Rae's Story

[Jersey Nonny]

My name is Rae, and I'm an alcoholic.

It's been a little over five years since I spoke those words at an AA meeting...way too long when you consider that phrase absolutely defined me for the previous 20 years! Because of increasing ill health, I've been unable to attend meetings as I had...and, I do miss them! I had been very active in my group, going out on speaking commitments at least once or twice a month...so, let's see how easily it all comes back to me:

I was born in Troy, New York, simply because we happened to be passing through there at the time. You see, my father owned a circus, and we traveled with it...until my mother left him when I was about nine years of age, and I never had any contact with him ever again. He might as well have died...as a matter of fact, that's what my mother told me...and, I found out many years later (quite by accident) that it was all a lie...probably wishful thinking on her part.

Mom and I wound up in Newark, New Jersey, where I lived for the next 30 years. She remarried, and soon I was no longer an "only child"...I had a brother and a sister, respectively 11 and 12 years younger than me. Although I loved them dearly, I resented the fact that much of their care was entrusted to me. Consequently, I felt more like a surrogate mother than an older sister...and, I missed out on a lot of after-school activities because I was either doing housework or babysitting.

I consoled myself by retreating into the world of literature, and became a voracious reader. Writing poetry was also a way of expressing the adolescent feelings that I was unable to share with my mother. Whenever I earned the price of a movie, I spent as many Saturday afternoons as possible there...often having to bring one or both of my siblings along. At 12 years of age, I developed a crush (almost to the point of obsession) on Gregory Peck...and cut out photos of him from movie magazines to hang all over the walls of my bedroom.

When I got to high school, I began to rebel...in small ways at first...such as regularly playing hooky with a classmate to see a stage show and movie at a theater in downtown Newark. It was quite a big deal to see stars like Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Vic Damone and all the popular bands of the era. Of course, these excursions were a bit more expensive than the local movie house...no problem...I simply started to sneak change out of Mom's purse...just enough so it wouldn't be missed.

By now, we were in the middle of WW II, and Mom was doing factory work on the 4:00 - 12:00 shift at Westinghouse; but, I found ways of getting out of the house on Friday nights to go to the dances at the Teen Canteen just a block away from where we lived. My best friend had a younger sister, and I would pay her to babysit with my siblings from 7:00 to 10:00. I would get the little ones sound asleep before I would leave and make sure I was home in time to finish any household chores before Mom got home from work. Pretty resourceful, huh?

Alcohol entered the picture when I turned 16...along with cigarettes, and sexual activity! Compared to many of my peers, I was actually a "late bloomer"...probably because Mom and my strict Italian stepfather tried to keep such a tight rein on me. Already rebelling, alcohol gave me the false courage to go even further over the line...now there were beer parties in our apartment between the hours of 7:00 and 10:00. Nothing like having every drinking, smoking teenager in the neighborhood know the parents weren't at home...I became very popular!

The legal drinking age was 21; but, my girlfriends and I never had any trouble getting served...some makeup, hair up in a French twist, and high heels "borrowed" from Mom's closet easily added another five years. There were many enablers...I soon learned to flirt and become friendly with bartenders, bar owners, and band members. My friends and I became bar band groupies, following our favorites all over New Jersey. There were also frequent bus rides into the jazz clubs of Greenwich Village, New York, often getting home well after midnight...this did not set well with my mother or stepfather, and things were getting very tense at home; but, the fun times were worth incurring their wrath.

I was 17 when I graduated from high school and stopped at my favorite local cocktail lounge on the way home. At 3:30 in the afternoon, there were only three people there...the owner, the bartender, and a Newark cop, all of whom signed my yearbook and bought me congratulatory drinks! Remember, the legal drinking age was 21...did I mention I had enablers?

My first job was as a $30./week file clerk in one of the many insurance companies located in downtown Newark. It was enough money to pay board, buy my own clothes, and still have plenty left over for weekend bar-hopping...money went a lot further in "the good old days". That summer, began the really fun drinking at The Shore, where my friends and I would rent a room on the weekends at one of the many rooming houses. Although the drinking had increased, it hadn't become a problem yet.

That same year, I met the man who was to become my first husband. He was five years older, came from a very unhappy family background, and he proposed after just a few months of dating. I immediately saw a way of getting out from under the control of my parents, away from the constant babysitting...to become "independent"...so, of course, I accepted...and we were married when I was just 19. Big, big mistake...for both of us! I soon found out you don't become independent when you get married; and, now instead of parental control, I was having to deal with a husband who thought nothing of punching me when he found out he couldn't control me. He wasn't an alcoholic...I never ever saw him drunk...but, he had other issues.

Although I wasn't a virgin when we started dating, I was very naive. We were both practicing Catholics and didn't use any form of birth control. What I thought was his way of "protecting" me from pregnancy, continued after we were married (much to my confusion and dismay)...an older married friend was kind enough to explain impotency. After three and a half years of marriage, I realized there could never be any children under the circumstances, although he tried to convince me it was all my fault The arguments became more frequent and more violent...especially if I had been drinking...because, of course, I would remind him of his "inadequacies". After one particularly severe beating, I sought refuge with my nextdoor neighbor. When I came home from work the next day, he had packed all of this belongings and moved out.

