February 9, 1997

We had some good times on our trip, but our marriage was finished. I felt that unless we divorced I was going to die. I knew I would not be able to stop drinking as long as we were still together. By this time Tony had a few extracurricular activities. I did not mind it, but my pride was hurt and I wanted OUT.

In January of 1971 we agreed to separate and Tony moved out. No matter how much we both wanted this divorce, it was still scary and painful. We had been together for nineteen years and it felt as if we were tearing apart the very fabric of our lives. Tony and I both made poor choices of lawyers who only aggravated the hostilities between us. We both wanted the divorce. We had no assets so I asked for no alimony, only custody of the children and child support. I wanted to keep our duplex even though it was heavily mortgaged. Tony got his business, our sailboat, his new car, his coin collection and a few other items.

The divorce dragged on and it was humiliating, painful and expensive. I remember Tony’s lawyer closed down all my charge accounts as if I were going to go on a shopping spree and spend thousands to take advantage of him. It took me mere minutes to reopen accounts in my own name. The children suffered from the divorce but they were better off now that the daily fights had ceased.

I remember taking my sons for a walk in the Marina and feeling isolated from everything and everybody, as though looking out at the world from the inside of a bell jar. I was depressed and suicidal. But, how could I do this to my children? I could not as they were what was keeping me alive.

I thought separating from Tony would make it possible for me to stop drinking but by this time, I was a full blown alcoholic. I went to work every day and in the afternoon, I tried to buy just enough booze to get me through the evening and the night. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it did not. I threw up a lot and took many little naps on the nice cool tile of the bathroom floor with the toilet bowl close by.

The skin on my neck was flushed when I drank red wine or brandy. I switched from hard liquor to wine to vermouth to vodka to beer. Let’s just say I was not very particular as long as it had alcohol in it. I went to different liquor stores to acquire my stash. As if anybody cared how much I bought or put away. I knew I was an alcoholic but I did not know anything about alcoholism. I was going to stop by will power.

One night I was so miserable and so lonely I called a friend. His name was Stash and he used to work with Tony. Stash was a widower about thirteen years my senior. He was an elegant, charming man with British mannerisms he learned during the long years he spent in London and from his English wife. Stash did not know about our separation and after talking with me for a few minutes, he offered to come over. Actually, he rushed over. He was very sympathetic and it did not take us long to become involved. After a divorce it is best to start out slowly with your next relationship, preferably with one of your ex-husband’s friends.

Stash was an officer and a gentleman. He was born in Poland and served in the Polish Cavalry. Stash and the Cavalry were ready when Hitler’s tanks attacked Poland in 1937 but unfortunately the Cavalry lost.

Stash and I were together for seven years. He was affectionate, helpful, entertaining and very much in love with me. To demonstrate how serious and honorable his intentions were, Stash arranged a meeting with my Tony to declare his love for me . Never mind that I had no intention of getting married again. He was also interested in my sons and was unfailingly kind to them.

I was drinking all through the seven years we spent together. Stash knew and even told me that I was an alcoholic. Unfortunately he was jealous and so afraid of losing me that he became my supplier. Often he would arrive with a bottle and have a drink but he was not an alcoholic. I would put away the rest of the bottle. He even took me to an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting once but I have no recollection of what was going on there.

Because of my alcoholism, I gave him a hard time. I was unpredictable. I would cry on his shoulders when I was depressed then dress him down when I was displeased with him. I was good company when I was high but that happened less and less. Poor Stash. I sent him home, I called him back. I do not know why he put up with me.

I never considered marrying him. First of all, I knew that I was not marriage material. Stash lived with and supported his sister who was not fond of me and he had a modest income as an electrical designer. He smoked like a chimney and was a very compulsive-obsessive kind of fellow. His greatest pleasure was polishing his Buick in his garage and listening to music.

