CHAPTER SEVEN

 

SOBRIETY

 

     My last slip was at Christmas 1981.  It lasted only a few days and it was  connected with Ivan.  I had no call wandering around slippery places and associating with drunks.   Some of us are slow learners and I was one of them. Since then  I have celebrated my fifteenth sober anniversary and my life has changed for the better beyond my wildest dreams.

     Ever since I have known her, my mother always took tranquilizers so with the  knowledge I had acquired in AA, I tried to convince her that she was an addicted to prescription medication.

       “Only since the War.”  she said.  The War was forty years ago. The day came when the pills did not work for her any longer.  She was in the grip of dreadful anxiety, could not sleep and her hold on reality became tenuous.  She was filled with a “nameless fear” which I came to identify as withdrawal from drugs.

     My daughter-in-law, Lauren,  is a nurse and she was instrumental in having my mother evaluated. Cecilia’s Librium level was very high so she agreed to check in to the Chemical Dependency Unit  of a hospital for thirty days.  She was seventy-five years old.  Before I was taking her to the hospital my mother showed me her collection of empty medicine containers. 

      “What is this for?”  I asked.

      “To show to the  doctors which ones I have already taken.”  She replied.

     I guess she was working her way through the Merck Index.  She had containers of Valium, Librium, Mepromabates, Thorazin, Phenobarbital and many others.  She gave up her pills and I give my mother a lot of credit for her strength.  She had a terrible withdrawal; she could not sleep for years, flu-like aches racked her bones and worry, depression and fear were her constant companions.  But she stuck it out and extended her life by fifteen years.

     I have never seen the members of Alcoholic Anonymous give anyone more help than they gave to my mother.  Her sponsor, Alison, was available to her beyond the call of duty.  My mother tried.  She stayed clean of mind altering medications but she was not able to utilize the program to live her life just a little bit happier.  Her stinginess still prevailed and we could not convince her to have someone help her.  On a monthly basis, I hired and she fired helpers.  She stayed miserable, complaining, resentful and hard for her family to endure.  From time to time she tried to be kinder and more loving toward me and my stepfather, Frank, but she just could not keep it up and soon  her bitchiness and sarcasm returned.

       I tried to help her but since we had such a difficult history of unresolved conflicts, I did not think this was the right time to open the flood gates.  I myself had only a few months of  AA under my belt -- I refused to attend family group therapy while she was in the hospital.

       One day someone took Cecilia to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting which had a much rougher clientele.  After the meeting, my mother phoned me.

      “What does ‘motherfucker’ means?”  she asked.  So, I explained it to her.

     My parents moved to a residence for senior citizens in Ventura.  For over fifteen years I visited them faithfully but most of these visits were  difficult and draining for me.  My stepfather and mother did not get along and  they were full of complaints although due to the generosity of my brother, George,  they lived in a beautiful place.  My mother had glaucoma and eventually lost her eyesight in one eye.  During the last few years she has had to use a walker.  Now Cecilia lives in a convalescent hospital in Santa Monica and is stricken with Alzheimer’s Disease.  She does not recognize us any longer.  The contest is over.   We never had a chance to work out our relationship and now, we  never will.  She has had a difficult and unhappy life.

     Frank, my stepfather, died three years ago of cancer of the tongue.  He was ninety-three years old and ready to go.  I loved him and felt great compassion for him and was gratified to be able to be there for him.

     Through all this narrative I have not given account of my baby brother, George.  Well of course, he grew up and he was very, very smart, ambitious and a talented worker.  He attended Harvard Business School and became a greatly successful and seriously wealthy venture capitalist.

     George’s first marriage ended in divorce.  I am afraid my mother’s interference had a lot to do with this.  Now  George has a young wife, Kim and two  attractive daughters from his first marriage, Gaby and Susie. George was good to our parents and saw to it that they had a comfortable life.   If only money could buy happiness!  He has helped me with my investments through the years and I know would I need him he would be there for me.     George is interested in philanthropy and very involved with his foundation. The trouble is, as I see it, that our mother did an excellent job on George too.  I keep urging him to go to Al-Anon but I do not think anybody goes to AA or Al-Anon until they crawl there.  Then they are ready. 

     George and his wife, their two cats and one dog live in his exquisite home on a cliff overlooking the San Francisco Bay.  They have good days and bad days but as far as I can tell, money is not going to do it.  Money cannot buy bliss as it is an inside job.

     And now about my sons.  I did not think I was a good mother.  I divorced their father and I was on the bottle on and off for eighteen  years.  I was depressed a lot,  I raised hell and I was not always there for them.  I have to fess up to it, I was not ‘Mother Knows Best.’

