I am a free-lance singer and writer trying to practice "saying what I mean, meaning what I say, and not saying it mean." My goal on this blog is to provoke conversations in which we can be real in sharing with one another -- free to express our points of view, even when we differ. Just today, I posted MY CYBER LINKS under that label (see adjacent list). I am available, and I love it when we get to encourage one another!
I took a quiz recently on Facebook to see what flower I would be if I were a flower. Its results concluded that I would be a rose: You are an eternal romantic and a firm believer in the power of love, which makes you a thoughtful and caring friend. You may have a few thorns, but there's lots of beauty in you. You are grounded and balanced -- you're able to manage the serious issues in your life with fun. You have a noble and sophisticated bearing and a healthy senses of humor. You have the best of both worlds!
But really? I'm a Sonflower! And as such, I truly do have the best of both worlds.
Look what the Book of Daniel tells us, perhaps for such a time as this:
He shall cause deceit
to prosper under his rule, and he shall exalt himself in his heart. He shall
destroy many in their prosperity… but he shall be broken without human means.
When her mother was dying, Joan could not afford the cost of transportation to Staten Island. “Who can’t afford $25?” was her sister Audrey’s comment. Joan finally saved enough money to get there, but her sister was nasty. Joan’s niece apologized on her mother’s behalf, but Joan just said, “She’s been working hard.”
Joan did not realize until many years later that her mother had been an active alcoholic. “Due to my mother’s alcoholism, she was not charitable to me. Consequently, my family did not talk to me, and it was at least twenty-five years before I heard from anyone.”When her mother passed in 1989, Joan could not attend the funeral. She was in the hospital having a breast removed. A year or so later, Joan’s sister called just to say hello. Joan says, “We had many conversations, which was amazing, given all those years of misunderstanding between us.”
By 1997, Joan’s son, Rick, had joined the Navy, so Joan was living all alone in the house on Long Island. Rick’s first and last station was in Connecticut, and he didn’t want to move back to Long Island, so Joan decided to re-locate to the Connecticut shoreline. She didn’t know a solitary soul in the area; she couldn’t drive due to her epilepsy; and there weren’t any buses on the shoreline at the time to get people around by public transportation. It was her son Rick who was quick to suggest, “All you need is one meeting, and you’ll be all set.”So he drove Joan to a Westbrook meeting, where she asked if anyone lived in Deep River. Four hands went up. From then on, she was able to get rides to and from her meetings. Later, Joan recalls, “I received a pep talk from a gal in program about driving. I tried it, and six years ago got my license back, so I am driving again after thirty years.”
Way back when Joan was really having problems, program folks had suggested that she pray for her husband, but she had been reluctant. Initially she said, “I’m not going to,” and she refused for quite awhile. But she eventually started to pray for George, and ended up with no ill feelings toward him. “Before George passed away in 2001, he and his wife came over to my house to look at some old photos. Rick was there, too. At the end of our visit, George and I gave each other a warm program hug and kiss.”At a later date, George said to his son, “If it wasn’t for the booze, I’ll bet your mom and I would still be together.”
At the funeral for George in 2001, Rick and Joan stayed at his home. Joan says she was in the living room with his wife, talking. Rick was outside, when he suddenly came running in from the back porch, saying, “Mom!’Come out fast!There’s something I’ve got to show you!” When Joan got outside, she could hardly believe her eyes. There in the sky was a large, beautiful rainbow in vivid, bold colors -- almost close enough to touch. Joan says, “I had a gigantic awakening that day.”
The rainbow is just one of many reasons why Joan so firmly believes that, eventually, something good comes out of every bad. There are other reasons, many others, including some recent examples that help to prove her point:
One is the miracle of reconciliation between Joan and her two eldest children who disappeared from her life in 1977. Today, Joan reports, “John and Barbara have both crept back into my life.” John now calls her every Sunday, and Barbara talks with her very often. Joan says, “I’m finding out about her -- things I didn’t know about her family life.” This is the kind of thing that Joan calls “a gigantic.” It’s what she means when she says God answers prayers and that good comes of every bad, eventually.
