The good old days (part 1)

I had to stop driving my car for awhile... my tires got dizzy.

                                                        -Steven Wright

I remember my mother once said to me, “why does everything have to be so hard for you?”.  And I said, “I don’t know, I guess it’s how I learn.” It’s odd because I really hadn’t yet begun my wild drinking and getting high days, so how did I know that?  But it turned out to be true. 

 

Here are just a few stories from the days I was a ‘party girl’ (as I thought of myself); I didn’t get drunk until I was 17, and I sobered up at the age of 31.  I had had plenty of tastes of alcohol before that first time getting drunk, as kids were allowed sips of drinks when we were camping and at other occasions. There it was my mom who was prophetic. I recall not liking the taste of her wine and she said to me “you’re going to like it one day.”  And I did.

 

When I got my driver’s license all bets were off. It was freedom, the heck with rules, time for fun and adventure. I spent a lot of time with kids who were younger than me, taking them places in my car, all while smoking and drinking. We partied at an abandoned ‘haunted house’ in the country where a lot of kids hung out. I went from being a good girl in high school to a wild child, and it was on purpose. I deliberately set out to try as many substances as I could. In the late 70’s there was a local forest preserve where people could hang out, party, and buy or sell just about anything. One day I went through there and bought two blotter hits of acid. I took one, and after a while said to a friend that I didn’t feel anything --  so I took the second one. Next thing I remember I was at the park smoking pot, then I was in outer space. Walking across the grass was a long journey through a shimmering deep blue and white land, with spacemen (other people) waiting at the end. I sat on the asphalt and laughed while they made grotesque faces at me. 

I came down to earth a bit when I was sitting in my car and one of the town’s police officers, who knew me, came driving up. The kids standing around scattered, but not before one left a little container of his marijuana under the seat. The officer found it and wouldn’t believe that it wasn’t mine. He took me to the police station – I rode in the front seat, dazed by all the lights and gadgets. At the police station he showed me the jail cell, the fingerprinting, and he took my mugshot, and gave me the polaroid (which I still have to this day).  He gave me a lecture on how pot can lead to harder drugs, then very dramatically dumped the stuff out into the wastebasket. He made a comment about how this wasn’t funny. I don’t remember too much after that, I know my mother came to get me, whom he’d called, even though I was 18, and she blamed it all on my friends. I knew I was supposed to feel upset, but I just couldn’t.

Some months later, I got into a car accident and totaled my dad’s old car, a beautiful red Plymouth Duster. I was drunk of course, and don’t remember much except that I was taken to the hospital to be checked out. A police officer asked me a few questions, wanted to know if I’d been drinking. I answered honestly; I had been drinking gin and had a few beers. And that was that. I wasn’t charged with drunk driving, although I did have a court date for the accident, which I missed, having no transportation. My license was suspended due to too many moving violations and I didn’t get it back for over twenty years. At that time I was living with a boyfriend, in an apartment building within walking distance of my old high school, selling drugs. 

After six months or so - most of which I don’t remember - we decided to run away to Wisconsin (just an hour or so away), to start a new, wholesome life. My boyfriend and his friend got a car and rebuilt the engine. But there was a problem – we didn’t have license plates. I really don’t recall why we couldn’t’ get them, but we had the brilliant idea to get the plates off the Duster.  We drove to the place where it was impounded late one night, but the guys were too afraid to try to break in. So, armed with a flashlight and a screwdriver, I crawled under the fence, found my poor car, and got the plates off. Not long after my boyfriend and I took off for Wisconsin and that new engine really flew down those back roads. And that is another story.

I had many other adventures in cars, for the short time I had my license, and many close calls. I allowed a boy without a license to drive and took the blame when he got into an accident. I drove drunk many times, wandering around until somehow I ended up in the driveway, I drove while high on acid, and it was like the steering wheel wasn’t real. It really was a blessing in disguise that I lost my license and didn’t try to get it back for years. Living in the city there were plenty of buses and trains, and I did a lot of walking or riding my bicycle. When I did finally try to clear up my record, that accident with the Duster had long since passed the statute of limitations. However, I found out that there was an old ticket for running a red light – but I didn’t remember that. I suspected it may have been my boyfriend with the rebuilt car. This was 1979, so of course before computers and cameras.

