The next year he gave notice that he intended to remain at home at least a few more years when he announced to me one day, “Mother, it’s time for a new house.”

     By then we’d already lived in our Encino home for eleven years. That hadn’t been very “California” of us; Los Angeles residents seemed to move every several years. So I was ready for a change of environment.

     Michael, LaToya, Janet Joe, and I looked at some houses. But we were shocked by the high prices. Los Angeles real estate, we learned, had appreciated a great deal since 1971.

     “Why move?” we concluded. “Rebuild, instead!”

     After rejecting one architect’s plans for a totally new house, we decided simply to remodel our existing house, and add a second story for the bedrooms.

     We liked the remodeling plans that a second architect drew up. Since he was also a contractor, we hired him to do the building as well. But to our dismay he tore the whole house down and poured a new foundation! “Do you call this remodeling’?” I asked him. We fired him.

     However, we kept his plans. We hired another builder to continue the work.

     While the house was under construction, Michael, LaToya, Janet, and I moved into a nearby condo that we own. Joe remained in a guesthouse on the property to help guard against trespassers.

     Still, as word got out about the construction, trespassers did occur when he wasn’t around. Some of the boys’ gold records were stolen from the guesthouse, as were various odds and ends.

     One day, Michael, LaToya, Janet, and I happened upon a looting in progress. I don’t know who was more scared, the looters or us. They took off in one direction, scaling a wall, while we fled in the opposite direction, back to our car.

     After that, we decided to hire a round-the-clock security staff. Security guards are a fixture at our house to this day.

     The inconvenience of having to relocate temporarily was worth it when, in 1983, our house was finally finished and we were able to move in.

     As Michael had offered to pay for the new construction, his touches abounded.

     It was his idea, for example, that the house be English Tudor in style. I’m not fond of Tudor’s -- I think they’re dark and spooky-looking -- but I went along with him when he agreed to have a lot of windows to bring in the light. The end result is one of the cheeriest Tudors ever built.

     As Michael was a big fan of Disneyland, with his own hotel suit at Disney World, many of his ideas were Disney-inspired. For example: his mini-version of Main Street, U.S.A., next to the garage, featuring a candy store and a storefront picture window housing his antique toy and doll collection; as well as the wooden signs containing such hand-carved Disneyesque messages as FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS WHEREVER THEY MAY LEAD.

     Michael was so fixated on Disney that he even wanted to reserve one of the downstairs rooms for a mini- "Pirates of the Caribbean” attraction! He went so far as to consult a Disney technician about the project. “There will be a pirate shootout, cannons, and guns,” he told a reporter at the time. “They’ll just scream at one another and I’ll have the lights, sounds, everything.”

     When I heard about this Disney “touch,” I put my foot down.

     “We just can’t have that, Michael,” I said. “It’s a little too much.”

     “Mother, I want it,” he insisted.

     “Please, we can’t. Let me make a dining room out of that room.”

     Michael finally gave in, but he was disappointed.

     He did, however, welcome two of the ideas I had for his bedroom.

     Since his room had such a high ceiling, I suggested we put in a second floor containing a second fireplace -- he had one downstairs -- and a second bathroom. Michael installed a barber’s chair in that bathroom for his hair cuts.

     Michael’s Murphy bed was also my brainstorm. “What are you going to sleep on if you get sick?” I fretted after Michael announced that he intended to sleep in a sleeping bag instead of a bed, so that he would have plenty of room to practice his dancing. The Murphy bed seemed the ideal compromise; when it folded into the wall, you didn’t even know it was there. All you saw was wood paneling.

     But the best idea I had for our new house was to have an upstairs den. I was afraid that since everyone was going to have his or her own bedroom and television we wouldn’t be spending enough time together as a family at night.

     The den was a hit from the first night. Besides watching TV, the children and I would play various board games, including my favorite, Scrabble, and a game Michael made up in which one player picks two letters and the other players try to think of a name of a celebrity that begins and ends with those letters.