Another example is the healing of the 25-year rift between Joan and her siblings. Joan’s sister ended up with a diagnosis of terminal cancer, so Joan was on the phone many times with Audrey’s family and with her brother as well. Joan says, “It was a gigantic answer to my prayers for family unity.”Again, light overcame darkness, good came out of bad.
Recently came a day when Joan’s brother called with an invitation to his daughter’s wedding. Joan attended the festivities with Rick, who drove her round-trip, as he lives conveniently near Joan’s house. Joan says a beautiful compliment came from her brother, when he asked how she manages to stay so peaceful and serene. Joan replied, “Saying my prayers, attending meetings, and reading Twelve-Step literature every day.”
In the eyes of others, Joan’s serenity is also due to another fact: she has learned to view things differently. “Program has taught me to use my spiritual eyes,” she says. She now sees the need to pray for the helping hand of God and she recognizes it when it comes.
Joan is deeply grateful to God, who has helped everything fall into place. For so many years, she endured frightening storms of epileptic seizures and spousal abuse. In those days, Joan says, her entire life seemed hopeless and grim. “Things were so black for so long,” she says. And then, she pauses and looks up to say:
“You have to weather the storm to appreciate the rainbow.”
Afterword
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I was discussing this painting with Joan just the other day. She had given me permission to post her story on my blog, and I had chosen this image, which is entitled Bird of Paradise. She said, “This painting is perfect because, for so much of my life, everything was jet black.” And then, last Saturday night, she went to bed and never woke up. We buried her yesterday.
It is hard to comprehend that she is no longer sitting here among us, sharing her experience, strength and hope by the grace of God. But we are grateful -- grateful that she passed so gently and peacefully from this world into the next; grateful to know that we know where she is now: fully in the Light, completely free like the Bird of Paradise.
George tended to come and go from the house, but his visits were as volatile as always.He was still cornering Joan-- one time in the kitchen with a hot iron. Joan says he would often clamp his hands around her neck, and that really frightened the boys. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when he bound her down on the kitchen table with his hands around her throat, yelling, “God damn you -- I have to get you under control!”Joan says, “That was it -- I had HAD it. By then I had plenty of Twelve-Step meetings under my belt, so I was strong enough, and I filed for divorce.”
When it came time for the divorce, George was fighting Joan all the way. She recalls that he took the charge cards and cut them up, which left her without any money. The boys were very helpful to Joan as the divorce loomed. “The boys were heavily involved in program, and we would have mini-meetings in our kitchen. In general, it was all program talk, and the boys would point out many positives that I couldn’t see.”They talked a lot about the divorce proceedings, and Joan would explain how their dad might win custody, but if she won custody of them, they would have a hard time. Joan says, “I could not drive or get a job due to active epilepsy. At that time, no one would hire me. We prayed hard, and we Let Go and Let God.”
The divorce became final on a Friday in 1979, and George won both the house and custody of the children (this with five Orders of Protection against him in the past). Joan says, “We didn’t create an uproar. We simply accepted the things we could not change.”Two days later, her former spouse offered the boys back. Joan said yes, but wondered where they would live. George said she could use the house until their youngest son was eighteen.
Joan says, “It was just myself and the two younger boys, and we were poor, but Rick today says, “I never felt poor.”One Thanksgiving, Joan and her boys had absolutely no money, so they decided to have franks and beans instead of the traditional (expensive) meal. The week before Thanksgiving, one of the gals in program came over with a basket of everything and explained that she used to have to steal food when she was young. Several days later, someone from the church brought yet another turkey. Son Tom said, “Mom, look what next door has: a Cadillac. Look what across the street has. But we got two free dinners, and we didn’t have to ask for anything. We better say some prayers of thanksgiving.”
