Chapter 1-Then Maybe it all started in 1969 when I was twenty and diagnosed with arthritis in the joints

in my face. No wonder my head hurt. I was in college, the beginning of my junior year in college and straightaway I began to have these blinding headaches. Horrid. I stayed with a friends mother and father for a week or two, at times unable to barely move before I finally went to the doctor. He said arthritis. I said okay. There was no medicine. There were no prescriptions. Just the diagnosis. I explained to my parents, who were living in Kansas City at the time, what the doctor had said. I was in Fort Worth, TX, finishing up college. My mother insisted that she had never heard of such a thing and further insisted that I miss more school. She wanted me to fly to Kansas City and see a doctor there. She took me to see a psychiatrist who insisted that it was an anxiety response due to a lack of proper blood flow related to stress. He prescribed relaxation and I was branded with a psychosomatic response. Oh great, I thought. Im nuts. My mother had a sort of self-satisfied look about her. I dont remember my father weighing in on the matter. I flew back to Fort Worth and continued to have the same blinding headaches but told myself I was crazy and went on about my business. In hindsight, its amazing that I graduated. Nonetheless, graduate I did, continuing to be in pain and agony but not saying anything about it (couldnt let anyone know I was nuts.) I went on about my business, working, talking, and earning a living for the next twelve yearslovingly referred to as the PD (post diagnosis) period. You have to like the period theme. If you live long enough, youll know what Im talking about. Heres where it starts to get interesting. Id had days, over the years, when I could hardly talk, open my mouth or see. I remember working with a sweet young guy named Dave. Id say, My face hurts. Hed say, You think it hurts you. Its killing me. (Im not much of a looker.) I weighed maybe 100 pounds at 56. Not opening your mouth to eat dampens your appetite. But I didnt have much of one since blinding headaches have a similar effect. Oh, the places youll godrinking helped but I didnt want to be an alcoholic so there werent a lot of options other than sucking it up. Dave was probably the only person I made the comment toworried about that nuts thing again. Anyway, at thirty two, I went to be treated for a sinus infection. We went through two rounds of antibiotics and then the eye, ear, nose and throat doctor (I cant spell it and I have a PhD) x-rayed my sinuses. He said, The sinuses are clear but your face is a mess. You have arthritis and need to go see your dentist. He gave me some x-rays to take to the dentist and off I went, confused. Theres that damn arthritis thing again.

My dentist was a man Id known for over ten years, Billy. I went in to see him. He referred me to an orthopedic surgeon. How much can be wrong with one face? He referred me to another dentist. This man had fingers the size of cucumbers. He had a penchant for sticking all ten of them in my small mouth at one time. By now, I have been passed around more than the collection plate at church. I know you know what Im talking about. I get passed from place to place. Sitting in lobbies. Filling out forms. Wondering when someone is going to tell you something about what in the world is going on. Is there anything more anxiety producing than sitting in the lobby at the doctors or dentists office? Why, I can hardly stand it and then they come and get you and have you sit in another room while you wait for the doctor. Are they bad guessers or are they just messing with us? Do they not learn that it will take a certain amount of time to see a patient and that they have to do some scheduling? Seems pretty simple. But we wait. They dont have enough things in the waiting room (the room where we wait) to do. It is nerve racking, let me tell you. Nerve wrecking. Its not so bad when you have someone to talk to, I guess. I dont know. People bring books like they planned to wait. Like it was going to be something pleasant to do. It makes me so nervous. Why, Id rather eat a mile of donkey dung than wait. Thats how bad it is. I do not like to wait in doctors offices. Have I effectively put the pedal to the medal on this one? Are you feeling me? So Im waiting and waiting to see these doctors who are going to tell me what in the world is wrong with my face. Ive opened my mouth about a million times. Theyve told me to open and close my mouth a million times. They feel my face next to my ears. They take pictures. Not pictures like where you see people in them but little x-rays, like you get at the dentists office. What is wrong with me, I wondered, as I drove to these appointments? Nobody told me. I just kept on going to whoever they told me to go to next. Apparently, I had to do something. All these doctors kept telling me to go to another appointment. I went. I sat in lobbies. I waited. By the time I finally got to the last appointment, Id had it. I needed for someone to tell me what in the world was wrong with my face. Remember the first doctor who told me my face was a mess? Thats all I knew. I knew that my face was a mess and that I had arthritis. That was the extent of my knowledge about what was wrong with me. Nobody else knew what was wrong with me. They just kept sending me to someone else. They didnt tell me too much. So finally, I got to the last place. I wondered what he was going to do. I wondered what he was going to say. I wondered how much poking and prodding he was going to do, to my face. My face, for heavens sake. Suffice it to say that it is not a good idea to get in my face. It is not a good idea to come at me. Chris Rock says it. You got to come correct.

The last placeI waited in the lobby. His nurse came to get me. She had me sit in a chair. Then the doctor came into the room except he was a dentist. He did his poking and prodding around my mouth. He made me open my mouth. A lot. Why, he made me open and close my mouth more times than you can imagine. Ive had more visitors in my mouth than the Grand Canyon. Then he went to work. I had appointment after appointment. This dentist played in the fields of my mouth that it hurt to open and fitted me with a splint. It had a one inch lip on it. I was supposed to wear it all the time in order to immobilize my jaw. It hurt. Try to talk without moving your jaw. Go ahead, try it. Thats what I was supposed to do all day every day to fix whatever was wrong with me. At the time, I was teaching school, 4th through 8th gradersphysical education. Can you imagine how hard it would be to talk to children for eight hours a day with this device in my mouth? I sounded like I had a mouth full of mush. Suffice it to say the device got left in my desk, a lot. Well, I take that back. Id take it out of my mouth and put it in my pocket when I had to say something to the students. Then Id put it back in my mouth. The pocket thing worked pretty well until the principal of the religious school where I was teaching suggested I was doing something untoward in my pocket. (No one at school knew about it, true to form.) But I wore it the minute I left and all through the night. It was uncomfortable, to say the least. It was supposed to stop my head from hurting. I mean, thats what started this whole mess anyway. I went back to the doctor with the sinus infection because my head hurt. I went to all these doctors because my head hurt. The mission was to stop my head from hurting. Are you with me? The mess and arthritis, were at an important intersection here. Flip back to the beginning of the chapter if you have to Do you think this contraption made my head hurt less? It did not. I dont know that it did a bit of good at all. Probably made me talk less which could have been a good thing. I kept wearing this thing for a year. My head kept hurting. The cucumber dentist kept making the lip longer and doing all sorts of poking and prodding. This went on for a year. At the end of the year, he sent me back to the orthopedic surgeon. Better? he asked. Nope, I answered. So he decided he was going to have to operate. Were heating up here. I had to go have an x-ray before the surgery. I went to the hospital for the test and come to find out it involved sticking a six-inch needle into each of the joints of my face and squirting dye in and telling me to open and close my mouth. Nothing like hot coffee on a cold day! Nothing I lay on a metal table, face down, while they did the first side. My eyes started to water. The nurse asked if I needed anything. I said, You could hold my hand. She said, We dont do that here. Then they did the other side with the dye and she didnt ask if I needed anything and I didnt say a word. I am a quick study. Now, mind you, Id been doing all of these appointments alone. 3

The results of the x-ray came back and the surgeon said, We have to operate. I told some friends that I had to have an operation. I didnt have a very good feeling about this operation. I was scared. The surgery was scheduled. This was 1982. There had been a rash of people die under anesthesia in Fort Worth so I had to stop by my doctors office to get cleared for surgery before going to the hospital. My doctor was a man Id been seeing for 15 years. He checked out my heart and lungs and, as long as I was there, he did a breast exam. Oops, he said. You need a mammogram. Things kept getting better. If I woke up from the surgery, I might get to have breast cancer. You cant make up this stuff. To the hospital I went. To surgery, I went. Scared to death. I woke up in the hospital the morning of surgery. A couple of my friends were there (in keeping with anonymity). Off I went to surgery, still scared. Anyway, I woke up about ten hours later with my head feeling like it had been used for batting practice by Reggie Jackson. My head was wrapped all the way around. Part of my head had been shaved. My head hurt and I felt like I wanted to vomit. I could not open my mouth. A friend was sitting on my right and my red faced surgeon was standing on my left. What happened to you? he demanded to know. I spent five hours cleaning up the left side of your face. The disc that sits on top of the bone of the joint was under your eye and folded (try folding a nickel). You had to have a transfusion (the blood supply was not protected back then). It took me three more hours to finish the right side of your face. I had to call in a plastic surgeon to close. What the hell happened? I fell off my bike. I replied. The doctor shook his head. Didnt buy it. I fell down a lot. Hes still shaking his head. Damn. I tried a few more things like grinding teeth, braces, chewing gum and everything I could think of that might have involved my mouth in some way. Get your nasty mind out of the gutter. Stop it. You know what Im talking about. He didnt buy it. Finally I said, with great reluctance and the profoundest sigh of sadness, I used to get slapped in the face a lot. He said, Why didnt you tell me? Its the only thing that would explain the kind of damage I found. I was not prepared to do this much surgery. I heard myself say, I didnt want you to think anyone was a bad person. My friend sat there. Back then, you stayed in the hospital five days for major surgery. I was in nauseating pain. The surgeon said, Whatever you do, dont throw up. Ill have to go back in and redo two inches of layers of stitches all over again. No, he did not give me pain medication. I didnt want it because I didnt want to get addicted. My friend would sit by the side of my bed and put ice chips on my lips, or little pieces of jello, because I couldnt open my mouth. It kept my lips moist. It was just about the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.

Not throwing up was harder than you might imagine because I was sharing a semi-private room with a woman from India. Two days after surgery, on Sunday, every person from India must have come to visit her in the hospital (she had a hysterectomy.) And the smellsI just wasnt used to it. I wanted to die. Three days after surgery, the chipper surgeon came into my room, removed some bandages and gave me a mirror to look at myself. It was not pretty. My hair was shaved. My face was swollen. It was simply awful to me. Then he said, Now, you open your mouth or I will. My mouth did not drop open. My friends looked at me. I parted my lips. He said, You have to begin physical therapy and learn to open your mouth again. You have to practice until you can fit three fingers between your teeth. I thought hed lost his damn mind. But weve established Im a quick study and he did not sound like he was joking. On the fourth day, Billy the dentist came and wheeled me down to x-ray for my mammogram. The fun never stopped. I had it. It was negative. One less thing, as Forrest Gump would say. My hero. On the fifth day, the priest from the religious school where the principal accused me of strange pocket goings on came to visit. He appeared to look sheepish but it might be my imagination. He had been quite disingenuous with me. In light of the events that had transpired, I thought it was pretty appropriate. He didnt stay long. I got to leave the hospital that day, still in a lot of pain, but hopeful. Only problem was I couldnt be alone. So, I went to some friends house for a while. I spent hours trying to pull my mouth open and then using heat and ice to restore order. After a week, I got to go get my stitches taken out but I couldnt drive. A teacher Id accidentally locked in the bathroom (another story) was at the doctors office and drove me back to my friends house. I think Id tried to drive over there and it didnt go well so my friends husband had to go pick up my car. I did ask the surgeon why I had this phantom sensation of a band being across my forehead right before I went to sleep. He said, You did have a band across your head. We had to tape your head to the table to do the work we had to do. What a relief. I thought it was that psychosomatic thing again. Nope. One less thing. Again. I was supposed to go over to some other friends house the following week but I was scared to go. Her children were young. My head was killing me. I was afraid the noise might bother me. She assured me that they could keep it quiet but I had a jackhammer in my head and didnt want to impose. I hope she forgave it. Anyway, then began the long process of having every tooth in my head reshaped. Over the thirteen years since Id developed the arthritis, all my teeth had worn funny. Not funny, ha ha. Funny. Like they didnt align properly. So, cucumber fingers got to go at it again. After two weeks, I could go home and drive and play with my pup, Oscar, and practice opening my mouth. The reconstructive dental work took about five months. 5

So, whats the end of the story? Thirty nine years later, I have no feeling in the bottom of my face, from my lips down. They hit a nerve which I knew might happen. It itches in front of my ears but when I scratch it, I cant feel it. Sometimes, I cant feel my forehead so I pull my hair. Its very distracting. I spend every day in pain. Some days its a 3/10, some days a 6/10. When its a 10/10, I go to bed. The surgery did not take care of the pain. But Im not sorry I did it. I wanted to believe that the surgery would make my pain go away. I learned a lot from the surgery. Im not going to do it again. I have a lot of scar tissue. Some days I still cant open and close my mouth without hurting. But we are not talking bad news here. You cant even see the scars. The scars are on the inside. Most days, I try not to even pay attention to it. Its been there for so long that, at this point, it has lost my attention. Nobody knows about it. It has become degenerative. Isnt that a fun word to associate with yourself? That means it gets worse as I get older. I dont know what the end point isI wont be able to chew and Ill have to take my food through a straw? I dont get to know. I just get to do every day the best that I can with Gods help. This isnt a melodrama here. Its just a story about a face. Dont turn it into Days of Our Lives. You soap opera fans need to settle the hell down. I had the surgery and I lived to tell about it. Thats the story. The good news is that, at sixty-one, I look amazingly young so I figure I got a free face lift out of the deal, especially on the left side of my face. The right side is starting to sag a little, which bothers me. But I sure am hoping those anti-sag crme commercials Ive been seeing Diane Keaton do are true. My worries will be over if I dont have to sag.

Chapter 2 Now Maybe it started when I got on Facebook. Its just the wildest thing. All you do is type in facebook.com and there you have it. Wah,lah! I am an old woman and I signed up for Facebook. Is that a gas? Me, on Facebook. These goofy, precious pups are watching me write and holding down the fort. Damn, my head hurts. Every day with it. Urp. Alice is scratching the carpet. I guess she thinks it itches. Now, shes settled. Anyway, I signed up for Facebook. Ive sent invitations to everyone on my address list. My e-mail address list. It includes the President and my sister and brother-in-law. I think it even included Cornel West. Can the brother turn English into sheer poetry? He is magical. Listen to him! Listen! Too bad it doesnt include some other people: Julia Roberts, Denzel, Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Whoopi, Oprah, Shemar Moore (can I get an amen?), Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah (can I get a hey?), Michelle Obama, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, Tom Hanks and Sam Elliott. A girl could lose her sensibilities around that man. Hold me down! Id like to talk to Caroline Kennedy. I know just what Ill say to her. No, I wont tell you. Id like to talk to Michelle Obama, all of the Kennedys really, my sister, my brother-in-law, my grandmother (yes, I know shes been dead for forty years), Eleanor Roosevelt, Goldie Hawn, Sally Fields, Jackie Kennedy, Prince William, Desmond Tutu, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, Barack, Susan, Susie, Sally, Charlie, OShea, DO, my father (though he might not enjoy the conversation), Sheila, Rich, Colleen, Margie, Val and God. Wouldnt that be a conversation! Throw a little pepper in with Alma, Rocky and Rodney. It would be a conversation! Little more pepper? Add Alyson and Verleen or Andre and Tamika. Dont get Andre and Alton get started! Altons wife writes books, Barbra. Shed keep us righteous. Oh, and add the DeBerrys; they would not want to miss this conversation! Anyway, I signed up for Facebook! I have numb lips and I signed up for Facebook. It walked me through the process. I entered personal information, information about what I like to do and what I do for a living. I entered contact information. I have now arrived at some magical, digital wonderland. It was easy as pie. Its exciting and scary, all at the same time. I wonder what it means. Well, I can wonder what it means or I can go to bed and find out in the morning. It has been a day. I dont think I got up from my chair all day. I felt like a dog chasing its tail. My phone did not stop ringing and I did not stop listening all day. I couldnt go fast enough. I have fifty or more cases and thats a lot. I dont think I took my headset off all day. I know I didnt eat all day. Well, I had one of Heathers Butterfingers. Glad I didnt fall down. I felt like a cat at a dog show. And I got to talk to the pals, briefly. We were all busy. Or people acted busy. I wanted to come home and take care of the pups and write. I wanted to be done with work-related activities. Id had enough for one day. Tomorrow will be sufficient unto itself.

So Ive been writing since I got home. For maybe about three hours. Ive noticed that working on the great American novel improves my spelling speed at work. Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and again. Dont you just hate it when its right in front of your face and you miss it? Typing for three or four hours every night might be bound to improve something. Im in the groove. I spend all my time typing something. And scratching things that feel like they itch that I cant feel. Like my ears. They itch. But I know that I cant feel them if I scratch them. My chin itches but I cant feel it when I scratch it. Its enough to drive you nuts. I can feel my arms and legs when I scratch them. I elected not to go to the gathering of people in for training. I didnt know where it was and I wanted to come home and work on the great American novel. But I got diverted because its so much fun signing up for Facebook. I dont know how long that took me. Then I decided that I ought to write about how much fun it is signing up for Facebook. Ive worked for a couple of hours on writing. Youd think Id come up with more than this in two hours but what you see is what you get. Thats all there is and there aint no mo. But there will be more another day, dear reader. More another day! God willing. Go sign up for Facebook while Im gone. Itll do you good to get outout of the box that you live in. Dont we all live in boxes? Well some of us have multiple boxes. Its part of our routine, our dance that we do every day. We dance from one box to another. Or we trudge. Dancing or trudging, were doing one or the other. We are confined by our boxes. A boxed mind is the worst waste of human space. It defies freedom. It defies the freedom to hear essential truth. It squirts lies, right in your eyes. I dont want to have a boxed mind. I want a mind that is free to think and make decisions. I want a mind that learns something new every day. Every day. What did you learn today? We race, like something is going to happen if we dont get there to see it thats the most important thing that ever happened in the history of the entire universe. What in the world are we in such a hurry to do? Were all going to the same place. Really. Think about it. What in the world is the big hurry? Im rolling slowly. Not in a hurry to get there. Driving the speed limit. Taking care of the car. Slow down. We get to do this once, once. We get to dance this one dance. If you fall down during the dance, you get up, or someone helps you up. Either is an option. Sometimes you have to make up your own partner. Dance, for goodness sake. Dance!

Chapter 3-Way Back Then Physically, it started when I was born. My parents married late. My father was 29, nearly thirty. My mother had just turned 28. They were introduced to each other by mutual friends. My mother was working for the phone company and living with her parents (her mother and floridly alcoholic father though I was not to learn about that for years). My father had been living independently after getting his PhD in chemistry. He lived in a house with four friends and travelled all over the world with his job as a chemist. I digress. They were introduced by mutual friends and fell in love. After dating for over a year, they married. My father is Roman Catholic and my mother was Episcopalian and apparently, in those days, that sort of thing wasnt done. They married in Boston. Catholics really didnt marry outside of their religion in Boston. It had to be done in secret. They married in the church parlor. My mothers family didnt care too much for Catholics and my fathers family didnt much care for what was then called non-Catholics but they loved each other. My fathers Aunt Edna was a witness at the wedding and, if I remember correctly, my mothers Aunt Isabel, was a witness. They had to marry in the parlor of the Catholic church and my mother had to agree that her children would be raised in the Catholic church. Hey, sixty years ago was a different time. Sometime later, they moved to Denver, CO. Fourteen months after they married, I bounced out of the chute, as they say. They had moved to CO with my fathers job. My mother quit her job after they married because, sixty years ago, women didnt work outside the home. My father had decided to go with the oil and gas division of his company because he thought hed make more money than he would as a chemist. He sure wasnt going to travel with a wife at home. Five months after they were married, my mother was pregnant with me. She wanted to name me Genevieve after the movie star that she enjoyed. My father, apparently, did not agree. Im about as far from a Genevieve as Earth is to Mars but well get to that later. Turns out, the name I ended up with is and always has been, just as difficult. Telegrams flew like crazy. As Fanny Flagg said, Welcome to the world, Baby Girl. They went to Detroit where my fathers parents were and to Philadelphia where my mothers parents were. I saw a copyborn July 11 at (cant remember the exact time). Mother and baby doing fine. I was an event. Mother and baby went home and mother was stuck with a bouncing baby girl while father went out the door to work. I do believe that my mother suffered with what we now call post-partum depression though they didnt call it post-partum depression sixty years ago. She sure didnt learn it from the psychology school where she got a degree. She studied Freud because that was what was taught sixty years ago. They didnt study Jung, or Piaget.

They studied Freud and even later Freud was to say, dont generalize my findings. She studied what she was taught. I believe she studied psychology to better understand her fathers alcoholism. So, she applied Freudian psychology to a little baby. My first memory is of her, opening the crack of the door to my room, I guess to ensure that I was alive. I see her through bars. I must have been lying in my crib. Back then, there was a notion that you can hold babies too much and they will control you (Freud was big on control). Ive seen pictures of me lying in the middle of my parents bed. Ive seen pictures of my mother holding me (my father was a photographer) while sitting on the front porch with my grandparents (her parents). Based on her study of Freud, she believed I was happy to see my father when he came home because I liked him better. As I look back and, knowing what I now know about human development, I realize I was just happy to get picked up. He was always happy to see me so, I was probably happy to see him. And we look so much alike. Ive seen a picture of me, probably taken by my fathers father, and a picture of him. We could be twins. I digress. I had a round face at the time, like most babies. My father has always had a round face. His smile is just jumping off the picture and my smile is just jumping off the picture. Ask Dave, hes seen the picture. Little did I know, I was competition to my mother (that Freudian control thing and that Freudian oral, anal, Eros thing). I was up a while and then was off to bed so they could have time together. I didnt like my father better. He was just happy to see me. He didnt have post-partum depression. Post-partum depression must be awful. Mixed with Freud, it spells doom. But hey, Im writing the story. Taaa-daaa. Read on, please. Hows a woman to earn a living! Resilience flourishes.

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Chapter 4-Then It may have started with the timer. I dont know whose idea it was, I simply do not know. But, at the age when babies start learning to feed themselves, somebody came up with the brilliant idea to tell me that I had to be finished with dinner by the time the timer went off or I wouldnt get any dessert, as sweet things were called. Im an overachiever. I never heard the timer go off. My mother used to tell the story that I would bang my silverware on my tray. Lots of babies bang their silverware on the tray. She thought I was trying to control her (Freud). Lord in heaven, I was just hungry. She told people I was fat because I had a round face (Pam, my best first friend remembers). I wasnt fat. I wasnt trying to control anyone. I just have my fathers energy and, as he is 92, it may have been too much for my mother to have two energetic people in the house. My father is a force to be reckoned with, as you can imagine. He says hell live until hes 106. He has a family of relatives who lived past their 100s. Genetics are on his side. Anyway, that damn timer. Who would know that I would generalize the timer to a whole bunch of other things as well? I still do it today but at least I know what Im doing and can remind myself that theres no timer. Let me point out that I do jump like a cat on a hot stove if I hear a timer go off. I hate the silly things.