I wasted no time filing for a divorce, and took advantage of my newfound freedom to spend as much time as possible in any one of the "watering holes" conveniently within the four-block area of my apartment. On December 28, 1954, I was sitting at the bar one evening, and in walked "husband number two", while my divorce proceedings had just barely gotten underway. He had just served four years in the Korean War with a fellow I had graduated from grammar school with. They had made plans to meet in this bar when they were both released from the service...my old friend introduced us and we all agreed to get together on New Year's Eve. The rest, you might say, is alcoholic history.

We met in a bar and spent the next 22 years in many, many bars! Just three months after we met and started dating, I became pregnant...confirming what I already was sure of...I was not barren, as my husband had tried to make me believe! As luck would have it, by the time I was to go to court for the divorce, I was about six months along and the court date had to be postponed. In those days, they would have frowned on a woman coming to court pregnant by one man while trying to get a divorce from another. When I finally did go to court, I had given birth to one son and was pregnant with the second! But, we were finally able to make it legal, even though we had been living together as husband and wife for almost two years.

It's difficult not to include "war stories", since our home was more often than not a battleground. We were married, but he was still living a single life...not coming home from work, not bringing his pay home, leaving me to sit at home alone with the two boys. The longer he stayed out, the angrier I became...the angrier I became, the more I drank. By the time he finally walked in the door, all hell broke loose!

Whenever I could talk my mother or my younger sister into babysitting, hubby and I would go out drinking together; but, the end result was usually pretty much the same. If the drunken argument didn't start in the bar, it would start on the way home and escalate as soon as we got indoors. To his credit, I must say he never raised a hand to me except when he had been drinking, and he didn't drink every night.

The worst thing that ever happened after we had been out drinking for several hours was a near tragedy. He was licensed to carry a gun on his job, and he kept it in the house...much to my disapproval. I said I was afraid of the kids getting hold of it; but, I soon found out what I was really afraid of. I couldn't tell you to this day what precipitated it; but, there I was, pointing the gun at him. The gun went off; but, I was shaking so, the bullet went into the floor where it made a very big hole. I fully expected the police to come pounding on the door...but, no one came. I had my brother get rid of the gun the next day...much to my husband's disapproval...and a throw rug covered the hole in the floor as a constant reminder of how close we had come to disaster. But, it didn't scare either of us enough to quit drinking.

And, it wasn't all terrible...there were plenty of good times, too. Seven years after our second son was born, we had a little girl. The five of us would spend at least one or two weeks on vacation at the shore every summer. There were trips to zoos, museums, parks, swimming at lakes. Husband and I also went to Broadway shows as frequently as others go to see a movie...and fine dining was affordable, since both of us worked full-time. But, no matter what we did, alcohol was always included! I don't think we would have done anything if we couldn't drink while doing it.

We moved out of Newark after the 1967 riots, and bought a 10 room house in an upscale suburb. There were no bars in that town; but, between the two of us, I'm sure we frequented every bar in the surrounding areas. And, our barroom brawls continued...and The Newarkers (as we became known by our affluent neighbors) often had the police visiting them.

Seven years after we moved, I began to suspect he was cheating. Sure enough, one night a woman reeking of alcohol came knocking on the door to tell me she was in love with my husband. It was one of the rare times I wasn't under the influence myself, so I invited her in and offered her a cup of tea. I thought it was very civilized of me...my kids, on the other hand, wanted to throw her out of the house. She left after a while; and, when he came home, I confronted him. He was stunned that she would have actually come to our home; but, he swore there was nothing to it, and that he had stopped seeing her. I chalked it up to his going through a mid-life crisis, and wanted to believe it had just been a fling.

But, of course, he was lying...and, when I followed him one day to the bar where he went to meet her, I confronted the two of them together. He moved out and in with her...we put the house up for sale, taking a big loss on it. Our eldest son joined the army, the younger one moved in with his girlfriend, and our daughter and I moved to the first floor of a two family house in the next town. Our landlady was a young career woman who bought white wine by the gallon and grew marijuana plants on her upstairs front porch...my kind of woman!

In an effort to try to do something worthwhile with my life, I enrolled in college courses. What a joke! I would go to daytime classes hung over, and stop at the Student Pub for a few quick ones before night classes. I would stop on my way home from work "just to unwind", and become so unwound I could hardly stand up. I had become a falling down, sloppy drunk...something I had often berated my husband for being. That was the year I used my entire four week vacation, 15 sick days, and 3 personal days on all the Mondays I simply couldn't make it into work after every "lost weekend".

On a November morning in 1977, as I was getting into my car to go to work, a woman skidded on wet leaves and hit my car, pinning me in a standing position. My jaw was fractured and my legs severely lacerated. After a week in the hospital, I came home with my jaw wired shut, and supposedly confined to the house for the next nine weeks. Although the accident wasn't alcohol related, my recovery definitely was, because a little fractured jaw wasn't going to curtail my nightlife; and, my liquid diet consisted of a lot of chablis. Sitting at the bar while drinking wine through a straw wasn't bad; but, smoking must have looked a bit bizarre as I tried to blow the smoke back out through the wires!