Diligently that same son had been saving up to buy a car. Joan says, “God helped him get the car by bringing my aunt to Tom with a car she wanted to sell. It was the type Tom wanted, and the price was right, so he wound up buying it. Unfortunately, it was winter when he started working on the car during a very cold afternoon. He wanted to check the lights and the wiring, so he turned the car on and it was running , but the garage door was down. Joan says, “Ricky and I were in the house, preparing to paint the living room with Tom, who was always punctual. When Tommy wasn’t showing up, Rick went out to the garage and found him -- Tommy, who’d had no idea about carbon monoxide or accidental asphyxiation.”
At the funeral for Tom, Joan’s former sister-in-laws appeared, expecting Joan to be unwelcoming since their family had severed relations with Joan long before she divorced George. Instead, Joan opened her arms wide, later learning why her in-laws had severed relations for such a long time. “They had thought I was lying about George,” Joan says. “His mother simply could not believe that her son would ever behave as I was describing, plus George had been telling all kinds of negatives about me -- how I couldn’t stand them and remarks like that.”At one point, her father-in-law told Joan never to call their house again.
Reconciliation with George’s family came to Joan through the unspeakable tragedy of young Tom’s death. Another reconciliation occurred right before her youngest son, Rick, was to turn eighteen.Remember that deal after the divorce about Joan living in the house only until then?“Well,” says Joan, “the summer before Rick turned eighteen, George sold me the house for one dollar.”
The house was located on the water, and they had a bulkhead (a retaining wall between the water and the land) where you could dock a boat. The bulkhead was breaking, and they needed a new one, but the price was prohibitive. Then, weeks after the estimate was quoted, Joan’s mother passed away, leaving Joan an amount of money -- the exact amount that was needed for the bulkhead. Joan says, “The way everything kept falling into place may sound phony, but it really happened.”
Twenty-one years after marrying George, Joan was listening to a radio program about the Twelve-Step program. She made a phone call to the number that was given, and the person at the other end of the phone said, “Where do you live?”When Joan replied that she lived in Oceanside, the woman said, “I’m going to my Oceanside meeting tonight if you’d like a ride.”Joan agreed, and so she attended her first meeting. She remembers being told, “For your own sake, you have to come back.” To Joan, that sounded like her mother, so she obeyed, getting rides whenever she could for both herself and her five-year old son, Rick.
That was in 1971. Fortunately for Joan, she lived on Long Island, where public transportation allowed her to attend a 10 a.m. meeting that she could reach by bus. Joan says, “I was still dealing with constant seizures, and with Ricky, who was only five at the time.”She ended up telling the bus driver about the possibility of her convulsions, and he said, “If anything happens, I’ll take care of you.”So off Joan would go every Wednesday morning, taking Ricky along with her to the meetings. She says there was always more than one child playing in the corner. Having children in the meetings never bothered anyone.
Joan says, “In those days, it wasn’t that easy to get an Order of Protection against someone, but I did. “ In 1976, George started attending Twelve-Step meetings, but his abuse continued and actually worsened, so Joan was getting one Order of Protection after another. Over the years, George was issued five all told.
Recognizing that Joan was in turmoil, a Twelve-Step friend named Patty told Joan after a meeting that if she ever needed a place to sleep, even in the middle of the night, to call her. Not two weeks later, Joan was in trouble with an episode of drunkenness and domestic violence. The police were contacted and they arrived quickly.
“George was naked and stoned, but the police couldn’t do anything because our Order of Protection had expired,” Joan recalls. “After the police left, the kids hastily got dressed, and we shot outside to hide under the bushes. I had no car because of the epilepsy, and I really didn’t know what to do.”Suddenly in the darkness, the police car reappeared. Joan and the kids came out from under the bushes, and the officer asked if there was any place they could go. He drove them over to Patty’s house, where they arrived at 2 a.m.