     I was not a great mother, but I have the nicest,  decent, loving sons  a mother can hope for. They are talented, gentle and  they have a good sense of humor and forgiving hearts.  How lucky can you get? Somewhere...somehow in my miserable past, I must have done something good.

     In 1958 when Paul was born, we were introduced to Doris and Paul Gordon.  They offered their friendship which was a gesture easier said than done because our English language skills were still marginal at best.  Well, if we could not talk, we could play ‘Clue’ with Doris and Paul.

     The Gordons had a marriageable daughter, Lauren, three years old and twice as tall as our Peter who was four at the time.    This is the girl my lucky son married twenty years later in 1979.  I like to think that I was instrumental in getting them together but it was not intentional.

    :  The Gordons invited us to their younger daughter Adrianne’s Bas-mitzwah.  Peter and Paul gave me the business about not wanting to attend but I put a gun to their heads and made them come with me and this turned out to be the  occasion where Lauren and Peter rediscovered each other --  in the temple in the presence of our Creator.  Good omen.  They had changed a little since they had been three and four years old.  Lauren was still taller  but I suspect they were eyeing each other for a few years because they attended the same high school. 

     “How does Lauren spell her name?”  Peter asked me the next day.

     “Aha.”  I thought.  “He noticed her.”

      One thing led to another.  I was told Paul Gordon was dead set against their marriage and threatened to kill himself if they slept together.  Do not ask me why as he could not find a better son-in-law from here to Timbuktu.   Fortunately Lauren stuck to her guns and since Doris and Paul did not want their daughter to live in sin, they set the date.

     Doris presided over their wedding, held in the Westside Tennis Club.  Peter’s two best men were David Wilner, his  friend since the fourth grade, and his brother, Paul, who flew home from Paris for the occasion.  The bride was a vision in pink.  I offered to have the wedding videotaped but I was resoundingly vetoed.  Wouldn’t it be fun to watch it now?  This was one time when Mother Knew Best.

     It was a great wedding and I even danced with my ex.  When the photographer told us to snuggle up closer, I said

     “Shit”, we both broke out in big grins as he took a grand picture.

     I felt a little left out at the wedding.  Peter chose to get married from his father’s home and nobody bothered to show me any of the wedding presents.   But I understood that my sons were distancing themselves from me because of  my craziness in the past.

      I discovered that the famous gangster, Meyer Lansky, was moping around the office of the Tennis Club.  As far as I knew, I had never met a gangster before so I wanted to be introduced to him.  He was a polite old man and ever since our meeting, if my sons are giving me trouble, I tell them,

      “my close friend, Lansky, might be dead, but his friends are still around...”  Not that a tough lady like me needs to call in outside help but it is always nice to know it is there if I need it.

     I was very happy with Peter and Lauren’s marriage and I still am.  Lauren is a lovely woman and she turned out to be a prize, too.  Peter might be a computer genius but as far as women went, I thought he could not find his way out of a paper bag.  I was wrong because he got himself  a terrific wife and a fine mother to my grandchildren.

     They live happily in seaside Malibu and have been peacefully married for seventeen years. I have two wonderful grandchildren.  Alex, who is almost thirteen, is a smart, straight A student and I can see that he is going to be a heartthrob.  With his golden hair, he is the essential California boy.    He is deeply into video games, never cleans up his room willingly and with adolescence just around the corner, he is starting to give his parents a run for their money.   Alex started to talk when he was about a year old and his first words were “mine” and “more”.  I knew right away that my blood was running in his veins as those are my favorite words, too.

    My grand-daughter, Katie Alison, is ten years old, beautiful, and wants to be a writer.  My blood is flowing in her veins, too!  Katie plays the piano with skill and feeling and she is also into fencing now.  There are  also the complicated books that she writes, their plots sometimes escaping me.  She is a tomboy and wears only jeans.  It has been years since I have seen her in a skirt.  I fear that both my grandchildren are headed for Mr. Blackwell’s ‘Worst Dressed List’.   They are both great  readers and they love Hungarian french fries.

     Neither of these children have ever seen me drink and this is very important to me.  A few years ago, they presented me with a cake on my AA birthday. Their family is completed with their adolescent dogs, Charles and Dickens.  I hear they do not chew up the furniture any longer, or whatever is left of it.  They are nice dogs, and of course, I am their grandmother, too.

     My younger son, Paul, was angry with me for a long time and with good reason but he has forgiven me for the pain I caused him during my drinking.  Paul also turned out to be very, very smart.  It seems to run in the family.  He received his Master’s Degree in Visual Arts  from the famous Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  And he did it all on his own steam as nobody paid for him.