We did many things together. We traveled to Mexico and Stash drove me all over Europe. We took a cruise down the Danube, crossed the Saint Bernard Pass in the Alps, sauntered through the Promenade in Interlaken, climbed to see the Jungfrau, and admired the Castle of Sion. We enjoyed the French Riviera and Monte Carlo and raced through the Netherlands. We also spent some time in Germany and Austria. I was not always the most charming of traveling companions because either I was drinking or I was or I was craving a drink.

One good thing we did together was to buy a four unit apartment house in Westwood. With liquor fueling me, I was the driving force in the deal. We had trouble scraping together the down payment but eventually Stash became a one third partner and I owned the other two thirds of the building, along with the lending institution, of course. It was a handsome garden apartment house in a good location and I still own it.

After I pushed the deal through Stash was invaluable managing the building. In the beginning, he had to do a lot of repairs and painting and I am ashamed to say that I criticized his efforts and gave him a hard time. It took us years to raise the rents up to the point where the apartment house was paying for itself.

For ten years while I was working full time as a high school librarian once or twice I worked in a Junior College as a reference librarian to bring in extra money. I worked twelve hour days which was a lot, but this is where my down payment for the apartment house came from.

Stash wanted to move into one of the apartments in our building as the flat he was renting was about to be torn down. I was dead set against it because I thought that if we ever wanted to sell our building, this could create a problem. Stash was anxious to live in his own property and he offered to sell me his share in our joint venture and I bought him out even though I had to obtain a loan to do so.

Stash was able to buy another building using the money I paid him for his share. He was such a good man that he kept managing my apartment house for me even when he was no longer my partner or the man in my life. And I still continued to chew him out from time to time – ungrateful wench as I was Even when our romance was over, Stash and I remained friends. He is a lovely guy and I am grateful for all the help he gave me.

All this time I had been working in a huge inner city high school as a school librarian. I had to take this job because at the time I wanted my divorce, I needed security and the School District offered me a contract. Tony could barely support himself so I knew he was not going to support me, but I knew I could take care of myself.

When I accepted the job during summer vacation I saw a school building which was new and magnificent. The library was spacious, carpeted, lined with huge windows and furnished with new blond furniture. It had not yet been open to students yet so most of the books were still in boxes.

When the school year started in September, there were four thousand black teenagers milling around the corridors and in the classrooms. I felt great compassion for black people and I was very enthusiastic to help implant the love of books into these students. I was a good librarian, a hard worker and a pretty good disciplinarian. I had a lovely and willing assistant, Laurie, who became my friend.

It took me years to process those books and get them on the shelves and to set up the card catalog. I also had to hold library orientations, teach library skills and offer individual help to the students as most of them were library illiterates. If they had to look up George Washington in the card catalog, they looked under “George.”

I had to run the Circulation Desk where we checked out and tried to get back library materials and books with only student assistants. We lost books by the thousands. Fortunately the Federal Government replenished the till yearly so I was able to order more books. I loved that part of the job and I was good at it. It was like Christmas all year round with boxes full of beautiful books always arriving. Eventually the school acquired a Book Detection System to prevent the thefts but it did not do much good.

I liked my job during the first ten years as I earned my keep and felt I was doing something useful. The students behaved pretty well in the library. I remember Darryl Strawberry was one of the high school’s basketball stars but he was only interested in the sports pages. He and his entourage gave me a few white hairs.

Gangs soon got hold of the school, the Crips and the Bloods were very much in evidence. The corridors were full of graffiti although the painters worked day and night to cover it up. The school was reinforced like a fort but still there were shooting incidents, drugs, fights -- the whole catastrophe. After ten years I was burned out and ready to flee but how and where to? White teachers were not granted transfers from the Inner City as this interfered with the much touted racial balance.

After our bloody divorce I tried my best to make a life for my children and myself but I was emotionally depleted--and still using alcohol almost every day. My younger son, Paul, was thirteen years old at the time and he was very angry with me but he could not or would not talk about it.