One time, after George had been banned from the house, Barbara ran away at the age of 16. “I was due to go to a Step Meeting that night, so I called the gal who drove me to let her know I couldn’t go (Barbara was my babysitter). I was told that I had to get to the meeting -- that I needed meetings -- so I went. The group took one look at me and changed the topic to Live and Let Live. I did not share that night, but they directed the meeting to me. I went home, and I went to sleep. Barbara came home a few weeks later.”
Tom and Rick were very close. Joan says, “They were like Siamese twins, and they started getting involved in the Twelve Steps themselves because this is a family disease.”The boys and Joan shared a lot in common because of all they were learning in their Twelve-Step meetings. The boys had seen the abuse that came from drinking, and the abuse continued, even after George had been in the program for three years.
As if there was not turmoil enough in the home, now Joan’s son, Johnny, started being verbally abusive to Rick, who was now ten years old. Joan heard on the radio about Protective Services, so she called, and they came. “After hearing my case,” Joan remembers, “they suggested that I get an Order of Protection against Johnny. I did.”
Johnny was issued an Order of Protection the same week his sister, Barbara, got married. So they both left, and George was already out of the house, so Joan found herself with just the two youngest boys. It was 1977, and now young Rick began expressing his rage through violence -- throwing things and punching holes in walls. Program people encouraged Joan to leave him alone and let him work out his anger and frustrations. She did, and Rick did keep attending his Twelve-Step meetings faithfully. Still, there was a lot of damage and wreckage in the home. Several weeks after his outbreaks, Rick came home one night and gave Joan a different kind of hug and kiss. He looked around the house and said, “I’ve think I’ve got some work to do around here, don’t I, Ma?”Joan says, “He repaired every bit of damage he had done.”
This is a painting by Veronica Benning, whose work is awesome. Google her!
As with the last time I posted GOD CAN in a series of blogs, feel free to contact me if you get antsy and want to read the whole thing. I can e-mail the full manuscript, which is under ten pages, or you can just wait on pins and needles for the next installment. Here goes with the first of four:
Joan’s Story - Part 1. Joan has been in Twelve-Step recovery for thirty-nine years now, but it took her almost as many years to find her way into The Twelve-Steps. For most of her life, she says, “everything was jet black” -- especially as her husband’s alcoholism spiraled into violent abuse. Joan’s story is full of frightening and dangerous experiences. She is living proof of something she very often says: “Out of every bad comes a good.”
Her childhood was uneventful enough, born in 1931 to parents who lived in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn, New York. Joan says she can’t remember too much about her childhood. There is a hint that things weren’t altogether wonderful, because when she recalls meeting her future husband, she says, “All went well. I really liked his family -- they were very warm -- not like mine.”
She had met George while working at AT&T, after graduating from St. Brendan’s in 1948. The two were married in 1950 and moved into a furnished apartment for which they paid $65 per month. Both Joan and George were working for the telephone company, and after being married for just six months, managed to buy a house in Oceanside, Long Island. Joan’s first pregnancy had been a miscarriage, so when she became pregnant again, she stopped working and stayed at home. Son Johnny was born in 1952.
According to Joan, “All was well for four years -- in fact, it was terrific until exceedingly stressful events surrounded the birth of our second child in 1955.” Apparently this delivery involved some “high drama” -- including false labor -- before the baby, Barbara, finally arrived.
Two weeks later, Joan had her first epileptic seizure, which threw her into a convulsion while she was ironing. She ended up hitting her head on the ironing board with the iron on (and it ended up burning a hole in the brand-new carpet). Fortunately George was home when this happened, so he was able to prevent what could have potentially become a disaster. Unfortunately, however, Joan’s epilepsy emerged ferociously, with convulsions that were severe and constant. She was having five to ten seizures every day, this with a two-year old and a brand-new infant in her care.
George, quite understandably, was a wreck. The town in which they lived was really quite far into the country on Long Island and a lengthy distance from the hospitals of New York City. Joan says the medical situation sent George into anxiety. “He asked me if he could have a beer, and I said ‘Sure, why not?’ but that opened the door. I had no idea what alcoholism was.”