     Other special features of the house included an upstairs gym and, downstairs, a game room stocked with the latest video games; a thirty-two-seat movie theatre; and, off the entry hall, the children’s trophy room. Michael took it upon himself to decorate the trophy room’s walls and cases with plaques, awards statuettes, gold and platinum records from around the world, magazine covers, keys to cities, picture discs .... and the room’s most impressive “award,” a six-foot-long diorama of Snow Whit and the Seven Dwarfs, presented to Michael by Walt Disney World in appreciation, I imagine, for all the free publicity that it had gotten from him.

     The trophy room was one room of many that Michael had a hand in decorating.

     By then he had become a serious collector of art, especially antique European statuary and ornate bronze and gold clocks. Many of the pieces found their way into the living room and entry-way.

     At first I was overwhelmed by them. “I feel like I’m living in a museum,” I told Michael.

     Michael was so proud of his pieces that he had pin lights installed in the ceiling, so that at night they could be lit up in an otherwise pitch-black room. He loved the effect, but to me it was scary.

     “Turn some lights on!” I’d exclaim when I was trying to find my way around downstairs.

     I wasn’t so sure about some of Michael’s other decorating ideas.

     In the downstairs den, for example, he placed a huge clock above the fireplace. That clock is going to overpower this room, I thought. In the same room, in one of the walls, he installed a stain-glass-window rendering of a castle. That window is going to make this room look like a church, I said to myself.

     Whenever I’d question Michael directly about one of his purchases, he would reply, “Trust me, Mother, it’s going to look real nice.” He’s so confident in his tastes. In the case of the stained-glass window, he was right; it is beautiful. When the sun is shining, the flowers and roof of the castle appear to be lit up.

     I know Michael thinks his decorating ideas are better than mine. He just couldn’t warm up to a painting of a little girl I had proudly hung in the dining room, for example. “Every time I look at that little girl, I feel that she’s looking back at me cockeyed,” he complained one day. I studied the girl’s face and, sure enough, she did have a slightly cross-eyed look.

     “You know, Michael, you’re right about that little girl’s eyes,” I said.

     Not long afterward, I noticed that the painting had been removed. In it’s place, Michael had hung a painting of a little boy.

     There was one decorating project of Michael’s that he was determined to keep a secret.

     “Don’t go up in the attic,” he kept warning me. The “attic” was the name we’d given to the two small rooms above the garage. Those were the rooms he was working on.

     “Well, I won’t,” I assured him. Even if I had wanted to nose around, which I did, I couldn’t. Michael kept the door locked.

     Michael let it be known that he was preparing a gift for the family in those rooms.

     One day, finally, Michael said, “I want the whole family over. We’re going to have a party. I want to show you what I’ve done to the attic.”

     Michael didn’t have to twist anyone’s arm to get them to show up. By then Joe and the other children were just as curious as I was about Michael’s mysterious project.

     Michael worked up to the last second on the attic.

     Even when we were all gathered in the dining room on the appointed day, snacking on appetizers that his chef, Rane, had prepared for us, Michael was still running around with his workers, trying to put the finishing touches on his special project. Something must have gone wrong because at one point I saw him in tears.

     Whatever the problem was, Michael apparently solved it. Finally, he appeared in the dining room looking much happier. Asking for everyone’s attention -- Michael is always such a showman -- he announced, “I’ve got a surprise for you.” With that, he silently led us outside and to the door leading up to the attic. Up the stairs we went, single file.

     I don’t know who was the last in line, but he or she must have been dying in anticipation. Everyone who reached the top of the stairs let out a whoop or a cry.

     What Michael had done was transform the two rooms into a photographic version of “This Is Your Life,” starring the Jackson family.

     “To take a picture,” read the message on the plaque that Michael had placed on the wall, “is to capture a moment, to stop time. To preserve the way we were, the way we are. They say a picture speaks a thousand words. So with these photographs I will recreate some wonderful, magical moments in our lives .... ”

     Michael had gotten the photos from my personal collection. One day when I wasn’t around, he stole into my room, opened the suitcase in which I stored them, and helped himself. The blowups of the shots filled every available inch of wall space.

     REBBIE: We were all very amazed, very touched. Michael was watching us to see our reactions; it was obviously so important to him that we liked what he’d done.