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Chapter 5 - Now My poor mother on the other hand was not as fortunate. At ninety-two, hes a force to be reckoned with even for me. He doesnt have any understanding of what I do and who I do it with and for. He doesnt understand that my sister was recently named one of the top ten female entrepreneurs of small companies by Fortune magazine. He doesnt understand that a change in the political environment could severely impact her ability to work and my ability to work. He doesnt understand that my sisters husband, who goes all over the country helping people in the most incredible ways, could be negatively impacted by a change in the administration. Although he says he is proud of us, he doesnt understand what we do or who we had to struggle with as women to accomplish what weve accomplished. He cant because hes not a woman and doesnt get our struggle as women. He does understand and value, as he reminded me last night, my brothers ability to earn a living because he has children, one of whom is in college. My father can relate to that. He did the same thing. He believes that my political affiliation and my sisters political affiliation undermine my brothers ability to earn a living. Hes retired and listens to Bill OReilly. He believes that Obama care will ruin the private insurance business and, as such, my brothers ability to earn a living. When we go out to dinner together and he talks about politics, which we never bring up, my sister will argue will him. Shell give him facts that are credible. My brother-in-law and I watch. We talk privately about our political affiliation when hes not around, the three of us. But I dont have the starch to argue that my sister does. I was so proud that Whoopi and Joy got up and walked off the stage when OReilly made his racist comments. Juan Williams should have been fired by NPR for making the same kind of racist comments that people struggled with through the Civil Rights Movement. Racism lives. Obama gets five times as many death threats a day as George W. Bush got. We still have racial problems. We just hide them better Oops. I didnt tell you I had a sister. I got so carried away

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Chapter - Then It may well have started when we moved from Denver, CO, to Calgary, Alberta, Canada. My fathers job transferred him from Denver and, sixty years ago, womens roles were very different. Imagine trying to pack up a house and move with a five month old. I can imagine it would be very difficult. Demanding baby, demanding husband, post-partum depressionFreud and control again. I was five months old so I dont remember too much about Denver but I sure do remember a lot about Calgary. Its got to be the best place in the world. If I was five months old, my mother might still have had the depression. We didnt know that then. When I was fourteen months old, my mother got pregnant with my sister. I dont remember asking for one but I sure am glad I got one. It must be hard work being pregnant with a baby and having a fourteen month old. I had a lot of energy, like my dad. I was mobile. It was probably hard chasing me around and being pregnant all at the same time. I remember having this book, with buttons and zippers that was a dexterity toy, though it may not have been called that sixty years ago. One day a man came to our house and he had buttons and zippers on his clothes. I was a little kid. You can guess the rest. My mother nearly had a stroke. I remember a woman who lived with us, well several, who helped to take care of me. When I was 23 months old, my mother went away and came back with another baby. She was so happy. My father would go off to work in the morning and leave the three of us. I bet its hard having two children who are less than two years old. She later told me, much later, that something special happened to me when your sister was born. I can guess what happened. She bonded. All her stories about me rejecting her from birth were fiction. Babies cant reject their mothers. They need them too much. I guess I just didnt act like it. Oh, there was rejection that went on. But it wasnt from the baby. All those years of her telling that fictional story were simply that, I later discovered, simply fiction. Anyway, I learned to tie my shoes at age two. I was motoring around and, eventually, going outside to play while she was busy with the baby. The baby needed her and, she needed the baby. Go figure. My parents made some great friends in Calgary, friendships they maintained for a lifetime. The husband of one friend was my mothers gynecologist. He delivered my sister. Shortly after she was born, my sister developed a growth in the ocular area (around her eye). It scared my parents to death and they were advised to take her to Childrens Hospital in Boston, MA. So off my parents went to Boston and my grandmother (my mothers mother) came to stay with me. I was two and a half or so. Dont you imagine I wondered at that age where in the world they went? I bet I did. But, my grandmother was there and she was crazy about me. So, Im two and a half. My parents

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disappeared. Wouldnt it be so normal, developmentally, to have some separation anxiety? I bet I did. But my grandmother was nuts about me. She took care of me. She played with me. Isnt that great? My mother wasnt much of a player but my grandmother was and it was wonderful. She picked me up. She played with me. Oh my gosh, it would have been developmentally normal to bond tomy grandmother. In pictures of my grandmother, her face jumps off the page with joy when she is holding me. My father told me later that, after a few weeks in Boston, they sent for me. I dont remember that. It made an impression that they were there and then they were gone. My father says they told my grandmother and I to come to my grandparents house (they moved to Boston). I dont remember that. I remember there, gone. But developmentally, it would have made an impression. Normal developmental angst at two-anda half to three. (They taught me how to talk fancy in PhD class but well get to that). Lets say we did go back to Boston while my sister had her surgery and treatment. My mother would have been pre-occupied with my ailing sister. Care, custody and control of my care and feeding fell to my grandmother. Were still at the intersection of walk and dont walk here. Normal, developmental milestones stay with me. But my grandmother was crazy about me. Are you still with me? She was there and then she was gone, my mother. Have we effectively established this? Im still doing normal, developmental angst. My grandmother was crazy about me. Has this been effectively established? I dont want to beat a dead horse but she was available for me to bond. (Wonder who thought that upwho would beat a dead horse?). Anyway, my sister got treated and was okay and we were all back in Calgary and order had been restored. Who is my mother going to be pre-occupied with? Im rolling into age three here. Are we paying proper attention to normal developmental milestones? The most wonderful thing ever is that, at age 3, back when children did not go directly into pre-K, my mother decided that two children were too hard to do. She sent me to school. I loved it. We played, I made friends. I was too much for my mother. Keep following along on these normal developmental milestones here. I was at school playing and my mother was at home with my sister. It was, as Forrest Gump would say, a very confusing time for me. Then my world grew to include school at age 3 and home. I probably wanted to play. ..like we did at my school. I wanted to play with the baby. Normal developmental milestones here. Schoolhomepreoccupied mother. There, gone. I wasnt sure where she went but she was darn sure gone. Thank heavens for school. You know I stayed in it til there werent any more classes to take. I got my Ph.D. But Im getting ahead of myself. My mother had a series of women who came into the

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house to cook and clean, what with the heavy responsibility of having a lively two-and a half-year old. They helped take care of me. Theres that too much for my mother thing again. As my sister got older, and better, my sister and I shared a room. My mother would come into the room at night, say goodnight to me and then go and sit on my sisters bed. I always wondered, in some needling way, what they talked about or what they did. I just remember my mother not sitting with me and sitting with my sister. Seems pretty ridiculous, when you think about it but its always made me wonder what was wrong with me that she didnt sit on my bed. Normal developmental, ages three to four, confusing angst. I think my father was still pretty happy to see me when he got home but we had strict rules about bedtime because thats what you do with a two and a four year old child. This was sixty years ago, if youre keeping up. I think I wasnt too sure this sister thing was such a good idea. So my world as a four and five year old included school that I loved, home that I wasnt too sure of and, well, sleep the daughter of a mother who didnt sit by the side of her bed. It was a very confusing time for me. Someone asked me thirty years ago what my first memory was. Back then, I said, Im standing outside in the front yard down the hill and a man stopped in front of the house and got out of the car. He opened the trunk of the car and asked me if I wanted some peppermint. Now, Id learned at school, not to talk to strangers and no one looked stranger to me than this man. As he got out of the car to open the trunk, I hightailed it up the hill, well the stairs up the hill and tried to open our screen door. It was locked. I banged on the door and my mother came to the door. I told her about the man at the bottom of the hill and, I think, my father came home from work to look for him. They didnt find anyone. I dont think my mother believed me. My father seemed to. I remember him picking me up. Thats the memory, I told them. What was the message that you got from this memory was their next question? Watch out for those self-help types. My answer: That what happened to me was inconvenient for my mother. It took time away from her time with my sister who she really seemed to enjoy. By this time, I was growing and, as children do, I became too heavy for her too lift. Plus she seemed to enjoy holding my sister. Growing, bonding, normal developmental milestones are still the plot line here. I was not too heavy for my father to lift. She didnt have room for me in her lap because she was holding my sister. Plus, I was too heavy. But I wasnt too heavy to sit in my fathers lap. He would read to me and I pretended to learn to read by memorizing what he said. I must have been precocious at four and five. Still going to school every day. Making friends. My first best friend was the daughter of friends of my parents. She had an older sister but in my family, I was the oldest. We were the same age and the best of chums.

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Ive seen pictures of my sister and I playing outside from the time she could walk. We look as if were having fun. Im tall and straight with a round face like my father and my sister has the softer look of my mother. Meanwhile, back at the house, my mother began to develop some weird ideas about how to parent me. Freud raised his ugly head again. She got to thinking I preferred to sit on my fathers lap. My sister was smaller and easier for her to handle. She had an unreachable sense of denial about who rejected who. I didnt seem to be too heavy to sit in my grandmothers lap. She thought I liked them better. She began to tell people I rejected her from birth. No baby can reject their mother at birth. Someone did get rejected. It just wasnt her. One day when my grandmother was visiting from upstate New York, she decided we were going on an adventure together to pick out a new refrigerator for my mother. I was so excited to be going somewhere, anywhere, with my grandmother. I was four or five. So, we got on the bus to go to town. We looked at refrigerators. Apparently we found one because it was time to get back on the bus. Except when I looked behind me, my grandmother was not on the bus. When I looked out the back window of the bus, she was running after it. Never have I been so happy to have a bus stop or to see someone. Scared me to death (this will get to be a theme). Anyway, I loved outings with my grandmother and life went on. I had a best friend named Pam. We played together. I had a sister and, when she was old enough, we played together. We sledded, ice-skated, played in the yard. In the spring and summer we went swimming and played in the yard. It was a pretty wonderful existence. I had lots of friends: Pam and David. Pam and I still keep in touch more than fifty years later. I had neighborhood friends and was happiest out playing with my friends. Keep walking, normal developmental milestones, no psychopathology here. As I said, I started school at age three. My mother was overwhelmed with having two children under the age of four. Christopher Robin was the name of my first school and from day one, I loved schoolloved it. So I went to school and played with my friends in the Canadian Rockies, beautiful country, and I was a happy little camper. My brother was born seven years after I was. Strangely enough, I had prayed for a brother because the sister thing was sometimes difficult. I prayed to God for a brother and you know what? I got a brother. It was the first time I ever thought that God really answers prayers. My father took my sister and I to the hospital to see the new baby. I remember watching mothers stomach grow but didnt know why it grew. I remember we were having a baby and I was praying for a brother. I was six at the time and bliss abounded, right? Not. I was so glad God was listening and I got a brother. I was doing normal big sister, wanting to help take care of the baby things that children do when theyre six years old things. It made me happy. I had someone to take of because some strange Freudian practices were being applied to me and I 16

seemed to get in trouble a lot. My mother thought the only way she could get me to do anything was to ask me to do the opposite of what she wanted. I didnt know what she wanted, ever. Talk about confusing. I would just do what she asked me to do and then shed get mad because I didnt figure out to do the opposite. It was very confusing. She kept telling me I was fat because I had a round face. She told all her friends about my round face and she always said, You dont have a neck. It took me until I was twenty five years old before a friend made me stand in front of a mirror and said, Whats this? She pointed to the area between my head and shoulders. Oh my gosh, I had a neck. Course sixty years later its starting to fall. But I consider every wrinkle well earned. Apparently my sister was small and younger. She was named after my mother. She didnt have a single characteristic of a round faced person. She looked like my mother, softer. She was not as heavy as I was because she was not as old as I was. My brother needed to be tended to and I was old enough to help. I think my mother still had the notion that you only pick children up sparingly unless they are born with a growth over their eye. My brother didnt have a growth. But I would go in and check on him and I would want to hold him. It seemed instinctive to me. Big sisters do that. Plus he didnt fuss at me. He was just a baby and couldnt talk but that didnt register with me. There are people who will tell you I have a firm grip on the obvious. It seemed to me like I was being blamed for one thing and another. If my sister and I disagreed, my mother would say, Youre the oldest. Youre responsible. Youre bigger than she is. You could hurt her. Now I had no desire to hurt my sister. There are plenty of pictures of my sister and I playing outside together and looking pretty happy doing it. Normal developmental stages, doing age appropriate things and struggling with the idea of having to share everything with my sister. My mother still came into our room every night and sat on the side of my sisters bed. They would laugh and talk. I would turn my back to them and weep silently. I wonder why she never sat on my bed. Then shed get up and quietly leave the room. I always wondered what they were talking about. My sister didnt start school at age 3, nor did my brother. They both started to school in kindergarten. I was far along in my educational process by then. Let me remind you again how I loved school. I did well in school and didnt seem to get in trouble at much at school as I did at home. School made sense to me by that time. I also never had the same stuffed animal that my sister and brother shared, Pinky. I dont know why. Maybe I didnt want to bond with a stuffed animal. I did have a rag doll named Raggedy Ann. But she didnt sleep with me. There go Bowlbys theories. I didnt want to bond with something stuffed. I wanted to bond with a real person who had to be available for me to bond with.

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Post-partum depression did not accompany my sisters birth. It may have followed my brothers birth. I really dont know. I do know that Id go in and check on him and my mother would tell me I wanted to check on him too much. She criticized me for picking him up too often or holding him for too long. Instinctively, that didnt make sense to me. So, I kept doing it. She thought I did it just to bother her. I did it because it seemed right. I kept going out and playing with my friends because I was old enough to be outside. Sometimes my mother would want me to take my sister with me and, sometimes, I didnt really want to do it. I wanted to have my friends and I wanted her to have her friends. My mother thought that meant I didnt like my sister. It wasnt true. She thought I liked my brother better than my sister. It wasnt true. He just couldnt talk yet and didnt fuss at me. He always seemed to be happy that I checked on him and that he could sit on my lap. I was old enough and tall enough to reach him eventually, because I was nearly seven when he was born and my sister was nearly five. She couldnt pick him up as easily as I could. Plus, she always seemed to be sitting on my mothers lap. I would sit on my fathers lap or I would hold the baby until his bedtime. My mother thought it meant that I liked them better than I liked her and my sister. Not true. Fast reverse back to Freud and bonding. Fast reverse back to he was a baby and couldnt talk so he couldnt fuss, argue, criticize or make me feel bad about myself. My father came home from work one day when I was six, my sister was four and my brother was less than five months old. He told us we were moving to Midland, TX. Id always been pretty crazy about my father but I sure didnt know about this idea. My parents went off to Midland to look for a house and they were gone for what I think was a couple of weeks. We either stayed with my parents friends or my grandmother came to stay with us. I just knew they were gone. It must have been my grandmother because I remember walking home from school for lunch and climbing down the rock garden in the back yard. Id been told not to use the bathroom anywhere but at home and I really needed to go, badly. I was six and in the first grade. School was only five or six blocks from my house and it was safe to walk home from school sixty years ago. My mother was big on exercise. I almost made it to the bathroom but not quite and I soiled myself. My grandmother didnt make a big deal about it. My mother would have gone into orbit. My grandmother just helped me change underwear, fed me my lunch and sent me back to school on time. I dont think she ever told anyone. You can imagine my gratitude. After they got back from looking at houses, things started to heat up. My mother was charged with arranging the move because my father had to go to work. I dont think she was too thrilled with the idea either. She had good and dear friends that she really didnt want to leave but, sixty years ago, women moved where their husbands jobs were. Sometime, right around the time my brother was born in February, my fathers mother died suddenly of a heart attack while serving dinner to a houseful of guests. My father went alone to her 18

funeral, leaving my mother to do the care and feeding of three children. I dont know why she couldnt go. Maybe she was needed at home or maybe there wasnt enough money for a plane ticket. She never really liked my fathers mother because she was fat but I only understood that much later. She was my god-mother, my fathers father, and I had the same full round face as a baby as she had. Theres that nasty genetics thing again. I tried to help my mother because I was six and old enough to do it. She seemed to have her hands full. He came back from the funeral. My brother fell off of one of the chairs at under five months and, because his bones were soft like most babies and he was a pretty happy baby, no one even knew he broke his arm. I ran over and picked him up. He only cried a little bit. He was a happy baby and I was a happy big sister. Anyway, the move. It was a flurry of activity. Packing, saying goodbye to people you have come to love and cherish. It had to be so hard on my mother. Friends had parties in abundance to say goodbye to them and us. Sometimes we got to stay with friends when they went to the parties. Best of all was Pams mother and fathers house. They didnt fuss at me or criticize me. They did think it was funny that I had such a round face and that maybe I was fat because thats what my mother told them. Nobody connected the dots that I just looked like my father who was making my mother move from a place she loved where she had dear friends out to the middle of the Texas desert. Theres that ugly genetics thing rearing its ugly head. Again. Never in her life did my mother ever think she would live in Texas. She was from Philadelphia and Boston, not Texas. But my father, who I look like, was making her move. Theres that ugly Freudian control thing again. Every time she looked at me, she saw the man who was making her move. She didnt want to move but, sixty years ago, thats what women did. My mother was so sad and I couldnt do anything about it. I dont know if my father saw it but I saw it. Course, I didnt want to move either. I had friends that Id played with for as long as I could remember. The parents of friends would ask me if they could keep me. I had time away from the house by the time I was three or four. I was almost seven when we actually moved. Id been around. My parents friends would tell me they wanted to take me home with them. I even packed a suitcase one time and I remember all the grown-ups laughed. That was my introduction to what has evolved into my existential stand-up comedy routine. Im just waiting to be discovered. Chris Rock aint got nothing on me. Well, hes got more money but Im funnier. I dont use GD and MF to the same extent but hey, its my comedy routine. Im getting ahead of myself. Rewind. I didnt want to move either. But I couldnt live independently in Calgary at age seven, so there you have it. I wanted to stay and live with Pam and her family but So back to the flurry of activity. Packing, getting ready to move, saying goodbye to people, staying at friends houses while the grown-ups packed. Urp! Then came moving day. My last day at school 19

my favorite teacher ever, Ms. Clark, lined everyone up to say goodbye to me. I was in a stupor and very, very sad. We spent the last night there at Pams parents house (her parents and my parents were the best of chums, Marg and Jim Francis. He was a doctor and Jim delivered my sister and brother.) I probably failed to report seminal events. My sister did not go to school at age 3. She stayed home with my mother. I was at school or outside playing and my mother and sister were together. My mother seemed to love having another child, especially a girl. She had a brother. She could have used a sister. They were at home all day together and loved being together. More bonding. Stay with me here. Bonding: no post-partum depression, looked more like her, needed her more and cute as a button. She needed to be needed. I was getting big and was too much for her. My sister was small and easy to lift, though my mother wasnt much of a lifter at least with me. But her ideas about parenting changed with the second child and it was different. My mother experienced it as different. It wasnt that I was some rarefied creature that wanted to bond with apes. She wasnt available for me to bond with. The origins of the she rejected me from birth myth. Babies cant reject their mothers. Surely you know this. She had another baby and left me with my grandmother. I didnt leave her. She left me. I was too young to know what its taken me years and a right smart amount of my money to come to know. She left me. I didnt abandon her from birth. She abandoned me. All I knew was that she was darn sure gone. I think this is pretty standard birth order stuff. Both of my parents were basically only children. My father was his parents only child. My mother was her parents only child until she was maybe eight or nine years old when her mothers son from another relationship came to live with them. When he was eighteen years old, he went back to California where my grandmothers sister lived. It was really pretty understandable.

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Chapter 6 - Now Maybe it started with the genealogy work. One of the pals is doing some genealogy work for me. Shes into that kind of stuff. She goes to libraries all over the country and looks up information on peoples families. She told me shed gotten back to eighteen sixty-seven with my fathers side of the family. She says its better to follow one side of the family as far back as you can before tackling the other side of the family. She said she hadnt found any skeletons yet. I thought keep looking, you will but I didnt say it. My father has two grandfathers clocks. He thinks hes going to sell them. When I told him that one of them dated back two hundred years, he looked at me like Id lost my mind. But my pal saw a picture of the clock. So thats good enough for me. She also told me that my mothers great uncle was a doctor. He apparently went to Washington State University. I never knew that. I wonder if she knew that. She had an uncle who went to medical school. Thats all I know so far. My pal said its better to go with one side of the family so I believe her. She doesnt need to make stuff up. Shes going to keep looking on my mothers side of the family. I know what shell find. But Im not saying a word. She says every family has skeletons. Shell find it. I have learned that sometimes the less said the better. Yes, Lord.

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Chapter 7 Way, Way Back Then Heres the skeleton. My great grandmother on my mothers side of the family married a man who moved her from upstate New York to the Carmel area of California to seek his fortune. They rode the train. I bet she missed her parents but when you married back then, you followed your husband wherever he went. While in CA, she gave birth to two daughters, my grandmother and my grandmothers sister. Her mother died of some kind of kidney disease when my grandmother was nine and her sister was seven. No one ever seemed to know the name of the disease. After my great grandmother died, my great grandfather became an adroit philanderer which is to say that he was skilled and known throughout the small community as a womanizer. He married several women. Some of them didnt like my great grandfathers daughters. But they loved his prosperity. He was prosperous. He made his fortune. Im not exactly sure what he did but I know he had land and horses and a stable. One night, my grandmother woke up in the middle of the night and one of her step-mothers was standing over her with a knife. She was between fourteen and sixteen. She got out of the house and married the stable boy. No, it wasnt a shotgun wedding. Stop it. Always looking for a scandal. When she was eighteen, she had a child. The babys father left when he was eighteen to join the Merchant Marines. Apparently the notion of supporting a wife and child didnt appeal to him so off he went, leaving my grandmother with a baby. My grandmother could not go home and live with the same step-mother. My great grandfather was married to her for a while. Apparently he didnt know about the knife. She seemed to like my grandmothers sister okay but she did not like my grandmother. My grandmother was eighteen and alone with a baby. She had no job. Her sister was sixteen years old and could live with my step-great grandmother. Her father loved her but didnt understand what was going on. My grandmother and her sister hatched a plan. My grandmother would go back to upstate New York where her mothers parents lived. My aunt could take the baby to live with her in the house. My grandmother would be in a safe place. She would send for him when she got settled. 22

I doubt she knew it would take seven or eight years. My grandmother couldnt be available to bond with her son, safely. At eighteen, she didnt know what to do with a baby. She was scared for her life and she ran for safety. She left my uncle, my mothers half-brother (same mother, different fathers) when he was very small and he bonded with my grandmothers sister. Pretty standard stuff here. My grandmother ran to a place where she could be safe with the only people she knew loved her, my grandmothers grandmother and grandfather. She stayed with them until she could get on her feet. She didnt have a career so she had no way to earn money. They didnt seem to mind having her there. Now upstate NY is about as far from CA as Earth is from Mars or so it seemed one hundred years ago. The only available means of transportation was the train and it was a long train ride all the way across the country for a single woman. It would not have been proper for her to make the trip. Her grandparents were probably still mad at my great grandfather for taking their daughter so far away and letting her die. They were probably mad that he was philandering with two small children at home. Grandparents get that way. So my grandmother lived in peace and harmony with her grandparents. They loved having her around. Eventually though, she was ready to marry again and have more children. She met my grandfather and fell in love. He was from a small town near the town where my grandmother was living. She lied about her age. She told my grandfather she was several years younger than she really was because he was younger. Anyway, they fell in love and married. After several years, my mother was born. She was an only child of these two adoring parents for the first years of her lifeI think it was several. Then my grandmother sent for her son. He would have been nine at the time. The Merchant Marine never popped back up on the radar so my mothers father agreed to have my uncle come to live with his mother and him. He adopted him and gave him his last name. My mother was crazy about her brother. She couldnt believe her good fortune. He was nine and she had a big brother. Who doesnt want a big brother? My grandmother had a son who didnt remember her very well and my grandfather had a nine year old child that was fathered by another man. He probably had to get to know him. That couldnt have been easy for either of them. I bet my uncle was homesick for his aunt who had been the only mother hed known. He may not have been very happy with things in a new place. But gradually, as he got older, he got to know some boys in the small town in upstate NY and they became real pals. A group of them hung out together until they turned eighteen. My mother used to love to tag along. She remembered all of their names. My mother was nine when my uncle turned eighteen and, just as soon as he finished high school, he beat feet back to CA. He was probably a handful at eighteen and, by then, my grandfathers alcoholism was emerging. There, I said it. He was an alcoholic. My uncle got out of there and went back to the life he knew in CA. He later became an alcoholic too. There, I said it. Genetics or environment, either one can be deadly. Read about it in my dissertation. Its a great read. Hundreds of pages and useful, if you 23

want to understand more about the relationship between substance use, mental illness and family functioning. So, my mothers half-brother went back to CA when she was nine. She missed him terribly. My grandmother probably became depressed. My grandfather kept on drinking. My mother thought it was her mothers fault that her father drank. She didnt know back then about the love affair alcoholics develop with alcohol. She knew about Freud. Little was known about the progression of the disease. It was a scandal in the small town where they lived because everybody knew it. They could hear him hollering when he came home drunk or my grandmother would tell her friends about his drinking. Back then, it was just a scandal. My grandparents moved with my mother as she got older to Philadelphia, PA. My grandfather got a job in sales. Worst profession in the world other than construction work for fostering drinking. He would come home from work drunk and start screaming and hollering. My mother talked about how she and her mother would run around the house. They closed the windows so the neighbors wouldnt hear. It was shaming and embarrassing. Ive worked with thousands of people who have problems related to the harmful use of substances. Ive worked with thousands of their family members. They thought the problems were their fault. Thats what people mistakenly believe. Its not someone elses fault. They do it because they like the way it makes them feel. There might be some underlying issues but the essential truth is that if it wasnt against the law and it didnt seem to cause any problems, a lot more people would be using substances, especially alcohol. Its legal. Did you know that the largest single source of income for the federal government after income taxes is liquor and sin taxes? Alcohol is big business in this country. Thats why the liquor lobby is so powerful in Congress. Pay attention to all of the liquor ads on television! If you believe the advertisements, you get a powerful message that you cant have a good time without drinking. If you watch a sporting event, and I do, you see a gozillion ads for liquor. You cant watch a football game, a basketball game, the World Series or any other sport without seeing an ad for liquor. I havent noticed them so much in tennis matches, which I love to watch as I was a tennis player, or golf matches.