George became more than an occasional beer drinker as he was receiving some relief from the beer. And then alcoholism crept in. George would often say, “I do not want to turn out like my Dad.” But he became not only increasingly active in his drinking, but also what Joan describes as “very controlling” and abusive in physical ways.Most of the abuse was sexual. She was trying to say no, but her husband was not taking “no” for an answer.
In between Barbara’s birth in 1955 and the birth of their next child, Tom, in 1962, there were plenty of miscarriages. One occurred when George knocked Joan down the stairs (she lost that baby at six months). By the time the fourth child, Rick, was born in 1966, Joan had been pregnant ten times. Altogether, she had ten pregnancies. Four produced living children; one baby was lost after she fell down the stairs; the other five were miscarriages. Joan says, “I became extremely thin from the stress, and George took to weighing me once a week. Every Monday, he would weigh me.” She didn’t know it at the time, but she was dealing with an increasingly strong spirit of control.
Joan says she received a great many “whack-arounds.“One time, she was beaten in her sleep. At this point, she started having seizures while driving with children in the car and decided to stop driving. This was not a good situation with an abusive drinker in the home.
Joan says, “In my day we didn’t have 9-1-1 or shelters. I was trying to say no, but George was not behaving well. On the outside, we looked like the picture-perfect couple.Our house was spotless inside and out. We put in a cement driveway -- we did a lot together -- but it was the darned drink. It changed him to be forceful and refusing to take no for an answer.”
Perhaps the most vivid example was right after Rick was born and a seizure hospitalized Joan. George, however, kept forcing sex. “He was forcing me the day I came home from the hospital. I had just had a baby. But when I tried to express myself, George would say, ‘Will you stop complaining!’” Joan say she would get really stern when she tried to say no. Her words: “I was falling apart.”
To be continued next week...
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Hot Off The Press!
This news may be redundant, but I am so excited about the publication of Whit's End that I am telling everybody I know in every way I can. It has taken years to get this thing in shape, but at long last we have a story (a true story!) that should bring hope to anyone who loves an alcoholic. It is now available on-line via all the usual outlets, including Nook and Kindle. Its cover, a painting by artist Claudia Wood Rahm, looks like this:
It is the story of a breakdown -- and a breakthrough. I hope you will enjoy it and spread the word. To check it out, just click on the hyperlink below.
Bob told Ruth she needed to attend a Twelve-Step meeting, to which he and his wife, Nancy, took Ruth that same night.They left two hours early and drove to Mt. Kisco, where there was a meeting in the Episcopal church at 8:30 p.m.“They kidnapped me,” Ruth says, “and we sat in the car for two hours talking.“ According to Ruth, her attitude was, “OK, if I have to attend this meeting, then I’m going to find a sponsor for Eddie.”But, she says, when she entered the room, “The meeting looked so peaceful.There were just four people when we walked in, and they had a home-made cake and coffee -- and china.”Ruth says she felt welcome, especially by someone named Lois.
“I met Lois at my first meeting in Mt. Kisco.She was clever and cute.At first she said, ‘My name is Lois -- what’s yours?’ and then she said, ‘Welcome -- we have a message for you we will give you at the end of the meeting.’”Then at the end of the meeting, Lois told Ruth, “If you keep coming, we have two things to give you: hope and love.”
Lois made pretty darned sure that Ruth would keep coming.Ruth says, “The following Tuesday, Lois called me saying she didn’t have time to do the coffee for this morning.That was the beginning of my service.”
Ruth began attending meetings regularly.There were four meetings that were convenient: one in Chappaqua, one in Mt. Kisco, one in Bedford Hills, and one in White Plains.“Over time, “ Ruth says, “I lost my desire to try to change Eddie.”Perhaps as a result, Eddie was feeling some relief from the ceasing of Ruth’s nightly readings.“But then,” Ruth says, “he got scared.The following January first, he had his last drink.”