     By 1985 Michael had also begun to furnish the attic with special personal effects, turning it into a combination Jackson family gallery -- Michael Jackson museum.

     Among the memories was a collection of his spangly tour jackets, each mounted in a five-foot-tall Plexiglas case and labeled with the occasion(s) for which it was worn -- i.e., “Victory Tour, Kansas City, Opening Night,” “Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame,” and “President Regan Visit to White House/Grammys 1984.”

     In another Plexiglas case, Michael placed a number of his trademark single sequined gloves.

     But the most eye-catching “exhibit” had to be his collection of Michael Jackson wax statues -- three of them. One had been presented to Michael by the people at The Guinness Book of World Records, one by the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, California, and the third by Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum in London. They were positioned in various corners, giving visitors the distinct feeling that they were not alone as they toured the two rooms.

     Michael enjoyed being in the attic so much that he put a stereo system and his portable dance floor up there so that he could dance amid the memories. The attic became one of his retreats after he returned home following the Victory tour.

     But so, too, did his two-story bedroom, and the game room, movie theatre, and gym.

     “I’m putting all this stuff in,” he said during the house’s construction, “so I will never have to leave and go out there.”

     When Michael and I visited Disney World during one of the breaks in the “Victory” tour, I saw firsthand how difficult it was for him to venture into public as a superstar. Word that Michael Jackson was there that day spread around the huge amusement park like wildfire. Before we knew it we were surrounded by a sea of people. Finally, the Disney World security staff had to map a route for us to get out of the park.

     Michael only had to look at the closed-circuit camera to be reminded that any time he chose to leave the house he risked being pounced upon.

     When Michael did brave it, he’d occasionally resort to disguises. By 1985 he had collected an array of appearance-altering: funny teeth that show a lot of gum, fake moustaches, glasses, hats, pads to stick in his cheeks and -- his pride and joy -- an inflatable fat suit.

     One day I had been startled in the kitchen by a chunky-looking man with a moustache and hat.

     “What are you doing in here!?” I demanded. I assumed that the person was a fan who had somehow managed to evade our security force.

     “Mother, you don’t know who I am!” a familiar voice squealed in delight.

     That was my introduction to Michael’s fat suit.

     Having been baptized a Jehovah’s Witness in 1983, Michael started wearing the fat suit along with a few of his facial disguises when he did field service. He soon found out, however, that not everyone was as easily fooled as his mother.

     “You know who still recognises me?” Michael said one day, in awe. “The children.”

     Michael usually drove himself to Kingdom Hall and his field-service routes. He’d finally gotten his driver’s license in 1981, at the age of twenty-three. Initially he didn’t want to learn to drive.

     “I’ll just get a chauffeur when I want to go out,” he said when I began nagging him about getting his license.

     “But suppose you’re someplace and your chauffeur gets sick?” I reasoned.

     Finally, he relented and took some lessons.

     After he began driving, Michael decided that he enjoyed being behind the wheel, after all. The first time he took me for a ride, he ventured up to Mulholland Drive, a winding road in the Hollywood Hills. It was a hair-raising experience.

     “I’ve got a crook in my neck and my feet hurt,” LaToya, who was also in the car, complained afterward. “I was putting on the brakes’ with my feet and ‘steering’ the car with my neck trying to keep it on the road. I was so scared!”

     It was white-knuckle time for me, too. Michael drove fast. He also had the same habit that I have: driving right up to the car in front and stopping on a dime.

     After that, Michael started going out by himself.

     “You shouldn’t go out alone,” I told him. “Get Bill Bray to go with you.”

     But Michael wouldn’t hear of it. “I’m tired of having security with me every time I go someplace.”

     When he began driving, Michael told me that he would never go on freeways; he thought they were too dangerous. So I was shocked one day when Michael suddenly drove us onto a freeway ramp.

     “Wait a minute, Michael, what are you doing?”

     “I can drive the freeways now!” he said, laughing. He had changed his mind about freeways when he saw just how long it took him to get around Los Angeles without using them.

     Michael’s first car was a Mercedes. Then he bought a black Rolls-Royce, which he later painted blue.

     It was in the Rolls that he was stopped one day -- not for fans outside the gate, but by a Van Nuys policeman.

