"Look What's Happening To Me!"

This article appeared in the November 1961 issue of Motion Picture Magazine

( MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE EDITOR'S NOTE: When Sandra Dee's baby is born, approximately the end of this year, it will be a great-great grandchild, the first for a 92-year-old man who lives in Bayonne, New Jersey. Although there are more than 70 years between them, there is and always has been a close bond between Sandra and her great-grandfather, in whose rambling house Sandra lived for three years when she was a child. Here she writes him about the coming event.)
Dear Granddaddy:

I'm sorry I haven't written before, but this business of expecting a baby is fantastic. The doctor keeps telling me to slow down, but you of all people know how hard that is for me. Every time I turn around it seems there's more stuff for me to do. So I'm running.
I wish I could have been the one to tell you the big news instead of your hearing it via the grapevine through Mama. She doesn't have anything to do but buy clothes for the baby, and worry about me running around too much.
Anyway, I think it's sensational that I'm the one who's going to make you a great-great grandfather. And if you'd like to sit down in your favorite armchair, I'll tell you all about it.
I've got to admit I didn't plan it this way. Bobby and I wanted a family, but we didn't figure it'd happen so fast. As a matter of fact, he told me I was going to have a baby, which is a switch, to say the least.
The way it happened: You remember I had chicken pox in the spring? Well, the doctor kept coming over to see how fast the spots were disappearing, and although they were doing a fade-out like they should have, my blood pressure shot up like a rocket. So the doctor scratched his head--which is a gesture I wish doctors wouldn't do because I'm not cheered up when I know they don't know what's the matter. He figured a blood test was in order, and after I'd had that and nobody knew any more than they knew before, another doctor suggested a rabbit test.
Well, I took the rabbit test and then forgot all about it, and that night Bobby and I took Mama out for dinner. We were sitting there in the restaurant when Bobby remembered the test and went to a phone to find out what the doctor had to report. I almost died on the spot when he came back. He weaved his way through the tables, looking as though somebody had just handed him a mail sack full of diamonds. That was all right, except that he was yelling, "I'm going to be a father! I'm going to be a father!"
Which fixed it so that half the customers in the restaurant knew I was going to have a baby before I did!
Now, of course, I'm being interviewed about what it's like to expect a baby. They ask me the craziest questions. Like "What do you do about your grooming these days?" So I tell 'em I don't groom much differently from the way I used to groom.
Then they ask me, isn't it a joy to expect a baby? Well, sure it is, but only to think about. To have it is something else again. I'm not at all like I used to be. Now, you're not supposed to worry about this because the doctor says it happens all the time with women--but I get so depressed. If Bobby turns a doorknob the wrong way I fly into tears. And then he gets worried and wants to know what's the matter and I say nothing and that's the silly part of it. I say all this in between sobs, and then two minutes later I'm fine again. And somebody told me today that women get fits of depression AFTER the baby's born! Ye gads, I don't know if I'll get through all this joy.
People are always telling me things, forty different things. I don't know what to expect, really, because this is my first baby. But they keep telling me not to put my arms over my head--and not to look at something or other or the baby will be born cross-eyed or something. And they ask me if my feet have started to swell (THAT'll be nice!), and then look dumbstruck when I say I wake up with a headache. It's a joy, Granddaddy, it really is, but it's pretty confusing, too.
The question that really gets me is the one about what am I doing to pass the time. Pass the time! Take today for example, and today's been like every other day. I felt fine until I put my feet on the floor, but I couldn't go back to bed because I had an appointment with the doctor. I don't like to go alone, so I picked up Mama, which means going around all those curves on Benedict Canyon to get to her house. And then after I saw the doctor I took Mama home around the Benedict curves and then drove over the Coldwater Canyon curves to the studio, because I had an interview and a whole flock of things to do there. And then I met Bobby and we went to look at a couple of houses. In Bel-Air, where it's all curves.
I wish we could find a house. This one we rent now has only one bedroom, which is pretty silly when you consider there's a whole acre of ground and the house is huge but there isn't a decent place to put a baby. We've been looking for a house to buy for two months now, and haven't had any luck. Me, all I want is at least two bedrooms, but Bobby's got this idea about having two acres of land. I don't know what he wants it for, but he's set on being sort of a country squire to make up for his boyhood in New York. For all I know, he'll be planting alfalfa and riding around the estate with the baby on the saddle in front of him. But the point is, Granddaddy, that there just aren't two acres left out here. You could find two acres easier in Bayonne than you could anywhere around Los Angeles. So wish us luck, because I don't cotton to the idea of moving into a new house just before or just after the baby's born.