     He spent some years in France and now lives and works in Pacific Grove,  California, living in a red Chinese pagoda right on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.  He has had a few ladies in his life and some long term connections but he has not been able to settle on any of them yet so he is still unmarried.  He is a terrific guy; funny, thoughtful and well read.  He can cook, play handball, likes to hike, travel, plays the piano (a little), worried about the environment  and is handsome, too.  He looks like a young Tom Selleck and any interested applicants should contact me.

     Since my own marriage was not a happy one, I am the last to urge Paul to marry.  One of these days he will find his true love and when that happens, I will be happy for him.  I just hope I  will not be too old to cradle his children.

      After I sobered up in AA, I took Dr. Glasser to several meetings and he enjoyed them very much.  Once I invited a bunch of AA members and Bill Glasser over for a discussion.  We wanted to educate him about alcoholism and he was willing to be educated.  I had put a little spread out.  Boy, were these former alcoholics picky.  One did not eat dairy products.  Another refused anything with sugar in it  and the next one would not have a grain of salt.  Coffee is out of the question, soda will kill you and then there are the vegetarians.  These folks poured incredible amounts of alcohol of every variety down their throats for twenty years (not to mention drugs of every kind) and now they had become purists. 

But they looked terrific, I had to admit.

                        .

     In 1984 I went back to Hungary for a visit  as I still have a few friends over there.  I took a message  from Dr. Glasser, to a Hungarian psychiatrist named Paul A.  I called Dr. Paul and found out that he was heading up the government agency directing the research and treatment of alcoholism in Hungary.  Alcoholism is a terrible problem there as it is anywhere  else in the world. 

     Dr. Paul had never met anybody who was sober with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous and he was very excited when he learned that I had two and a half years in AA.  He rushed right over to meet me with a bouquet of flowers.   He was a good looking man; tall and solid with a marvelous mind and a superior education.  He spoke several languages and was a connoisseur of classical music. 

     “How come there are no men like this one in California?”  I said to myself.  I did not know.  Perhaps I was looking under the wrong rock.   Dr. Paul and I had a lot to talk about.  By this time I was an enthusiastic advocate of AA and he wanted to know everything about it.

     Hungary was still being run by a communist government  (no Higher power for them) and they did not want to permit an organization like Alcoholics Anonymous which was managed by its own members without any government control.  They could not keep their alcoholics sober for any length of time as they kept their drunks locked up in a hospital setting for a few weeks at a time but when they were released they would  inevitably lapse back to drinking.  There were also some clubs for alcoholics where they played cards and arranged dances but nothing was working.

     Dr. Paul invited me to give a talk and answer questions from the staff of one of the largest treatment centers for alcoholics in  Hungary.  I was enthusiastic and, completely enthralled, I put my heart into my speech.  They cheered  enthusiastically when I  told them what we say to the newcomers in AA.

     “Try it for thirty days and if you don’t like it, we give you back your misery.”

      When we came to the questioning segment of my talk, they had only one for me.

       “Who pays for all this?  Where is the money coming from?”   I could not convince them that AA was free, was working and was available to everybody who wanted it.  It did not cost any money.  Just by passing the hat, we were completely self supporting by our own contributions. 

     Dr. Paul and I kept at it; we talked for hours everyday and pretty soon we were talking about ourselves, our lives, our families, his work,  and my work.  He seemed starved to talk and since I enjoyed his company immensely, this turned out to be a pretty good vacation. 

     One thing led to another and our friendship was starting to  become  something more serious.  He was married but his wife did not understand him.  I never had an affair with a married man before and I believed him but I held out.  I had become very virtuous in AA, AA virgins they call us, but it was not like I was ever free with my favors, so this is  where we agreed to leave it.

     We corresponded for a year and I changed my mind.  The next summer I had a home exchange with a family in Paris and I invited Paul to spend ten days with me.  It was a romantic flat right under a slanted roof in a building close by the Georges Pompidou Center.  We walked the streets of Paris, fed the pigeons by the Seine, took in the museums, and sampled the culinary delights.  We had a marvelous time and I took Paul to his first AA meetings in both the American Church and the American Cathedral. 

     A year later Dr. Paul visited me in California for a month.  Perhaps his wife did not care.  He was considering staying here but he was really too old to start all over again in his profession in a new country with a new language.  His writing was very important to him, I have one of his books titled, ‘Heroic Therapy’, but I still have not gotten around to reading it.  I liked and enjoyed him a lot but I did not want to keep him as I was not in love with him.  One of my friends met Paul at the Cafe de la Paix  in Paris and she whispered to me,

      “He is adorable, why don’t you buy him?”