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Chapter 8 Now Maybe it started with Tiger Woods. Yes, I occasionally watch golf. I especially watch it if Tiger is playing well. Yes, he did a very bad thing to his family. I think he knows it. He was raised by a father who cheated on his mother and told him he could have anything he wanted. Apples dont fall far from trees. But get off his back, collectively. Hes paying for his sins, in spades. I feel very badly for his wife and children. They are paying the price of his indiscretions. But hes not the only guy who ever cheated on his wife and hes probably not the only golfer on the pro tour whos had indiscretions. They arent as good as hes been and theyre not African American. Golf is still a white sport. I hope he does well and lives up to his own standards for himself on a golf course. I love watching he and Stevie enjoy one anothers company so much. Its easy to see why hes on the bag for Tiger. Hes very good at what he does. I hope his wife heals and finds comfort in her children and her friends. I hope that she can live long and prosper. I hope she finds love again. We dont need to be picking sides and jumping to conclusions. Good grief. How can there be good grief? I swear the Olympic Committee should make it the national pastime of Americajumping to conclusions. We all do it, about things we know very little about. They do it in other countries too, jumping to conclusions about what it means to be an American. It could be a competitive Olympic sport. Whered we learn that? We need to get off Tigers back. We dont really need to be on anybodys back but maybe our own about doing the best that we can do for as long ever as we can for as many people as we can. We need to be about encouraging youth to grow and flourish. Its their time.

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We shouldnt really have enough time to be all involved in other peoples lives just because they are celebrities. But we have this morbid fascination with scandal. We need to be about making ourselves the best that we can be, at whatever were called to do. And life does have its callings. If youre not getting a message about your life, youre not listening. If you dont cherish what you do for the sake of doing it and doing it well, youre not paying attention. Tiger was born to be a golfer and he is continuing to work to do it better. I hope he lives to realize the dreams he has for himself. I hope he cherishes his children and that, eventually, they look up to him. I hope the divorce is peaceful and that both of them work things out in the best interests of the children. Its really none of our businessIm big on hope.

Chapter 9 - Then Anyway, back to the alcohol. My grandfather continued to drink and he sometimes had to travel when he worked. Hed pick up strangers he met and bring them home for dinner. Hed pick them up and just give them a ride somewhere. He had a car by then and he went around selling glass for a glass factory in Philadelphia. The three of them, my mother and her parents, lived in that house and tried to hide the drinking from the neighbors and everyone else. I dont think my grandmother or my mother knew about Alcoholics Anonymous. They just knew he came home screaming. My mother loved her father and thought it was her mothers fault that he drank. They would holler at each other and my grandmother didnt know what to do to get him to stop drinking. The disease progressed as it will dochronic, progressive and fatal. He continued to drink. Everyone tried to hide it. My mother couldnt figure out how to get him to stop drinking. When she went to college at eighteen, I believe she studied psychology to better understand her fathers drinking and her parents strained relationship. Freud didnt have too much to say about that and Freud was what was being taught at the time. My grandmother never learned to drive. I dont know why. They only had the one car that my grandfather drove. She didnt have any way to make a living so she was dependent on my grandfathers income. She was stuck in what was becoming an intolerable situation. My mothers father was a big man, 6, 2 tall and robust. He was brimming with vitality and energy. My grandmother was about 5, 7, tall and she probably had a lot of her vitality and energy scared out of her by the step-mother standing over her with a knife.

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She didnt know what to do. Divorce was not common in that era. It would be a bigger scandal. So, she stayed. One man left her for the Merchant Marines and the other one left her for alcohol. She probably felt doomed in the relationship category. She struggled to control something and what she could control was my mother. My mother blanched under the weight of that. When she went away to college, her mother would write her letters about what my grandfather was doing with his drinking. My mother was trying to get away from it and the letters kept pulling her back in. She was trying to make a life for herself in college. She didnt want reminders of how things were at home. It was too painful. My grandfather also wrote her letters, but they were glowing letters about how much he missed her and how proud he was of her and how much he looked forward to seeing her. After she died, I found the letters my grandfather had written my mother. She had saved them all. I didnt find any of my grandmothers letters. They were probably too sad. After two years at a school out of town, my mother transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to be closer to her parents. She finished her degree there, in psychology, and may have lived at home during those last two years in college. I dont know if the sales business wasnt going very well or what the reason was but I do know she transferred from a school she loved where she had great friends to another school that was close to the embarrassment she was trying to hide. I think she lived at home and worked for the phone company in what we now call Human Resources. She was involved in interviewing candidates for positions of employment at the phone company. Thats where she met the man who introduced her to my father. So she had a career from the time she was 22 until she met my father at age 26 and married him at 27. She probably gave financial support to her parents as the sales business was not going well with all the drinking. She dated other men but didnt meet the right one until she met my father. He hadnt been much of a dater and she was the first woman he fell in love with. She may have been the first girl he ever dated. Ive never heard him speak of it. They fell in love. After a while they married. I wonder if my father saw my grandfathers behavior. I dont know. I bet they went out on dates. Ive seen pictures of them on a date. They look happy. They are both smiling big smiles. They are sitting on the grass. Go look at the pictures. I have pictures. Im determined not to have pictures in my book. That would make it noticeable. This has to be anonymous, completely anonymous. I could be in a world of hurt if word ever got out. Better it be secret. After they married, she gave up her career because thats what women did fifty or sixty years ago. She stayed home after they married. I bet she missed her job and the friends she had at work. Its a great way to spend part of the day, if youre doing what youre called to do.

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Chapter 10 - Now Yes, were called. Were called to do the best we can every day. Were called to work with children in the foster care system. We are entrusted with their care. We want whats best for them. Yes, the company I work with works with foster care. They work with some other things but what I know about is foster care. I listen to stories all day long about children who are mentally ill. They are so sick that they have to be in the hospital. Children, as young as three years oldwhose parents didnt treat them right. They treated so badly that they cant be parents anymore. So they live with other parents. These other parents let them stay with them in their houses. I hear stories about the children who have problems with their new parents. They misbehave so badly that they have to go to the hospital. All day, I hear about these children. Nine hours a day. They arent very happy stories. Actually, they are very sad stories about the children. Sometimes the children want to kill themselves or kill somebody else. They hear voices the rest of us cant hear. Theyve been bad. They were bad and they got sent away. These are sad, sad stories. Most people dont want to hear them. I hear them, all day. It makes me sad when I hear about the children. Sometimes I want the people on the phone to just hurry up and tell me the story. I know its going to be sad. We have a template we have to use when we talk to them. We have a script to go by. We can only ask questions in a certain order. So we go by the script thats on the template we have to use on our computers. 28

I usually sit at my desk all day because I never know when the phone will ring. Well, I take that back. I do go out three times a day to smoke with the pal. Yes, three times a day. He sends me an IM instant message. Its on the computer. He asks if I want to go for a stroll. I always want to stroll with him. I always go with him. If I have to explain what computers are, Ill hurl. I know a lot about computers. I dont want to have to explain them. My sister and brother-in-law have computers. So does my father. Ive been working on computers for nearly thirty years. I dont take much time for lunch. I take my lunch and pop it in the microwave at lunch time. It usually takes about six minutes to cook. Its nice to have a microwave oven at work. Makes things faster. I sit at my desk while my food cooks. I never know when the phone is going to ring. I jump up and get my food. I eat at my desk in case the phone rings. Sometimes, it does, during lunch. I never know when someone is going to call. I eat my lunch. Sometimes I look on the Internet for e-mail. I dont spend much time during the day looking on the Internet. Im too busy talking on the phone. Then I spend the rest the day listening to stories about these children. They have had horrible livesawful. You cant imagine what happened to them in the past. Its painful stuff. There are rules about how we do it and I go by the rules. I dont ask too many questions. I listen a lot. Some days, we have meetings. Mostly every Wednesday we have a meeting with all the people in Dallas, Houston, Corpus Christi and the group in Austin where I live. Its about forty or fifty people. We talk about the children in all of the hospitals who are really, really sick. We do that for about an hour or more and then we go back to our desks. Desk, chair, shelves, drawers, walls and a computer are in our work space. We sit by other people. We have to talk softly. I get up and go to the bathroom about three times a day. I have to be careful when Im listening so I dont miss anything. People are telling me these horrible stories about children. I am typing the stories into the computer. It is very sad to hear the stories. I have to hear the stories in a certain amount of time. I only ask certain questions. They usually call me at the same time every day so I can plan my day. I stay busy doing reports and things when Im not on the phone. I spend the whole afternoon, from 12:00 to 5:00, listening on the phone. I am very busy. Sometimes, I go in early so I can get a jump on the day. So I might be spending nine to ten hours on the computer every day at work. Listening to stories about children who have been treated badly. I just listen and sometimes ask questions. It makes for a long day. Not so bad as it turns out. I spend the day doing this work and I feel like Ive done something. I filled the day. I helped somebody. I drive home and I think about what Ive heard during the day. Mostly I concentrate on driving. But my mind wanders and I think about going home and seeing the dogs.

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Sometimes I have to stop and get something on the way home. I dont like to have to do that. Not food, silly, dog food. I dont eat at night. Or medicine. Well talk about the medicine. Its a secret. So Im driving home and I think about these children. Some, I remember. They haunt my nights. I have spent nine or ten hours listening to horrible stories about what has happened to these children and I am leaving work. I drive home. I think about the dogs and getting home where its safe. Im always happy when I get there safely. Sometimes I call my father. He always has a story and I listen to the story and another story. He loves to tell stories. And I feel sad when I talk to my father. He does not know my story. He doesnt want to know. He doesnt know that I am in pain every day and that I take medicine. He asks about my sister. He always perks right up when I tell him I got an e-mail from her. She is far away. He asks what the e-mail says and I tell him. We talk for ten or so minutes. He hadnt eaten his dinner. So Ive driven home from hearing these horrible stories for hours. I am in my abode. Its an apartment but abode sounds homier. I know its a stupid thing. Go ahead and laughtil you cry. It has to be the most ridiculous thing in the world. I aspire to that actually. I want to go into the Guinness Book of Worlds Records as the most ridiculous person ever. Ill be a household name. It has taken me a while to figure it out. Dont you just hate it when its right in front of your face and you just miss it? I have spent the day listening to stories that could be my story. Nobody knows or wants to know. But I know. I dont know all the time like when Im just walking around the office. But I know. Well, Sue and Susie know. But we dont talk often. I like it when we talk. But its not very often. I am pretty much alone with this story. My sister and my father dont believe me. My brother doesnt either. He stays far away. I am alone with the story and the candle is burning. I type what Ive been getting to all night long. These stories could be my story. Are you getting it? Get it! They could be my story. I do the work every day and I look forward to going to work in the morning. With any luck, Ill go tomorrowGod willing. My snow cones melting. Most of these stories could be my story. They all are in some way. I was treated badly by my mother and yelled at by my father. He didnt know what was going on and he didnt want to know. My sister acts like nothing ever happened. I am alone with the story. Well, the story and the pups. Thats how its always been. Nothing ever happened. My face is numb and my head hurts from getting slapped in the face by her on a fairly regular basis. The surgery that was supposed to fix it didnt. I didnt mind the surgery because I thought it would help but the numbness drives me crazy. Sometimes it goes up in to my eye. I didnt tell the surgeon ahead of time what caused the problem. I just had the surgery. He asked the questions afterwards. I was afraid to answer him. He was mad. It took him a lot longer to do the surgery than he had planned, eight hours.

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I answered the question and have paid for the answer for nearly thirty years. A few friends know. You could count them on one hand. But no one here knows. Or wants to know. Its the secret. I was abused by my mother and ignored by my father. My sister wont wade in. Neither will my brother. My father said if it werent for me theyd have a perfect family. My brother told me that. He denied it when I told him he could cut me loose if it was true. But I bet he said it. He sometimes says mean things about people. Have I effectively communicated? I was abused by my mother and my father didnt know anything about it, or didnt want to know. Now my forehead is numb. I pull my hair. It doesnt change anything. My head hurts and the numbness is kicking my narrow behind. I scratch a place on my face where I cant feel. I ponder. The great American novelist ponders what to write next. Get to the point. I spend the day listening to it and the night living with it. I just wish my family would believe me. But they arent going to believe me. So I live with it. I spend the evenings writing the great American novel. I usually spend four or five hours working on it. Im actually enjoying the writing. But my back is sore and my eyes are growing weary. I have to get up and go to work tomorrow. Ill take my medicine, yes my medicine. Ill go to sleep. The pups rest quietly and I dont want to disturb them but it is time for bed. So, I will leave you dear reader, and toddle off to bed. Im scratching places that I cant feel. Ill put the dogs up and get out of my clothes. Ill make sure all the lights are turned off and the door is locked. Ill get there. Ill take my medicine and go to bed and read. Oh and Ill probably have to go to the bathroom. Oops! I said bathroom. Great American novelists do not go to the bathroom. Better leave that alone.

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Chapter 11 - Now So, Im back. Did you miss me? I got up bright and early this morning. I took a shower and wet my hair. Wash and wear hair is the only way to go. I got dressed and put on a new pair of shoes. They came as a surprise in the mail. I ordered them. They sure are comfortable. They have shoelaces. They are flat shoes. I dont want to fall down in high heels. That would be a disaster. So I wear flat shoes. Other people wear high heels but they make my feet hurt. Plus, I dont want to fall down. So there you have it. Flat shoes. God woke me up this morning. Aint that a wonder! Now I have more time to spend on the great American novel. Its practically writing itself. I just go where the mind wanders. Ill be plenty early for work today. Dont want to be late. And I wont be. I have lots of time before work starts. Ill have time to stop and get a Diet Dr. Pepper. The dogs need water and Ill have plenty of time to give it to them. They are sleeping quietly now. I wonder what they dreamed about. Sometimes, I remember my dreams. I dreamt of spending time with Michelle Obama. It was a great dream. Id like to meet her. Thats not likely to happen because she is so far away but it sure would be nice. I have her picture up in my office. Theres another picture of she and Barack dancing. Hes the President. Theres a third picture of the whole family, with their two daughters in it. Id like to meet all of them. They look like such lovely people. Gorgeous to a person. Security probably wont let me get in. They dont know me from Adams off ox. I read about them all the time. I look at their pictures. They look pretty happy together. But they dont know me. I voted for him. I think you have to spend money to see them. I dont have much money. I dont

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want him to come to Texas. It is not a healthy place for presidents. Plus people are mean about him here. I dont think people like having an African American president. It scares them. Im not scared. I love his ideas and the plans he has for our country. People forget what a big mess he inherited from the last president. He wasnt very good. People scream at the President when hes talking. I wouldnt like all that screaming. Other people besides me must have voted for him because he got elected. He has a lot of security people around him. I dont want him to get hurt so thats a good thing. He has to have arguments all day with people who dont like his ideas. They are afraid of his ideas and tell horror stories about him. He doesnt comment much on the horror stories. But he tells the truth. I dont watch certain things on TV because of the hollering they do about him. I want balanced reporting. Well, its time for me to take care of the dogs and get ready to go to work. Its been fun, talking to you. I might even remember my lunch and my vitamins. I have to brush my teeth. You cant read about that every day. More than you wanted to know, right? So Ill be gone for a whileat the factory. Thats what I call the place where I work. I like to go there. It will be a long day because I have to work until six tonight for the people who want to call in late. Nobody ever calls. But we have to be there in case they do. Its not so bad. Hope I remember to get dog food on the way home. The pups need to eat. Anyway, thats the way I spend my day. I pretty much stick to myself, except for a few pals. The sistahs. And the brother with his fine self. There are other pals too but I mostly hang out with the sistahs and the brother. They say Im always busy. We kick it when we can. They are my work pals. And a few other people tooI dont want to leave anybody out. And its the bomb to talk to them. We have an understanding. They like the pictures on my wall at work. I sit at my desk except when I have to get up, which is not often. I sit in front of the computer all day.

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Chapter 12 - Now I hope this damn computer works. I hope it doesnt lose this entire great American novel. It is just begging to be written. I got up at four AM and was bitten by the writers bug. Go figure! Anyways, my mothers family circumstances called her to study psychology in order to better understand her parents. Freud didnt cover that. AA was still a secret. Alcoholism was a sign of weakness. My grandfather did not see himself as weak. He saw himself as robust and competent. My mother and father married. Neither of my parents parents was thrilled with the choice of spouses. My mothers family was not crazy about Roman Catholics (they were Episcopalian) and my fathers family was not crazy about the idea of their only son marrying a non-Catholic (they were all Catholic). But my parents love for each other prevailed and they were married in Boston. By then I think my mothers parents were living in Needham, MA. My grandfathers job had transferred him and what did women do sixty years ago? All together now, a little background music, they moved. Im sure they were at the wedding. I dont know who else was there. My genealogy pal says she found my parents wedding certificate and other information about who was there. My aunt was there. I had to go get some water. I noticed one of my pups had gone into the laundry and was sniffing my underwear. Why do dogs sniff underwear? I secured the underwear. I swear, this one pup I have, 34

Bandit, loves to sniff underwear. Course my very best friends say, He aint right. They tolerate him because they love my other dog, Alice. Shes a rescue dog. Course all together, Ive had six dogs. Oscar, Sam, Alice, Boo, Bandit and Puff. Oscar, Sam and Boo are in dog heaven. I still dream about them. Puff is running around in some Iowa cornfield. There better be dogs in heaven. So now I have Alice and Bandit. They are both fine, fine animals. Alice is the oldest and is clearly the dominant one. Shes still getting used to sharing a crate at night with Bandit. He forgets that hes the smallest, at age ten, and he messes with her in some dog way of his. She has to remind him and they settle down. My friends say, Bandit is retarded. We laugh our rear ends off. Maybe he came from a gene pool where the breeder bred too soon. I dont know. Love my pups. Miss the ones who are gone, especially Boo. He died too young. Suddenly one day for no particular reason. I came home from the puzzle factory at lunch and he was dead. I tried to give him mouth to mouth but it was too late. I left him lying on the bed. I was in shock. I went back to the puzzle factory and called my best ace boon. She was in shock too. I started crying and asked her if I could bury him in her yard. She said I could. We hung up. I went back into work and told my boss but I promised him there would be no drama. I have a thing about drama and he is terribly avoidant. He was kind and said, Thats not drama. I finished my work and left work for the day. I didnt want to go home. I kept hoping Boo would have awakened and be running around the house like he was getting away with something. But, it was not to be. He was still gone and I noticed a little blood on the end of his nose. Curious. The other dogs knew something was wrong. I left Boo lying on the bed. I took Bandit and Alice outside. They did their doggie business. We trudged up the three flights of stairs where I was living and went inside. I fed them. I petted Boo and cried. I asked him what happened to him. He was still warm. When it was time to put Alice and Bandit in the crates for the night, Alice went quickly to her crate. Bandit just looked at me. He and Boo had shared a kennel since baby years. They would lie in the crate and groom each other, like cats. Silly dogs. Bandit went in the crate and I went to bed. Boo was still lying on the end of the bed. When I woke up the next morning, I hoped it was all a dream and that Boo would be ready to go outside. He was still dead. I got ready for work, found a box, wrapped him in a towel and put him in the box. It was heartbreaking. I sealed the box tightly and carried it with me to my car. I put him on the passenger side and put my hand on the box, and shook my head. Oh, Boo. I got to work. My friend and I had made plans to meet at her house at 2 PM to bury the dog. My boss had agreed to give me the time off. I told a couple of friends at work about it when we were out on smoke break. One of them was very sympathetic because she has dogs.

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Other than that, no one knew about it. Yes, I smoke, sparingly. Its a bear to quit. I love the ritual of it and I cry all the time when I dont smoke. Whats a girl to do? I only smoke six or seven cigarettes a day, sometimes less. Dont tell. My work pal knows because we go on smoke break three or four times a day. We call it strolling. He is a charmer. Thirty one years old and the nicest young man Ive ever met. If only I were younger. He agreed the other day when we were smoking that I could adopt him. He smiled and said I could. Made my day. He only smokes six or seven a day too. He never smokes in front of his son. Yes, he has a four year old son whos a cute, cute kid. He brought him to work one day. He played quietly for four or so hours. I admired his coloring. It was very good coloring. We walked around the corner and got a soda. His father said it was okay. I let him push the button on the soda machine after he told me what he wanted. I loved it. He was young enough to be my grandson. We walked back to his fathers desk. His father asked him if he said thank you. He did. I wouldnt have cared if he hadnt said it. Hes four. But he did. I was glad his father is teaching him good manners. His father has amazing manners. He always opens the door to the smoking area for me and lets me walk out first. He talks to me about what he did the night before and what he does the nights he has his son. I always ask. Love hearing about it. Its like hearing about grandchildren and hes young enough to be my son. I love our time together. Yes, I have a crush on him. Hes about the handsomest man Ive ever met. I love having a work pal. He knows I have a crush on him because I told him I did. He smiled. Gosh, hes handsome. Ive established that. Not as handsome as Denzel, who has to be the handsomest man in the universe. Love me some Denzel. But Ive never met Denzel. Is there anything in this world more handsome than a handsome brother? Lordy, lordbe still my heart. I have known me some handsome brothers. But we dont need to get into that. Barack is pretty handsome his own self and Michelleis there anything in this world more beautiful than a beautiful sister. She has got to be beautiful from the inside out. I just got a Michelle Obama calendar. Lord, shes beautiful. Id love to meet her. She dont know me from a can of paint. Isnt it funny how we can admire people from a distance? Julia Roberts. She has got to be the most beautiful woman and it looks like its from the inside and earned. Id love to meet her. I love hearing how she manages her career and her marriage and family. She seems to be at peace. Sometimes, when Im in a roomful of people that I dont know and we have to go around the room and introduce ourselves, which makes me totally anxious, I tell people Im Julia Roberts. I usually get some laughs and then I say my real name. Its hard to understand, the name. So, people get confused. I have to repeat it several times. Its a bummer and it makes me totally nervous.

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Ive never known another person with my first name. Ive heard there are some. Lots of streets and cemeteries have my same name. No one has my last name either so its pretty much the pits all the way around. It always takes people a while to get them both right. Im pretty nervous about it but Im a nervous little twit about lots of things. Im a nervous wreck about writing this book. But on I write, hoping to prevail. Im hoping to hit the save button so I dont lose this literary masterpiece, this great American novel. Dustin knows Im working on a book. He would be the only person, other than the girls at the snow cone stand. Every day after work since I moved to Austin eight months ago, I stop and get a snow cone. One large grape, please. Every day. They got to know me. Now we talk every day when I go by. They are a lovely group of young girls who are working their way through college. It is so neat to hear about what they are doing in school. Theres that grandchildren thing again. Im so proud of what they are doing in school and with their lives. I always leave a tip. They have a tip jar that says College Fund on it so I always put money in the jar. Its so sad that tomorrow is the last day for snow cones for the season. They close from November to March and its going to be so sad not to see them on the way home from work every day. Im going up there today to buy some, four grape, and four lime. Ill get a fifth grape to eat there. Im going to take them home and freeze them so Ill have some for later. I got paid yesterday so I have cash for the snow cone. Im going to give them my business card so we can keep in touch. I hope they do. Id love to hear about how their lives are going. Ill leave a big tip. It will be so sad. No more snow cones for dinner. They are going to open back up in March. They say theyre going to be back so it will be fun to think about seeing them again. They open between 1 PM and 7 so Ill have to take a break from writing the best great American novel. The pups are in the room with me now. They are looking and settling. Bandit is curled up in a ball and Alice is arguing with the carpet. Shes about to curl up in a ball. Yup, yes indeed. They watch me write the great American novel. So the pal at work and the snow cone girls know about the novel. But that would be it. Its a crisp, fall day in Austin, a Saturday all is well with my little world. Its a little chilly and I might need to turn off the fan. The dogs got up when I did. But now theyre back at peace, a safe distance apart. Alice tolerates Bandit. He is curious about her. Theyre still settling and Im back to writing. A smoke is helping. But Im smoking in the room in the other end of the abode. I only smoke in this room and the bathroom. I never smoke in the room with the new couch. Yes, I got a new couch. It was a gift from my father and my sister when I moved to Austin. Ive had it for about a month. It is a great couch and is much nicer than the couch I had when I lived in Dallas. It was twenty years old. Ive had it for about three weeks. Its the nicest couch Ive ever

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had in my life and it is so comfortable. Its purple which is my signature color. Think about the color of a plum. Thats the color. Its suede and it is soooo soft. I like to lay on it. I like rubbing it. I get to do it on Saturdays when I usually watch college football. Yes, I watch college football though today Ill probably work on the great American novel. I will watch some of the Notre Dame game so that I can talk about it with my father tomorrow. I usually go to his house on Sunday. Gosh, I have a headache. Whew! Needed some water because I dont make saliva for a variety of reasons but we dont need to get into that now. Tomorrow I will go over and watch football with my father and help him pass out Halloween candy. He lives in a neighborhood where there are a lot of children so he has a lot of candy to pass out. Hes nearly ninety-two and uses a cane so I figured he might have trouble maneuvering the candy bowl. So, I offered to go over and help him pass out candy. My sister says hes thrilled that I offered. Hes going to have some sandwiches from some place that he found in his travels about town. He still drives and he has his places he goes. He goes to the grocery store, the drugstore and the post office. Hes found his way to the doctors that he needs to see. Hes found a barber shop. He has people who come by and help him do some things like change air filters and switch the cooling system to heat. He occasionally has problems with his computer so he calls the Geek Squad and they come to his house. He has had fewer problems since he switched from a Dell to an Apple laptop computer. He likes to get on the Internet every day and read the news. Hes working on putting together his coin collection. Anyway, smoking helps with the writing and its almost time for the snow cone girls and football. In that order. Im sure glad that I remember to hit the Save button on the computer periodically. Itd be a crying shame to lose the Great American novel. I hope I get to finish it. Im sure glad my computer has Spellcheck and Grammar check on it. My head doesnt hurt so badly now and the pups are balled up quietly. My back aches a little because Ive been sitting in my grandmothers rocking chair for three hours working on the novel. I think weve established that its a great novel. No need to beat a dead horse. I wonder where that expression came from. Who would beat a dead anything? The candles softly burning. Dont you love the music of Gordon Lightfoot? Who in their right mind doesnt? I have a bunch of his songs on my IPod and my Zune. Yes, I have modern technology. I used to listen to it all the time at work when I was in Dallas but I havent done it since I moved to Austin. I was afraid to use them here. Didnt want to do anything to draw unnecessary attention to myself. But now, eight months later, Ive noticed that a lot of people listen to their IPods so Im thinking maybe its okay to use them. If I can remember how to use them. Dustin will show me how to do it. I wont do it if Im on a call though it would be a nice distraction, considering what people call me about.