During my years living in the city, I was at a punk bar having a good time, I suppose. It was early morning when some man offered me a ride home, and I said sure. He drove extremely fast on Lake Shore drive, and even in my numbed-out state I was a bit alarmed, as he was getting awfully close to the cement barrier. Then he exited and parked at the lakefront. Oh, I forgot to mention, he was talking to someone in the back seat who wasn’t there. As the sun was coming up, he got out of the car and walked toward the lake. I sat there not knowing what to do, if he was coming back, or if I even wanted him to. 

Eventually a patrol car came by, and stopped to see what was going on, as there was no one else around. I explained to them the situation, including how the man had an imaginary friend, so the cops volunteered to take me home.  As I sat in the back seat, I noticed beer cans rolling around on the floor; they asked me if I wanted one, and I said no, I have some gin at home.

Now that I think back, one of the oddest things is why I once again was drinking gin. I was a whiskey girl at heart.

And On....

Several years have gone by and I am feeling the need to tell more stories. I suppose I can let this blog be my memoir of sorts. 

I am now 66, and not long ago I celebrated 35 years of being clean and sober. I have drinking dreams sometimes, good reminders that I am an alcoholic. I'm in relatively good health; I've been doing well in some ways, got to take a great trip to New Orleans, but the last few years have been very difficult at times.

in 2022 my mother died -- on my 64th birthday. It really seemed like some kind of cosmic joke. Yes, she was 86, but it seemed like her health declined quickly. She was on hospice care for only a short time, and she died with her beloved cat cuddled next to her, in a facility near the Sandia mountains, which she loved. I wasn't there, as she was in New Mexico, but I had gone to visit her a few months before and was glad I'd seen her, in spite of some strained communication.

Two days after she died I took my kayak out on my favorite river.  It rained, I got soaked, then this gorgeous double rainbow gradually appeared.  It felt like a beautiful message from Mom; when my parents first moved to Albuquerque she'd sent me photos of rainbows, saying that they were seeing them frequently.  Shortly after my father died she looked at the mountains and saw a rainbow -- she felt it was a message from Dad.

Several months later, my sister and I flew out to visit our other sister in New Mexico, the first time the three of us had been together in years. We took Mom's ashes up into those mountains, knowing she wanted to have them spread near her husband's, like we did 22 years ago. We drove and drove but could not find the right location, then finally found a lovely spot in a cluster of pine trees where we said goodbye. 

But for me, the most emotional part of the trip was going to see the tree she had had planted in the Veteran's park in our father's name.  Twenty years ago it had been a little sapling, and there it was in all its red leafed glory.

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🌺

They say when the student is ready, the teacher appears. 

This has happened to me over and over again in my life. I have not always used the traditional AA sponsor, but have had professional mentors, therapists, friends, and all sorts of different kinds of help, some I can't easily explain. But I can say that change happens on the inside. 

I'll give an example. When I was learning to be a counselor (undergrad level) I was unsure if iI should reveal to clients that I was in recovery, or other personal things. What my supervisor said to me was 'check your motivations'.  Wow. That kind of wisdom is absolutely golden. So I learned to share when I thought it might help, at least in my professional life. 

To me, it's a matter of being open. I've been doing various types of meditation for years, not really formal, but lt includes guides recordings, reading spiritual texts or books, and listening to talks from spiritual teachers. I had an intense experience at a spiritual retreat years ago (sober) that has stayed with me.  Lately I found a woman who describes many of the inner changes and processes that I've gone through, and adds yet more layers of understanding.  Through her help I was able to let go of something I was very angry and conflicted about.

Another change has been in the area of being a single, non married (or even divorced) woman.  Maybe it's not as much of a stigma nowadays but for so many years it was very painful, feeling like there was something wrong with me for not being able to 'hang onto a man'.  I am aware that some of my singleness is or was from being a victim of rape, more than once, but there has also been sense that I need to be independent, that has only grown stronger as I've gotten older. I discovered this wonderful social scientist who writes about 'singleism' and people who are 'single at heart':  https://belladepaulo.com.  I think that's me.

I have joined an online group of people who feel the same, and it's been really life changing for me to drop that feeling that I'm missing out, or defective in some way.  This is the way I am and it's so freeing. 

Next:  Memories of crazy days

The millennium and beyond

We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.
-Anais Nin

It was eight years ago in November when my family fell apart.