     Mostly thanks to  the enthusiasm and hard work of my friend, Kati Mati,  Hungary finally had its own  Alcoholic Anonymous and Paul became a wonderful friend to its members.  Today there is a vigorous AA which is spreading from the capitol out to the country.  They even have members with five or more years of sobriety.  My lovely friend, Dr. Paul, had a stroke and died a few years ago.

     After 1981, I managed to stay clean and sober but I still did not have a sponsor or a conscious connection with a Higher power which is the cornerstone of the program of Alcoholic Anonymous.  It is a spiritual program.  I did not understand the difference between religion and spirituality and at any rate, I had neither.

     I remember after the War, I willfully broke the fast during the High Holidays, buying greasy potato chips in a paper bag and eating them.  Because of what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust, I was through with God.  I did not know how to pray and I refused to mouth the Lord’s Prayer at the end of the meetings.  It was not that I did not believe in God, I was angry with him but more than anything else, I was confused.

     All of my life I existed in a void of spirituality and  living in a communist nation only fostered this faithless existence.  We brought up our children without any spiritual teachings or religion.

     But now I was in trouble.  I knew that I was an alcoholic and I understood that if I continued to use booze I would face an increasingly painful life and a horrible death.  Since I could not bear to live this kind of alcoholic life any longer, I surrendered and I was ready to do whatever it was necessary to do to change.    This is what I said but my resistance to accepting a Higher power was still strong.  I do not think this acceptance is something one can do overnight; it needs study, practice and example.

     “If you don’t have a Higher power, you can use mine.”  My friend, Carol, told me half jokingly.  I was having such a tough time so this was easier said than done.

     One Sunday morning I went to an AA meeting in the Pacific Palisades and the speaker was an old man named Irving N. with three decades of heavy drinking behind him.  He used to be a union organizer so an ethereal life had never been part of his existence but Irving had been sober for twenty-five years and I thought

      “If he could do it, I can do it, too.”

      What I meant to do was bypass the Higher power part.

     I started to hang around Irving and he turned out to be a colorful, interesting and compassionate man.  He was a Marine sergeant in World War II and I loved listening to his stories.  Irving was available to AA members day and night and many of us took advantage of his open house, open heart, common sense and  good advice.  I loved Irving for he had given me so much affection and intelligent conversation.  Although we were not dating and just friends, together we went to the movies, concerts and plays.

     Irving practically had to re-parent me and fill the voids I was still yearning for in my father.  He helped me cope with the anger and resentment I felt toward my mother and, at the same time, insisted that I behave as a human being and a dutiful daughter.   My mother was getting old and infirm and I had to talk to her almost on a daily basis and that was not easy.  It took a lot of talking to from Irv for me to be willing to be sympathetic and helpful.  A couple of times he even accompanied me when I drove to Ventura to visit my parents  a couple of times.  Irv also guided me as I worked on healing my relationships with my sons.

     I went to meetings, not daily as recommended, but two or three times a week.  I wrote a lot in my Journal, I made a few friends in AA and I did not drink.  Slowly and painstakingly my life started to turn around  I was healing.  It took me a long time to ask Irving to be my sponsor.  Unbeknown to me, by the time I asked  him Irving had already been sponsoring me for years.

     I have a favorite Irving story:  I used to complain a lot to Irving about my life and about my work,  it being too hard and too boring.  I did not like my boss and the students were driving me crazy.  My children were rotten, my parents were difficult, my relationships stank, I had money trouble, I was depressed, I hated the program and I could not stand it another minute.  Irving listened calmly to my tirade.

      “Beats picking cotton.”  He remarked quietly.

     My perception shifted and I had an image of myself working in the fields all day, my back bending painfully low, the hot sun beating on my head, being hungry, thirsty, tired and hopeless and working for a pittance.

      “You are right, Irv.  My life, difficult as it seems to me, beats picking cotton.”  I thought.

     Irving left us in 1989.  He is going to meetings up there in the big sky and giving his wonderful bear hugs to all comers.  Who knows?  Maybe he met his Higher power there.  Although I miss him, he is always available to me just as he was before he died.  If I ask him a question, I know what Irving’s answer will be.  I have sort of internalized Irving.

     Irving considered the meetings and the community of Alcoholics Anonymous his Higher power.  I did the same and slowly, I stopped fighting it and I started to have a connection to a more personal God.  Sometimes it is there and other times, I lose it  but even when I lose it, it is there.  I ain’t making much sense but this is the way I understand It.