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People call me about children who have been physically and/or sexually abused and are in the foster care system in Texas. The children I hear about are so badly damaged that they have done something to get themselves admitted to a psychiatric hospital. It is hard work to hear about it every day. Of course, I always remember that its harder to be living with it. Been there, done that. People wonder how I do the work every day. I will do the work for as long as I live, God willing. I cant imagine not doing the work. I feel lucky. I have a very good job with an excellent company. Its the best company Ive ever worked for and I have worked for some doosies. This is a great company. Ive been working for them for two and a half years and hope to work for them until I retire. I work for great people. My supervisor is wonderful. Her supervisor is wonderful. Its a collection of knowledgeable, role-mole type women. They are doing some great things. I am learning to do some great things because of their great ideas. I really enjoy my job. Dont get me wrong, I love Saturdays and Sundays just as much as the next person. And Mondays are hard on everyone. And meetings. Is there anything harder to do than go to a meeting? Makes me nervous as a hooker in church with a date waiting outside. I especially hate it if I have to talk during the meeting. That would be my least favorite part of the meeting. Luckily, I dont have to go to too many meetings where I have to talk. I like it that way. Im always very anxious about having to talk but sometimes go first just to get it over with. I mostly want to listen. Here lately, the things Ive been listening to have taught me a lot so Ive been very glad to listen. I was very nervous about being able to do the things but now I find that I can do them and really enjoy doing them. I like the changes that are being implemented. I like the way the changes are being communicated and the way they are explained. Im finding that I do them pretty well. Who knew? I continue to surprise myself every day. My supervisors seem to be pretty happy with the job that Im doing. It hasnt always been that way but it sure feels good. They seem to respect each other as women and I havent always seen that in other women Ive worked for. Its nice to see. I tell them that I like what Im doing and that I like and respect the work they do. Some people would call that sucking up. I dont care. Im too old to suck up. Im alive enough to be respectful and kind. I especially appreciate the way my supervisor told me on Monday that one of the pals had died over the weekend. She was thirty-seven years old. They dont know what happened. All we know is that she had complained of problems with allergies for about the past six months. It had been giving her some breathing problems. She had started to feel badly Friday afternoon and was having trouble breathing. Her aunt came over to her house on Saturday and found her. My boss was so kind as she told me this horrible news. She knew we were close to each other and talked all the time. Apparently, I was the first one she told. I was in shock. Who dies at 37? What in the world had happened to my beautiful, great sistah! You know what Im talking about. My 39

smoking pal and I went out for a cigarette. I had to tell him. He was in shock. He had worked with her every day, too. I cried, wept, and he told me it was okay. He was so tender. We finished our cigarettes and I cleaned up my face so I didnt look like Id been crying. We went back in the building and went back to our desks. My supervisor was making her way around to tell another coworker. So, the three of us went to tell the coworker about what had happened. She was crying. My supervisor told her. I asked her if it would be okay to pet her. She said it would. I think people need petting more than dogs. I think I took that trip because she was being buried today. By now, the services are over and she has been returned to the earth. I hope the flowers were beautiful. I hope I effectively communicated how important and special she was to so many people. She was so filled with joy, and was respectful, generous and committed. She was one of the greatest people Ive ever known. There had to be tears flowing today. I hope she is in heaven with her mother. I like that image. Im so sad that shes not still here with us. Done too soon. I have a hole in my heart and an ache in my stomach though I could swear she just passed by. I believe that spirits do that. Call me crazy. She was passing. I stopped and looked at her and bowed as tears streamed down my face. I am telling her how proud I am of her. She finished her undergraduate work at Spellman College. If you dont know what it is, go look it up. Its the most prestigious school in the country that draws the best and the brightest young African American women. She earned her masters degree. You have to respect that. I admire that. I told her that. I told her she would live forever in my heart. I wished her safe travels and peace. The tears stream down my face. The candles softly burning. I see her glow. I hope she rests in eternal life. I hopelike a free man on a journey whose destination is unknown. Dont you just love the Shawshank Redemption? Go see it, rent it or buy it. Ive probably seen it twenty times. Ill see it every chance I get. I have a list of movies that I will watch over and over again. The list includes: Ordinary People, The Color Purple, Pretty Woman (and every Julia Roberts movie), The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Caf, anything with Denzel, Morgan Freeman, Samuel, Sidney or Tyler Perry, The First Wives Club, Steel Magnolias, Crimes of the Heart and Scent of a Woman. Oh, I dont want to leave out A Time to Kill and all the John Grisham movies, anything with Diane Keaton, Whoopi Goldberg, Goldie Hawn, Sally Fields, Cicely Tyson or Oprah in it. I love watching the young African American women who are starting to be portrayed in more positive ways. I love watching the young men too. Isnt it great that they are finally able to be portrayed in positive ways? Ive gotten so I wont watch anything that doesnt have positive, diverse characters in it. I love that we have an African American president. Hes so handsome. Since he gets five times as many death threats every day as George Bush did, I know racism lives and flourishes. He inherited a mess. He has had a short time in which to implement positive change but things are changing. His policies are changing things. 40

Other countries have noticed it as hes travelled around the world. Apparently being African American isnt as big a deal in other countries as it is here. They find him so respectful and it has changed perceptions other countries have of Americans. But here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we seem to mind it. Some of the wild things people have said about him are just sheer madness. People listen to it because deep in their hearts, they fear African American men. Especially young, vital and powerful ones. Time for football and snow cones so I will leave you, dear reader. But stay tuned. Itll be a barn burner.

Chapter 13 - Now I got back from snow cone heaven. One of the pals was working. I ordered my usual, large grape. Meal of champions. She came out of the stand and talked to me. I always like it when they do that. She told me about her career hopes and dreams. It was pretty amazing. She has admirable goals and promised me she would not let anything divert her from her dream. She has a boyfriend. They dont talk about her going to NY. She says it just causes problems. But she swore she was going no matter what. The snow cone stand is a pretty amazing place. You see all sorts of people. Today it was a display of diversity. I just love diversity. Apparently snow cone girl does too because she started talking about all the diverse people shed met through her work in fashion design. They were from all over the world. She was really excited about it. It was wonderful to see. Shed met people from South Africa, Sudan, Egypt and France. I love meeting people from other countries. 41

There was a man there with two of his sons and I got to practice my Spanish. Yes indeed. He told me hes insisting that both of his children are bi-lingual. He has taken them into Mexico. He said that he goes all the time. Told me it was nice talking to me. I also saw a lot of couples. I wish I was part of a couple. Im an old maid. No, Im not funny. I just never married. I had some opportunities but they never seemed to work out. Thats another story entirely. I ordered four grape and four lime snow cones to take home and freeze. The stand is closing tomorrow for the winter and I wanted to freeze them to have them for later. Tomorrow is my last snow cone until March. What in the world will I do? Who would have imagined that my work pal, the snow cone girls and a new supervisor would lift me out of my depression? But they did. It was beautiful sitting outside of the snow cone stand. It was especially great sitting in the sun. I love to be warm. It was a beautiful day. She made the snow cones for me and I gave her a big tip. We said goodbye. She taught me how to send someone a text message. I gave her my business card so we can keep in touch. I hope we do. I have an I-phone but only use it for talking on the phone. I dont know how to use all the features. Maybe Ill start texting people. It seems to be all the rage. I wont be doing it while driving. I dont even talk on the phone when Im driving. It drives me crazy that people do that when they drive. Driving is hard work. I remain amazed when Im able to go somewhere in the car and get there safely. God is good. I always pay attention. I got a new car. The one Id had for ten years was costing too much to maintain. I got a 2010 before the newer model year. I got a good price. Really like the car. Dont really mind the car payments. I made it all the way home, safe and sound, and was able to carry the snow cones up the stairs to my abode. I said a thank you prayer. Im determined that this car will not get any dings on it. Man plans and God laughs. The dogs were happy to see me. Well, either that or they were hungry and wanted to go outside. Regardless, we went for a walk. They did their business. They ate their supper. I lay on the fabulous couch and turned on the TV to check out football games. Florida and Georgia were playing a great game. I didnt care who won. I just enjoy watching good football. My head was hurting. The dogs finished eating and came over and looked at me. They know better than to get on the couch. After a while they laid on the floor. Then the game was over and I decided to return to the great American novel. Im enjoying Saturday and having an extended period of time to devote to my labors. Ive probably been writing for six or seven hours today and its been nice. Its just flowing out of me. Who knew? Alice is just watching me type. I wonder what dogs think. They have to be thinking something. She is curled up quietly in a ball in her favorite position. She also likes to lie on her back and listen to 42

Italian Opera. She seems to think that, if Im not petting her, Im not being productive. I named her after my favorite author, Alice Walker. Shes black all over but staring to get some grey. I found her on the way home in the driving rain from seeing Rosa Parks. What a fabulous experience. Then I see this black dog just walking in the street. I stopped to pick her up and get her in out of the freezing rain. She jumped right in. I took her home to meet Sam and she slept on my chest the first night I had her. What a dog! We went to the veterinarian the next day and the vet checked her out. She was fine. So, I kept her. Shes my rescue dog. I went through the neighborhood looking for signs about someone losing a small, black dog. No signs. Course I joked and said I would put up a sign that said, Found. Big yellow dog. I never did. I never saw any signs either so I kept the dog. Shes made me so happy. Sam tolerated her at first. He had been an only dog for years. He wasnt too sure about sharing. But he came around. She made it clear that she was the Alpha dog and there would be no messing with her. I miss Sam and Boo. Sam was seventeen when he died, peacefully in his sleep which I was hoping for. I didnt want him to die but I didnt want him to suffer and I did not want to have to make a decision to put him down. He died quietly on the bed next to me. When I woke up in the morning, he was gone. I called my friends who had given him to me and told them. I asked if I could bring him over there for burial. They said I could. I left him on the bed and went to work. It was a hard day. I left him on the bed with me overnight and got up bright and early and put him in a box for burial. I took the box to my car and we went to my friends house. She hugged me and he got a shovel and dug a hole. They asked me to say a prayer. I did. Then I put him in the hole and he was covered with dirt. It was a hard drive home. It was hard to go to work. People said he had a nice long life. He did. I take good care of my dogs and they tend to live for a long time. Id like to come back as one of my dogs. I dont expect them to do tricks so they dont. Sam used to sit up like a squirrel but I didnt teach him that. He just took it up. I had to take the pups out. They were starting to stir and I figured that meant eat or pee. We always pee first. Its safer. It was pee. Speaking of which, as you get older, women need to complete the task more frequently. Just keep living. I dont mind it so much. Noticed I could hang a couple of pictures in the bathroom. Its the one by the typing room. I havent had time to get to it yet. I havent had the energy for it. Ive been depressed for the past five months. I dont move well. I dont miss Dallas at all. But I miss some of the people. Its hard on you to move at sixty. Course its been hard on me to move for over fifty years so I dont know that its going to change. Nobody knew I was depressed and I really do like Austin but I knew. I was so scared. I never want anyone to find out. Its managed safely with a cocktail of medication prescribed to me by the worlds greatest psychiatrist. Id been seeing him for thirteen years. I couldnt get in to see a psychiatrist here until 43

late October so I just had to gut it out. He kept faxing in prescription renewals until I could get in to see the new doctor in Austin. I finally got in to see him. He asked me a lot of questions. We talked about the medication regimen. He said that based on his tests, he thought that all of the medications were appropriate and he agreed to be my new doctor. I made another appointment. He even suggested changing one medication to a newer form of the medication so that I would only have to take the medication once a day. I thought that was a pretty good idea. So, I agreed. I went back to work and no one made a big deal out of it. I was pretty thrilled about that. I was able to get all of my work done without having to ask anyone to help and it all worked out well. I got some new hospitals which I was very happy about. My caseload had been relatively low and I hate to not be busy at work. But I got some new hospitals and I am happy. Now Im back up higher and managing it well. They act all surprised that I get it done. I even offer to help other people in the office or when people are out. Im pretty generous in my offers to help. They seem surprised but appreciative. I like doing it so it works out well. I like to be busy at work. Always have liked being busy at work. It drives me smooth up the wall not to be busy at work. I dont even seem to mind going in early or staying a little late. Its almost time for snow cones and football and I may leave you, dear reader, but hold on to your hats because Ill be back.

Chapter 14 Now Maybe it started with the pups. They are playing quietly, in ends of the abode. Bandit is ten but acts like hes seven. I hope they live for a long time. Bandit just came to check on me. He is confused about what Im doing and where. Pretty soon theyll both be in here, looking at me in curious amazement. Then theyll lie on the floor in the room where Im writing and loll. Here comes Alice. I can hear her moving in this direction. Bandits sitting in the hall in front of the door looking at me. Like hes going to guard somebody. At eight pounds. I have to appreciate the sentiment. Sometimes they get so quiet I have to check and see what theyre doing. Its a compulsive thing.

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Stay with me now. I jumped forward on you about sixty years. The past and the present have a way of doing that on you and since Im an inspiring writer who should be famous, I have to go with the flow. Well go backwards again now. Order has been restored. The pups have joined me.

Chapter 15 Back Then Soon after they married, my mother and father moved to Colorado. I doubt either family was crazy about my fathers job moving them across the country to CO but move they did. Then they moved to Calgary. You know the rest. Ive seen pictures of both sets of grandparents in front of the house in Calgary so I know they came to visit. Ive seen pictures of them holding me and smiling. Maybe my mothers parents were living in Boston at the time. I know my fathers parents were living in Detroit. They must have taken the train to come and visit. It would have been too long a drive. Boston is where they took my sister for medical treatment for

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the growth over her eye. I think they stayed with my grandfather while my grandmother came to stay with me. It was a scary time for my parents because they didnt know what the growth was. My sisters memory of having it removed is caused by the knowledge of the faint scar above her eye. She didnt know it was such a commotion. I think my parents were worried that it was cancer. Not much was known about lumps back then and there was a chance that it was. Imagine their relief when they learned it was a benign growth. After the surgery and the diagnosis, they came home. I was two. As my sister grew, we were able to play out in the yard together. Ive seen pictures of us playing together when she got to be two or older and I got to be four or so. We look like were having fun. I dont remember not liking her. I do remember being jealous that my mother did not sit down on my bed when we shared a room. She just told me goodnight and then shed go sit on my sisters bed. I never understood why she didnt sit on my bed. My mother began to hire some domestic help to help with keeping the house clean and taking care of me while she took care of my sister. I liked them all and they seemed to like me. Apparently, two children were a handful for my mother. She somehow came to the conclusion that, if she knew what my favorite thing was, she could get me to do what she wanted me to do by threatening to take it away. I learned fast not to tell her what my favorite things were. I am a quick study. I have to tell you this writing business is hard work. I had to take a break so I could get some sleep. I needed to be rested for the job I cherish. Im dipped and clipped and ready for my demanding day. The pups are walked and it is a beautiful fall day in Austin, TX. A little nip in the air is my favorite time of the year. Ive taken my vitamins and am ready to go at 6:45 AM. I dont get big commissions to write like Nora Ephron and Robert Parker, though I should. But, I digress. These women came to help take care of me. My parents even built a room with a bath in the basement of our home in Calgary. Most homes up there have basements. The women lived with us during the week and had a day off sometime. We lived there for seven glorious years. My sister and brother were both born there. The same doctor delivered them both. The doctor and his wife were my parents best good friends. They had three children too, two girls and a boy, like us. Their younger daughter was my best good friend and that doesnt happen every day. I didnt want to move. Then off to the airport we all went. They took us to the airport. As long as I live I will never forget looking back and seeing my mother hanging on to the Francis, cryingsobbing. Oh my. It hurts to think of fifty five years later. Imagine what it must have felt like to a seven year old. Back then, Canada to Texas was not an easy flight. In 1956, it took a couple of days. We stopped in Edmonton. I threw up at the airport. We stopped at Minneapolis. I threw up all over the airport. We flew to Dallas Love Field, the only airport in Dallas at the time.

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I remember sitting by a window seat looking out at a vast expanse of flat nothing and I started banging on the airplane window. What is the matter? asked the stewardess. Im going to jump out and kill myself because I cant live in a place without any trees. Then I threw up some more. Midland was even flatter and more barren. Our house wasnt quite finished so we had to stay in a hotel downtown for a couple of weeks. My father got up and went to work every day. My mother had care, custody and control of my six month old brother, five year old sister and me. And it was hotin the 100s and the hotel air conditioner broke for a while. I thought I was in hell. My mother, on the other hand, was mad. She couldnt believe my father got to leave every day to go to work and she ended up stuck in the ninth circle of hell. Wasnt easy being any of us. Finally our house was finished. It had two small trees in the front yard. My gosh. What was with the no tree thing, I wondered. I was lost and puzzled. While unpacking was going on, I ventured out. The people who lived next door to us had four boys and a couple of them were close to my age soearly friendship. All sorts of weird smells came from their house. Not bad smells but different smells. I began to notice that their father came home for lunch every day and they ate their meals at straight up noon. They also fried food, a lot. After Id been playing with them for a couple of weeks, I went home twenty feet away and was talking to my mother. Somehow in the sentence I used the word git (a Texas thing). She slapped me across the face (this will become a theme) and told me, Dont you ever sound like youre from Texas again. I guess she wasnt very happy about moving away from all the trees either.

Chapter 17 - Then Maybe it started the night I listened to TBNs Holy Land Experience. Ive been going to church since my baby years. I remember when I was five or six going to church with my father. Remember, my mother had to agree that the children would be raised in the Catholic church. I didnt understand too much of it because it was in Latin. But I loved being with my father. My mother stayed home with the baby and went to the Episcopal church later. She loved her church.

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After we moved to the middle of nowhere, my sister and I would go to church with my father and my mother would go to her church after we got back. My father would always fix a nice breakfast for us after we got home from church. I think that my mother was depressed and missed her friends because she never wanted to get up in the morning. I had these long pigtails and I didnt know how to braid them. They would come loose in the night when I slept. We were supposed to get up and go outside and play in the morning and not bother her. But sometimes, my hair got so hot, I would have to ask her to braid it. She was not happy about that. She would braid my hair and go back to bed. She always got up for lunch. Pretty soon, I didnt have long hair any more. She took me to get it cut. My father fixed pancakes, waffles and French toast, depending on the Sunday. He always added bacon or sausage. They were great breakfasts. My mother would usually sleep late and wake up when we got home from church. We would all eat breakfast together and then my mother would go to her church service. My first year of school in the middle of nowhere was the second grade. I went to Catholic school. I had a great teacher named Sister Laurentia. She seemed to like me and told my mother good things about what I was doing in school. I always made very good grades. But it was hard for me to sit still in my desk. My fathers father sent me a dollar for every A I got and fifty cents for every B I got. I had to pay him a dime if I got a C and a dollar if I got a D. I mostly got As and Bs. Back then, the grades were in numbers from one to a hundred. I made lots of nineties. My parents wanted me to make 100s. In the second grade, I got to start taking communion when we went to church. It was a big deal. I got to start walking down the aisle of the church with my father and receive the wafer that they pass out for communion. Back then, they didnt pass out wine. Only the priests drank wine.

Chapter 18 - Then Maybe it started when I was eight years old. We had driven one hundred long, flat miles to get on a train. We were going to see my mothers parents in upstate New York which is a long way from West Texas. My father was going to join us later. He put my eighteen month old brother, my six year old sister and me on the train and said to 48

me, Take care of your mother. Seemed like a big job for an eight year old but he told me to do it so, I did my best. We were in a Pullman car with beds and places to sit away from other passengers. I dont know what the others were going to do but I had my marching orders. I loved riding on the train. I thought it was heaven. We ate on the train and I slept like a baby on the train and, after a couple of days on the train, we were in Union Station in Chicago where we had to change trains. This was a perfect opportunity for me to take care of things. So, I worked hard because Union Station seemed huge and I didnt want anyone to wander off. I made sure my sister, brother and mother stayed together without being bossy. Its the truth. I found out where the other train was that we were supposed to get on to ride to New York. We got on it. It was a relief to know we didnt have to change trains anymore. At the next stop, we would be at my grandparents house or close to it. The train actually stopped in a town called Elmira and my grandparents lived about twenty minutes away in Wellsburg. Close enough. We rode the train some more and finally, we were in Elmira. We all shuffled off of the train into the waiting arms of my grandparents and my aunt and uncle. My aunt was my grandfathers sister. We went over to my aunt and uncles house for a big meal and a neat thing about it was it was cold so we got to get a pair of blue jeans. We also got to meet a whole bunch of people, cousins especially that I didnt even know I had. There were lots of visitors to greet us, as my role model Forrest Gump would say. We were like family. Well, we were family. Who knew! After the meal, my mother, sister, brother and I said our goodbyes and got in the car for a ride to my grandparents house. And I had the very best experience. I got to go and spend the night at my aunts house first, because I was the oldest. It was a big house. And I got to go to their lake house first, because I was the oldest. I remember riding back in the car with them and they let me stretch out and put my head in my aunts lap. It was heaven. Isnt it funny how things stick with you? Ill always remember that. We went to my mothers church on Sundays. It didnt seem a whole lot different from the Catholic church. My grandparents went too. My grandfather sang in the choir. He was a big presence in the town and usually sober on Sunday morning. My grandmother always cooked a big meal for after church. Gosh, she was a good cook. Fresh vegetables with the roast, plenty of milk or water and dessert. She made the best desserts. Sour cherry pie was my favorite. Rhubarb pie ran a close second. She grew fresh vegetables and berries in her garden. It was enormous. I was old enough to go out in the garden and help with the harvest. I loved being with my grandmother so it was well in my world.