One day Paul left on an overnight bicycle trip without my permission and this precipitated an incident between us. I was furious and aware of the implication that I was losing control over him. Paul wanted to live with his father so I went to see my old psychiatrist, Dr. Glasser, to talk things over with him.

“Tony is just as much of a parent as you are, let him go.” Dr. Glasser advised.

I was not convinced but I did not have much of a choice. I wanted to get Paul into individual therapy or into therapy with me but he refused.

Tony was not too crazy about this new arrangement as it interfered with his dating but he agreed to let Paul move in with him. After that Paul seldom came to see me and stayed angry with me for years. Even today he keeps a certain distance. I do not blame him but sometimes I feel hurt. I do not think the divorce could have been helped but I am ashamed of my drinking. I know I could not have been a good mother while I was doing what I was doing. I had no idea that alcoholism was an illness. I was ashamed of not having the will power to quit drinking no matter how hard I tried.

Paul was doing well in school. I remember he played the lead in ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ and he was a terrific Teddy Roosevelt. To celebrate I bought ice cream for the whole crew. He chose to go to the Alternative School for his High School years. This school had psychologically oriented teachers and I thought it was under the influence of EST. I was not too happy with his choice but maybe this was what Paul needed. To my surprise he was accepted to Berkeley so he must have learned something equal to a high school education in the Alternative School.

I was so hurt when Paul moved out that I was ready to do something about my drinking. On a July day in 1973 I turned myself in to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting being held in a yellow house on Ohio Avenue. It was a Tuesday evening and the large hall was packed. I do not remember what took place there. During the break somebody told me that I had to get a sponsor. The chief guru assigned me to Rose B.

“Call me tomorrow exactly at noon and don’t drink no matter what!” She told me. Rose wrote in my blue book of Alcoholics Anonymous:

“Good luck on your journey to living!”

I do not know why but I followed her instructions. The next day I cried all day. I thought that my life had come to an end now that I realized I was an alcoholic. I also learned that this is an illness and there is no cure but by abstinence alcoholism can be arrested. I thought that if I could not have a drink life was not worth living.

For awhile I followed Rose’s strict orders. I went to a meeting every day and I started to feel better. The AA group I had stumbled into was a tightly run ship with many rules and regulations. They were a lively bunch and they laughed as they listened to each other tell the horrible, heartbreaking stories and adventures they had lived through while they were drinking.

These former drunks liked to hang out together and helped each other whenever possible. They picnicked and played ball and celebrated ‘birthdays’, the anniversary of their last drink. It was unbelievable to me that some people had not had a drink in as much as ten years.

Two weeks later I was fired by my sponsor, the indomitable Rose, because I had refused to go to an AA birthday party. I was terminated. Well, now that I knew what was wrong with me, I was going to fix it myself. I did not get another sponsor as I never did like to take orders and I went to meetings when I felt like it -- which was not very often. It seems to me that I never heard about the steps of the program. The steps represent the actions one is supposed to take in order to stay sober. I never heard that tranquilizers and sleeping pills could take you straight back to drinking.

Even with my lax attitude, I stayed away from booze for a year. I even took a birthday cake at the same meeting that a famous astronaut took his one year cake. I introduced my son to him and Peter kept saying

“He shook my hand! He shook my hand!”

I was cured. Or so I thought. Soon after this I invited some friends over for dinner and bought a bottle of wine--for them. I do not remember the why’s and the wherefore’s but I ended up having a glass of wine. Nothing happened because I was cured, wasn’t I?

Two weeks later I was back where I had been before I tried Alcoholics Anonymous drinking every day. If the truth be told, although I did not drink for a year, I was not clean. Occasionally I dropped a Miltown or a sleeping pill or who knows what? It has been a long time ago. I slipped around Alcoholics Anonymous for years. Once I even put together three years without drinking but I was still popping pills. I whole-heartedly blame my sponsor for my eight years of slipping and sliding in AA -- my sponsor was ME. After Rose I had not connected with a new sponsor and the result was disastrous. I could not stay sober.