Eddie got into the other program eventually, and the two became “program people. “ Eddie and Ruth moved to the Shoreline when their son, Wayne, was six and Eddie wanted to build a marina.When asked the name of the marina, Ruth answers, “The GD Marina….the God Damn Marina.”
In her new location on the Connecticut shoreline location, became instrumental in what she calls “popping up” meetings.First Clinton wanted a Monday night meeting, then Madison wanted a meeting, where (at first) hubbies came with their wives.Then came a Saybrook Step Meeting, and gradually, more and more meetings along the Shoreline -- from Old Lyme to Branford.Today, there are seventeen longstanding meetings along the Shoreline, but Ruth is good in the Humble Department.“There are no celebrities in this program,” she insists. “When we come into the Twelve-Step program, we find a spiritual foundation.The steps led me to trust in my Higher Power, and the meetings gave me opportunity to share how God was helping me in my day-to-day life.”
The one word Ruth uses to describe herself today is “grateful.”Which seems right.She had sixty years with a good husband, and she is celebrating her own fifty years in Twelve-Step recovery.Eddie died in December of 2000, but his son, Wayne lives up the hill from Ruth with his wife, Cindy, and their daughter Hayley, who Ruth describes as “six going on seventeen.”The day we came to interview Ruth, Wayne had prepared a lovely buffet luncheon, which was ready and waiting for us.
Ruth couldn’t see the abundance of that luncheon table because she has gone blind.A drastic turn of events, but she’s had some of those before.Despite (or perhaps because of) them, Ruth has gratitude for what God has given her. “God is nice!And good!And not mean!” she exclaims, her blue peepers shining bright.Isn’t it nice that it ends where it began, with what Lois first said to Ruth:
If you keep coming, we have two things to give you: hope and love.
It was the druggist’s suggestion that Ruth go immediately to the police station and “Tell them you have no place to live.”Ruth arrived there only to find that the lieutenant on duty was someone she knew, a neighbor of her parents.The lieutenant immediately telephoned a rooming house across the street, asking the person at the other end of the line, “Can you put up Ruth Miller tonight?”
Fortunately for Ruth and her babies, the answer was yes.And even more fortunately, it turned out that the person at the other end of the telephone line also knew Ruth.She ran the rooming house, but had also been the custodian at the school Ruth had attended.“The woman was a God-send,” Ruth says.“We cut up towels and sheets for diapers to get us through the night.”
Ruth’s parents took the tiny family into their home the very next day. Still, it was shocking for Ruth to find herself so suddenly abandoned in the terrible economy of 1939.For the next seven years, she was a single mother and living with her parents.Then came the end of World War II, and with peace at last, soldiers and sailors began returning stateside.
One of the returning men was Eddie, who had been Ruth’s original childhood sweetheart.He wanted very much to marry Ruth and to adopt her two children as his own.Eddie and Ruth were married in 1946, and the family moved to Chappaqua, New York, where Eddie owned a gas station and ran a good business.They had a very good marriage, but after ten years, Eddie was drinking to excess.But Ruth didn’t leave Eddie.She said to herself, “If he is, he is, but I’m not going to be a single parent again.”
Ten years later, the two kids had flown the nest, and Ruth was 40.It was at this point that Eddie announced something Ruth had not even remotely considered.He said, one day out of the blue, ”Ruthie, I’d like to have child of my own.”Ruth agreed to seek her doctor’s advice about having a baby at her late age.His response:“If God gives you one, you’ll have one.”Ruth says, “Wayne was given me.”
Wayne was born in 1958, but as he was sleeping soundly in his baby crib, Ruth was honing a new habit: reading to her alcoholic husband when they went to bed.Somehow or another, she had obtained a copy of The Big Bookfrom Alcoholics Anonymous, which she hoped would cure Eddie of his problem drinking.“I would read out loud as Eddie dozed off,” Ruth recalls.“I did have a big mouth.”