Dad was a distant man, for much of my childhood. He could be angry and critical at times, and at others he was fun and playful. He liked travel and games and adventures; he took our family camping and some of us skiing, to movies, and out to eat. He as generous with presents for birthdays & holidays. Most of the time, when he wasn’t at work he was watching TV or sleeping. Or he’d be in the basement with his books and puzzles, drinking beer. When we were younger he was in night school so we rarely saw him, but when he graduated college we were all there to see it. He was an electronic engineer, and very smart. After the death of my brother his behavior became warmer with his remaining three children – his three daughters, now in our twenties. He talked more, listened more, and was more present. After I sobered up, and my younger sister also, he even drank less and sometimes didn’t drink his beer when we were visiting.

When he retired, dad wanted to move to someplace warmer, and to get out of Chicago. He and my mother had continued to travel frequently so they were considering various places and finally settled upon Albuquerque New Mexico. My father’s reasoning; there were no earthquakes, floods, or hurricanes, or landslides (as opposed to California or Florida). Both my parents liked the mountains and the desert. They bought a new house, to be built in a gated community. In early summer of 2000 they moved to an apartment in Albuquerque to await the completion of the new home.

The last time I saw my father was on Father’s day; we had a small barbeque at my grandmother’s house and played one last game of Uno. Drinking and sober, it had been our favorite game to play together. When I said goodbye, I heard dad was giving his car to my brother in law. For 20 years I had been taking buses, trains and getting rides, having lost my license when I was a teenager. I had finally cleared up my record and was getting ready to take the driver’s test. I told him this - I had before but he’d forgotten - and he felt bad he wasn’t giving the car to me, and I said it’s ok. We hugged, and said goodbye as if it was any other day.

Over the summer, waiting for the house to be finished, my father would call from New Mexico. In Chicago he almost never called but now he was excited, he was enjoying having a cell phone for the first time, and calling from a mountain or some other interesting place. They saw a lot of rainbows. It was good to hear him so happy.

On November 5th – it was a Sunday – I was at a restaurant with my sister and her husband after an AA meeting. We were just about to eat our pancakes when my sister got a call from mom on her cell phone. I knew instantly. Dad had had a heart attack and had died at the hospital; he had told them to let him go. It was his second heart attack; he’d been smoking since he was eight years old and drinking almost as long. On the day they were moving into the new house dad insisted on helping the movers, which was when it happened.

Both my sisters flew to Albuquerque right away. Since I knew my mother was not alone I decided to wait; I was working with teenagers and did not want to just leave them. My supervisor thought I was crazy for going to work but I needed to. I was also hoping to find my nephew, who was living in a college town without a phone. My brother in law drove there and got him and I was able to fly to New Mexico with my nephew. On the way to the airport, I stopped to vote, since it was Election Day. I wanted to make sure to cast my ballot against George W. Bush.

That night, in my mother’s new house, she told us she had seen a rainbow over the mountains on her way back from the hospital. She thought it was a sign – that she was supposed to live there by herself and for the first time have the experience of being on her own. She had been married young, and had never been alone before.

So we stayed up late that night in a darkened room with very little furniture, lying on the floor watching the election returns until we realized Al Gore didn’t really win Florida, or maybe he did, they were not sure….

During those few days we were all together, there were some family difficulties, though the actual "funeral" - a viewing of the body - went quite well. The five of us gathered in a small room at the funeral home with the open casket. We spoke of some memories, told dad we loved him and said goodbye. We all held hands and said the Serenity prayer.

Later, my older sister called me a bitch, and I comforted my younger sister when mom upset her. This sister is in recovery also, and one night we went out to find an AA meeting but got very lost, driving through the unfamiliar city at night. At one point I remembered we still had Dad’s ashes in the trunk, having picked them up earlier in day. They were inside a plastic bag in a cardboard box. I mentioned this to my sister, laughing about driving around with Dad in the trunk (I liked that because he did so like to travel). I found it comforting in a strange way; my sister was not amused. It spooked her. Eventually we found a meeting and it was a warm and friendly place.

My elder sister and nephew left a few days later. Mom, my younger sister and I took a drive up to the Sandia Mountains to scatter Dad's ashes. This was Mom’s idea; I never actually knew why she wanted to do this but who was I to question my mother?

It was a grey and chilly day with snow lying in patches, and as we drove over winding roads we finally found a spot with a bit of a view that sloped downward, right off old Route 66. Here we found that ashes did not exactly scatter, but my mother manged to dump them on the hillside.

I have photo I took of my mother and sister standing there on the mountainside with the empty cardboard box, smiling as if on vacation. To me it epitomizes the dysfunction of our family.