My doctor lectures me just like you used to do. He keeps telling me to take naps, but somehow there's never time for a nap. I can't sit still for more than twenty minutes, unless I'm lying around the pool on week ends. The doctor says that isn't enough. Every time I see him he says, "Now, young lady, when you leave this office, walk out-don't run!" So I mince around until I get outside his door, and then I race for the elevator because I'm always late for an appointment. He got me today, though. I had just started to blast down the hall when I felt somebody grab my dress in the back, and there he was, grinning at me. "Aha!" says he. "I thought so. Now I'm going to stand here while you walk to the elevator."
He knows me pretty well, I guess. He even knows about the popcorn. I'm not supposed to have it, but there's a candy store about two blocks from the doctor's office that makes the greatest popcorn I ever ate. And I just have to have it. So I sneak down after almost every visit, and the next time I see him I get on the scale and he says, "Been eating popcorn again, huh?" I didn't get any today because there wasn't time, and right this minute I would give a hundred dollars for some popcorn.
But I'm being pretty sensible, I really am. I don't eat those hot peppers any more. I used to buy jars of them and hide them around the house, but now they're ancient history because of the spices. I have to keep away from starch and I didn't think it would bother me, but for the first time in my life I think of bread as the staff of life. What I'd give for bread--and popcorn, and ham and bacon, and salad dressing! I had a luncheon interview the other day with a Frenchwoman and when I dug into that plain lettuce she kept saying, "But how can you eat it without anything on it?" I don't know how I can, but I do it. So I'm really being very good. Once in a while we go out to dinner and then I throw the diet to the winds and eat myself silly, but the next day I go right back on it again and it doesn't seem to make much difference.
I'll tell you about the clothes for the baby--maybe it'll get my mind off food. For the first time in my life I go shopping and come home without anything for myself. Mama, too, believe it or not. I guess every saleslady in every infant department in Los Angeles knows us both by now. We leave stores with the back of the car piled high with blue this and blue that.
It's got to be a boy, of course. Bobby wants a boy, but I'm expiring for a boy. If it's a girl I guess she can wear blue diapers, but I don't know what I'll do with the Eton suit. Keep it, I guess, until we have a boy. If this one's a girl, you can count on being a great-grandfather at least twice, because we'll go on having more until we get ourselves a son. Please don't think a girl won't be welcome--in fact, we have a name for her, Tracy Elizabeth. But we're still trying to decide on a name for a boy. I want him to be Robert Junior, but Bobby absolutely refuses to have a son named after him. Which, much as I want the baby to be a junior, is kind of nice because it shows Bobby isn't conceited. But it leaves us without a name, and so far the only thing we can agree on is Jeffrey. With a J.
I'll bet at this point you're sitting there and wondering how I could ever be a mother. You still think of me as that awful little kid who used to slam doors instead of closing them. Well, I've grown up, I really have, but just between you and me, I can't picture myself as a mother either. I guess I'll take it all in stride, but the idea of jabbing safety pins anywhere near a baby makes me nervous even now.
Bobby will be a much better father than I'll be a mother. He's much more sensible than I am, and he's crazy about kids. We'll be driving along and he'll see a little boy playing ball and he'll roll down the window to say hello. Once he even stopped and helped a little kid across a street.
You might even say he's going through this with me. He's so worried I'll do something wrong that he gets hysterical. If I put one toe in the pool he insists I'll get pneumonia. And one time I tripped and fell and he worried about it all day. He wanted me to lie down and then he wanted me to see the doctor. I thought that was silly so I didn't go, and by afternoon Bobby was feeling awful. He had a backache and felt sick-but I felt great. Finally, at 7:30 that night we were on our way out to dinner and he put his foot down and said I had to see the doctor right away. So he drove me over to the doctor's house. And now, whenever I call the doctor for an appointment, he teases me and wants to know if I'd like to come for dinner, too.
You can tell you don't have to worry about me. Mr. Darin's going to see to it that this whole proposition is handled right. I've read Dr. Spock from cover to cover, and I take my pills and feel just great except when I get those silly blues. And on top of it all I won't have to work for just ages. They have one lined up for me - In The Wrong Rain and already I'm wondering how I'll ever be able to leave Jeffrey in the early dawn and take off for work all day.
Anyway, he's due about the end of the year, and I'm hoping I can give you a Christmas present by having him before December 25th. But I promise you one thing, and I mean this - just as soon as he's old enough, and I have time away from work, I'm going to bring him to Bayonne and put him in your lap. Who knows - maybe time will bring Bobby and me a whole bunch of kids, and they'll all be climbing out of the window of my old room and onto the porch, and you'll have to holler at them the way used to at me.
This has been a regular tome, but I'll let you rest your eyes now because I'm going to go into Beverly Hills and get some of that popcorn. I can't go without it another minute.

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