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I remember my mother told me not to get in the car with my grandfather without telling her. She didnt tell me why. I was out in the garden. My grandfather asked me to get in the car with him. I told him I had to tell my mother. He yelled at me to get in his car. He said he was my grandfather and I should do what he said. He wouldnt let me go and tell my mother. He cursed at me and told me to get in the car. I did. He wanted me to sit close to him. I did. He was a big man. I was a little girl. We stopped at a place and he said he was going in but he was going to be right back. Right back seemed like a long time to me. He came back and he smelled funny. Then he drove some more. I couldnt see out of the car window. He stopped at another place and went in again. He said he had some business to take care of. He said hed only be gone for a minute. It sure seemed like a long minute. He came back to the car and wanted me to sit closer to him. He was insistent. We went to another place and he said he had to take care of some business. He said hed be right back. It seemed like a long time. By then, I knew I was going to get in trouble. I knew my mother would be mad that I was gone. By then, it was dark. Im a little girl sitting in a big unlocked car. Then he came out again and wanted me to sit closer to him. I thought he smelled funny. He wanted me to sit in his lap. I dont know how many places where he stopped. It seemed like a lot. I was eight. I was scared. It was dark. So my grandfather had me sitting real close to him and he finally went to the house where my mother was. I was scared. I knew I was going to get in trouble for going away without telling her. I walked up the stairs to my grandmothers house. They were on the porch because they saw the lights of the car in the driveway. My mother was mad. Why didnt you tell me where you were going? she said and slapped me across the face. I told her that I tried to tell her but she didnt listen to me. I got sent in the house. My mother was yelling at my grandfather but I dont know what she was saying. I was in the house. My grandmother fed me dinner. Then I got sent to bed. I think the grown-ups stayed up talking but we had to go to bed. Nobody ever asked me what happened. The next morning we got up. We ate our breakfasts and then had to go out and play. I didnt mind. My sister was six so she got to stay inside sometimes. Nobody ever mentioned it again. I sure didnt want to bring it up because I didnt want to get in trouble. I wonder what happened to that little girl sitting in a dark car in a town where she didnt know how to get around. A town where she knew her mother was waiting for her. Mad. I wonder what happened with that alcoholic grandfather that wanted a little girl to sit closer to him. I remember the smell and it makes me want to throw up. I wonder what happened to that little girl on the dark road in an unlocked car who was so scared. I wonder I wonder about the little girl who got in trouble after she had been so frightened. Does anybody know she still gets frightened? Does anybody know how frightened she gets when she thinks someone is mad at her? Do they know how frightened she gets when she hears arguing? Do they know I get scared when they tease me? No. 50

And I wouldnt tell them if they asked. I just act like it doesnt bother me. They seem to be pretty happy thinking that it doesnt bother me. It would be a bad subject to bring up. I know the rules. I know what I can and cannot talk about. I know not to answer the question, Didnt you grind your teeth? We both grind our teeth. Didnt you have that temporal mandibular surgery? Yes, I say but Ive never been a teeth grinder. My teeth dont touch each other. I know better than to answer the question. I think she knows the answer to the question. An invitation to enter in to the land of OZ waits. But I know better than to accept the invitation, as it were. I just walk along silently. I might ask her a question and shell chat on about something. She might slap me in the face. I dont know. I know better than to play the game. We go on to the movie. It is never mentioned again. My father came to NY after we had been there for a while. He drove. We all piled in the car to drive to Detroit to see his family. We drove north and then west, through the St. Lawrence Seaway and in to Michigan to see my grandfather. When we passed over the Canadian border my father said, Hush, dont say anything about having lived in Canada. I always wondered, in some needling way, what he didnt want those men to find out. Anyway, we got safely across the border and drove down into Detroit. My fathers father was happy to see us. He had a neat house. We got to sleep upstairs in the bedroom. My aunts came over. They were my fathers mothers sisters. One came down from far away to see us and slept at my grandfathers house on the screened in porch. We met all sorts of relatives because my grandfather was one of eleven children. My grandfather was a dentist for sixty years. He used to walk to work every morning. We got to go see his office while we were visiting. He cleaned our teeth for free. He gave us new toothpaste and a new toothbrush. One of his brothers was also a dentist for sixty years. We went to my fathers church while we were in Detroit. Mass was still in Latin but I was starting to pick up some of the words so I could pray along out loud with the grown-ups. We were there for about a week. I had loved being back among the trees and greenery. I hated to leave. Anyway, it took us three days driving in the car to get back to the desert. My father did all the driving. My mother offered to help but he said, No, thank you. Back then, men did the driving. So my mother mostly slept. Wed play or sleep in the back seat. My father drove on, all two thousand plus miles. We settled back into the routine. Pretty soon it was time for school to start. Now, when you go to Catholic school, church happens every day, usually before lunch. This is important to remember. That fall, I started the third grade. My third grade teacher was Sister Soteris. She had a full, round face and she smiled a lot. She really liked me. We started studying the Catechism, the Catholic book of rules to live by. I can still remember most of it. I started making some friends at school and I had my first kiss by a boy out on the playground after school one day. It was a thrill. I ran into him again in high school but I dont know if he

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remembered our kiss. He always was such a sharp dresser. Wonder what happened to him. I was nuts about him. He was my first boyfriend. The third grade went by uneventfully. I always thought school went by too fast. In the fourth grade, my teacher was named Ms. Cornyn. She did not like me. It was my first experience of a teacher who didnt like me. And it was a rude awakening. She gave me bad grades in Citizenship and Science. I didnt like her either. She was mean. It was the first time I had to send my grandfather a dime. I was crushed and humiliated, though I wouldnt have known what the words meant. I felt bad. My mother and father didnt believe me when I told them that she didnt like me. They went up to the school and talked to the teacher. They believed her. Follow this string. One day, while I was standing in the line to go in to lunch after church, one of the boys came up to me and asked me if I knew what the F word meant. No. Go stick your teeter up a girls butt. That made no sense to me but he told me the sign of the word is the middle finger and I should wave it to him to say hello. So in class, he sat at the front of the room and I sat at the back and he did the hello sign to me by waving his middle finger behind his back. I waved the middle finger back. Pretty soon several boys in the front row were doing the F word to me and I waved the F word back. Where the teacher can see it. I didnt know I was doing anything wrong. I got a D in conduct. The excrement hit the fan like West Texas tumbleweed. I took my report card home. I had two Cs and a D. I had to send my grandfather a dollar and two dimes. My parents were horrified. I had brought shame and humiliation into their home. Im sure I got in trouble, big trouble. They asked me What did you do? I dont know. I didnt know what I had done that was so bad. I better act better or I was going to get sent awayto one of those mean places. They know what to do with little girls who dont act right. We better not ever see anything like this again. What did I do? What did I do? Well something. So I thought, better do nothing. If I dont sit perfectly still and not talk to anybody, then no one will know how bad and awful I am. So I sat perfectly still and didnt move for six weeks. I had to be threatened with being sent away for six weeks, every day. But after six weeks, I made all As on my report card and I was temporarily out of trouble. I didnt have to send my grandfather any money. I wasnt going to get sent away. I think some people came to visit us when I was in trouble. I know my aunt came. She was my mothers fathers sister. I think some people from Canada came. They all heard about the bad grades. I was so embarrassed. I probably got a spanking from my father. He hit hard. Then summer came and I dont remember being in trouble any more. I played in the yard with my brother and sister. If there was any arguing or crying going on, my mother would get out the butter paddle. I was usually blamed and had to pull down my pants and get hit with the butter paddle. On the bare buttocks. I was embarrassed.

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Sometimes my sister would get hit with the paddle, but not as often. My mother said it was my responsibility to set a good example and be generous because I was the oldest. My brother didnt get in trouble too much yet but he was just two. Plus, I would protect him. My mother began to tell me I was like Cain and Abel with my sister. I didnt know what she meant. She said it meant I never wanted to share things and would go to hell and my sister was like Abel and would go to heaven. I thought that meant I was a pretty bad person. So, after a while I stopped wanting to play with my sister. In my neighborhood, there were only boys to play with so I went to play with the boys. We climbed on sand piles. We threw rocks. We played in the sand. I dont get in so much trouble anymore. I was about to be ten and I was playing with the boys. My mother thought it was weird that I didnt want to play with girls things. She thought that it was strange that I played with boys. As long as I was in the house at exactly the right time, for lunch and dinner, she seemed to be happier that I wasnt around so much. I thought that was good. It cut down encounters with the butter paddle or my fathers hand on my bare buttocks if I was really bad after lunch. We knew that we werent in trouble if nobody got a spanking. Just wait until your father gets home. She didnt think the butter paddle hurt enough so she would say just wait until your father gets home. It seemed to be important to her to hurt me. The butter paddle hurt. I just stopped acting like it hurt. Thats when she would tell him so he could hit us harder. I was nine or ten. I shared a bedroom with my sister just like when we did from baby times. My mother would always tell me goodnight but then she would sit on my sisters bed. I wondered what they talked about. For years and years I wondered it. I still do. What did they talk about? I thought that meant that she liked her better. I think it still. As long as I didnt get in trouble with my father and as long as she didnt tell him Id done something bad, there was peace and calm. But if he came home and had to hear that I had done something to upset my mother, I knew what that meant. A spanking on the bare rear end. Sometimes, three just to be sure that it hurt enough. He hit me harder because I was older. It seemed important to my father to hurt me, so I started acting like it didnt hurt. He hit harderhe tried to make me cry. Then he would stop because he thought it hurt enoughif there were red marks. I would walk to my room and cry, where no one could see me. Go to your room. Sometimes it was just one of us. Sometimes it was both of us. He never asked me whether Id done anything wrong. He knew I had done it because she said so. Well send you away where people wont love you like we do, he said. No one ever said that to my sister or my brother. I thought I was in big trouble. I tried so hard. My mother began to tell me that I liked my little brother better than I liked my little sister. I just didnt get in as much trouble with my two year old brother. He couldnt argue with me. He seemed to like me. I seemed to like doing things with 53

him. I had helped with him since his baby years when I was seven. I was a big helper with my brother. He was old enough to take outside and play. My sister seemed to want to stay inside with my mother. I liked to take my brother outside. I didnt mind doing things with him. I didnt get in trouble with him. My sister and I kept sharing a room. My brother slept in his room and, of course, my parents slept in their room. My mother kept telling me goodnight and then sitting on my sisters bed. I finally rolled over with my back to them so they would think I didnt care. I cared. It just wouldnt have made any difference. No matter how good I was, she was never going to sit on my side of the bed. I still sleep on that side. Funny, isnt it? I sucked on my sleeve. I dont have a pinkey doll or a mother on my bed so I sucked my sleeve. They never heard my muffled sobs. They thought that I didnt care. I cared. I just knew it wouldnt change. It never changed. I was nine or ten years old. I was getting to be too big to cry. We better be quiet when its time for bed. I dont want to have to come in there. I dont want to hear any arguing. Youre the oldest and you better be a good example. I would lie perfectly still. I would be quiet as a mouse. If my sister started to laugh or cry, my mother would come in the room and turn on the lights. What did you do? Nothing. Yes, you did, youre the oldest. I didnt say anything else. I knew she would never believe me. I was ten years old. She was still sitting on my sisters side of the bed, I was still sucking on my sleeve and acting like it didnt bother me. Even when she has to turn the lights back on, she still sits on my sisters side of the bed. I wondered what they talked about. Summertime was over and I was happy to go back to school. I was in the fifth grade and my sister was in the third grade. I got a new teacher. She was Sister B something. I cant remember her name but I remember that she seemed to like me. I started to think that the only people who liked to have me to teach in school were Roman Catholic nuns. Ms. Cornyn had been a lay teacher. I figured only nuns liked to have me in class. I thought I might become one. I made very good grades in the classes. I got to write good letters to my grandfather. I got to get good grades in class. If my report card said 93, my father might ask why it wasnt 100 but an A was an A. This will become important later. I didnt get in trouble in school in the fifth grade. I was still in Catholic school and still doing okay. I made a female friend and a male friend. They were in my grade in school. The female friend lived far away from our house. The male friend lived across the street from my house. I didnt want to have to share my friends with my sister. People always seemed to like her better. I was afraid people would stop being my friend and start being her friend. I would walk home from school by myself. My sister would walk with a group of people up ahead. I was behind to make sure that she got home safely and she would walk with a group of friends. Even if she didnt have any friends to walk with, I didnt want to walk with her. She was a little sister. She would tell my mother I was mean to her. I just didnt want to get in trouble over something that was said. I wanted to prolongue the peace. 54

It didnt work. Even if I didnt say anything, Id get in trouble for not talking to her. There was no way to win. I was Cain and she was Abel. I was the oldest and should have known better. None of the girls my age lived close to where we lived. None of them were walking in my direction. I made two other friends, one was Hispanic but my family said they were poor. The other one was Caucasian. They had six children. Sometimes, I went over to their houses after school. I didnt see anything strange. I didnt see anything unusual but my parents never said much about it. They just thought my friends parents were poor. All I noticed was that they didnt mind having me around. I didnt get in trouble at their houses and didnt make a mess for the parents to clean up. As long as I came home at the right time, things seemed okay. Fast forward more than fifty years. It is hard work to write a book. Ive read probably a million books and the people who write whole novels do it so well and they start when theyre younger. I hope I get to finish this book. I hope its not too late. Maybe there will be, well, redemption. You cant know yet. Its too soon. And I had to have one of the frozen snow cones that I bought for extra. I kept hoping the stand would be open today. Im sad when I see that its all closed up. That, as they say, is that. The great American novel moves along. Back to the past, I was in the fifth grade. I wasnt getting in trouble with my teacher. I was making some friends. The fifth grade passed uneventfully. Well, no. The boy who lived across the street from me had an accident on his bicycle. He had road burns all over his face. His cheeks, his chin, his forehead and his nose were all covered with road burn and he did it in front of me. I had to go and tell his mother. I had to get the grown-ups. I hurried and rang the doorbell. His mother came to the door. Look, he fell off his bicycle. He had put cards in his wheels and was doing tricks. The bicycle just flipped over. It was after school. Since he was in my same grade at school, I got to bring him his homework every afternoon on the way home from school. He didnt have to go to the hospital but the doctor had to come to the house. They put crme and bandages all over his face. He missed school for more than a week. His mother didnt seem to have a hard time dealing with me. She was always happy to see me and smiled when she opened the door. She didnt mind if I sat on the side of his bed and told him about our classes. She didnt mind if I explained to him what we talked about that day in school. She didnt mind if I just sat there and looked at him. It was hard to look at his face all bandaged up. But he was my friend so I wanted to be with him. I went, day after day, to his house to see how he was doing. Both of his parents told me to come on in. I even went on Saturdays. We went to church on Sundays. We werent allowed to play on Sundays. We were supposed to be together, like a family. I helped to take care of my brother. My mother and my sister seemed to enjoy being with each other. Thats how it went. We went outside to play before dinner and did our homework after dinner. I made very good grades. My sister and I were sharing a room. They talked to each other a lot more than they talked to me.

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My father would come home from work and he wanted to sit down and have a drink with my mother. They would talk about the day. Sometimes, she would tell him bad things about me. He would never ask me if they were true. He just believed her. He always believed her. He would tell me he was going to send me to that place where people dont love you. I didnt get in trouble at school or with friends. I only got in trouble at home. Eventually, the boy across the street got better and I didnt have to take him his homework any more. Everybody was very happy to see him at the school. He was my first male friend. We had become special friends. I thought so anyway. He didnt act like he liked me at school but when we played together after school, he acted differently. He acted like he liked me. As long as I was home by the time my father got home from work. I learned to tell time and would watch for his car. He would wave when he drove by, with a smile on his face. I knew it was time to go home but I didnt want to go home. It seemed like I always did something wrong. I ate too fast. I didnt help set the table right. I didnt do anything right. I kept trying. Sometimes when he got home, my father would play catch with me out in the back yard. I knew he liked to play baseball and I had gotten a glove. Sometimes he would play catch with me. I dont think my mother liked it too much that I was playing catch. I dont think she liked it that I made her have her drink a little late. I didnt think she liked me. She kept telling me that I had a round face and looked like my father. What girl wants to look like her father? She told me that I was fat. Pictures reveal otherwise. She would tell my father I was fat. He would believe her. Sometimes, I wouldnt get dessert. I did have a round face. My father wasnt paying much attention. He was busy providing for a family. He didnt have time for foolishness. He went to bed right after the news every night. My mother used to stay up later. My sister and I still shared a room. My mother still sat on her bed. Towards the end of the fifth grade, something strange began to happen. My teacher told me that people who werent Catholic didnt go to heaven. That didnt make any sense to me. My mother was not Catholic and she was going to heaven. I didnt say anything about it at school. Most of my Catholic schoolmates had Catholic parents. They wouldnt have understood anything about it. I went home and told my mother what the nun said and she was mad. She didnt like the idea of Catholic school but shed made an agreement when she married my father. I had been to church with her and I didnt think that meant that I was going to hell. She was mad. She was mad about being referred to as non-Catholic. She was mad that she would be considered a non-anything. She was an Episcopalian and she was going to heaven. My parents argued over dinner. My mother was mad about what was said at the school. He didnt do anything. She got madder. We went to bed and she sat on my sisters bed and she was mad at me because I looked like him. I thought she was mad because I told her. Then came the last day of school of the fifth grade and we were allowed to wear regular dresses instead of the uniforms we always wore. I had on a sleeveless dress with a cap sleeve sweater. My 56

sister had on a regular dress with sleeves. Sometime during the morning, it got warm in the classroom and I took off my sweater. I was ten years old. Here comes the excrement again. The principal of the school, Sister Bonfilia, called my mother and told her she had to come to the school and see the principal. She thought Id done something wrong. Turns out, it was against the rules to have bare arms. It is simply not done in Catholic school. My mother argued with her. I put my sweater back on. The principal insisted that my mother take me home and change my clothes. My mother was so mad. She was mad at the Catholics and she was mad at me. I went back to school in another dress. My mother was very upset. I didnt say too much for fear of making her madder. We walked home from school that day. My mother told my father what had happened. She was furious. He didnt say very much. He wasnt one to argue. She got madder. She was so mad that, after a while, it was decided that I didnt have to go back to that school anymore. My sister didnt go either. We still went to church on Sunday with my father but we didnt have to go back to that school. My mother was happy. Sometimes I also went to church with my mother. They didnt seem all that different and I couldnt understand what the fuss was about but there was a fuss. That summer, I turned eleven. My sister was nine and my brother was four. I liked to play outside. All of the people to play with in the neighborhood my age were boys. There was one girl but she was my sisters age and they played together. I didnt interfere in their friendship. I played catch, baseball, basketball and dodge ball with the boys. She played inside with her friend. They played with dolls. I didnt play with dolls. I was a tomboy. My mother didnt like it that I played with the boys. I didnt understand why. I couldnt imagine what she was talking about. I thought she might be pretty happy. At least I wasnt at the house causing problems. One day in late summer, my friend who hurt himself on the bicycle was playing with another boy I didnt know very well. He was a year older than I was. I didnt know him very well. But I wanted to play with my boyfriend so I started hanging out with them. Before long, the older one asked me to come into his fort. I didnt think it was a very good idea. My boyfriend said it would be okay. I went in. They got me to lie down. The older one kept unbuttoning my blouse. You can imagine the rest. I remember buttoning my clothes and stumbling out of the tent. I tucked in my shirt and straightened my clothes. I went home. I didnt tell my mother because I knew shed tell me Thats what you get for playing with boys. I didnt tell my father because I didnt understand what had happened. I knew it would make everyone mad so I just acted like nothing happened. I wet the bed that night. I was eleven years old. I had never wet the bed in my life. I got up and made the bed. I hoped my mother wouldnt find out that I wet the bed. I was so disappointed in my boyfriend who let this happen. We didnt play together as much anymore. I saw him several years ago. He had his hip replaced. He was still the same, curly headed handsome boy I remembered. I wonder if he remembers that day. His cousin is married to 57

the daughter of a friend of mine who lives here in Austin. I hear about him all the time. Isnt it strange how life connects? No accidents, my friends. There is something cosmic going on here. I turned eleven that year. I think, for summer vacation, we went back to Detroit and upstate NY. We drove up as a family this time. We went to Detroit first and then to NY. My father left the car so we could drive back and went back to work. His vacation was only two weeks. We needed to spend more time with my mothers parents. I was eleven, my sister was nine and my brother was four. It took us three days to drive there when we went. We had to stop at hotels along the way. My father said we had to be careful in the South. We didnt want to end up in bad neighborhoods where there were African Americans. We stayed at a motel with a swimming pool. My brother slipped and fell into the pool. He couldnt swim. My mother didnt want to mess up her hair and my father couldnt get in the water because it would make his ear bleed. My sister was laughing. I jumped in the water. This all happened in a matter of seconds. I jumped in the pool. I brought him to the side of the pool. My father lifted him up. He was crying. I went to the stairs to get out of the pool. I got out of the pool and walked over to my family. They didnt say much to me because they were busy with my brother. We all went to bed. Sometimes in the car trip, my brother would put his head in my lap and his feet in my sisters lap and take a nap. He was just a little guy. I didnt mind. I really sort of liked it. It felt good to nurture him. My mother and father were riding in the front seat. My father was driving and my mother was sleeping. We sat in the back seat and I never even minded when his little head would sweat. It was hot driving through the south. My sister and I were too long to lie across the back seat. We went to my grandfathers house in Detroit. My aunts were there again. One of them was an old maid because she had never married. The other one married my great uncle but he died the day he retired. They were both alone. They were my grandmothers sisters. My mother didnt like one of them too much because she was fat. She liked the other one because she was small and petite. I liked both of them. My face was round like the one she didnt like. We stayed there for about a week. Then we went to see my mothers parents. I was sorry to leave my grandfather and my aunts. They were always very nice to me. It took a day to get there. My grandparents were not getting along with each other. We drove to my grandparents house and they were happy to see us too. My grandfather got drunk one day at work and referred to his boss as a G-d idiot. He was fired immediately. No job. He was in his fifties and didnt have another way to earn a living so he and my grandmother moved back to the small town in upstate NY where he came from. What did women do back then who had no job skills? What did women do with drunken husbands? You ought to know by now.

