The shirt was a black knit, and about a size too big, judging from the three inches of fabric that fell over each hand when he pulled them out. In that formation, they looked quite powerful, a single, solid unit of youth and zeal and all of those good things I wish I could have back. They looked good; sharp and excited and reasonably wrinkle free. I made a mental note to thank Walker when he got home, although I supposed that he had little to do with it. I made a second mental note to thank the sty lists at DKNY.

"We're happy just to be nominated. Really." Isaac nodded with his usual amount of enthusiasm. Three nominations. Three. For the biggest honor the music industry bestows. We hadn't been expecting it at all, until about two days before the nominations came out when Ashley randomly mentioned to Walker that the buzz on both coasts was us, especially in the Best New Artist category. We downplayed the whole thing, letting them sleep in on the morning of the announcement. Walker and I crept downstairs at 7:30 and turned on E! while Ashley stayed at his house on the cell phone to LA. We kept the volume low and huddled on the sofa in our bathrobes with cups of coffee, feeling guilty that we hadn't woken them up. Walker popped a blank videotape in the VCR, just in case. If there was nothing, then we didn't get them all excited for no reason. If we got something, there would be plenty of time to celebrate.

And then it came. Not once, twice, but three times. I was almost dizzy, partly from lack of sleep, partly because I knew that in a few short seconds, we had proven something important.

"Paula Cole, Fiona Apple, Hanson…" The list rang in my head. Walker and I looked at each other for an instant. We had to tell them.

Walker grabbed the phone to call Ashley. I bounded up the stairs two at a time, feeling the way I felt on my seventh birthday, regardless of the extra weight I was carrying. Zac's bed was closest to the door, therefore making him my first victim by default. I shook his shoulder, maybe a little too violently, but hey, it was for good reason.

"Zac. Zac! Get up."

"Huh? What?" He rolled over, his eyes opening just enough to identify his assailant. "Mom. Cut it out. What are you doing?" he mumbled into the pillows, still half asleep.

The noise woke Taylor who sat straight up in his bunk. "Mom? What? Oh my God. The thing… the thing was this morning. The uh… the nominations." He forced his eyes open, forced them to work, to join civilization with the rest of his body. "Did we… did we get anything? What time is it? Why didn't you wake me up?!"

Isaac's head peeked out from under a mountain of blankets. "Will you guys be quiet?" Then he realized. "Oh… oh man. The Grammy's. What happened? Did anything happen?"

Walker stepped into the room with the phone still in his hand. "Three. We got three."
---

There was a single deafening beat of silence. A collective intake of breath. True to form, Zac was the first one to shatter it.

"YEEEAH!" He tumbled headfirst out of bed, catching his feet in the blankets. He stumbled towards Walker and dove at him as Taylor and Isaac worked to untangle themselves from their respective bedding. Taylor began to thunk down the ladder of his bunk bed unsurely, each foot clamoring for the next rung, looking for the fastest route down. Figuring that he might kill himself, I stood behind him to steady his clumsy barefooted steps.

They hugged us, hugged each other. Zac charged back at his bed and bounced up and down on it as hard as he could, nearly touching the ceiling with every try. I didn't even mind really. Isaac and Taylor couldn't stop moving from one corner of the room to the other, a set of pinballs banging against every light and bell in their path, scoring more points for every hit. Their sleepy, slurring voices churned over and over.

"I can't believe it."

"This is so cool."

"Dad, do we have to wear tuxes?"

"Who are we nominated against?"

"Does Ash know?"

"Does MTV know?"

"Why didn't you wake us up?"

"Yeah, but what category?"

"I'm so amazed right now, I can't even think."

Finally, somehow, we calmed them down. After all, it guaranteed nothing. There was no place in any history book for Grammy Nominees. The competition was tough and the ceremony was more than a month away. Tides changed quickly in this business. They sat in a row on Zac's bed, their faces serious for the first time all morning, sporting three bad cases of bed head. Walker laid it all out on the table for them.

"You might not win guys. Statistically, the odds are against you. So let's not go nuts yet. Actually, we could probably do the math out sometimes, you know… what the actual mathematical odds are… Diana… hon… you could probably do that with them right?"

"Uh huh…"

"So yeah, that's your next math lesson. Anyway, this is a big deal. It's very nice to just be nominated. They read your name up there alongside people who've been in the business for years. You're very lucky. So we'll go to New York for the ceremony. Ash and I have already planned it out…"

Zac's eyebrows went up. "Does that mean that we get to go to the parties afterward?"

Walker and I had discussed it immediately after the nominations were announced. There wasn't much debate.

"No!" We tried very hard not to do it in unison. It happened anyway.

"No parties this year Zac. Maybe when you're older." I tried diplomacy, but it didn't work. His pout appeared for the first time all morning. I felt guilty immediately.

"Mom's right Zac. No parties for you, not yet. Anyway, like I was saying, let's not get too excited over this. We celebrated. Now back to normal. We have appearances and other stuff that needs to get done before we go to the Grammy's. So, congratulations. We're all very happy and proud of you."