     A few years ago a matching grant was offered by the State of California to any secondary school who wanted to put computers into their library.  Although I did not know anything about the use of computers, or of grant writing for that matter, I enthusiastically signed up to be among the  schools that my school district was willing to sponsor that year by matching the dollar amount of grant with the state.

     The writing of the grant was a nightmare although we had a full-time grant writer helping us but it seemed to me that she was new at this game, too.  Finally we received the grant and spiffy IBM computers arrived but it took years for the specialized library software to emerge and by then the hardware was obsolete.

     Every book had to be bar-coded and entered into a database.  There was no money allocated for clerical help and most of the work was done by students  who, to say the least, produced an uneven quality of work.  There was no training offered to librarians and library clerks  and all my meager knowledge of computer skills were taught to me by a small group of students who had computers at home and knew about a hundred times more than I did.  Six years went by and when I left the school the system was still not working.  I am eternally glad to be out of it. 

     I have traveled a great deal in the last twenty-five years.  I made many trips to Europe and also to Russia, Australia and the Orient.   I got involved in a house exchange program in which people stay in my home and I stay in theirs.  I usually invited a friend to accompany me.  I love this mode of travel as I like to explore the neighborhood, shop in the Miniprix, and figure out the subway.  Besides, this kind of travel saves a lot of money.

     I have been to AA meetings in Mexico, Kauai, Australia and New Zealand,  Bangkok, London,  Rome, Budapest and many times in Paris.  I had enthusiastic AA members translating the meeting to me when I could not understand the language.  The tongue does not matter since I know what is going on in a meeting even when I do not speak the language.  These were wonderful experiences and I felt so very lucky arriving in a foreign land and finding instant friends, comfort, advice and a cup of coffee.

      I developed a keen and enthusiastic interest for needlepoint and took it up as one of my favorite hobbies.  Through the years I must have made fifty needlepoint pieces, some of them my own designs and many of them quite beautiful.  I also made needlepoint copies of paintings by Renoir, Gauguin and Picasso.  Not bad for a girl who flunked handicraft in the third grade.  I have one large silk petitepoint picture depicting an eighteenth century music room scene.  The shading is exquisite.  This petitepoint, while certainly a work of art, is not the product of my nimble fingers but one which we used to have in our apartment in Budapest.  My mother brought it with her and it is the only tangible memento I have from my youth.

     I love to explore thrift shops.  The serendipity of the hunt intrigues me and my home is full of interesting pieces I picked up during my many search and rescue outings.  Once in awhile, one lucks out and acquires a Christian Dior, a Galanos or something equally precious.

     In 1992 I gave myself a big present and  retired.  Many people asked me,

     “What are you going to do, won’t you be bored?”  I have not grown bored yet and I love every minute of my free time. 

     First of all, I love loafing around and I can and will unashamedly flop down in the middle of the day and read a book.  This is what I call progress after growing up with a mother who believed in the ‘Joan Crawford School of Mothering’ to borrow a phrase from a friend reading in the middle of the day would have been a true guilt producing activity.  There are walks to be taken, meals to be cooked and eaten, movies to attend, music to listen to,  friends and family to share my life with, foreign lands to travel to and books to be written.  If the truth be told, I still have not gotten around to cleaning out the garage.

     An important part of the AA program is that we make amends to people we hurt when we were drinking.  Admittedly I was a little lax about this part but eventually I got around to calling Tony, and asking him for a meeting.  He said he was busy,  but will call me.

     I was just trying to throw out a few things in the garage when Tony called and offered to meet me in a coffee shop called Dolores.  Give me a break!  I was a mess in my garage cleaning outfit and DOLORES?  I wanted ambiance for my dramatic amend making extravaganza.  But this was a tough thing to do and it was now or never and so Dolores it was. 

     We met.

      “Tony, I am on a Program which requires me to do this.  I want to tell you that I wasn’t a good wife to you and I am sorry.”  I said.  There was no point overdoing it but I meant every word I said.  He said he used to be very angry with me and it had taken him a long time to get over it. That was it.  We chatted a few minutes about our parents, our children and our grandchildren and then we parted, Tony driving off in his sports car.  Well, boys will be boys.

     I had not had a man in my life since Dr. Paul and even he was not a constant companion since he lived in Budapest and I lived in Los Angeles.  Besides, he was married.

     I got used to not having a man and it did not bother me and I was not  even looking.  My past  relationships had given me a lot of pain and now I had a good life without them.  I traveled and I had settled into a couple of AA meetings whose members were like family to me. I was not lonely and my anxiety lifted, I had not had a serious depression  for years.