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He became a justice of the peace. Course he was generally the one causing the biggest ruckus but he was a justice of the peace. It was like giving the fox the keys to the hen house. He would scream and holler and rant and rave at people the police brought over to the house for driving while intoxicated. I dont know if the police knew he was probably in the bag himself. Turns out, thats what my grandparents werent getting along about. We left there after about three days and drove to Philadelphia. My mother and father wanted us to meet the people that introduced them. They wanted us to meet some of friends they had when they were younger, before we were born. We met them. My parents stayed up late talking to them and we took a nap on their big bed. We werent allowed to get on grown-ups beds. It was a real treat. There are pictures of me lying next to my sister with my brother lying next to her. Ive seen them. I must not have hated her too much. We got up to go to our beds. We met a friend of my mothers from her college years. She had a family with four boys. Her friends husband was the personal physician of the director of the Philharmonic. It was a big deal. My mother had spent part of her life in Philadelphia. She was happy to see her friends. We went to see the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was the most incredible thing Ive ever seenrooms decorated with period pieces. Ive never seen an art museum like it. We got to touch the Liberty Bell. What a treat. My parents were very happy together there. Then we went back to see my grandparents and my father had to fly out to go home. He left the car with us so we could drive back. We stayed with my mothers parents and my grandfather kept coming home drunk. The noise he would make was astonishing. He would bellow out in the middle of the night. It usually woke us up. My mother and my grandmother would go and see what all the noise was. Then there were arguments. My mother would go back to bed. We had been told to stay in bed. My brother was sleeping in an alcove. My mother was sleeping in the room with the alcove. My sister and I were sharing a room. My mother still sat on my sisters bed and said goodnight to me. I had gotten used to it. I loved being at my grandparents house. There was always plenty to do. My grandmother was crazy about me and always had chores that I could help her do. I was happy to pick blueberries, raspberries, and rhubarb. She had corn and peas. Whatever she didnt have in her garden, her best friend had. We would go over to her house and talk to her. My mother would get mad at her mother if she talked about her father. An uneasy silence would follow. I didnt understand what that meant. My grandfather never got up early and went to work like my father did. He would get up late in the day. He would run his dogs around the house and he would check his bees. He had about six springer spaniels that he kept in a large, fenced kennel and six beehives so he had to put on special equipment to harvest the honey. The running of the dogs was always an event, sort of scary until you got used to it. The harvesting of the bees was always an adventure but we had to stand far away, so we didnt get stung. At

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night, he would drink again but we didnt really understand what he was doing. We just knew he was doing it loudly. One night after dinner, my sister and brother and I were out playing in the front yard at my grandparents house. We asked if we could run up the hill to the cemetery that was across the street from the house. Wed done it plenty of times before. It was still daylight. So we ran up the hill and ran back down and, what do you know, when we got back down to my grandparents front yard, I started sneezing. After Id sneezed about sixty times, I went inside to get some Kleenex. I was still sneezing. My grandmother asked me what was wrong. I told her about the sneezing. She told my mother. It kept getting worse and my grandmother said I should go to the doctor. My mother said I just needed to go upstairs and take a nap. By this time, my tongue was swollen and my nose was swollen shut. I thought Id die if I took a nap. My grandmother kept insisting that I needed to go to the doctor. Finally, my mother took me to the doctor. She drove the car into town and we went to the doctor. My sister and brother stayed with my grandmother. The doctor was very nice. She told my mother it was a good thing that she brought me in to see her. As it turned out, I could have died. She gave me some special medicine or a shot. It made me stop sneezing. We probably picked up a prescription for more medicine on the way home. I was really sick. My mother and I got back to my grandparents house and I felt better. All the sneezing had stopped and it was safe for me to go to sleep. My tongue wasnt swollen anymore. My nose wasnt swollen shut. My throat wasnt swollen shut. I felt much better and wasnt so scared any more. My grandmother was relieved. By the time we got back to the house, it was time for bed. So, we went to bed. I never did find out what I was so allergic to on that hill. I just knew I was happy that my grandmother had insisted that my mother take me to the doctor. I took the pills for a while. Things got back to normal. I would play in the yard with my sister and brother. I did chores for my grandmother. I taught my little brother to play catch. We had a fun time. We went to my grandfathers sisters house. She had a huge house. They had a cabin on one of the Finger Lakes. They took us to the cabin. The lake was beautiful and my aunt played bridge with my mother. I dont remember if my grandmother went with us to the cabin. We were gone for several days. We went swimming and went for boat rides in my uncles boat. I looked out after my brother and sister. I was the oldest. My uncle was there part of the time. They had a piano that played itself if you pushed the pedals. I loved to play that piano. Just pump the pedals and the music came out. It was a gas. We slept out on the porch because the weather was so nice. My sister fell and scraped her knee in the drive way. It was a big deal. She had just been walking and slipped on some rocks. Her knee was all bloody and had rocks in it. My mother cleaned up her 60

wound and put a bandage on it. We went to bed. She couldnt play for a while so I played with my brother. She had a bandage on her knee. My mother still sat on the side of her bed. By then, I was in full dont care mode. My mother seemed pretty happy to be playing bridge with my aunt. I would sit and watch them. After a while I began to learn some of the rules. They asked me if I wanted to play. It looked like fun. I wasnt very good at it but it was my first introduction to bridge. My mother loved to play bridge. Pretty soon, it was time to go back to my grandparents houseback to the screaming and yelling. It always upset my mother. My grandfather would drink and my grandmother would fuss. Hed get mad and stomp out of the house. My mother thought it was my grandmothers fault that he drank, still. Hed go to the bars and come back in the middle of the night. Sometimes hed holler and sometimes he wouldnt. I remember my mother telling her father Dont talk to my mother that way. He yelled at us too. She said, Dont talk to my children that way. He just got madder and drunker. He would eventually leave the house. He had his places that he stopped in and drank. He was probably a loud drunk. He was loud about everything else. He would go to three or four places in that small town and get something to drink. We didnt know what he was doing. My mother and grandmother probably knew. We just knew hed get loud when he got home. You could practically hear him all over town. It was embarrassing. It was the small town he grew up in so he didnt have to go far. He always drove his car. My grandmother never learned to drive. I learned my fathers mother never learned to drive either. They were both afraid of driving. So my grandfather would drive away and it would be pretty peaceful and quiet in the house. It really got noisy when the police brought a drunk driver to the house. My grandfather was the Justice of the Peace and he would yell at them or give them a fine. He was probably just as drunk as the drunk driver. Sometimes they would yell and argue. My grandfather would give the drunk driver a fine. The police had brought the drunk driver to the house. There were plenty of arguments. Sometimes it woke us up. Then my grandfather would stumble up the stairs to bed. I dont think he and my grandmother talked very much. We always had to be quiet in the house in the morning so we didnt wake him up. That was fine with me because there was only one bathroom. We got up and brushed our teeth and went downstairs to eat breakfast. My grandmother made great breakfasts. Sometimes my mother would sleep late too. She liked to sleep late. I had to be extra quiet so I didnt wake her up too. I loved spending time with my grandmother so it was no problem. She didnt tell me I was fat and she called me honey. That sounded kind of nice. I still had a round face but the rest of me was pretty long and lean. I dont know why my mother thought I was fat. Probably the round face. My sister and brother did not have round faces. Just me. 61

So I ate breakfast with my grandmother. Pretty soon everyone else got up and they ate breakfast. My grandfather did not get up for breakfast. We knew to be very quiet. We went outside to play right away. Sometimes my sister stayed inside with my mother. I did chores for my grandmother and wandered around that neat old house. It was originally a house for two families but my grandfathers parents owned the house. They let my grandparents live in it. I wanted to see the room where my grandfather had his meetings with people late at night. It was a big room that was filled with books and fishing rods. I didnt touch anything. It had a curtain that led into it. I went exploring. You could walk through the room from the kitchen and all the way around to the living room. It was hidden. We werent supposed to go in there. So I went outside and picked food from my grandmothers garden. She grew a lot of food to save money at the grocery store. I guess being Justice of the Peace didnt pay very well. I loved working in the garden. Sometimes my grandmother would come with me. My mother would stay in the house with my brother and sister. They were too young to pick fruits and vegetables. My grandmother told me I was doing a good job. It made me want to do it even better. She said I was turning into a nice big girl. I was eleven. She would usually cook a big lunch. My grandfather might be awake by lunchtime. He liked a big meal. They had a table in their kitchen that looked like a park bench. I sat on one side, away from my grandfather. He was loud. He liked a big meal when he woke up so thats what my grandmother fixed. She would have to get meat and bread at the store but a lot of other food came from the garden or from her friends garden. My grandfather would sit at one end of the table and my grandmother would sit at the other end. I sat next to my brother and my sister sat next to my mother. Sometimes he would start to yell and holler. It was scary. Then hed leave in his car and we wouldnt see him any more until suppertime. It was pretty quiet. He came home for supper. We didnt know where hed been. Sometimes he was late. My grandmother would fuss. She would have the main meal ready to serve and he wouldnt be there. When he did come in, he was pretty loud and he smelled funny. He was big and tall and I didnt want him to start hollering. He would especially holler at my grandmother. Sometimes he hollered at my mother but not often. He teased us. Sometimes my mother would tell him to stop. He didnt. After dinner, he would leave the house again. One day he came home with a big catch of raw oysters. He thought we should have raw oysters to eat. They looked pretty gross to me so I didnt want to eat any of them. He got red in the face and laughed. I tried but I couldnt swallow it and it tasted nasty to chew. I think I spit it out. He laughed and yelled some more. I dont know if anyone else ate raw oysters. I think my grandmother had fixed something else for dinner anyway. I cant eat anything raw. Well, fruits and vegetablesgive me a break here. But meats or eggs, I cannot do raw. It makes me throw up. Some things require cooking.

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God woke me up again this morning, dear reader, so you must read on. Dont blame it on me. The tale has a mind of its own. We went to church on Sunday with my grandparents. My grandfather sang in the choir. He had a big, booming voice and you could hear him all over the church. Sometimes my grandmother didnt go because she was busy fixing lunch. She knew my grandfather wanted a big lunch on Sundays so she would cook it. We met all my grandfathers friends. Some of them remembered my mother from her baby years. She had been born there and lived there for nine years. They hadnt met us but were glad to meet us. Then we went home for lunch. My grandmother was a great cook. Her meals were always wonderful. My grandfather seemed to enjoy them too so an uneasy silence developed during the meal. No one hollered at anyone. It was Sunday. We took naps after helping my grandmother with the dishes. She told me I was a good helper. I was eleven. My mother probably helped with the dishes too. Later in the afternoon, my grandfather would leave and go to one of his places. He had a rule for himself about when he would start drinking on Sundays. But, drink he did. My mother and grandmother didnt want him to go. He got mad and went anyway. My mother thought it was my grandmothers fault that he drank. We didnt know much about alcoholism in the sixties. It was still an embarrassment. My mother and grandmother were embarrassed. They didnt want him to come home hollering. We all agreed to be very quiet when he came home so we didnt do anything to make him drink. He was still loud and made fun of everybody. My mother would criticize my grandmother for making me a large breakfast. She said it would make me fat. My grandmother didnt think I was fat but my mother sure did. My grandmother had to do what my mother said to do. So, I didnt get to eat biscuits with butter on them anymore. My sister and brother did. But not me because she didnt want me to be fatter. Sometimes, she would tell me I couldnt have dessert because it would make me fat. My grandmother did think I had a round face. Genetics is what were talking about here. Stay with me now. Im getting there. I looked like my father and people commented about it. What girl wants to look like her father? My sister and brother looked more like my mother but I looked like my father. My brother has my mothers nose. My nose was like my fathers. My mother especially commented about it. We all three have my mothers brown hair and eyes. But I had a round face then, like my father.

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Chapter 18 - Now Over fifty years later, I dont have any gray hair. I jokingly say that its my job to give other people gray hair. Its a jokepeople laugh. Hey, its my routine. It works for me. You have to have a routine or you will never get through it. Its about how you are around people. Its the play. Its the way you play with other people. Grown-ups have funny ways of playing the game. They make up all sorts of rules for the game. Some of the rules are good, so that we can all live together in peace. Some of the rules make sense to me. Stop on red and go on green. Practice good manners. That probably says it all. When all else fails and you think you simply cannot imagine what in the world to do, try good manners. And dont hit people. Grace. Play the game with grace. Where did we hide gracious? Im on a roll here. Kindness is a big one. Let me not forget respect. Sing it sister, Aretha. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Listen more than you talk and think about what you say. Think! Listening, really listening is twice as hard as you think it is. Its much, much harder. Think about what people say to you. Think before you say anything in response. We are weaving a rug. Every experience in life that we have is a strand of a certain color. We get to pick the colors. Some people weave dark rugs without much color. Some people weave brightly colored rugs with colors that are of a richness and fullness that defy description. They will take your breath away. And they picked the colorsout of the love and laughter and the heartache and sorrow, the joys and sorrows, the successes and failures; they picked rich, full colors. Hows the work coming on your rug? God got it right with the Ten Commandments. Like my friend says, Theyre not multiple choice. Love God and love your neighbor. Pretty simple stuffsimple, not easy. It is hard work. Some people think they have a work game and a home game. Life is the game we get to play. We cant play more than one game at a time. We get this magical one game to play. Its the Super Bowl and the World Series and Wimbledon and the Masters all rolled in to one. If were not doing enough in this one game we get to play, what are we doing? I digress.

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Chapter 19 - Then People talk about which parent a child looks like, dont they? I was told I looked like my father. I wonder who my sister and my brother look like. Well, they didnt have round faces. So maybe people said they looked like my mother! I wonder about that. Then it was time to leave my grandparents house and go back to see my father. He had left the car with us. We had to drive from NY to TX. My mother had to drive. I was supposed to sit in the front seat and pay attention to directions while she drove on the highways between TX and NY. We told my grandparents goodbye and left to get in the car. I started paying attention to directions and my mother started to drive. My sister and brother were sitting in the back seat. I read the map. I dont want to make a mistake so I was looking out the window and reading the signs and looking at a map. The route was highlighted in a special color so it was easy to follow with my eyes. I think my father had done that so we didnt get lost. Maybe he asked Triple A to do it. All I know is that I was sweating bullets here, wanting to make sure I pointed at the right number. I looked at the map, said the name of the highway and my mother drove the highway. I sure hoped I didnt get us lost. We got to the end of the first day of driving and had gotten where we needed to be, according to the map. I was happy. I didnt do anything wrong. My sister and brother sat in the back seat and I sat in the front seat with my mother. I read directions. When we went to sleep, I slept on the bed with my brother and my mother spent the night with my sister. I dont remember ever going to sleep with my mother. They would laugh and talk. They sounded happy. My brother was four years old and fell asleep fast. I lay there listening to my mother and sister. They always had so much to talk to each other about. I wonder what it was. We got up the next morning and ate breakfast. Then we got on the road again. I was still reading the map. My sister and brother were sitting in the back seat. My mother was driving. I sat quietly and told her highway numbers. We got safely to the second place where we were going. We drove for about eight or nine hours. We had to stop for lunch and to go to the bathroom but we probably averaged eight hours of driving. We got to the second place my father had drawn on the map. I was pretty happy. Nobody got hurt and I didnt get in trouble. We ate dinner and slept the same way wed slept the night before. I was eleven and my brother was four. We got up the third day and ate breakfast. We went back to the room so my mother could go to the bathroom and then we packed our suitcases and got back in the car. I sat in the front seat with my mother.

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My brother and sister sat in the back seat. I read the map and told my mother which highways to take. During midafternoon of the third or fourth day of driving, we were back in TX. We stopped for the last time in Abilene on I 20. What do you know? My father was there to meet us. He had gotten a car and driven up to meet us in Abilene. I wonder how he knew wed be in Abilene. Maybe they talked on the phone. Maybe my father calculated it on the map. He was just there. My mother was so happy to see him. We had two cars in Abilene. I rode back to West TX with my father and my sister and brother rode back with my mother. We had two cars there. My mother didnt need anyone to give her directions any more. She just followed my father. I was out of a job. My father told me I must have done a good job, helping my mother drive back from NY. He was very happy with me. My mother thought it meant I liked my father better. Nope. I just didnt want the pressure of reading maps any more. So I rode with my father. He knew the way. My mother followed in our other car. He knew the way. I didnt have to point the way anymore. What a relief! It took several hours to get home from Abilene. I didnt mind. My father was asking me all sorts of questions about what wed been doing. I told him. There were a lot of things I left out. But we rode for two or three hours in the car together. My mother was probably unhappy that she wasnt with my father. I didnt know that. I just knew I was with somebody who didnt need directions. Less pressure. We got back to our home before it was dark. We were all tired and went to bed. My brother went to his room. My sister and I went to our room and my parents went to their room. I dont remember getting into any trouble. I missed my grandmother and asked if I could go and live with her because she always acted like she liked me. My mother laughed. It was time to get ready for the beginning of school. I always loved school. It made sense to me. But, we werent going back to the Catholic school that year so I was going to meet all new people. I was scared. I was going into the sixth grade and my sister was going into the fourth grade. We were both in a whole new school. We didnt have to wear uniforms every day. We did still have to wear saddle oxfords because they were good for our feet. I was growing. My sister and brother were growing too. Now my sister didnt start school at age 3 and neither did my brother so they didnt have the affection for school that I did. I couldnt wait to go to school. Id been going for eight years. I could barely sleep the night before school was going to start. It didnt bother me so badly that my mother didnt sit on my bed. I was glad to be going to school. My sixth grade teacher was a woman, Ms. Jones, and she seemed to like me. When I stood up to talk at the new school and the other children started to laugh, she told them to stop laughing. Id always been taught to stand up when I talked at the Catholic school. It was a sign of respect. But I didnt have to stand up in my new school. I just had to raise my hand. It was a tough habit to break. All of the children who were at that school had been together at that school for years. They all knew each other. They didnt know me. I missed my friends from my old school but I didnt play 66

with the boys anymore. I met a friend who lived around the corner from me. My mother let me go over to her house. She was an only child and my parents said that was a bad thing. They said she was probably spoiled. She didnt act spoiled. She shared her things with me. We listened to her records together and we looked at movie magazines. Her mother acted like she didnt mind having me around so I liked being over there. I didnt get in trouble over there. My sister didnt tease me over there. Sometimes my sister would tease me and take away something I really liked. My mother laughed and said, Ignore her and shell give it back. I was never very good at ignoring things. I didnt take her things. Sometimes we would argue when she took my things and it would make my mother mad. Usually, she was mad at me because I was the oldest and bigger than my sister. I should set a good example. I didnt argue with my brother because he didnt tease me. He was only four. Sometimes her teasing would make me cry. Stop crying my father said. Ill give you something to cry about. Now he was five seven and weighed about two hundred pounds. I knew he could hurt me. He would remind me that he could break me in half. I believed it. My mother was five four and weighed one hundred and twenty pounds. Her figure was always important to her. I still had my fathers round face and the other children at school told me I was fat. I got picked last when we played games because nobody knew me. Pictures tell a different story but I did have a round face. My mother always told me I had to be careful about what I ate. I only ate breakfast, lunch and dinner. I didnt eat anything else. She told me not to eat at my friends house. I didnt. But her mother offered me a Dr. Pepper. I loved the Dr. Pepper. So, I drank it. My mother didnt like my friends mother because she wore pants. My mother always dressed up in a dress with hosiery every day. I didnt think it was so strange that my friends mother wore pants but thats what she told me. I had to be home at exactly the right time for dinner or I would get in trouble. My mother would tell my father that I hadnt been around to help her. She told him that I hadnt set the table for dinner. He threatened to send me away to that place where they send bad children. I was scared. Sometime around then, my grandfather sent us a piano and my mother wanted me to learn to play the piano. I didnt want to play the piano because I wanted to be outside with my friends but I had to take piano lessons. She found a piano teacher that acted like she liked me. So I didnt mind going to piano lessons so much. I didnt really like to practice though. I had to practice for an hour a day. My mother could tell if I made a mistake when I was practicing. She would make me practice it over again. She said she wasnt going to waste money on piano lessons for someone that didnt want to practice. She didnt want to be embarrassed in front of the piano teacher who had me keep track of the hours I practiced every day.

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She had me keep a book. My mother would check the book. She would keep track of how long I practiced and watch me write it down. An hour seemed like forever but I had to sit there and practice for that long. My piano lessons were only thirty minutes and my teacher could tell if Id been practicing. I was the oldest so I had to take piano lessons first. I had to practice on Saturday and Sunday, when my father was at home. He could tell if I made a mistake too. He would holler out, Do it again. I did. Both of them would fuss at me at the dinner table about why I was eating so fast. I didnt know I was. My sister had a face like my mothers and she didnt eat fast. My brother didnt have a round face either. I still had a round face and I looked like my father. Now about this time, my mother hired a woman to come over and help her clean the house. Her name was Ruth and she had dark skin. All the people who had helped my mother before had white skin. But I didnt mind. Her name was Ruth. We had to clean our rooms and make our beds before Ruth came. My mother didnt want Ruth to see a messy house. I asked my mother about Ruth. She told me that Ruth had nine children by nine different men. She made it sound bad. Ruth acted like she liked me okay. One day, she took me to her house with her. She had a piano. There was a picture above the piano. I asked her who was in the picture. Thats my family, she said. It was a man with Ruth and three children. She had a family just like our family. I didnt argue with my mother. I even went to church with Ruth one time. Everybody was really happy to see me. Ruths whole family went to the same church. My family didnt go to the same church. My mother and father would talk about the differences between the Catholics and the Episcopalians. I didnt think they were so different. But my sister and I went to church with my father and my mother went to her church later. She made a promise when they got married. I really liked school and really liked my teacher and she seemed to like me. My favorite time of the day was when she read a story to us. If the whole class was good, at the end of the day, she would read the class a story. I dont remember ever hearing a woman read a story. I was always very good and was never the reason we didnt get to hear the story. Sometimes, other children would talk or laugh, usually the boys. Then shed stop reading. Sometimes she would just stand by me and tell the other children to be quiet. I liked that. I made good grades and got to send my good grades to my grandfather. He would still send me a dollar for As and fifty cents for Bs. I didnt have to send him dimes any more. Hed ride down on the train from Detroit to visit us for Christmas. We got to go to the train station and pick him up. It was always very nice to see my grandfather. He would always bring us jaw breakers and fruitcake from Detroit. I loved the fruitcake. He brought my mother butter almond toffee. We werent supposed to eat that.

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Theres a picture of me sitting with my family in front of the piano. My brother is still in baby clothes. He is standing by my father. My sister is standing by my mother. My grandfather is sitting in the middle on the piano bench. I am sitting at the front, all alone, with the same long legs I have today. Thats how I felt in my family, alone. I have a solemn look on my face. I wonder what happened right before we took that picture. Who knows? My grandfather stayed through Christmas. We were out of school for two weeks. My parents gave us nice presents for Christmas. We would awaken on Christmas morning early and my sister, father, grandfather and I would go to church. Then we would come home and wake up my mother and brother. We opened presents. We took turns. My parents both smoked cigarettes. We would give them cigarettes or cigars for my father. Sometimes, we gave my mother candy or perfume. It was important to us to be able to give them presents. I saved my allowance.

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Chapter 20 - Now A little dancing music, maestro. Dance forward with me. Dance forward with me about fifty years. I feel like I have two personalities, hard worker by day and famous writer by night. Do you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in there? I have done that enough to make a dog laugh. Have you ever gone to the grocery store and forgotten to get the one thing you went to buy? Me, too. I lost something the other day at work, or thought I did. I had the receptionist send out an office wide e-mail to turn in the watch to the receptionist. One hundred and forty people were looking for the watch. Im sure glad they didnt know it was me who lost the watch. It was at home, on my dresser. Right where Id left it, like I always do. CRS Cant Remember Stuff. I was glad to be home today from the factory. The pups were happy to see me, or hungry. It doesnt matter which one it is. They took care of dog business. They ate. They faithfully guard the secret writer, in King Mutt mode. I do not like the cold and it has gotten colder in Austin. It makes my head hurt. I broke down and turned the heat on. Sirens wail in the distance. The wind blows outside my window but I am safe, dear reader, behind the walls of my abode. All right, Ill quit dancing around and avoiding the plot here. Back we go to the sixth grade.

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Chapter 21 - Then We walked home from school, my sister and I. She walked with her friends and I walked. I didnt have any friends that walked. Sometimes, we walked together. I was supposed to wait for her to make sure that she got home safely since I was the oldest. Im still waiting for her to get home safely. Funny, how life is. Wed meet up after school. We lived at 1500 Murray St; 682-9007 was our phone number. I had to learn it. I used it to call my mother if I went to a friends house. My friends didnt come to our house very much. My sister and I would sometimes play outside. We would roller-skate and ride our bicycles together. I would walk around the corner to my friends house. We had to be home at a certain time. Where is your baby sister, my mother would ask. I didnt always know. I still dont know. Sometimes, my parents would go out together at night and a woman would come and stay with us named Ms. Howell. She was the nicest lady. We would always drive over and pick her up in the car. My father would get dressed up and wed go pick up the babysitter. He would wait while my mother finished dressing. They would go out for the night. I always thought my mother looked so pretty. Sometimes, she wore a new dress. My father wore a suit and tie, just like he did to work. The babysitter would put us to bed. My brother had to go to bed earlier because he was just four but my sister and I usually went to bed at the same time in the room we shared. We were not allowed to go into my parents room. Well, I wasnt. They came in our room. We were supposed to keep our rooms clean. Ruth came to the house during the day and sometimes, she was there when we got home from school. Then she would go back to her house. She lived on the other side of town. She drove an older car over to our house and helped my mother keep the house clean. She was very nice to me. She would be gone by the time my father came home from work. One day, my mother and I went in to the living room. She sat in the middle of the couch. I sat on the floor. She told me about where babies come from and how they got made. She told me it was something special you only do with one person after you get married. She said it was a holy thing, only meant to be shared with the man that you marry when you grow up and get married. It was very confusing to me. But at least I wasnt in trouble. She said it 71

should only be done when youre grown up and married. She didnt touch me or anything but I wasnt in trouble. Shed hit me when I was in trouble and kiss me goodnight. She still never sat down on my bed. I turned over like it didnt matter. What did they have to talk about? I didnt want to say anything wrong. I could hear them whispering and laughing. What were they talking and laughing about? I dont know. I remember that my mother wanted a flower garden in the back yard, a big flower garden. She wanted it to go all the way around one wall and all the way up the side of the other. She wanted it to be wide. My father made the ground moist and got a shovel and began to build this enormous garden. He said I was big enough to help him dig the hole. We could get it done faster if I helped. So I helped my father with the shovel. My mother seemed happy because she was going to get her garden faster. My sister and brother were inside with my mother. We would work on it on the weekend when my father didnt have to work. Sometimes hed work on it after work, when he took off his work shirt. Hed put on his gardening clothes. We moved a lot of dirt around. We spread a lot of peat moss around, bags and bags and bags of it. It seemed like an enormous number of bags. My father had to bring it home in his trunk. We had to dig all the way down to the caliche because thats where the ground gets too hard to dig. That was about six inches down. Then we mixed the dirt with peat moss because it was supposed to make the ground better for growing flowers. Then it would be time to help set the table for dinner. I learned to do it first because I was the oldest. Then, two years later, my sister learned. I dont think my brother set the table. I had to wash my hands before I touched anything. I was tall enough to wash my hands in the sink. Sometimes Id try to hold my sister up so she could reach the sink. Then Id lift my little brother up to the sink. Then my sister got too big for me to lift. One of my parents could lift her but I couldnt lift her. I was too big for my mother to lift and she could lift my brother. I was too big for her to lift around the time I turned two because she had to hold my baby sister. Someone else had to hold me. There is a picture that Ive seen with my sister. I have my hair parted in the middle with bangs in the front. The rest of my hair is braided into two perfect pigtails. I have my fathers round face. My sister is in the other side of the picture with short, curly hair and a face like my mothers face. My hair is perfectly parted from the top of my bangs to the bottom of my hairline and braided. My mother braids my hair. My sister and I have baby teeth. I wonder if we hurt when we were teething: my brother or my sister or me. My mother thought babies cried to get attention. She picked me up to feed me and change my diapers. Then she put me down in bed again. I wonder if I slept through the night. Do babies sleep through the night? I wasnt supposed to cry and wake my parents up. My father had to get up and go to work early in the morning at 8 AM. He had to leave the house early. My mother stayed home with me. 72