Peter stayed with me through most of my miserable drinking days. He felt sorry for me but told me

“It is up to you to help yourself”. He also lived with Tony for awhile. With both my sons residing with Tony, I was free to drink as I wished – and I did. My drinking life was really very boring. I was not one of those who would go to a terrific party and wake up the next morning in Brazil, wrapped up in the arms of a divine man. But I have one good story to tell in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I used to drink alone reclining on the couch and wearing my green velour robe. In front of me was this nine foot long glass coffee table, its base custom-welded by my dear departed husband. Every time I got up to refresh my drink I banged my shins on this monster coffee table. One day I noticed these bruises in all colors of the rainbow. I knew immediately what the problem was and how to solve it. I raced to the phone and called Tony.

“Come and get your table. I don’t want it any longer.” I demanded. So, he did. The table is still in the corner of my mother-in-law’s living room. While I was under the influence ALL my decisions were made with the same crystal clear logic.

One day at school a student approached me with her Check-out card in her hand. She was about to be kicked out of school and needed my signature to ascertain that she was free of library debt. I checked the records and found that she had a delinquent book. As I went to the shelves to double check that we indeed did not have the book, the student, already upset because she was being kicked out of school, attempted to tear the Check-out card from my hand. She knocked me on my back and I hit my head on one of the library tables.

This constituted an assault and eventually Security came and led the girl away. I was very upset, scared and confused. Nobody paid any attention to me so I searched for the union representative just to have someone to talk to. The nurse took my blood pressure and it was sky high. Eventually the union rep went to fetch Stash who drove me to a doctor then brought me home.

I refused to return to the same school. As these things usually go, a lawsuit followed. My doctors were helpful and sympathetic but I was a mess. I tried to talk to a rabbi about my anger over the assault but he was not the right man to talk with. Finally I had a great talk with a priest, who advised

“For a good fight, you need a clear head.” I laid off the booze immediately.

At the end of the summer the School District caved in and allowed me to transfer to the school of my choice among the available vacancies. The school I chose was far from my home and required a thirty minute drive. I was afraid to drive on the freeway when it was raining since I had been in an accident. but decided to chance it. It was a smaller high school in a naturally integrated suburb of Los Angeles. The houses around the school had large yards and some people even kept horses. It was almost like being in the country and I loved it.

The librarian was retiring and as I looked over my new empire, I was surprised to see that she had filed the fiction books by title instead of alphabetically by author as customary. I had my work cut out for me. This was a more tranquil environment and I was happy with the change. I was also in charge of some of the audiovisual materials and feeding video tapes into the classrooms. Even though I had a tough time learning to handle all the equipment, today, I am proud to say, I am one woman of a certain age who knows how to program a VCR and I am almost a computer literate.

I was about six months at my new school I so carefully selected for its serene environment, when driving to work on a Monday morning I heard on the radio news; “The library of Sylmar High School was destroyed by fire.” I could not believe my ears. I thought I was hallucinating. My library was gone. It was scorched beyond recognition and stunk to high heaven.

The investigation concluded that a couple of girls from the neighboring junior high school had set the fire by lighting scraps of paper and shoving them into the book-drop. The library quickly caught fire. It was Sunday and the school was deserted. The flames burned through the roof hours later. The entire collection was destroyed and the library was declared a total loss. It was an old and poorly maintained collection but still was a great personal loss to me. I was attached to my place of work and I loved the books. Burning them was such a hostile act, I felt the gesture was aimed towards me, but it was not, the young arsonist were not even our students. The Investigator’s Report called the devastating fire “malicious mischief” and the girls and their parents were never held responsible.

One valuable collection survived the inferno. Periodicals on microfiche were kept in a fire proof steel cabinet. But the next day the clean-up crew hauled away and dumped ten thousand dollars worth of microfiche. We suffer many losses in our lifetimes and I have had my share. The next two years were spent rebuilding the library and selecting the books for the best possible collection.