And I was. So proud of them, so proud that their work had been recognized, that they looked fabulous, that they were classy and smart when the spokes model tossed them inane comments and a slightly condescending air. They smiled and moved on in their swooping triangular formation, geese going south. As the model said hello to Puff Daddy, they moved past the VH1 camera and toward Radio City Music Hall. Trailing a few steps behind them was a black tuxedo…

"Daddy!" Avery bounced in her seat.

"Where?! Where's Daddy? I don't see Daddy." Mac hopped off the couch and moved toward the screen to see.

"Right there!" Avery charged across the room and pressed a sticky finger against the screen where the dark figure was.

"Yep. That's Daddy." The baby kicked once, quite forcefully, as the words came out, a pre-natal acknowledgment of its origins.

And then they were gone, and we were stuck waiting again. We sat through interview after interview… Sarah McLachlan, Stevie Nicks, R. Kelly… Then I changed it to MTV. John Norris was backstage in light blue sequins interviewing whoever happened to be passing by.

And so the parade of spangles and sound bites continued until the end of the hour. They didn't come on again. As the credits began to roll under Norris' head, I quickly flipped the station to ABC. I could almost see them now, walking into Radio City's mammoth, glittering auditorium surrounded by their peers. It made me shiver just to think about it, the low murmur of pre-show conversation, the star burst proscenium framing the backs of their heads in their seats.
---

I saw Radio City for the first time when I was fourteen, when my father surprised us with an early Christmas present, a trip to New York to see the Rockettes. I had never been anywhere really, and I remember how dazzled I was by the whole thing, how my mother had granted us the indulgence of new outfits for the occasion, shoes included. My dress was pink, of some kind of stiff Nixon-era fabric that I'm pretty sure doesn't exist anymore, or was outlawed because of extreme flammability or it's tendency to cause abrasions.

The show was lovely, of course, pretty girls in pretty costumes dancing to pretty music. But what really caught my imagination and sent it spinning, was the building. Standing in the lobby at intermission, feeling very grown up with a ginger ale in one hand, I silently vowed that someday, I would have a house like that, a place filled with dark rugs and gold tinted mirrors that made it feel warm and heady all of the time. I wanted everything the color of onyx, and a curved staircase that led from by bedroom, so that I could Make an Entrance whenever I chose. I wanted gold leaf wallpaper and an endless blue ocean of fish for a carpet and a sunset, a constant sunset that shimmered and sent rays bouncing in every imaginable place.

I put the memory of my dream home away slowly. After all, there were plenty of people whose highest aspirations for a home were an aboveground pool and track lighting. I hadn't completely let it go yet when the phone rang.

"Hey Beautiful. How are my gremlins holding up? All four of them…"

"They're just fine. Isn't the show starting in a minute? Where are the kids? Are they nervous? Do they look all right?" I tried very hard to stop my voice from ascending higher and higher up the octave as each question came out. My attempts to stay calm were failing quite badly.

Walker chuckled into the cell phone. I had made him promise to call whenever he got the chance. "Hm. You sound more nervous than they do, Mom. They're right here actually, sitting in their seats. Zac is playing with the lint on his shirt. Taylor is people watching, and Isaac is talking to Paula Cole's boyfriend, who is sitting right in front of us."

"How was their sound check? Did it all sound OK?"

"Yes. They sounded excellent. We're fine. Everybody's fine. No one is too nervous, I don't think." His voice dropped lower. "Well, maybe they're a little nervous. They'll be fine though. Don't worry about them. Hold on."

There was a pause in which I could hear Walker talking to a male voice, not one of the kids.

"OK hon, the show's starting. We have to go. Look for us, OK?" He pulled his mouth away from the receiver. "Hey guys. Say hi to Mom, real quick."

The three voices chimed in unison, "Hi Mom!"

"All right then. We'll talk after the performance. Tell the kids I miss them. Love you babe."

"Bye hon. Break a couple of legs or something."

And with that, the TV screen brightened as the camera pulled in for a tight shot of my gold sunset, the one I wanted in my house.

"Show's starting! Show's starting!" Mac bounded around the living room a couple of times in a very Zac fashion and then plopped himself beside me on the couch, his head resting on the side of my belly. I told them that they could stay up late tonight. It was a special enough occasion, and besides, I didn't want to be in the nursery with a half asleep toddler while my sons were serenading the nation.

Then we waited. And waited. Waited through Kelsey Grammer's obnoxiously Frasier-like monologue, through six awards, through a Lilith Fair montage that included glimpses of both Sarah McLachlan's undergarments, and Paula Cole's underarms, neither of which were terribly attractive. Waited as a charming guy named Ole Dirty Bastard bum rushed the stage, and as Vanessa Williams nearly got killed by a moving piece of it. At one point Avery looked at me and said, "Mom, I don't think we're watching the right channel. Maybe we made a mistake."

And then, finally, it was time. Only bits and pieces of the introduction were registering in my mind.

"…their number one hit, Mmmbop… please welcome Hanson."