My mother stayed at home with me during the day. Fourteen months after I was born, she was pregnant again. She couldnt lift me when she was pregnant. It might hurt the baby. Nine months later, my sister was born. She was little and my mother could hold her. She could sit on my mothers lap. I was too big to sit on my mothers lap. I wasnt too big to sit on my fathers lap. I could sit next to her while she held the baby but she could not hold two babies at one time. I was nearly two years old, twenty three months old. My father took her to the hospital to have the baby. I was too young to go. My parents left me at home with a woman who lived with us. We had part of the basement turned into a bedroom with a bathroom and this woman lived with us, to help my mother take care of me while she was pregnant. She helped my mother keep the house clean. My father came home at night but my mother didnt come home at night. This lasted for two or three days, maybe longer. Then she came home one day with my father and brought me my little sister. She was born in Canada. I wanted to see the little baby and look at the little baby. Do you think the little baby slept through the night? My mother would sit in the rocking chair with her until she went back to sleep. I slept in the other room where I was supposed to be quiet right now. She slept in the babys room. My mother spent a lot of time in the babys room and I spent a lot of time with the lady who lived with us. She was very nice to me and seemed to like me. I liked her too. I think she was from another country. By the time my sister was twelve months old, my mother sent me to school for part of the day. It was too much for her to have two children at home with her. Its a good thing I liked school. I spent a lot of time there. It makes sense to me. I went to school until they ran out of classes for me to take. I got my PhD. I just did it because I wanted to learn some more things. Its no big deal. My father has a PhD in Chemistry. My brother-in-law has a PhD in Mathematics. Those are a pretty big deal. You have to be really smart to get a PhD in those subjects. I dont even use mine. Nobody calls me Doctor. It would make me nervous. Of course, it doesnt take much to make me nervous. So in this picture, since both my sister and I had teeth, we had to be three and five years old. We werent very old. But I would have been in kindergarten by then. My sister stayed home with my mother. I went to school. When I was six, I went to the first grade. During the first grade, my mother got pregnant with my brother. By this time, I noticed that her stomach was growing but I didnt know what it meant. After Christmas, she went to the hospital again with my father. The same lady stayed with us. We were both old enough to go to the place where my mother was and see a baby. My father lifted us up to look in the window. We werent allowed to go in to the hospital. My mother held up the baby. She was inside. My father was outside with us. Then, one day she came home with a baby. The baby had to sleep in the baby crib so my sister and I slept in the same room. We always slept in the same room when she was old enough to be able to sleep in a bed. My brother slept in the crib and we slept in our room. 73

It was a little boy with the same name as my father. My parents told me they were having a baby. I knew that boys were different than girls from my friends that I played with from school. They lived in our neighborhood. I thought it would be nice to have a brother. I thought maybe I wouldnt get in trouble so much with a brother. I told the people in my class at school that I had a new brother at home. I brought a friend home to see my brother. My mother got mad. She said if I ever brought anyone over without telling her, shed make omelet creole. It is not a dish for children. Shortly after he was born, my fathers mother died suddenly while hosting a dinner party. My father left and went to Detroit to my grandmothers funeral. My baby brother fell off of a chair when he was gone. My brother broke his arm. He was such a quiet baby and he didnt cry so no one knew that he broke a bone in his arm. My father was gone for a while and then he came back. He was sad. His mother was my godmother. She had had a heart attack. She was sixty-five years old. Then in a few more months, we moved. I was nearly seven, my sister was five and my brother was five months old. My parents went to visit the new place where we were going to live. My mother and father had to pick out a house. I think they flew on an airplane. They were gone for a while. My mothers mother came to stay with us in Canada. Then, they were home and my grandmother slept in the room with the baby. He had to be in a separate room. Maybe my grandmother slept downstairs in the extra bedroom. I dont know. I know l liked it when my grandmother visited. Shed ride on the train to visit us too, almost every other year when we were in West Texas and she was in NY. Then shed take the train to CA to visit her son and his family. It mustve been a long train ride. She stayed gone a long time and then shed go back to my grandfather. I guess sometimes she needed a vacation from the drinking and hollering. Then, shed go back and my mother would start getting the letters again. It was the letters my grandmother wrote her that told her about what my grandfather was doing. The letters made my mother sad. I told her not to read them. She laughed. She told me one time that if my grandmother ever said anything to me about my grandfather, I should never believe her. I couldnt figure out why my grandmother would tell me a lie. That confused me. It made me sort of curious. My grandmother never did say anything bad. Sometimes, she and my mother would argue and one of them would end up getting mad or going to their rooms. It was not a pleasant time for any of us. They didnt argue in front of my father. My grandmother would help my mother with the dinner and various other chores. It was nice to have her around. I dont think she was ever mean to me. She liked me and showed it. Then wed take her to the train station and she would be gone. I never got to meet my uncle or his family. He had a daughter and named her after my mother. He also had a son. I think he had a job in sales. Ive never met them either. Strange, to have family members you never got to meet. 74

How old am I now? Twelve. Summer was over and I got to go back to school. I was in the seventh grademiddle school. I had to go from one room to another for all of my classes. Id never done that before. I had a locker where I kept my things during the day. Id never done that either. I had different teachers for different subjects. My sister was in a different school. I liked my teachers and they liked me. My math teacher lived down the street from me. I would sometimes stop and visit with her. My other teachers were nice. I even had a man for a teacher. First time for that too. I didnt know men taught school. We had Physical Education where you had to change clothes in front of other people and wear a uniform. It was a different world. There were boys and girls there from other schools. It was big. All I knew was that I had to get from one class to the other on time or get in trouble. I was not going to get in trouble. I motored the halls from one class to the next. I couldnt draw very well so I took music. I didnt know anything about French so I took Spanish. English, social studies, math, science, Spanish, choir and PE. It was a full day. Sometimes I rode my bicycle to school. We just lived down the street from the school. We could walk home. Most days I did walk home. Sometimes Id walk with friends and sometimes Id walk by myself. My piano teacher lived on the way home, about two blocks from the school. I could stop on the way home and take my piano lessons. I always took her in her newspaper. Her music studio was around the back of the house. Then Id walk or ride my bicycle home. When it was raining, my mother would pick me up from school. Sometimes, I rode with my friends mother. She always picked up my friend from school. But my mother would get mad if I didnt walk so Id have to say no thank you. My mother and my father each had their own car. My father would take his to work and my mother would use hers for running errands and going to meetings. She was in the Junior League. Thats how she started making some friends. She had to go shopping. I dont know how she filled her day. She always dressed up though so she must have been doing something. We got up and got dressed for school. My father usually woke us up by clapping or turning the lights off and on. He would yell time to get up and we usually did. My clothes were on one side of the closet and my sisters clothes were on the other side of the closet. We had a dresser for our other clothes and things. We always wore a skirt and blouse or a dress with shoes and socks to school. We ate our breakfast. It was usually cereal and toast but sometime it was crme of wheat. Now I do not like crme of wheat so that wasnt my favorite breakfast. There go sales in the wheat growing states! But oatmeal suits me just fine. Maybe the oat growers can compensate with high book sales. Somebody better read this book Ive worked so hard on. Anyway, we had orange juice and milk with our breakfast and we were off to school. My father usually left the house whistling. He was happy. Fifty years later, I know why. My teachers liked me. That is the key here. I have been in school since I was three. It is now nine years later. Only one teacher during one year didnt like me. Id say that might have something to 75

do with her. But what do I know? I got good grades in school. I always did my homework. My grandfather kept sending me money for my grades. We put it in the bank to save it up. He usually wrote a check. Well, he didnt write the check. He probably told the woman who was his nurse to write the check. Over the years, it got to the point that she could write exactly like he did. It didnt matter. I got the check. And I always wrote a thank you note and told my grandfather how I was coming along with my piano lessons. My grandmother would write me letters. And my best friend from my baby years. I was always happy to get mail. I would always write back. I liked to write. Sometimes one of my aunts would send me a dollar, for no particular reason. That was a big day. On the weekend, I would help my father mow the grass. He usually did it when he got home from playing golf on Saturday morning. He would mow and edge and I would help him bag up the grass and take it to the trash. Sometimes, Id sweep the sidewalk and driveway. I liked helping him. One day, I decided it would be nice if he didnt have to mow the grass. So I got the lawnmower out of the storeroom and decided to mow the grass. Id watched him do it a million times. I just did what I saw him do. It was easy. I opened the gate to the back yard and took the lawn mower out front. I started the mower. My mother was standing in the front doorway. She was moaning. She said, I cant believe I have a daughter who mows the grass. She wanted me to stop it. She was worried about what the neighbors would say. I didnt care about the neighbors. I just mowed the front yard. When I finished in the front, I mowed the back yard. It was a big yard. I had to be careful. Then I got the edger and I took it around to the front yard. I turned the blade sideways against the curbs and horizontally against the other parts that the lawn mower. I finished the front yard and the back yard. I thought my father would be so happy that he didnt have to do it. He got home from playing golf and didnt say anything. I was crushed. He went into the kitchen and got a glass of water. As he was looking out the window over the yard, I asked him if he noticed anything about the yard. He looked out at the yard and said, Yeah, you missed a spot. He thought it was funny. I didnt think it was funny. I thought it was sad, very sad. I think he finally told me that he appreciated me mowing the yard. By then, I dont even know if I could hear him. The damage was done. You cant unring the bell or unbreak my heartas the song goes. I think I kept on mowing the lawn. I liked doing it and I might have even gotten more money for my allowance if I did it. I dont know. It was a chore that had to be done like inside chores. I liked being outside. Usually when the weather was nice, especially during the summer, my father would make barbecue sauce and he would cook outside on the barbecue pit on Saturday night. He had his own recipe. He would cook the sauce and then cook the meat outside. My mother would make part of the dinner. He also made homemade mayonnaise. 76

Anyway, the barbecue was always just the best in the world. Nobody makes barbecue like my father. He would cook hamburgers, chicken, ribs and rump roasts. They were so good. He would let my mother know when it was almost time to eat. We hurried around and set the table. We got everything ready. Then he would bring it in. It was so good. Gosh it was good. After we cleaned up things after dinner, we got to watch Perry Mason on television. During the summer we got to stay outside later with the porch light on. The weather was so nice. It wasnt as hot as it had been during the day. Some days, it was over 100 degrees. Thats hot in any country. Sometime during the seventh grade, I started my period. I thought I was dying of a disease. When I told my mother, she told me it was normal. She said thats what young women do. I was just relieved I wasnt dying. She got me these Kotex pads to use and said they would help with the bleeding. I wasnt supposed to tell anyone. She never told me what to do with the pads after they were soiled. I didnt think I should put them in the trashcan where other people would see them. So I wrapped them up carefully and put them in a bag because I didnt know what to do with them. I put the bag in my mothers closet because I figured shed know what to do with them. When I got home from school, she was mad. She showed me the paper bag. She started yelling at me and asking me why I did that. I didnt know. She told Ruth to hit me she was so mad. So Ruth did what my mother told her to do and hit me on the buttocks. It hurt. Then I went to my room. I was so confused. I dont think Ruth wanted to hit me but she had to do what my mother said or lose her job. After the seventh grade, my sister and I were going to camp. It was this place in the mountains in New Mexico. We drove there. We each had a trunk with our belongings in them. We stopped in Santa Fe on the way. We ate at the Pink Adobe and stayed at a hotel. We went up in the mountains. We saw plenty of Indians and the houses they lived in. We saw a lot of the things they made. One morning after breakfast, my mother thought she saw Johnny Carson walking around at the same park. She was a big fan. She didnt want to say anything to him but my brother threw up on his foot. She kept watching afterwards to see if hed mention getting thrown up on in New Mexico. He didnt. Would have been a funny story though. We drove to the camp. They dropped us off and off they went, back to West Texas. Now my sister was ten so she was in one cabin and I was twelve so I was in another. We didnt see each other very much. I had a counselor who I liked and who seemed to like me. I was with the bigger children and my sister was with her age group. We didnt even sit together at meal time. That was a first. Id been eating meals with my sister for as long as I could remember. It seemed funny that we would be sitting in the same room and not talking to each other. One night, I got sick. I didnt get any better so they drove me down the mountain to the hospital in Las Vegas, NM. They asked me my name at the hospital and I said Sam Jones the 3rd. I think I had had enough of a hard name. They decided to take out my appendix. A male nurse came into 77

my room with a razor. He said he was going to shave me. He did, down there. Was I ever embarrassed! Then they gave me some medicine and the next thing you know, I had my appendix taken out. I have a big scar on my right abdomen. Its big. And when I woke up, my parents were there. Apparently, the hospital had called them and asked them for permission to do the surgery. They drove over right away with my brother who was five by then. I was in the hospital for two or three days. Then I went to stay at the motel with my parents. We went back to the camp to get my things and see my sister. She was still there. I couldnt do anything for a month so it was silly for me to stay at camp. I drove home with my brother and my parents. Wouldnt you know it, my period started right after the surgery? I had to keep it a secret. My father and my brother werent supposed to know. We got back to West Texas and I was there by myself with my brother and my parents. I went over to my friends house a lot. I liked riding places in the car with her mother. I pasted Green Stamps for my mother. I wanted to be able to buy a tennis racquet with some of the books of stamps. It was strange sleeping in the room without my sister. My mother didnt even come in the room at all. She just said goodnight, or I did if I was going to bed earlier, which I usually was. I didnt stay up to watch Johnny Carson. It was past my bedtime. Then we went and picked my sister up at camp and we were all a family again. She had had a good time. She talked all about the things she did. She did a lot of things. Then summer was over and it was time to go to school again. Was I ever happy! I was in the eighth grade. My sister was in the sixth grade at the other school. I liked all my teachers and they liked me. We still had to walk around from room to room but by now, I knew my way around. I had a different home room teacher and a different locker. The teachers were different. But school was school. My favorite thing. I met a friend walking to school one day. She was a year younger than I was. We would walk to school every morning. We met part way because she lived a couple of blocks closer to the school. I had one teacher I really liked. She liked my writing. She had us write a paper about the Civil War. I wrote on about the battle at Antietam. I read it to my mother before I turned it in. She said it was fine. Then it was time to get up and read our papers in front of the class. I was so nervous. She liked it. She said it was very good. She had me go to other classes and read my paper. I dont know if they liked it or not but my teacher did. I got an A. I was so happy. Ms. Peacock was her name. She always talked to me. In the middle of the eighth grade was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Our science teacher talked to us about it. He said the Russians were taking missiles to the Cubans who were going to shoot them at us. People started building bunkers and storing food. We thought we were going to get bombed. I thought there would be Russian tanks driving down the street taking people from their families. I was scared. We had to practice in school what we would do if there was a bomb. We heard the Communists were going to invade our country. We knew that would be a bad thing. Thats what the teacher

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said. But there were no bombs or missiles. The Russians did not invade. That is not a part of our collective history. Two very embarrassing things happened to me in the eighth grade. One, I wore a white skirt to school one day. The only problem was that I was having my period and nobody told me not to wear white when you have your period. I leaked. I leaked in Math class and people saw it on the back of my skirt when I got up to leave school. I was so embarrassed when I found out. Somebody told me when I was walking out of school. The second is far darker. There was a dance at the school. It was a girls ask boys dance. I asked a boy to go. Someones parents drove and we went with some other girls and boys. He left and went to the bathroom. I heard him tell his friends that I was wiping snot on his shirt. I was horrified. I have sweaty hands. I wasnt wiping anything on his shirt. I started to cry. I went to the bathroom. Then, I came out. I acted like nothing happened and he danced with me and sometimes he didnt. We went to get a soda after the dance and then we all went home. I didnt tell anyone what happened. I was too embarrassed. Besides, my mother asked me why I had sweaty hands. I dont know. I have never known. During the spring, a really big event occurred. They came over from the high school and started telling us about this big new school we were going to go to in the 9th grade. It was called high school. They told us we had to choose our classes. They told us we had to choose so many classes to graduate. I thought I would never be able to do the work in high school. I was scared. I had made some other friends in junior high school and sometimes I would go over to their houses. I could ride my bicycle. My mother didnt have to take me. I just had to be home at a certain time. I especially liked going to one friends house. Her mother was always nice to me and thought I was funny. My friend didnt come over to my house too much. Sometimes, I got to spend the night with her on Friday night. It was fun. My friends didnt like coming over to my house usually. I made good grades in the eighth grade and my teachers liked me. Go figure. Ive had twenty-three teachers by now and only one who didnt like me. I still got to write to my grandfather about my grades. He still sent me money for my grades. The money was still going into a savings account. The summer after the 8th grade, my mother decided I should go back to camp. She knew I had missed the previous year because of my appendix and she wanted things to be even with my sister. I didnt care about going to camp. I wanted to stay home with my friends. But she wanted me to go to camp. So, I went to camp. We drove up there and stopped at Howard Johnsons. Its a motel. They usually have a swimming pool. We got to go swimming. There is a picture of me with long legs and thin, with a round face. I had on a swimming suit. I bet my father took that picture. He used to love to take pictures. We went to eat breakfast. I ordered something. My mother wanted me to have eggs. So I had eggs. When they were brought to our table, they were sunny side up and I knew there was going to be a problem. I cannot eat slimy things. I told my mother the eggs would make me sick. She told 79

me to just eat them. I did. I threw up. She told me I did it on purpose. She was mad. Who wants to throw up on purpose? Certainly not me. They took me to camp and dropped me off. I was there at camp by myself. I had the same counselor. We rode horses and did things you do at camp: archery, riflery, swimming and hiking. I made a friend from Amarillo and another one from my same town. On Sundays, I would go into town to church. Since I was Catholic, I had to go to Catholic church. One of the counselors was Catholic too so she drove with me down the mountain to go to church. One time, her boyfriend met us at church and took us flying. I felt so special. Not only was I on a church outing with a counselor, I went flying. He had rented a plane and was a pilot. It was so much fun. Plus, it had to be a secret. I couldnt tell anybody at the camp. I didnt. After a month, camp was over so I came home. My family came to pick me up. We drove back home. I think we had to stop and spend the night. It was a long way. My father drove with my mother in the front seat. We sat in the back seat. My brother still slept across my sister and me with his head in my lap. He was a cute little boy. We had to be quiet if my mother was sleeping. In the afternoon, it got hot but we had an airconditioner. Sometimes we would take naps too. We were too long to lie across the back seat. By now, I was almost as long as my mother. We got back from camp and, I think, my grandmother came for a visit. She rode the train again. She needed some postage stamps one day and gave me five dollars to get the stamps. I went over to the post office on my bicycle. I got five dollars worth of stamps. I took them back to my grandmother. As it turned out, she only wanted five stamps so I rode back to the post office fast and got my grandmother her money back. She had to be very careful about her money. So she got her money back and I was happy. I loved doing things for my grandmother. Weve probably established that. She was always so happy with what I did. We probably spent the rest of the summer swimming or playing with friends. I was old enough to babysit so my mother and father didnt have to pay anyone any more to come and stay with us when they went out. I was fourteen, my sister was twelve and my brother was seven. My sister would sometimes jump out of the closet to scare me. Like being responsible for two other people wasnt scary enough. It was bad enough that my parents were gone, again, but I also had to be responsible for my sister and brother. I did what I saw my parents do. I said what I heard my parents say. We had certain rules that we were going to go by. I had to make sure of it. I had to lock the doors and turn out the lights. I had to make sure everybody was in bed and then, I could go to bed. I would always get up and make sure everything was locked up again. Sometimes Id do it more than once. Especially the door to the garage. I would look out the window to see if they were coming home yet. Id worry.

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Id make sure that everybody was okay. If I put my brother to bed, I sat on the side of his bed. I petted him. I kissed him goodnight and turned out the light. We got to leave the hall light on until my parents came home. I swore I wouldnt curse in the great American novel but there are times in life when theyre only one word that will do. Shit. It scared the shit out of me. Now there may be fancy places where theyre not saying it. But theyre thinking it. Its one of those words that it always okay to think but sometimes not a good idea to say. You know what? I think I started babysitting when I was eleven or twelve for my sister and brother. Oh, dont act like youve never gotten things mixed up before. Ive got a lot of remembering to do. I usually get things in order. I have things organized. I always have things in proper numerical order. Chapter 22 Now Maybe it started when my doctor suggested I might be a little obsessive compulsive. Maybe. I put things in order in a room. I notice when things are not in the same order in the room. I notice when a room gets rearranged. I always have to do things a certain way at work. It makes me irrationally goofy when I dont do things the same way. I have habits, routines that I go through. Oh, dont act like you dont have them. You do. You dance your dance from the time you get up in the morning until go lay your head on the pillow at night, and sometimes after you lay your head on the pillow, if youre lucky. If youre lucky enough to share your life with someone, youre lucky. Someone who cherishes you. Someone who knows all the bumpy places on you and loves you still. Someone to share children with would be ideal. Someone to talk to and listen to would be wonderful. I dont have that. Never have. There have been men who I have come close to marrying but that was back in the day when you didnt sleep with men before you married them. Well, you werent supposed to have sex with them before you married them but sometimes it happened. I guess it happened. It didnt happen to me. I didnt want to get pregnant before I got married. I had to finish my college degree before I got married. Thats what people did. Sometimes people would get engaged to be married. Ive never been engaged. It would be nice just to have a boyfriend. Its hard to do alone. Anyway, the men I almost marriedone wanted to marry me but drank a quart of whiskey a day and wouldnt talk about it. I wasnt hitting the replay button on what happened to my grandfather so I told him we would not be talking to his parents about getting married. He thought we should have sex. You cant expect a man to buy a pair of shoes without trying them on. I was offended at being compared to a shoe. He asked me if Id give him a haircut anyway. I did. We talked. And then, he was gone. There was another man I was crazy about. Jim. He was so handsome and nice. We would go places in his car. Sometimes, wed sit out under the stars and kiss. It was wonderful. He said that

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we could get married but I had to agree to one thing. I had to agree to let him go to a titty bar once a week. Now I cant see how it would work out if he goes to the bar to meet other women. I was just stunned. I didnt know what to say to him. I say no, that I wont agree to that. He tells me, You ruin everything. There was one who wanted me to meet him in Oklahoma City so he could give me an engagement ring. Jim. He never showed up at the motel. I had driven for three hours. I had to drive three hours back home. I wonder what I thought about. Probably not much that was very good. There were men who wanted me to have affairs with them. They were married to women who were friends of mine. They were married. My gosh! If there is one thing that I will not be signing up to do its messing with someone elses man. Theyre not going to do anything but blow sunshine up your hindmost parts. Plus, I have too much respect for marriage and what it means. I have so much respect for committed relationships and what they mean. I will not be dipping in other peoples relationships. Jerry. He was the most persistent. He started by coming to the store where I worked and asking me to help him pick out a gift for his wife. She and I were friends. We played bridge together. She was a Chi Omega. There were dances that we would go to with other couples. I dont know who I went with. Probably someone I got fixed up with by my friends. We would dance and he would ask me to dance. It made me uncomfortable. He was someone elses husband. I dont remember any of the other husbands doing that. Then, he would throw rocks at my window at night and come to my apartment. He told me how unhappy he was and how much he wanted to get out of the relationship. I was floored. He told me they never should have gotten married but she got pregnant so they did. I was very confused. I told him to go home. I told him to go home and talk to his wife. I told him not to come back to my apartment. I dont think he did. She started talking about having problems with her marriage when we were together. I sure wasnt going to tell her that her husband had been at my apartment talking about it. I dont think she ever knew that I knew anything. He kept trying to talk to me. I insisted that he call me when his divorce was final. I wasnt going to betray my friend. Its pretty simple. They did get a divorce and he did call me. We went out. Sometimes, we went out with other couples. He lived in his own apartment. He would take me out to dinner. Sometimes, wed have pizza at his place. He usually drove. But we didnt spend the night together because we werent married. I didnt know if he was seeing other women. As it turned out, I went to a party one night for a friend of mine. I had asked him to go with me. He said he couldnt because he had a business meeting at the bank. He was in charge of the Trust Department at the bank. He was smart. 82