We had a budget of a quarter of a million dollars for books and other library materials. This was more like a half million dollars if you consider the discounts educational institutions get. W had no budget for manpower to order and process ten thousand books, the periodicals and the audiovisual materials. Although librarians from other schools helped to develop a basic order list, I alone carried the huge responsibility of putting together as good a library as money could buy and the best a high school could have.

Luckily book acquisition is my strong point and I am passionate about it. Being well versed in the tools of the trade, I threw myself into the project. Deadline after deadline came and went and the library building was still not ready, the school was without a library for two years. Although the ordering and receiving kept me very, very busy, it was a fun job. The PTA ladies and a wonderful clerk-typist, my right hand, Sue Tanaka helped. Setting up a new card catalog was a chore to remember, I learned the alphabet very well.

In 1975 I took a week-end class at UCLA entitled, “The Intensive Journal”. Based on the Jungian psychology and developed by Ira Progoff, it is a complex way to keep a journal and work out psychological problems without the aid of a therapist. I took to it like a duck to water. I have over one hundred notebooks filled and I found it a wonderful tool to work out some of my problems. I am sure that keeping a journal has improved my writing skills, too.

I understood very well that there were plenty of things wrong with me. Call it neurosis, anxiety, depression, suicidal impulses, problems with relationships, using alcohol, pills, etc. etc. My stabs at therapy had not been exactly successful. Dr. Glasser was my pal and I liked him a lot. I was hoping one of these days he would run away with me to Mexico (although I am getting tired of waiting) but as long as I was drinking, my psychological problems, whatever they were, could not be resolved. It was a miracle that I functioned as well as I did. I did not quite fall apart but I was an unhappy woman.

There were episodes when I came perilously close to falling apart. One day, Stash stood me up by not coming over to see me as he had promised but instead showing a visiting cousin around town. I knew what to do about that. I had a drink, or two, or three. By the time Stash showed up, I threw him out. Soon enough, I was contemplating suicide – I will show him! I called my son, Peter, and asked him to come over but he said it was not convenient as his girlfriend was staying with him. By this time, he had had enough of my antics. I felt rejected by the second important person in my life and now I was really suicidal. I called a cab and asked the driver to take me to the UCLA Emergency room. I guess I did not look too good as the cab driver told me,

“God will help you if you let him.” I must have had a plan that I was going to stay in the hospital because I took a nightgown and a radio with me.

At UCLA there was a long wait before they finally turned up a psychiatric resident so I had plenty of time to sober up but I let it slip that I was suicidal.

“I’m going to put you on a seventy-two hour hold.” The doctor said.

According to the law, hospitals can hold people who like to play with suicide for 72 hours as there is a danger that they will do it. Of course, this was all news to me.

The doctor asked if there was anyone who could come and get me. I was so furious with Stash and l mad at Peter and I would not give them the satisfaction so I said no. This was perfectly all right with the psychiatric resident; He loaded me into an ambulance and shipped me off to Olive View, a county mental health facility. In Olive View, I had a close-up opportunity to study the inebriates in the drunk tank. By this time I was very sober and realized that I had over-played my hand and they were not going to let me go for seventy-two hours.

I called Peter and tried to explain to him that his Mom was a lunatic and please, not to forget to feed the dog. Another ambulance ride took me to Camarillo State Hospital, a bona fide loony bin. I was in the big time now. I was admitted and examined and according to the doctor’s findings, I was a sane and mature adult! Nevertheless, they were holding me firm until the 72 hours were up as this became a legal matter. I was furious but as long as I was stuck there, I checked out the inmates. Although they were a little hyper I did not find them much crazier than the people on the outside.

Lucky me, I had my telephone credit card with me so I was able to call Stash and tell him

“Look what you made me do!” The poor man was horrified and a few hours later, he arrived to visit me with his cousin from Poland in tow. The cousin was very impressed by the American mental hospital. Compared to Poland, this was like the Hilton. Meanwhile, I was making many new friends and all of them kept borrowing my phone credit cards. Boy, did those crazy people run up my phone bill!