     “This looks like a stolen car,” the officer said. He didn’t recognise Michael, who wasn’t wearing a disguise that day.

     Michael explained politely that he did, indeed, own the car. But the officer went ahead and ran a check on the car, and found that Michael had a ticket outstanding.

     The next thing Michael knew, he was sitting in the Van Nuys jail.

     Bill Bray bailed him out. I didn’t even know what had happened until he came home.

     “You should have asked the officer what a stolen car looks like,” I said after he related his adventure. Perhaps the cop had felt that a young black man didn’t belong behind the wheel of a Rolls.

     But Michael was not only put out by the experience, he professed to be happy.

     “I got to see how it felt to be in jail!” he exclaimed.

     After seeing Michael work hard for several years, I was pleased that he attempted to strike more of a balance between work and play after the Victory tour, even though most of his play had to take place on our property because of his security concerns.

     Long an animal lover, Michael spent time with his menagerie, which included Louis and Lola, the llamas; Prince and Princess, the deer; and Winter and Spring, the peacocks. For a while, Michael also had a giraffe, Jabbar, but the neighbors complained, and Michael was forced to board him.

     There was one “pet” that adopted Michael. One day he was eating a pecan in the yard when a blue jay swooped down and took the nut out of his hand! Michael couldn’t believe it so he ran into the house for more pecans, held them out, and “Jay” grabbed them, too. From then on Michael and Jay were friends, and Michael would show him off to guests.

     The pet that Michael probably doted on the most, however, was Bubbles, his chimpanzee. He had been looking for a chimp for a long time. He was particular -- he wanted one of the rare white-faced chimps.

     Finally, Bob Dunn, who raises and trains chimps, found Bubbles for Michael in 1983. Michael got him as a baby, and he was something to see with his little white face. He looked like an imitation chimp, not real.

     For the first year of Bubbles’ life, he lived with Bob. But Bubbles would come over to our house for visits. He would sleep in a crib in Michael’s room.

     It was eerie for me to watch Bubbles. He would twirl around on the floor with his eyes closed, just like a child. He was smart, too. I remember one day when Michael scolded him about picking some small object of a table. Bubbles retreated to the corner of the room, but he still had his mind on that object. While Michael turned his attention to something else, Bubbles inched his way back toward the table, watching Michael all the time. Suddenly, he grabbed the object and ran back to the corner of the room with it, so proud of himself. He’s too much like people, I thought as I watched him.

     While Michael loved relaxing with his pets, he also enjoyed playing the host. By then he’d more or less given up on making friends his own age. More and more he was drawn to people younger and older than himself.

     Michael summed up his love for kids in a few words: “They don’t wear masks.”

     I’m sure that one of the reasons why he wanted to have a candy store complete with soda fountain was for the entertainment of his youthful guests. Among them were seriously ill or dying fans who’d written to him. The day before a visit from one of them, Michael would call the child himself and take his or her “order” for lunch and a movie.

     No matter how ill that child might be, Michael would manage to remain cheerful and upbeat during his or her visit; he’s strong that way. Sometimes, after the child had left, however, Michael would let the tears out that he had been holding in.

     If he had a spare hour, Michael also enjoyed visiting with the young fans who congregated outside our gate.

     One day, one of our security guards handed Michael three large envelopes that a schoolgirl foursome had brought to the house. When Michael opened the envelopes, he was amazed to see the words, “I love you, Michael Jackson” scribbled ten thousand times on one hundred eighty-one sheets of notebook paper.

     The next thing the girls knew, they were sitting in our living room with Michael. He told them how touched he was by what they’d done, asked them how long it took them to do it (seventy-two hours), and gave them a tour of the trophy room, photo gallery, and backyard.

     As for his interest in accomplished older people, Michael loved playing the student. Still fascinated with the movies, he especially enjoyed the company of actors.

     One of the first movie stars he became friends with was Jane Fonda. Jane invited him to the set of On Golden Pond in 1981, and, according to Michael, “We’d just talk, talk, talk about everything .... politics, philosophers, racism, Vietnam, acting.” Another friend he made at the time was Katherine Hepburn. Michael visited her at her New York apartment, and she attended one of the Jacksons’ Madison Square Garden concerts.