It must have been, because a neighbor in the quiet hills of Chappaqua could hear her reading the book at Eddie.She says, “That neighbor could hear me fling the book at Eddie when he’d fall asleep on me, and I’d call him an SOB and a crazy bastard.”The neighbor was Bob, a member of a Twelve-Step program.One day in 1960, Bob came over at 7 a.m. to tell Ruth he’d been overhearing her nightly procedure.By that time, there were four Big Books in the attic wall, where Eddie had hidden them from the big mouth.Bob had been listening to the nightly diatribes for two solid years.
“I came to hear the rest of the story,” the neighbor said.”“What story?” Ruth asked in dismay.“The story you read Eddie every night of your life.”And to Eddie he said, “Eddie, you’ve got a problem -- and it’s her.”
Today, Ruth is 94 years old and has fifty years of Twelve-Step recovery under her belt.Truth is, she is one of the longest long-timers in the entire program.She first came to meetings in 1960, when her second husband, like her first, turned out to be a drinker.“I thought God was mad at me,” Ruth recalls. “Everybody who had ever crossed my path seemed to turn into an alcoholic.I thought it was my fault.”
Alcoholism had touched her life early, though she says her parents were wonderful.“I was their only child, she says.“They worked days and nights, and there was no fighting.I was never deprived. “ During the Great Depression, both her parents worked in order to keep their Mount Vernon flat.However, Ruth adds, “They had a need to drink.They liked their drinkies.”
Children seem to have an uncanny ability to detect problems, even when they are not articulated or addressed by anyone in the home.Ruth’s antennae were raised when she was young.Many of her aunts and uncles were already alcoholics.
As Ruth grew older and entered high school, she developed a romantic vision of what she wanted next.“My dream was to marry a tall, dark, handsome good dancer.I did,” she says, “and he kept dancing -- but not with me.” The “dance” turned out to be traumatic, entailing one of the most abrupt changes Ruth would ever encounter.
Ruth had eloped in 1936 to marry an Irishman named Bob, who declared himself to be not the least bit interested in having children.Nevertheless, as babies are prone to do, a son appeared in 1938, followed quickly by a daughter in 1939.Hubby Bob had managed to “keep dancing” but, as Ruth says, “not with me.”
The marriage ended the night their daughter was born.Bob came to the hospital carrying Bobby, their 15-month old son, and escorted the family to the car.Off they drove, with Ruth holding her baby girl, while the toddler bounced along in the back seat of the car.Ruth says she thought it strange when her husband did not slow down to stop at their house.Instead, he drove slowly past the house, pointing at it and saying to Ruth, “You don’t live here anymore.”
The next stop was the local drug store, where Ruth and her babies were deposited by Bob, who drove away into the Mount Vernon night.“I needed bottles,” Ruth says.“I was twenty-two years old with eight dollars to my name, a newborn in my arms, and a toddler at my side.” The druggist, when he heard Ruth’s tale of what had happened, simply said:
“That BIS-terd !”
Does this not sound like there’s a problem related to alcohol somewhere in the equation?But Ruth was in denial, and people like the pharmacist did not know much about alcoholism in those days.Nobody did.
Recently, I have been interviewing some of the real “longtimers” of the Twelve-Step programs, and have found their stories (true stories!) stranger than fiction. The one I am planning to post first belongs to 94-year-old Ruth, but it is too long to publish in a single blog. Therefore, I am proposing to serialize it in three installments and to publish them all in a row. This posting is just to prepare the way for these occasional GOD CAN! serialized columns, and to encourage using the COMMENTS feature to ignite conversations about Twelve-Step Recovery.
If you get antsy at any point and want me to e-mail you the full manuscript, please just let me know by clicking on the COMMENT feature or e-mailing me directly. I do have both Facebook and Twitter pages, so that’s another way to contact me. In the meantime, I am posting this PURPLE image in Ruth’s honor because, somewhere along the line, I was taught that purple is for very special people and that it has to be earned. Ruth’s favorite color is purple and I have a feeling that, after reading her story, you’re going to agree that she has earned the right to wear it.
