Original post – October 10, 2020

Let’s see. Where did we leave off? These times in my life are not fun to revisit, to be sure. I think it’s important to share these stories. One never knows who will be touched by our words and sometimes, those words can save someone’s life. I just finished listening to a woman tell her story and a huge part of her journey had to do with her mother and the house she grew up in. It was part of a women’s conference. There were 135 women on Zoom listening. Many were weeping. So I’m going to continue to tell mine – and my mom’s – because in the end, they are stories of tragedy but more importantly, triumph and love.

April 1976, fire. I’ll never forget going to school the day after the fire. We had to scavenge through our closets to find clothes that weren’t stained with smoke. Once again, as I so often felt in those times, I was filled with shame walking into school that day. As usual, I felt dirty, conspicuous, and definitely less than. I was late to school so I went to PE class late. I had a total hard ass for a teacher that scared me a little, to be honest. I slinked my way into class hoping to go unnoticed but that was never gonna happen. She didn’t miss a thing. “Johnson!! In my office!” Fuck. Not only was I late but I was out of uniform. I wasn’t sure which offense was more egregious but I knew I was going to get an ass chewing. I could not have been more wrong. She had been told what had happened the previous night and she offered me kindness and comfort. As you can imagine, I melted into a puddle of tears. I wasn’t accustomed to that. I surely wasn’t getting that at home. Our family was so hand to mouth. I don’t remember any time or room for feelings about this traumatic event. It was just do what you gotta do and keep going. I don’t remember shedding a single tear until that teacher made it Ok. With her, it was Ok to express how terrifying that night had been. It was Ok to be a kid with her in that office. For a few minutes, I didn’t have to have a stiff upper lip and keep it together. She was pretty amazing and from then forward, we had a special, private connection that no one else knew of – until we moved to Pendleton and that was that. ANYWAY…

Now, we find ourselves in Pendleton. What a shit show that was but in a very different way from where we’d been. We were older now. It was the end of my sixth grade year. My sisters were in eighth and ninth grade. We were teenagers. That brought a whole host of other issues to the party. For one thing, my sisters weren’t having it. They had become more vocal and strong willed as teenagers do. When we’d been in that other house, we all pretty much stayed in line but in Pendleton, that changed for my sisters. School sucked – with a capital S. We were city folk and the locals didn’t take too kindly to us. We were outsiders. We were not welcome and they made that quite obvious. Mom and dad were fighting as much or more than ever and the drinking hadn’t changed. When dad’s job ended, my parents made the decision to separate, AGAIN. Only this time, it was different. That was the last time we lived together as a family. They didn’t make some grand decision or proclamation though. It just ended up that way. Dad was going to Portland and my sisters were going with him. I don’t know how that went down but they were both like fuck this shit, we are so outta here and off they went. Me going with them was never a consideration. Someone had to stay with mom to take care of her. You see, when she drank, she got sick, like really sick. She couldn’t get out of bed. She couldn’t do anything. Over the years, there were so many times mom was “sick.” That was the word that was used. She was “sick” when we witnessed her having convulsions from what I can only assume now was DT’s. At the time, it was just another day in our life. Dad stuck his hand down her throat and held her tongue cuz she was swallowing it and choking. My sister called the ambulance. Per usual, I watched and absorbed it all. There was one time I’ll never forget. Dad called us into the kitchen. My memory is both a blessing and a curse. It’s very visual so when I recall these times, it’s like watching a movie. I can tell you what everyone is wearing, what the room looks like, every detail is there. Anyway, dad calls us into the kitchen to inform us that mom is dying and we need to go into the bedroom and say goodbye to her. I don’t know what prompted that but we did as we were told. We were so little then. It’s so crazy to think back to these times because they were just so matter of fact. We were used to this life. If you’d plucked a “normal” kid out of their family and inserted them into this scene, it would be traumatizing. Hell, it was for us but it wasn’t unusual. It was just another day.