     Michael eventually became close to a number of other actors, including Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Fred Astaire, and Gregory Peck. All of them were guests at one or more of Michael’s star-studded dinner parties.

     Before Michael hosted his first party, I was a little nervous for him. He’s never done this before, I thought. I wonder how it’s going to go. But Michael turned out to be a good host.

     Michael planned his dinners carefully. After the guests arrived, he’d show them to the living room, where he’d serve juice and wine. Then he’d take them on a tour of the grounds, after which they’d all sit down to a dinner prepared by his chef (I’m sure Michael was now happy that we had a formal dining room instead of a “Pirates of the Caribbean” battle scene). Following dinner, Michael would screen a first-run movie.

     Once the power went off in the middle of the screening, and Michael was so embarrassed that, the next day, he had Bill Bray buy a generator so that it wouldn’t happen again. That was the one and only problem with any of his parties that I recall.

     “Mother, you’re more than welcome to join us,” Michael would make a point of telling me on the day he was hosting a dinner. But I’d always decline. In fact, I’d make sure that I was safely upstairs in my room and in bed before the first guest arrived. That’s how shy I am.

     But one night I wasn’t even “safe” upstairs. Without warning, Michael walked in with Yul Brynner! I was so angry with him, but, of course, I didn’t show it in front of Mr. Brynner.

     As it turned out, Yul Brynner was very nice. After they left I was angrier with myself for being so shy than I was with Michael for having surprised me.

     Michael is amazing. I’m not saying that because he’s my son; I really do find him that way. When he is with a celebrity, he “grows up” to their age. But then he has his candy store and his doll collection, and he rolls around on the floor with his nieces and nephews as if he were a child. He’s young. He’s old. As I said, he’s amazing.

     I believe that Michael had the room to be more sociable during those years because for much of that time he was doing “quiet” work, mainly writing and business.

     In 1985, he collaborated with Lionel Richie on “We Are the World” and also participated in its all-star recording. Income from the song aided the famine relief effort in Ethiopia. That year, Michael also concluded the purchase of the ATV Music catalogue, featuring two hundred fifty-one John Lennon -- Paul McCartney collaborations.

     Ironically, it was Paul who first gave Michael the idea of investing in fine songs in addition to fine art. One day during Michael’s visit with Paul in Scotland, Paul handed him a book containing all his copyrights, among them Buddy Holly’s classics. Michael was amazed at Paul’s collection .... and inspired.

     Paul had wanted to but the ATV catalogue as well, but he dropped out of the bidding long before Michael. I’m sorry if my son’s purchase of ATV meant that he and Paul could no longer be friends.

     I’m sure that his conversations with his celebrity friend and other successful people played a role in Michael’s decision to buy the Beatles’ catalogue. Investing is one of his favorite topics. “Joe Louis made a lot of money and he died broke. I don’t want to happen to me,” I recall Michael telling John H. Johnson, the chairman of Johnson Publications, publisher of Ebony and Jet. “Would you share with me what your secret has been in keeping your business successful for years?”

     By 1986, Michael’s work began to take him out of the house more. He collaborated with Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas on Captain Eo, the fifteen-minute 3-D film that became Disneyland’s and Disney World’s newest attraction in September. Michael starred as the young hero who brings light and beauty to a planet run by a villainous queen.

     In August, he entered the studio to record his next album.

     Writing songs for follow-up to the best-selling album of all time had been a very serious, ongoing project of Michael’s since the end of the Victory tour. I helped inspire one of the tunes.

     “I want you to write a song with a shuffling kind of rhythm,” I said to him one day. I tried to sing to him what I heard in my head.

     “I think I know what you mean,” he said, nodding.

     A week or two later Michael played me the song he’d written.

     “That’s exactly what I was talking about!” I exclaimed.

     “I know.” Michael smiled.

     The song was “The Way You Make Me Feel.”

     However, Michael refused to play me any of the other songs he had in the works.

     “Please let me hear, please let me hear,” I’d beg him.

     “No, Mother, wait until the album comes out,” Michael would reply. “Be surprised.”