Camera pan right to the stage. They were in semi darkness; Taylor looked very cool, leaning on the edge of one of his keyboards like it was the kitchen counter. Change to Zac, who counted it in, screeched was closer to it. His eyes were wide as saucers, cast down toward his drum set, a single fat lock of hair falling over one side of his face. My heart pounded. I had no idea what the rest of the world was seeing in my sons, but I saw that they were petrified. The song started, pounding, more urgent than they were used to. This was a first for them, for all of us. They had a new guitarist, a new sound, a new place to take their music. Isaac looked terribly serious, eyes on the strings, on the placement of each finger. Both he and Tay had taken their jackets off, exposing those gawky angular frames. They looked small now, half swallowed by my sunset. The song ground on. They sang, played, pounded, rattled the rafters of Radio City. I tried, tried so hard to see past the look of terror in Isaac's eyes, the i ll-fitting sobriety in Zac's.

I wasn't anticipating the flash of anger that raced through my bones at that moment. It was an instant, and it was gone before I could even put words to the feeling, but it was there, clear as day. In that instant, I wanted them home. I wanted them asleep in their beds, resting soundly, mouths open. I wanted them to have no palpable idea of what The Academy was, or Billboard Magazine, or Sound Scan. And as the shock ran away, as my kids continued to cause a small storm in New York, the feeling turned into something else.

That was when the baby kicked me. It was the hearty, wind up and let er rip type that almost knocked me off the couch, harder than the other one by a mile. And then, I started to cry. It was so inevitable at that point, I just let the tears well up and flop over my cheeks one at a time. My children were superstars. There they were, before my eyes, so vulnerable on that ocean liner of a stage, and yet, they were doing it. They weren't cowering in front of that audience, not in the least. They bore down, looked the monster dead in the eye, and slew it.

The song stopped. And then there it was, the whir of applause, dotted by the occasional whoop of approval. They won. The camera panned back, and the kids in my living room hollered and danced while my other ones in New York undoubtedly heaved a collective sigh of relief. My husband probably did too. Jessica spotted me wiping my face with the back of my hand.

"Mom, why are you crying?" A worried look knotted her fair eyebrows.

"Oh, don't worry hon. These are happy tears. Weren't they awesome?" I put out my arms and she joined me on the couch.

"Yeah. They were good." She shrugged indifferently. After all, they would probably be back home annoying her within 48 hours.

The phone rang again. They didn't even bother to say hello this time.

"Mom!"

"Mom?"

"Hey Mom!"

All three voices clamored at the other end as they fought each other for the phone. For the first time all night, I was glad I wasn't there to break it up.

"Ike! Gimme the phone! Why do you always have to hog…"

"Hi Mom. Did you watch us?" Isaac shouted into my ear. He had temporarily won the battle.

"Of course I watched you! You sounded great."

"Hey Mom. It's me. Oh my God that was so great. That just felt so good, and everyone applauded. I can't even believe it. And guess what? Before the show when we were sound checking, Sarah McLachlan came up to us and was like, 'You guys sound really good' and she talked to us for a minute, and she said that Zac was adorable and he turned really red and it was so funny."

Zac started to shout over Taylor's dissertation. "No way! I did not turn red! You're SUCH a liar!"

"Well that sounds exciting honey. Tell Zac not to call you a liar, and don't shout please. You're breaking my eardrums."

"Oh. Sorry Mom."

"It's OK. Is Dad there?"

"Yeah. He's right here. Do you wanna…"

"MOM!" Zac had apparently decided to take his turn first.

"Hey Zac."

"Mom! That was so cool! Didn't we ROCK?!"

"Yes dear, you rocked. You guys had better calm down a little before your categories come up."

"What? Categories? Who cares about that?"

"Umm… Why don't you let me talk to Dad, OK? Congratulations. You sounded very good."

"OK! Thanks Mom. Love you!"

"Yep. Love you too hon."

There was commotion in the background as my family continued to rattle on and on about how excited they were. Then my husband took the receiver. I hoped he would be the voice of sanity in all of this, but something in me knew better.

"Hey babe! What do you think of your kids now?!" He sounded just as giddy, if not more so than the rest of them.

"I think they're marvelous dear. Sounds like the whole sleep thing is out of the question for tonight though."

"Yeah. They're pretty excited. Of course they're excited. So am I. We can't talk long because we've got awards coming up. Not that it really matters at this point. We'll go home happy just as we are, trophies or no."

"Well, I'm very glad to hear that. Give them all hugs for me."

"Will do. Wish you were here."

"Yeah. Me too. But hey, there's always next year or the year after. We'll be back."

"Yep we will. Talk to you tomorrow morning. Bye."

"Bye hon."

As I set the receiver back down, I could feel my heart begin to return to its normal rate. They were fine. They were still my same hyperactive kids. No personalities had been altered. Thankfully, they hadn't noticed yet. Maybe they would never notice. Maybe they would never see that they had been tested in fire just then, that they would never quite come back down from the mountain. And on top of all of that, they were mine. They were the result of my own sweat and labor. They were a job well done. I tried very hard not to gloat, to keep my hands still and not let them grab the phone and call every number I knew to shout that those were my kids.

They didn't win, of course. As if it mattered. Like Walker and I had said, nominations were enough. We were happy with what we were given. A jewel of a performance and three slightly ungainly, goofy superstars who had just started to grow into their vast constellation.