After daily drinking, when I returned to work in January of 1978, I started going through my own mid-life crisis, dating men much younger than myself. One of them was a young married guitarist who played in a cocktail lounge I frequented. One night, when he came home with me, he saw my Saturday Night Fever poster of John Travolta hanging on my kitchen wall. He knew I had a sixteen-year-old daughter, and he said, "Oh, your daughter likes John Travolta?" I replied, "No...it's mine!" He looked at me like he thought I was a bit strange...and, he wasn't far from wrong.

My progression accelerated...I would have denied ever drinking on the job; but, we had a lot of wine and cheese parties at work (many of them organized by me). The left-over wine would be stored in my office supply cabinet; and, while others were having a coffee break, I would have a little chablis break in a styrofoam coffee cup.

It was about this time, I had a brainstorm, and decided to go to Al-Anon Meetings. My husband had quit drinking two years before, and I wanted to understand "his problem" when we reconciled. You see, I always knew he had a problem...I just thought that he was my problem...and, though he and "that woman" had been living together for a couple of years, I decided to try to get him back. So, I asked a nephew who was in AA to take me to Al-Anon Meetings. Along the way, I also went to some AA Meetings with him. Lo and behold, I was identifying and feeling more comfortable with the people in AA than those in Al-Anon. I decided to try to quit drinking.

One night after a meeting, as several of us were having coffee at a diner, someone in the group was talking about a recent trip to Europe. One of my dreams was to travel to Europe, but I couldn't imagine doing it without drinking wine in Italy and France, beer in England and Ireland, etc. As the tears started streaming down my face, and all eyes were on me, I sobbed, "I should feel better now that I'm not drinking; but, I feel worse." My nephew asked me how long it had been; and, when I told him just a couple of days, they realized I was going through withdrawal. After a quick call to Mountainside Hospital detox center, I was admitted for a ten day stay.

I learned a lot and wish I could say my recovery was an immediate success; but, I guess I just wasn't quite ready. Besides, I completely ignored the "strong suggestion" of no relationships within the first year, and developed a rehab romance with one of the male patients in the detox unit! As we strolled the hospital corridors hand in hand, the nurses and doctors just shook their heads in disbelief. Needless to say, four months later he was drunk, I was drinking and back in the hospital for what I hope and pray was my last detox. That was 26 years ago, and I just marked my anniversary on November 15th.

When I completely surrendered and began making as many as 10 meetings a week, slowly but surely I started to recover. But, I still harbored resentments against my husband and his woman. My sponsor and others suggested that I pray for them, to which I usually responded, "Pray for them!?! F--- them!!!" And, still the anger festered...so, I finally decided to take the suggestion. The best I could do was to pray that God would help them to stay sober...what do you know, it worked! I made my amends to him by giving him his freedom...my court date for the divorce was on my 90 days, very near to what would have been our 25th Wedding Anniversary. My sponsor went with me for moral support.

It took six years in program to get back to taking college courses, and then it took six years to earn a two-year degree in Early Childhood Education...all the while working a full-time job, a part-time job, and taking one or two courses a semester. One of the proudest days of my life was to have my mother, daughter, and granddaughter in the audience to see me
graduate with honors.

A year later, I was caught in a down-sizing affecting myself and 16 others... the 27 years I had given to the job meant very little. As I was cleaning out my office to move to a lesser position, I fell and fractured my shoulder. So, I was out on workmen's compensation, which gave me a chance to take early retirement and a nice buy-out package. With that money, I was able to realize that dream of travel to Europe...not once, but twice. I'm so glad I was able to go almost 10 years ago, because the arthritis in my knees would never allow me to do all that walking now.

The oldest of my four grandchildren was born two months after I quit drinking, and I now have a two year old great granddaughter...I'm so grateful none of them have ever known me as an active alcoholic. The granddaughter who attended my college graduation used to go to AA Meetings with me and knew the Lord's Prayer and Serenity Prayer before she even started in pre-school. One day when she was five years old, after she and I had been on a shopping spree, we decided to rest for a bit. There were kitchen chairs set up on display in two rows and we sat down. She turned to me and said, "Make betend we're at a meeting, Nonny." I said, "O.K" She jumped up to face me, put both hands on her hips, and said (in a loud little girl voice), "My name is Marissa, and I'm an alcoholic." I heard some laughter behind me and turned to see a couple who had apparently gotten a big kick out of the performance. I simply shrugged and said, "So much for anonymity."

The only goal I have yet to accomplish is to finish writing my memoirs...a task I started when I bought this pc five years ago. I had put the manuscript aside a while ago, but I'm starting to gradually get back to it. Even if I never get published, at least my family will have something to remember me by. This may very well become the Epilogue.

I don't know if anyone will have the patience to read this entire thread; but, I know it was very cathartic for me to go back and remember "how it was, what happened, and how it is today."