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HOW HER NEW BABY MADE HER MORE OF A MOTHER!
May 1970
Her long blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders, gently brushing the baby's arm, Liz seemed softer than ever before.
It was a softness, a femininity that emerged from deep within her. Almost like something physical, something you could touch, the womanliness seemed to envelop the little girl.
"It's different being the mother of a girl," Liz explained. "My two boys seem like blockbusters now. I want them to be strong and aggressive. So I suppose I act differently toward them.
"And," she added, "with this one, I'm having a few more problems."
Liz, who's Protestant, had deftly side-stepped what could have been a sticky problem with the two boys. Her husband, Bill Asher, is Jewish. Their friends, of various religions, began hinting about what to get for the christening. Liz hemmed and hawed and changed the subject.
"We both love our religion," said Liz, an Episcopalian. "Bill isn't the most religious man in the world. He doesn't go for a lot of the ritual, but he believes deeply in his Jewish religious and cultural heritage.
"I really haven't been a practicing anything for years. Still, I don't want to divorce myself from my heritage either.
"But you'd be surprised at how meddlesome people can be. After all, whose business is it how are children are raised? It's Bill's and my business, and no one else's," Liz said.
It was a problem Liz never had to face before. She had no children by her previous husband, Gig Young, who was many years older than she. But if they had had children, there wouldn't have been a religious question anyway. Gig, too, was a Protestant.
"Gig wouldn't have cared anyway," said Liz. "He was very easy-going on matters like that. He had kind of a live-and-let-live philosophy. I think he would have left it pretty much up to me, no matter what he had been.
"Besides, our marital problems became so overwhelming the question of christening children just never had a chance to arise."
With Bill, everything was different, Liz has told friends. From the beginning, there existed between them a physical attraction so overwhelming it became inevitable that they would have to live together.
"It was a remarkable relationship, like two children just discovering what life and love and sex were about," said a friend.
"I don't know what really pushed it - the exotic differences of their backgrounds, the need to explore and understand each other, or just an irresistable physical need.
"Of course, what it finally became was a marriage. They were, and are, so much in love they wanted a continuity of their marriage into eternity. That's what Liz told me one day. The only way they could have such continuity was by having children," said Liz's friend.
"Liz was a little afraid at first she couldn't have children. She'd at times thought of having a child by Gig, but never did. "it made her wonder whether it would be possible for her to bear a child at all. I know that's what compelled her to have a child by Bill as soon as they were able."
Once she had the baby boy, Robert (sic), now 5, Liz relaxed notably. But as far as her work is concerned, she's a perfectionist. She and Bill work very well together. She not only likes having him producer her show, she feels a definite need for it.
"Having our first little boy made me feel like a complete woman," she told me. "I had a husband I adored, and who loved me, and the product of our love was our little boy.
"After that, I became more of a mother. I wanted more children because it would be good for our family, for our little boy to have a brother or sister.
"Finally, with this last child, we were hoping desperately for a girl. It just seemed to round out our family.
"This religious business...it never really came up with the boys. It's a new phenomenon with our daughter. With the boys, our Jewish friends thought that nothing was too important anyway until the child was ready to go to Sunday school, and at 13, have a bar mitzvah.
"Some of our more religious Protestant friends raised their eyebrows that the children weren't christened, but they too thought they shouldn't intrude.
"This time, a few busybodies got into the act on both sides of the religious fence. Oh, I know they meant well. But it simply wasn't any of their business.
"About all I can gather is that they felt it's really the mother that sees that children get their religious education and experience. If father is too busy with work, it's mother who enrolls them in Sunday school and sees that they stick to their heritage.
"So, all of a sudden, they were viewing my baby daughter as a prospective homemaker. It really seemed a little premature to me. And when they started asking questions about the baby, they started intruding on what we were doing about the boys.
"I've never seen anything like it," Liz said. "One busybody even accused me of not caring for my children. Can you imagine? How can people be like that? And she was a girl who'd been a very good friend of mine."
Matters got so bad that it began to upset Liz. "I didn't want to mention anything to Bill about it," she said. "He'd just get angry at those people. I didn't want to start a big fight among him and some of our friends."
Finally, one weekend afternoon, Bill returned from some errands to find Liz pale and nervous and near tears. She didn't want to tell what had happened, but he forced it out of her.
"Someone had called and had gone into a tirade about what a bad mother I was and how our children would go to eternal damnation and what a bad mother I was and how bad a father Bill was," recalled Liz.
"It was someone, a woman, who'd been a good friend of Bill's and mine ever since we'd met. I knew she was undergoing all kinds of mental problems. But I just couldn't make allowances this time.
"I had heard just the day before that she was spreading all kinds of nasty talk among our friends, telling them what awful parents and people Bill and I were. I just couldn't cope with her. I let her talk herself out. I didn't say a word. And when she finally appeared to have finished, I just hung up.
"It was just then that Bill walked in the door," Liz recalled. "Bill made me tell him what had happened. I guess it all just poured out of me. And, just about when I'd finished - Bill was getting more and more angry - the phone rang again. It was this so-called friend wanting to know why I'd hung up on her.
"She couldn't have picked a worse moment. Bill was furious. He talked to her like I've never heard him talk to anyone. I couldn't have done it. But I knew he was absolutely right.
"It was the most trying time of my life."
Liz, despite all that has happened, knows very clearly what she wants for her children. She and Bill are in complete agreement.
"I want my children to be appreciative of all religions," she said. "I want to expose them to various faiths, let them understand the differences and the reasons for them and, eventually, decide for themselves what it is they want to follow as their own religion. It doesn't have to be mine. It doesn't have to be Bill's.
"Of course, I'll bring them along with a belief in God and goodness. I'm already doing that with the older children. I think there is great goodness in all religions.
"Bill and I want our children to be good citizens and good people. We know that is impossible without a profound belief in God.
"Still, it's a very private matter. And we intend to pursue this privately, just as other people do."