May 26th is an important day of the year in my family. It’s a birthday, but it’s a little different than celebrating the day on which one is born. Today is my dad’s AA birthday - the anniversary of the day he got sober, and the day that changed all of our lives
Before I go any further, let me assure anyone out there who’s an AA member or familiar with the guidelines regarding anonymity that I did get his permission to talk about his recovery here, so while I am breaking his anonymity, I am doing so with his blessing. (Thanks Dad.)
However, he made a big deal to tell me that he’s not making a big deal out of it. He said,
“Of course I’ve thought about it more this year because it’s been 25 years. But when you think about it, it’s really just another day. Someone who got up earlier than I did this morning is ahead of me in sobriety today.
Besides, if I brag about it, I have to give away my humility. It’s more important to me to keep that.”
It’s not that he doesn’t think it’s an important day by any means. It’s just that celebrating 25 years of sobriety today means as much to him as the next 15 minutes, hour, or day that he gets through. He’s wont to say that “AA is just as much one minute at a time as it is one day at a time.”
Well then, I am going to celebrate all 13,148,719.2 minutes, Dad. Because as much as your sobriety affected your life, it most certainly changed my fate as well.
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I was six on the day that Mom told Dad she was going to divorce him. It wasn’t the first time, but it was the first time that she was serious.
My sister and I were over at our neighbors’ house playing after school, which was a very common occurrence. For some reason, I wanted to go home and was told that I couldn’t; we would be staying for dinner. I don’t know why, but that struck a chord with me and I knew something was very wrong. Somehow, I managed to sneak out of their house and I sidled up to the fence to use it as camouflage (thinking that it would make me invisible, of course) to make my way home.
That the trip across the great expanse of yard along that fence seemed to take forever. I can see myself doing it in slow motion as though I am perched in a small tree in our yard watching myself make the move. I look small against the privacy fence and I have my back to it, arms at my side, as I side-step my way across the adjoining lawns. I am wearing yellow shorts and a tank top.
Then suddenly I am in my own body again and I realize that Dad’s truck is gone.
It shouldn’t have surprised me. I had known for some time that things weren’t right in our family. Dad wouldn’t be home for dinner and Mom would sit up in the rocking chair late into the night waiting for him to come home. The squeaking of that chair lulled me to sleep many a night.
And when he did come home, I could hear them fighting in the basement through the fireplace flue that shot up through the house right next to my room. Sometimes I’d even get my little sister out of bed and we’d go sit on the stairs by the basement door and listen to them arguing. I honestly don’t know how we never got caught…or what good I thought it would do to sit there and listen.
I am told that my dad moved out the day we were at the neighbors’. But there is a time lapse there for me. I sort of recall him living in a camper at my grandparents’ house, and things were obviously weird at home, but the next thing I really remember is Mom packing us up early one morning during my last week of Kindergarten to go to Colorado to visit family. I’m sure she had told us why we were really going, but I don’t remember the discussion. It just seemed like we were taking a vacation – I was missing school and we got to fly!
I don’t think the seriousness of Mom filing for divorce really hit anyone right away. Mom had been a member of Al-Anon for two years the first time she filed for divorce, when I was five. During the waiting period that time, they’d agreed that Dad would go to meetings for a month and they’d see what happened. He stayed sober for a month, went to meetings, and then went out and drank again after his time was up.
It took another year before she filed again and I crept home against the fence. But this time was different. She wasn’t backing down. She made him move out and shortly after, she changed the locks – which is why we fled the state.
We stayed in Colorado a week and by the time we got back, Dad had things lined out to attend in-patient treatment in a town 30 miles from where we lived. Mom drove him there on June 6th. He was there 35 days and I don’t remember him being gone that long.
There are a lot of things that I don’t remember about my life and my dad’s alcoholism pre-treatment. I am one of the lucky ones whose parents got help when I was young. However, I do remember going to visit him at the treatment center on the weekends and wearing these dresses. (Sorry about the bad pic quality.)