Point being, mom needed a caretaker. By now, I was 12 and going into 7th grade. My sisters were with my dad in Portland going to high school. I don’t remember having any contact with any of them during that period. They were there and we were here. Mom’s drinking was worse than ever but at the same time, she had to function to some degree. It was just the two of us so she had to go to work. I did the cooking, the laundry, helped her get dressed for work, slept with her to make sure she was Ok, I even gave her shots every other day. I understood they were vitamin b shots and what I know now is that she needed that due to her drinking. Sometimes I look back and just shake my head. Now that I have my own daughter, I can’t imagine her living the life that I did. But it was what it was. That’s when I began smoking cigarettes. Funny thing is when we got out of that situation, I didn’t smoke anymore until after high school. Mom dated a bit during that period which I thought was super creepy and weird. It’s pretty ridiculous but she would take me with her on these dates. I guess she thought I was too little to stay home alone? Um, hello? I know now that she was trying to love and protect me as best she could but at the time it was just insulting. I was doing all the adult things and she thought I couldn’t stay home alone? Really? Ok.

At some point that year, my best friend from Portland came to live with us. Her family was moving from Portland to Renton, WA. I don’t know who decided that her living with us was a better idea than living with her own family but they were having their own problems that I knew nothing about at the time. Either way, I was thrilled. I was being bullied at school, home life was shit, this was going to be just the ticket. I sat down with mom and asked her to please, please, please not drink while my friend lived with us. She made that commitment and I’m sure she had every intention of keeping her word. But she was an alcoholic and that was bigger than her word. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop. What she DID do was hide it from then on. That school year went on and my life was a little better since I had a companion. At the end of that school year, mom came to me and said she was “sick.” I knew what that meant. I’d seen it so many times before and that word was reserved for severe situations. She needed me to call grandfather. Now mind you, this is a man I hardly knew. Mom’s parents wanted nothing to do with her or her children. But that year that I stayed with mom, they welcomed me into their family by giving me a fur coat and a stereo. (super weird). But all the girls in that family started getting fur coats around the age of two. I didn’t exist until I was 12 so it was a little late but oh well. So mom explains that she’s been drinking this whole time and that she was sick and needed help. I cannot adequately describe the level of betrayal and shame I felt. But I dutifully called grandfather and explained the situation. Not sure why she couldn’t call him. I think she was afraid of him and thought he might actually help if it came from me. Who knows. He flew to Portland in his private plan. He arrived at the house, told my friend and me to take a walk, and he talked to mom. When we returned to the house, we were outta there. I don’t even remember packing a bag. I don’t think we did. We just left. As we were headed to the car, mom passed out in the doorway. Again, I was ashamed. All her shit was usually just with me but now there was the audience of my friend and her dad who was understandably disgusted. The three of us got her up and to the car. When we got to the airport, we had to wait while they fueled the plane, etc. Mom wanted to wait in the bar and drink. I learned a new level of furious in that moment. Eventually, we got on the plane and flew to Portland. Someone picked up my friend and my uncle on my mom’s side that I think I’d met once or twice picked me up and took me to my dad’s. Grandfather deposited mom in a treatment center. Now one might think thank God, it’s finally over. Nope. She’d been down that path so many times before and she just couldn’t stop drinking. So there was no relief or hope, necessarily. I just knew that she was her dad’s problem for now.

Meanwhile, my dad had gone to treatment and he did, in fact, quit drinking for good. Well, almost. He drank the day he killed himself but that was after 17 years of not drinking. Dad had always been the more stable parent and now that he wasn’t drinking, life became what I always imagined was normal. There was structure to our lives, there wasn’t any chaos, we were clean and fed regularly, life was pretty good – except that I was always sucked in by mom. My sisters had mostly washed their hands of her but that idea never entered my mind. I took on the role of being her person – her support – by default. Someone had to do it. I didn’t see that as a kid that wasn’t my job. Again, it just was what it was.