Since that day our family has never been the same. There have been no get togethers, if one doesn't count my grandmother's funeral (which is the only time Mom has come back to Chicago). Communication has been sparse, and becomes more so as the years wear on. We have our separate lives, in separate places, and although my older sister is in the area, we rarely talk. Lacking the context of family as a unit, it doesn’t seem that we can. It has gradually dawned on me that my father was the glue that held us together. Never mind that he had moved across the county, if he had lived we would still be connecting, in our own way.

Eight years later I still cannot grasp how my reality has shifted to such an extent.

Beyond Forgiveness

"Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is again made clean."

- Dag Hammarskjold

Once upon a time I had a brother, he was my only brother, the youngest of four kids in the family. Jim. James. Jimmy. He was the long awaited only son, but by the time he came along my parents were tired, busy, and as they had always been, emotionally unavailable. Although I was the second eldest I looked after him quite bit. When I was younger my mother read stories to myself and my sister at night, later I read stories to him.

He was a legend from birth in our family because he was born in the car on the Kennedy expressway. My mother delivered him while my father was speeding to the hospital. Dad was in a panic; she was calm. It was her fourth delivery after all. She was on the evening news and few days later there was an article in both major newspapers, with a photo of all of us at home, Mom holding the new baby.

I like to tell people how he was in the newspapers when he was born and when he died, almost 21 years later.

It would be nice to say there was a good story to tell about his life, but in truth I learned more from his death.

The basics about him are; sometime in his mid teens he shot up like a weed, and was over 6 feet tall. He was good looking, sensitive, mischievous, and very intelligent. He loved other animals but kept parakeets as pets. I think he had a hard time in school, with rules and fitting in. He played electric guitar, a little. He started getting into music at a young age; Pink Floyd was his favorite, then David Bowie, but he had quite a varied record collection by the time he left this earth. I know, because I carted those albums around for years, and still have some of them.

He started drinking at the age of 12, and taking pills sometimes. I remember hearing he was falling asleep in school. You could say we started drinking and getting high around the same time, though not together. His Greek friend would steal Ouzo from his father & bring it over. Our older sister would bring him beer & he’d lower a bucket on a rope to her in the driveway and pull it up to his room. I had been away from home and he got my room when my parents didn’t think I was coming back. I came home for about a year to get myself together in order to move out again, and Jim’s room was the party room, where we would drink, smoke pot and listen to music. Then when I moved out on my own, several years and numerous apartments later he came to the city and stayed with me for a while. His first real girlfriend was a friend of my boyfriend at the time. Perhaps a year later, after going back and forth from suburb to city he got himself a room at a hotel that was an “el” ride from my newest home. We spent a lot of time together, talking and talking – about war, life, nature, what it all means. I got him to listen to Bruce Springsteen with me, and he started to appreciate the lyrics. We had both decided we wanted to listen to the blues more, and went to the Blues Fest together; he held my hand in the crowd. He was my best friend.

July 21 1985. He was at my apartment and I was getting ready for a date with a new guy. We were going to a street fair right near Jim’s hotel I kept asking him to meet me there. He had his own plans though. He was going to go to a pier on Lake Michigan he and he his friend had discovered. At night people hung out at the very end of the pier around a garbage can fire; they would climb to the top of the narrow steel tower to drink and get high. So I went to the street festival and all I could think about was where my brother was and why he wasn’t there. On stage the band was playing the blues, it was Muddy Waters Jr. I kept thinking I have to tell him, he missed it. And I kept looking and looking for him.

Next morning I got a call from my mother. With no preliminaries, she said “Jim’s dead”. I said “no”. My parents had already identified the body. It had washed up on the rocks. I then had to call both of my sisters to tell them the news. My younger sister was living in St. Louis. I had visited her only a few weeks prior, for the 4th of July, and I brought back some fireworks for Jim. Being a typical delinquent in many ways, he liked to light them and throw firecrackers in front of people. I specifically told him not to do that when I gave them to him.

But that was exactly what he did that night. He and his friend Alex, who survived and has told me the only account of the incident I know, were up on the tower drinking cheap wine and smoking pot. And lighting firecrackers, and throwing them down at the people on the pier below. There was one guy in particular who became enraged. He and some friends climbed the tower to beat Alex and my brother up. There was only one way to get away and that was to jump into the lake. Alex said he was yelling at Jim to jump and my brother was saying he didn’t have his glasses; I guess they had been knocked off his face. Alex then jumped into the lake and made it to the beach I don’t recall how he got home but he did not wait to see what happened to my brother.