We would sit in the visitation room with him and drink grape pop out of glass bottles while he smoked and no one really knew what to say. It was the beginning of a strange family courting session. I didn’t know this person…he wasn’t the same father I had before.
When he was done with the in-patient aspect of his treatment, I think I expected things to go immediately back to “normal.†I know that both of my parents talked to us about it, but I didn’t really understand why he moved into an apartment and didn’t live at home. Or why we had to go there on the weekends. It was a little weird to eat Chef Boyardee ravioli and spaghetti warmed up from a can while sitting on lawn furniture. I do know that I cherished those moments, though - why else would I still have the SPAM keys from our gourmet meals there?
Naturally, I was thrilled when Mom invited him to dinner one day and they announced that they weren’t getting a divorce and that Dad was going to move back in. I remember thinking, “You were going to get divorced?†But mostly I remember that Mom fixed chicken fried steak and we ate at the good table.
So, he moved home and we settled into our new “normal.†He went to meetings almost every day and to this day he attends three or four meetings a week. (“Those who don’t go to meetings never see what happens to those who don’t go to meetings.â€) In fact, we ALL went to meetings. Mom continued her Al-Anon and Heather and I went to a group for pre-teens along with all of the other newly declared children of alcoholics during the 80s treatment boom.
I did not enjoy these meetings AT ALL and I tended to scoot my chair slowly out of the group circle (of course) and would eventually back up against a wall by myself. Oddly enough, even in a group of black sheep, I still felt the blackest.
It is hard for me to think back on these times, because I can only think of a handful of people from the groups I attended who grew up and became socially appropriate functioning adults. I have lost touch with all of them but I know that many of them continue to struggle with the aftereffects of alcoholism. Last I heard, one of my childhood girlfriends was a single mom stripping/dancing. One of the guys in the group is in prison, I think. And so many of these kids grew up to have alcohol and drug problems.
I think that Heather and I are very lucky because we were three and one when my mom sought help. My father worked outside of the home, so our main caregiver – the one who raised us, per se – wasn’t the alcoholic. We just happened to live with one. I say this because unlike so many children of alcoholics, we still had the stability that Mom provided, even if Dad couldn’t those first six years.
It took a long time for me to realize that not only would my dad never be “well,†but also that when the drunk gets sober, it doesn’t make everyone else “well.†It wasn’t until much later in my life that I heard the details of the shitty things he did when he was drinking. I was very angry. It took me a long time to accept that it wasn’t him doing those things; it was the disease. But quite honestly, if he were my husband, I don’t know that we’d still be married. It’s taken time, but I have been able to forgive him and I am glad that I know what I know because it forced me to take a look at what his alcoholism means to me.
Because my father is an alcoholic, I will forever be an Adult Child of an Alcoholic. And although I may be better off in a lot of ways than others from the group, I didn’t escape the aftereffects completely. (Fortunately for my sanity, they’ve been toned down with time and medication.)
- I am a perfectionist.
- I am controlling.
- I have difficulty trusting people.
- I feel like I don’t “fit in.â€
- I am quick to judge myself.
- As a child, I took myself very seriously.
- I am SUPER responsible.
- I have my own addictions.
I haven’t taken the easiest path. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I’ve learned from every one of them. I’ve taken crazy risks. I scared the shit out of my parents much earlier than anyone else’s kid did. I was the object of hate for a lot of mean girls when I was in high school and I still don’t know why. I followed my boyfriend to college instead of really looking at what I wanted to do and finding the right school for me.
It took college and a badly broken relationship before I realized that no matter what, I was in control of my life…that only I could take care of me…and that it wasn’t my job to try to please others.
I believe that I received that gift as a direct result of my father’s alcoholism. I am the person I am today because of it, not in spite of it.
I am eternally grateful to both of my parents for this. Thank you, Mom and Dad. I wish I could be there to celebrate with you.
Here’s to 25 more.