Dad dated and eventually remarried. Mom continued to struggle both with staying sober and being an adult. She frequently lived with her parents or her sister. She worked but they supplemented her income or just plain supported her. Grandfather used his connections to help her get a job. He bought her a car and paid her rent. I’m sure he bought her clothing and what not to help her get to work and such. But his love and support came with conditions – obedience and compliance. Her family always thought of her as crazy or reckless or unstable or whatever label that made them feel superior. She was always an embarrassment and someone they had to keep in line. As long as she was dutiful, they’d help her. If she didn’t toe the line exactly how they dictated, they would withdraw whatever support and so called “love” they provided. Mom continued to drink throughout my high school years and behave erratically. While there are so many awful stories, there are some pretty hilarious ones too, albeit sad. My mom is the only person I know that can get a DUI for not driving. She was downtown. She’d just gotten off work and was trying to decide if she was going to head west to her sisters or east to her apartment. She jumped into her car, drank a swig of Pepto and vodka that she kept in her purse, popped a pill, and pulled out of the parking garage. As she was sitting at a stoplight, she was contemplating which direction she should go. Well, she sat through 4 or 5 stop light cycles with a cop watching. I wonder what he thought! He pulled her over if you can call it that since she wasn’t moving. She got a DUI that night but grandfather, being on the board for the department of transportation or some shit called in a favor and made that go away. The thing about my mom was she knew these kinds of things were hilarious and awful all at once. She’d frequently laugh til she cried – not like laughing so hard that tears fall from your eyes but laughing at something that is ridiculous and tragic and overwhelmingly sad. I’m quite sure she felt like she was crazy. She was bi-polar and not adequately medicated so maybe she was. Dunno. She was confusing to me for years. Nothing was ever just one, pure thing. One minute, we’d be laughing together. The next, she’d be sobbing with me holding her. The other shoe was always at the ready to drop even in the happiest of moments. And of course, I blamed her. Great, now I have to take care of you, again.

The high school years were strange times too. While I lived with dad, I was still her go to person. Sometimes she was all over me. Other times, she’d live in Palm Springs and I wouldn’t hear from her for months at a time. At one point, she tried to bribe me to go live with her. She offered to buy my a 1980 limited edition black convertible MG which was my dream car if I would come live with her. She thought that because my dad had moved his girlfriend in and they were living in sin, it was a bad influence. I said no. She didn’t even have her own place! She was living with her sister. How could I live with her? Besides, I had come to really appreciate dad being a dad and me being a kid. There were rules and curfews and chores – normal stuff. She was still doing crap that I was ashamed of that made me just want to crawl into a hole and disappear. One time, when I was a senior in high school, she showed up to one of my boyfriend’s track meets with a “man” that was maybe 25 years old? They were sitting on a blanket giggling and drinking vodka out of a 7-Up can. It was horrible. She just was not able to see the pain she was causing to those that loved her much less what she was doing to herself. The funny thing is she knew she wasn’t having fun. It’s not like she thought she was partying. She just required being seriously altered to deal with life.

Shortly after the track meet adventure, she went down to OSU for mom’s weekend to spend it with my sisters. I don’t know any of the details of what ensued that weekend but the result was my sister putting her into yet another 30 day treatment center in Eugene. I wrote to her almost daily. I mailed cards to her. My sister drove from Corvallis to Eugene almost daily to see her as well as going to school full time. My sisters and I went to Eugene for family week. The point was after they’d had some time to let their pickled minds clear, we’d tell them all the ways that they had hurt us and how their drinking had impacted us. It was group therapy at it’s finest although I didn’t sign up for that. It was one more embarrassing thing I had to do because my mom drank. As you can imagine, as a 17 year old, it was excruciating because in alcoholic families, all that shit is secret. You don’t talk about what goes on behind closed doors. The shame is way too great. So, to bring all that out into the light of day was unbelievably difficult. I felt like I was betraying her and hurting her beyond repair. She was so fragile and easily wounded. But I believed that this was a necessary step and the result would be that she would quit for good. That didn’t happen. She’s alcoholic. She couldn’t. That’s when my sisters said enough is enough. We’d put it all on the line. We’d filleted ourselves in front of a big group of strangers, we’d supported, we’d begged, she’d promised yet again. It was over. My sisters were done and this time, they were really done. You also have to know that my mom saved all her sweetness for me. My sisters historically had received all of her venom or indifference so for them to put forth this huge effort to only have her drink again less than a month later, that was it. I didn’t blame them, really. I think my oldest sister literally didn’t speak to her for nearly 10 years after that. But once again, I stayed. Someone had to take care of mother. I hope you can see through all of this that while it was very hard for me, my mom was suffering in ways that I cannot fathom. I hope this doesn’t sound like I don’t get it because believe me, I absolutely do. When I say she was an alcoholic, I don’t say that with disdain anymore. I say it with compassion. When I say she couldn’t quit drinking, I know she couldn’t. If she could have done better, she would have. I know that with my whole heart. I surely didn’t see it that way at the time but I do now.