Alex had jumped into the shallower side of the pier, but my brother was found on the other side, the deep side. We do not know if he eventually jumped, if he fell, or was pushed in. The autopsy showed numerous bruises, including heel marks on his face. My older sister and I didn’t see the autopsy until after the funeral; it explained the thick makeup on his face and why he was almost unrecognizable in the casket. We also visited the detectives and cleaned out Jim’s room at the hotel. The police said they had questioned people who were on the pier that night and no one really knew what happened or were not telling. They did know that the leader of the guys who attacked my brother was a white guy with a lot of tattoos named George. He was familiar to the police, but they had not been able to find him.

My sister picked me up that day we got the news, to take us both to our parents’ house to wait for our younger sister to arrive from St. Louis. Once there, all I remember of that day, of the next few days, was sitting in the dark smoking joints and cigarettes, and drinking. That first night I was sitting in the driveway on lawn chairs with my father. The man who rarely showed any emotion was drunk and yelled and cried and regretted he had been in conflict with his only son. Later, as we sat there drinking Dad said he was worried about me, because I had been closer to Jim than anybody. I said, oh don’t worry about me, I’m happy for him. He got out of this life. I just wish it had been me.

Several years later I had gotten into recovery and was sober for about three years when I met my friend Linda. By this time I had been living by the lake -- very close to that pier. I liked the neighborhood and wanted to be near where my brother had last been alive. I thought maybe I would be closer to his spirit.

One summer night Linda and I were sitting on the beach and, with the pier in our sight, I told her about my brother’s death. When I got to the part about the guy George with the tattoos she said, “I know him”. Not that long ago she used to party with this guy and some of his friends and she knew that they went out on the pier often to hang out, and light a fire in the garbage can. A blond guy with tattoos. She said he was a Vietnam Veteran and he was drug addict. She said she remembered in the summer of '85 he did disappear, left the state for a good long time, maybe a year. She said he was back in the Chicago area, she’d heard, and thought she knew where to find him.

I really only thought about finding him for a moment. What would be the point? This was what I thought, but really it was more of sense, a feeling: Jim was a peaceful kind of guy, in spite of the mischievousness; he’d only been in one fight that I knew of. He and I had talked about the futility of war, especially Vietnam. Then there was George, a Vietnam vet. Jim, with that side of him that liked to push the edge threw down firecrackers, and George reacted, most likely because of post traumatic stress. So if you look at the three of us, I was an alcoholic and addict, my brother I believe was also, and George was a addict. We were the same. Any one of us could have been the other, given the circumstances. Had I been to war and was addicted and someone threw firecrackers I would have been enraged. George could have been he one in recovery. George could have been the one throwing down firecrackers; Jim could have been the person who had been in Vietnam. There have been times in my life, and this was the first, when a feeling has swept over me and, like a fresh breeze, blown away any resentment or anger I might have had. What I have been left with is sweet, clean air.

There was no need to find George, to try to make sure “justice” was done. I know, without a doubt, that he was living in his own hell, not that I wished that on him. My foremost feeling was that, given he was living nearby, perhaps someday he would get sober and I would meet him in an AA meeting. And what I felt, really, about the whole situation was beyond forgiveness – it was, I think, Love.

So there the saga ended and yet it has never ended. I heave never seen nor heard anything about George since that day. Linda did not talk to her old friends anymore. But Jim, well, he’s with me all the time. In fact many days I believe I am living life for the both of us – as best I can. In the beginning I had many dreams about my brother, some were scary, and he was bloated and covered with seaweed. Another type was a recurring dream where he was walking along silently beside me in a field of grass stretching out to infinity on his side – on the right. I was on the left, on the edge of a cliff, below me was a rushing river with a forest on the other side, and there were animals frolicking in water and woods. Jim was speaking, trying to tell me something, but I could not hear his voice.

One day, a few years later, I realized I had not had the dream in months, not since I had stopped drinking. I credited that with helping me to get sober; to choose life. This was what he was trying to tell me. I had gone from wanting to die in place of my brother, to wanting to die because he was gone, and acting in self-destructive ways, to finding something to live for – that had to be some force greater than me. The dreams I still have occasionally – this summer I had them more often, perhaps because I had been grieving - are the best. In them, my brother is alive, and we are talking and hanging out, and it’s as if he has just been away for a while and now he’s back. As if he was never gone.

As for George, if you are out there – I forgive you, and I know he does too.