There was an exercise class run by a nurse but she did everything all wrong so I tried to straighten her out and with my background in yoga, one would think she would have appreciated my help but she was in a huff over my interference. She wanted to run the show. It was just like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The members of the staff were bitches but the crazy people were all right.

Finally they put me on the bus to Los Angeles. I had refused to give them my insurance card. Let the State of California pay for it’s own mistake. This might seem funny now but it was one of the worst experiences of my life. Alcohol was taking me to places but those places were the ones I was planning to go to. By this time I had been to enough AA meetings to know that this was going to get worse. I could not even talk about my Camarillo experience in the AA meetings until I heard someone telling of a similar experience. After that I opened up and shared about the deep end drinking had dragged me to.

Back to Alcoholics Anonymous I went but I just would not follow their advice; get a sponsor, go to a meeting every day, read the Big Book, do the steps, get involved and help newcomers. I was a dilettante in AA, and I could not stay sober. I do not think AA is a great place to pick your dates from, but it happens -- you look across the room and there is Prince Charming. I had a whirlwind romance with a sculptor who was just perfect except that he kept going to his garage whenever we were together. It took me days to figure out but I finally realized that he kept his booze in the garage. I was a slow study because he had an “alcoholic kitchen”, every dishes he owned was dirty in the sink and on the counters.

Finally I had shaken free from Stash after seven years of mutual codependency and soon enough I met a neat guy, Ivan. In AA, where else? He had been sober for a few years and took his program seriously. He had been a lawyer with Mafia clients and after a horrendous history of alcoholism, he had a disability retirement. His wife left him, moving out all the furniture from their apartment out saying a word to him. He was the Ineligible Man of the Year. I know how to pick them.

Because of Ivan, I seemed to be making a go of the program. I felt better as we went to meetings together and socialized with other AA members. After every meetings we gathered at the Penguin, a sleazy coffee shop. Sex was good. Ivan had lots of practice cheating on his wife. The pillow talk was even better as we shared a common lingo of alcoholics on The Program.. Ivan had a great sense of humor and a good education and we had fun -- until we didn’t.

This is what happened to Ivan: He had been seeing a psychoanalyst for many years and was very attached to this doctor and gave him credit for sobering him up. I knew that Ivan was psychologically fragile but I was hoping that with the program and my tender loving care, he would get stronger. One day I smelled something on his breath but it did not smell like alcohol. The whiff persisted so I questioned him.

“What is this funny smell on your breath?”

“Oh, I’m using something on my teeth.” He answered.

At this time, Ivan borrowed fifteen thousand dollars from me, all the savings I had. It was to be a short term loan with interest and he gave me promissory notes. Unbeknown to me Ivan slipped after four years of sobriety. It turned out that his psychoanalyst had started him on antidepressants and the funny smelling stuff on his breath was Nyquil, an over the counter cold medicine containing twenty percent alcohol. How crazy do you have to be to drink Nyquil instead of good booze?

Ivan could not stop drinking. He was hospitalized a few times until his insurance refused to pay for his detox. I broke up with him in order to protect my sobriety. Of course, he never paid me back my fifteen thousand dollars. I had kissed a prince and he turned into a frog. Perhaps he did not want to cheat me but this is what alcoholics do; they borrow money from women and they do not pay it back. Those folks in AA knew all about this and had warned me.

Eventually Ivan was jailed for brandishing a weapon. His son called and begged for my help but I refused to bail him out -- finally I learned how not to help an active alcoholic while he was practicing his addiction. I also knew that I had no business lending him money in the first place. Once he called to tell me that the FBI was staking out his apartment and he was keeping a gun under his bed in case they attempted a frontal attack. It was so sad. Ivan was going insane and I understood how alcoholism, if not arrested, would lead to certain death. A few year after this episode, Ivan died of a heart attack.