I didn’t know she’d drank again after treatment and my sisters didn’t tell me. Mom took a friend and me to central Oregon for a weekend. While we were out in a canoe, I thought I smelled alcohol on her breath. I asked my friend if she smelled it. Well, she didn’t grow up with alcoholic parents so she didn’t have the nose for it like I did. But she said she hadn’t smelled it so I thought it must be my imagination. I knew better but hope is so addictive and denial is protection. When we returned to town, we dropped my friend off at her house. Mom and I went back to her apartment. I sat on the couch and mom went into the kitchen. When she returned, she nonchalantly sat down with a drink. That day I learned yet again a new level of livid. I couldn’t believe it. I was so tired of the hope/betrayal/disappointment/disgust cycle we’d been living in. But I couldn’t give up on her. I knew she had no one else. As pissed as I was, I also knew she was in agony. As disgusted as I was by her, that was nothing in comparison to how she felt about herself. Grandfather found out she was drinking again and leveled the consequences. I think he thought that if she experienced severe consequences, she’d stop. He didn’t understand this wasn’t a choice she was making. None of us did. He made a phone call and got her fired from her job. He took her car and stopped paying her rent. I don’t know what she did to survive at that time. I don’t think she was homeless but I don’t know where she was. By now, I was in college. Eventually, something happened – maybe it was getting cut off by her parents again but she stopped drinking. She called me one day and said that she knew that if she drank again, she would die. I knew that was the truth.

I always thought she was so weak because she couldn’t stop drinking but the reality was she was a fucking warrior. She was incredibly strong. She fought harder for her sanity and sobriety than anyone I’ve ever met or will meet. She never did drink again but it was far from smooth sailing. She had many hard years still ahead of her. I don’t know if she expected all of her problems to disappear if she quit drinking but looking back on it, I did. I was wrong. Now she was a woman without a solution. You see, so many non-alcoholics think the booze is the problem. If they would just quit drinking, everything would be fine. For alcoholics, it’s the solution. To take that away and not be able to immediately do life on life’s terms, that’s the most vulnerable period. That’s when life is truly unbearable. You can’t get away from your own head and can’t deal with emotions. The path of destruction that’s left in their wake is overwhelming. The shame and regret are immense. The knowing that there’s no way to change the past or take away the pain they’ve caused is constantly swirling in their mind. What’s the point? I can’t fix it. Hopelessness and despair are familiar friends. That’s why AA exists – to teach people in recovery how to live a sober life with peace and joy, to come to terms with what they’ve done, make amends, let go of the shame and regret, and forgive themselves. After the past has been cleaned up, it teaches how to be good and decent and to be of service to others as a way of giving back for all the damage caused in the past. Mom was not a joiner so AA was not going to be something she’d do. She’d always felt like an outsider and felt that everyone belonged to a clique that she was excluded from. If she’d only known that those were her people but alas, she had to learn those lessons the hard way through trial and error. She got through on sheer will, determination, and grit. It’s not the easier, softer way and she suffered the consequences of going it alone. Things got worse before they got better, that’s for sure. That’s when she frequently talked of suicide. She was so sad – all day, every day, for years. I don’t know how she managed to survive and persevere though that period to get to her solution but she sure as hell did.

Once again, I need to pause. I’ll return to her soon. Even though I know the ending and know how incredibly wonderful it is, this is not an easy story to tell. But I do think it’s important. She deserves to be honored and as I said, someone, somewhere may find some hope in this.

To be continued…