So I went to the party by myself and youll never guess who walked in the door of the place where we were having the party. He did, with his secretary from work. He was meeting with Jane Ann and Walter. He was having dinner with them there. I went over and said hello and he rushed off to the bathroom. You know you cant do anything and get away with it. You know it. It will catch you, fairly quickly as it turns out. Sometimes, immediately. The lies will get you back like last nights chili. They will slap you around; break you down to the ground. If they dont, theres something the matter with you. You aint right. Mine haunt me. Im very glad about that actually. Turns out, it means I have a conscience which, all in all, is a good thing to have. I dont have a t-shirt emblazoned with home wrecker on it. Cant say that about me. Well, you can but it wouldnt be true. So I didnt trust this one so much anymore, given that he had lied to me about the date. I stopped answering the phone when he called. I did sleep with him one night but I wouldnt have sex with him. He had lied to me and I didnt know how many other women he was sleeping with. I didnt want to be part of a group. I had another relationship with a dentist. He was a wonderful man with three children. He was divorced. He invited me over to his house and cooked me dinner. He was very handsome. Once, he rode his bicycle all the way across town just to see me. He didnt mention marriage but I didnt care. One night we went out and I decided that I was going to spend the night with him, if he asked. We held hands all the way to his place. We looked at each other in a knowing kind of way. He asked me to spend the night and I did. We were on his bed having sex and he said, Wait a minute. I didnt know what we had to wait a minute for. He left the room and didnt come back for what seemed like a long time. By then I was tired. I think I fell asleep. I woke up and heard talking. Then I got dressed to see what was going on. He took me back to the bedroom and laid me down on the bed. I was embarrassed. I hadnt done sex right. I didnt know what to do. I asked him to take me home. It was the middle of the night. He couldnt understand but he took me home. I was humiliated. I needed to go home and not be humiliated. I had messed up with sex. Oh no! I think he kept calling me and asking me out. He invited me to a tennis tournament because he knew that I liked tennis. I kept saying no because I was so humiliated. I didnt want to have to face him. I thought he would be mad. I think finally, he stopped calling me. He was such a good and decent man. Even though he was older than I was, I didnt care. He was so alive! He was so kind to me and nice to me. He cared about me. I had other relationships, but none with any one that mentioned marriage. I thought Id kill myself if I wasnt married by thirty. Really. I wanted a husband and children. But it didnt happen. So I never had a relationship with another man that was married. The last one who asked me to have lunch with him got a surprise when I told him, Okay, but I need to ask your wife if its alright with her first. He was stunned. 83

We had lunch. I told her I wanted her to have a chance to check me out and make sure that she was comfortable with me having lunch with her husband. I told her I had no romantic interest in her husband. She was comfortable with it so we had lunch. Ed. We taught Sunday school together. Can you imagine hitting on someone you teach Sunday school with? Please! Location people, location. Are you following your lines? The three of us got to be friends: he, his wife and me. They had me over for dinner. They had three boys. When they would go out of town on trips, they would ask me to stay with the boys. I did. They usually paid me to do it. She went out of town one time and he asked me if we could spend more time together. I was astonished. I had told this man repeatedly that I would not be getting into a relationship with him. I made it perfectly clear. Out of desperation, I just said that I was going to have to not talk to him at all or see him at all if he was going to continue to suggest that we were going to have a relationship. He stopped. He didnt ask me about a relationship any more. He did take my dog to the vet when he got sick but he never talked about a relationship again. Then there was the last relationship I was in. Wayne. We went out for over two years. Sometimes he would come to my house and sometimes I would go to his house. He lived in a trailer. He had a cat. He would call me at the end of the day and tell me about his day. He didnt drink. He used to drink but he doesnt drink now, I suppose. We went to dinner and to movies. Sometimes we just watched TV at each others houses. We usually cooked for each other. We dated. I dont think he was dating anyone else. I wasnt. I can only date one man at a time. Makes me terribly loyal. No one ever has to worry about who Im messing around with. Nobody. Anyway, I had four dogs. He lived in his place and I lived in mine. We never talked about living in each others places. It didnt even come up. The man never held my hand during a movie, for heavens sake. I met his mother and he met my father. We talked about getting married. I just presumed we would. We tried to have sex with each other but he had erectile dysfunction. Theres a limit to the amount of sucking a girl can do. Mr. Johnson would not rise to the occasion. After a while, we stopped and put our clothes back on. I told him maybe it had something to do with his blood pressure. I told him to ask his doctor about it. I sound like a Cialis commercial. Anyway, I never asked about it again and he never talked about it again. I dont know if he went to the doctor. I doubt it. One day out of the blue, clear sky, we were sitting on my back porch after dinner and he told me he didnt want to be my boyfriend anymore. I was amazed. I asked him why and a bunch of other questions. He didnt give me any answers. He said he just didnt want to be in a relationship right now but that being in a relationship with me had been good for him. I was stunned. I didnt know what to say and didnt say much of anything. He wanted to be friends. Lets learn the lesson. You cannot be friends with someone who you have been intimate with. It doesnt work out very well. But I didnt say anything to him and then he said he guessed he better 84

go home. He went out and got in his car and drove off and I went into my house. I didnt know what to do. So I called my best friend. She said hes a cat person and youre a dog person. I didnt know what that meant. She said it meant that, if he didnt want to be bothered with me, he wouldnt be. I thought that was interesting. So thats about it for my love life. I would love to have someone to share a life with. But I dont have it and never have. Maybe its not my kharma. I can love other peoples children. Thats what Ive done. And Ive had great dogs. The worlds greatest dogs. Cant imagine my life without dogs. Probably the smartest thing that Ive heard all day is this: Two things should be negotiated in private, love and peace. They should be negotiated in private, discrete discussions. So, if youre having problems with someone, work out a peace in private, discrete discussions. Do not invite all the friends and relatives into the mix. It just complicates things. Private, discrete discussions. We go to war with each other all the time, about little stupid things. We need to give it up. Our spouses, friends, relatives and bosses are the victims. War! Over little things or what we think are big things. Sometimes, they are. But peace still needs to be negotiated in private, discrete discussions. Everybody needs to make right with everybody. Sometimes, people gang up on one person. They take sides and gang up on one hapless soul who is just trying to get by, peacefully. Thats what happened in my family. Good lord! My father told me he didnt believe me. My sister maintains a strained silence about it. My brother mailed me a list of rules to go by. So Im stuck with headaches all by myself. I would have been fine if my mother had said, I didnt mean to do it. But it was the big secret. Secrets are poisonous like snakes and they will crush the life right out of you. There is only one human tragedy and it occurs when we forget who we are and remain silent while a stranger takes up residence in our skin. Have you ever done that? Noticed you were someone other than who you really are? It happens. Usually not when were children but when we turn into grown-ups. Do we ever need to be genuine in our own skin! We cant dance someone elses dance. We can only dance our own. And sometimes we trip over our own feet. The good news is that it is generally accidental and we can apologize right away. Do you know that I have apologized to every single member of my family? No one has ever apologized to me. I guess they dont think they have anything to apologize for. Can you imagine? Being in a relationship with someone for fifty or sixty years and not having anything to apologize for? It would be virtually miraculous. But nope. They act like nothing ever happened. Strange, isnt it? It is awe inspiring to be in the midst of such perfect people. I feel like Im in a parallel universe. My headache snaps me back to reality. Im not really mad but I do get frustrated with the headaches. Ive forgiven. I just have these little daily reminders. Well, big daily reminders that I cant get away fromtry getting away from your head. You cant do it. 85

My mother didnt control her anger and she took it out on me. There, I said it. I dont know why. Maybe because I looked like my father. Maybe because I loved my grandmother. I dont have a clue. She hit me in the face because she didnt like the look I had on it. I dont know what I looked like. Most of the time, I was very confused by her. Sometimes I would just stand real still so it wouldnt hurt so much. I believed her when she said if she had a knife, she would kill me. It was scary. She was a grown up and I was a little girl. I believed my father when he said he could break me in half or when he said he would send me to reform school. I dont think he said that to my sister or brother. I dont know. I just know Im never supposed to mention it. I had eight hours of surgery to repair the damage done from getting slapped in the face and Im never supposed to mention it. No wonder I get tired. This pain management stuff is exhausting. And nobody in my family cares about it. I will die alone with it. But with dignity. I will not leave this world bitter. God will help me make a thing of myself that will be good and decent, with any luck. Ill do more good than bad, I would hope. I dont know if Ill be a good person. God is in charge of determining that. But I will try to do the best I can for as long as I can. I hope

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Chapter 23 - Now Maybe it started when I decided to write a book. Computer woman by day and computer woman by night. I work on a computer during the day and I work on the book at night. You know the onethe great American novel. Its bound to be a barn burner. By now I am an old woman. For nearly fifty years, people have been telling me that I ought to write a book. My mother never seemed to like my writing. When people told me I ought to write a book, I didnt believe them. I never listened to the people who said that I ought to write a book. I couldnt imagine what I would write a book about. Now that I look back on it, I always got good grades on my papers at school and the papers I wrote when I got my masters degree and my PhD. I had to write proposals to get money to fund the treatment center we ran. We always got the money. Now that I look back on it, maybe I could write alright. Now, as Diane Keaton said in Somethings Got to Give, its just pouring out of me. It was a wonderful movie about learning to love someone again and getting your heart broken. Its about a writer who is very famous. She writes for a living. She writes and writes when she is heartbroken and cries the whole time she is writing. It turns out the story she writes next is the story of the relationship that broke her heart. While shes writing the story, tears are just pouring out of her eyes. She doesnt tell anybody. And then the man who broke her heart comes back to find her and it has a happy ending. Go see the movie! Its wonderful. I could write that story, all except for the last part. Thats what Im thinking. Its just pouring out of me, like it has a mind of its own. I cant stop writing. I think about the book when Im working and I work on the book when Im home with the pups. We went for a grand walk today, after work. They paraded around as pups do, heads held high and prancing. I wonder what they talked about all day. They always sound glad to see me or maybe

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they are just hungry. One is very polite and walks around quietly. The other one barks if he sees something besides me. He isnt going to do anything to anyone. Hes just an expensive noise maker. They arent watching me right now. They are exploring the abode. Now, they have settled and they guard the writer. Like they could do something if someone tried to get me. I dont think so. Maybe no one will try to get me. They circle around and curl up in balls. They stand at guard. They move when I move. Love the pups. My best friend thinks the dog who barks is wetahded. We laugh about it. She likes all my other dogs. I am going to go visit her in two weeks. I get to take the dogs with me. They dont mind the dogs. They like to see me, unless they are having an argument. Theyre not arguing about me. Dont be silly. It will be great fun to see them. They are having an Open House. Ill get to stay for a few days. Ill get to see my friends. Yes, I have friends. Great friends!

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Chapter 24-Then Back to the book. I went to high school. By this time Id been taking piano lessons for the longest time. I played in recitals and won pins for my piano lessons. I dont think either of my parents ever listened to my recitals. They just dropped me off and picked me up. Hmmm! Sometimes I won a statuette of a composer like Bach or Beethoven. Chopin was my favorite. I put them on the piano and my pins in my jewelry box. I still have them. I decided one day that I didnt want to take piano lessons anymore so I threw my teachers paper up on the roof. She had a talk with me in her living room. And then she didnt teach me piano any more and I went to another lady to take lessons. She was nice enough but I just didnt want to take lessons anymore. I wanted to play tennis. I high school, I took English, math, science, history, Spanish and PE. In PE, we got to play tennis and I just loved it. So the coach said I could play on the tennis team if I went to one of the far away courts. A friend of mine went with me. We hit balls to each other for hours. He didnt really pay too much attention to us. We didnt care. We were playing tennis. We carpooled to school in the morning. There were three other girls who lived in my neighborhood and our mothers took turns driving us to high school for a week at a time. Then it would be someone elses turn. We were pretty quiet when my mother drove. But I sure was funny when the other mothers drove. Everybody would laugh all the way to school. We would go to our classes. It seemed like I had classes with all new people because there were people there from different junior high schools. It was a big school. It had everyone from freshmen to seniors. It was huge. We had lockers and kept our things in our lockers. We only had a certain amount of time to get to class or the bell would go off. We didnt have a lot of time for talking. We could talk at lunch. I usually brought my lunch with me but sometimes, I would get lunch money. I liked food from home better.

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I went to my classes and what do you know. My teachers liked me. I made good grades. Now someone told me I couldnt be friends with another person and be friends with her. That didnt make any sense to me. So I kicked the girl who made me choose to the curb. The other one and I are still friends to this day. Isnt it funny how things work out? We were sitting next to each other in Mr. Wilsons science class when the principal announced that the President had been shot. It was awful. Everybody who was alive on that day can tell you exactly where they were and exactly what they were doing when they heard the news. I was sitting next to my friend, Gail, in Mr. Wilsons science class. It was after lunch. She was smarter than I was in science. And she played the flute. Years later, she and her husband came to visit me in Fort Worth. We were sitting in the grass in a park, talking. We heard that President Reagan had been shot. We decided it wasnt a good day for presidents if we were sitting and talking. When Kennedy was shot, we went home and watched it on TV. We sat transfixed in front of the TV for four days, while they had the funeral and everything. School was out. We didnt have to go to school. It was a sad four days. I swear the world would be different place if he, Martin, Malcolm and Bobby had lived. How in the world did Jack Ruby get past all those police officers with a gun, for heavens sake? The fix was on. Theres a hair in the butter.

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Chapter 25 - Then High school passed by, rather uneventfully as it turned out. All of my teachers liked me. Well, all of them except one. I did well enough in school to make the National Honor Society. It was a big deal. I took a lot of classesEnglish, Science, Math, History, Spanish and Physical Education. Loved them all. I even took two years of Latin. Amazing what it does for your vocabulary. I had a lot of friends. It was a big school. Best of all, I played tennis. We played for two or three hours every day and it was great. I played all four years of high school. We even got to go out of town and play tennis. We went to El Paso and Wichita Falls and all points in betweenLubbock, San Angelo, Abilene, Odessawe got to go everywhere. The top eight boys and the top eight girls got to go on the trips. I got to go for two years. On the weekends, my friend and I would practice. We were doubles partners. Is there anything in this world better than a doubles partner? She was where I wasnt. With singles, youre out there all by yourself but with doubles, somebody has your back. We is way better than I. Is there anywhere better to stand than on a tennis court? Not. I got to be captain of the team my senior year. Not that thats a big deal. But it seemed like a big deal at the time. At the time I was on the student council. I did all sorts of things in high school. I had two best good friends. One of them died of cancer. I dont have anything to say about that right now. After my freshman year in high school, we went back to visit my grandparents in NY. We stayed for about two months. My grandparents were going to move into the house my grandfather grew up in and we had to help them get it ready. Course, the house had been closed up for a long time so we had a lot of work to do. I didnt want to go. I had a boyfriend and friends that I didnt want to leave. But we went anyway. As it turned out, it wasnt so bad. We steamed old wallpaper off of the walls. I took all of the

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windows out of the house and washed them. They hadnt been washed in years. We spray painted the house. That was the year I got the flu, or some kind of bug. I was sick for days. I couldnt even hold down tea and crackers. All I did was vomit. They put me in a separate room next to the bedroom where my sister and I were sleeping. I guess they didnt want anyone else to get the bug. My grandmother came and checked on me from time to time. Finally, I was able to eat something and the bug went away. I lost about ten pounds. I was sick for four or five days. I was miserable. I wish I could remember if my mother came to check on me. It would be an important thing to remember. I wish she did. I hope Then it was back to work on the house. My grandfather wanted me to cut the grass outside with a scythe. I didnt know what a scythe was and sure as hell didnt know how to use one. He got mad. He got mad because I didnt know how to use the scythe and wasnt very good at it. I went back to window washing. I was very good at that. When we got back home, my mother started volunteering me to clean the windows of her friends houses. I just used ammonia to wash and vinegar to rinse. It wasnt that big a deal. Apparently, it was a big deal to her. I got tired of washing windows. We left and as we were leaving to get on the highway to drive back home, my grandfather decided to show us the scar on his stomach. He had had surgery the year before. It was a long scar. The doctor told him not to drink anymore. It didnt have much of an impact. He kept drinking. My grandfather just laughed like it was a big joke and then we were off. I was the co-pilot, again. We drove, from upstate NY back to West TX, again. I sat in the front seat and made sure we were on the right highway, again. My brother and sister rode in the back seat, again. I had to read the maps and tell my mother which highways to follow, again. I was fifteen years old. My mother, by this time, had decided that it was important to weigh me every day. I dont know why. She was afraid of the fat thing, I guess. She decided that I needed to weigh one hundred and twenty poundsone hundred pounds for being five feet tall and five pounds for every inch over five feet I grew. She weighed one hundred and twenty pounds. She was five feet, four inches. I was five feet six inches. There was no wiggle room here. A pound more and I was the Goodyear blimpa pound less and I was a starving refuge. Its amazing that I dont have an eating disorder. My mother had also decided that I was too old and big to spank but I wasnt too old to get slapped in the face. Who in the world invented that? She never did it in front of my father or if she did, he didnt think much of it. Yes, it hurt. Why did she do it? I wish I knew. I think she didnt like the look on my face. Thats the only answer Ive come up with and I have had nearly fifty years to figure it out. She didnt like the way I looked, I suppose. I can for sure tell you that I wasnt thinking anything in particular when she did it. I was mostly confused. She just got mad at something I said or did or the way I looked. I should have looked confused. After a while, it got to be routine. 92

My sister saw it. When I asked her about it, she just said some awful things to me about what a horrible child I was. She said some other equally mean things that it is too painful to remember. I remember crying myself to sleep. Dont slap your children or anybody else in the face. Thats the message.

Chapter 26 - Then Anyway, we got home safely and my sophomore year passed by. During the end of my sophomore year, it was decided that I needed to get a drivers license because my mother was going back to NY during the summer and someone needed to be able to drive my brother and sister to the swimming pool. I took drivers education. I failed parallel parking. My mother said I failed because I hadnt been nice enough to my sister. StrangeI thought I failed because I couldnt parallel park. I passed it the second time and got my drivers license.

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Chapter 27 Then My mother flew to upstate NY to help my grandmother with my grandfather. In the meantime, the summer passed in a blur of activity. My father would go to work in the morning and I would get up and fix breakfast. I took my brother and sister wherever they wanted to go. I did chores around the house. I played tennis and visited with my friends. The best part was doing things with my boyfriend. He had a car so we could go anywhere. He had a paper route so we threw papers. We played tennis and golf together. At night, wed sit out under the tree in my front yard. I leaned up against the tree and he would put his head in my lap and we just talked, about everything. We were going to get married after college and have five children. My father would turn the front porch light off and on when it was time to come inside. It was the best summer ever. It was hard work but it was a good summer. My mother came home when it was almost time for school to start. Her father had died. Up until the last days, he was still hiding bottles of whiskey around the house. After my grandfather died, it was decided that my grandmother would come and live with us. So we remodeled the house so that there would be a room for her. My sister and I moved into my parents bedroom and we each had our own closets. My parents built a new bedroom for themselves and my grandmother slept in the room where my sister and I had been sleeping. It was an adventure. We painted and the workmen worked on the house. We also expanded the den and made it bigger, added a fireplace and added a special patio. And then my grandmother came, with her things. It was wonderful to have her there. 94

She was sitting in her room one day and I went in there. She was sitting in her rocking chair. I sat in her lap and told her I just couldnt stand it anymore. She called me honey and told me something about being able to handle anything. I dont remember her exact words. I just remember how good it felt to sit there with her and have her listen to me. She didnt think I was too big. She and my mother fought. I dont remember what they fought about. I just know that they would get in arguments that usually ended with someone crying or someone not speaking to anyone. Maybe there were too many grown-ups in the house. I really dont know. You know what? All that tennis playing paid off because I started winning trophies. Its true. I even got a letter jacket for being on the tennis team. My mother told me I couldnt put the trophies out where other people could see them so I lined them up on the shelf in my closet. I won all sorts of trophies. After my mother came back, she decided I didnt need a boyfriend any more. Ill never figure that one out. We didnt do anything but sit out in the front yard. It was the most harmless relationship you could ever imagine. I loved him and he loved me but we didnt get all mushy and make out all the time or anything. We talked about what we would do when we grew up. He wanted enough boys for a basketball team and that sounded okay to me. We just talked. We were both going to college after high school and then we were going to get married. But I got tired of hearing her rag me about it so I did the only thing that I could think to do. I broke up with him. It was a Saturday night. My parents had some people over to play bridge. He came over and I broke up with him. I didnt tell him why. He kept asking me and I didnt tell him why. I didnt tell him my mother was giving me the blues about him. I just broke up with him. I went back inside of the house and I was upset. My mother asked me what the matter was. I told her I broke up with my boyfriend. She laughed. It didnt seem too funny to me. I did what I did best. I acted like it didnt bother me. It haunted me for years. I saw him at our ten year high school reunion. I told him why I broke up with him. He said hed always known. He said he couldnt figure out why my mother kept such a tight leash on me but not on my sister. How do you respond to that? Times change, people change but if he showed up today, Id have a hard time not going with him, wherever he wanted to go. The idea of growing old with him appeals to me. Course, it also appeals to his wife and we know where I plant my feet on that issue. So, I was a junior in high school. I went to school, I played tennis and I babysat to make money. I got to babysit for two of the most remarkable women, Sue and Patti. Its pretty remarkable that someone would leave their children with you at sixteen. But I was a responsible sixteen and I got to babysit for a lot of people.

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I saved my money. I had to use it to buy tennis racquets, tennis shoes, tennis balls and tennis clothes. My mother was not big on tennis. So, I saved my money from allowance and odd jobs I did for people and babysitting. I was in good shape. I dated some. My mother gave me the blues about not dating more and not having a boyfriend. Can you imagine how confused I was? First I got in trouble for having a boyfriend and then I got in trouble for not having a boyfriend. How ridiculous can this get! I had learned my lesson.

In 1974, when I was twenty five and my brother was eighteen, my father called me one day at work and told me he had some bad news for me. He told me that my brother had been in a bad car accident. He told me my brother was in a coma. I think he told the lady I worked for when he called on the phone. He told me he might not live. I love my brother. Then I called my mother and asked her to pick me up at the airport because my father was at work. My mother said that she was vacuuming and that I should just go on with my life. I couldnt go on with my life. My brother was hurt. So I called my father at work. I asked him to come and pick me up at the airport. They were living in Kansas City. My father said he would pick me up. I went home in the Volkswagen. I think some people from work went with me and took me to the airport. It was the first year there was a big airport in Fort Worth. The airport wasnt really in Fort Worth. It was half way between Fort Worth and Dallas. I got on the plane. I flew to Kansas City where they lived. My father took me to the hospital to see my brother and my mother. I took my mother a new blouse I had bought for her. She didnt look very happy to see me. I looked at my brother. He was lying in the bed. He looked like he was sleeping. My father said he had a broken neck and brain damage. He had bad cuts on his forehead and on his right arm. He had a round metal circle around his head with screws that were attached to his head. It was to keep his neck in place. He had his hands taped to the bed so that he couldnt pull his catheter out. I thought oh no. He couldnt talk. I petted him, like always. My father said he could hear us but he couldnt talk. Then a doctor came in the room and pulled his hair on his stomach. My brother jumped. The doctor said it was a good sign. He said we wouldnt know if he would live or not for seventy-two hours. That seemed like a long time. We left the hospital and went back to my parents house. My mother said that I should tell my brothers girlfriend that she didnt need to come around anymore. My father said maybe we should wait to see if my brother woke up before we did that. He said it might be important to my brother to help him wake up if he could hear her voice. My mother decided I should tell my brothers girlfriend to go away. I was sitting in the back seat and thinking he loves her and thats not a good idea. I had met her and I knew my brother loved her. He told me he did. He told me that my mother didnt like her. I thought he should get to love whoever he wanted to love. I didnt argue with my mother. My 96

sister was at my parents house. She had a friend sleeping over. They were sleeping in the bedroom I shared with my sister. I had to sleep in my brothers room. It was very scary. Everybody had someone to talk to but me. I was alone. ..in my brothers roomlooking at his things and sleeping in his bed. I didnt sleep very much. When I got up in the morning, I went downstairs. My father was sitting in his office. I told him I was sorry. I told him that I knew my brother was special to him. He started to cry. He said that all of his children were special to him. I said I know but hes more special. He was. My mother was still asleep. We werent supposed to wake her up when she was asleep. My brothers girlfriend called me and asked me if I wanted to go down to the hospital the next morning to see my brother. I did. When I got in her car, she told me that she didnt think my mother wanted her around my brother. She didnt. His girlfriend told me she didnt know what to do. I told her that she should go and see him for as long as she wanted to see him. That made the most sense to me. We went down to see my brother. We stayed for a while with him. I didnt care if he had brain damage or not. I knew that I would take care of him if he were sick. I just wanted him to wake up. She did too. We went back to my parents house. I went inside. My mother said your brothers girlfriends mother keeps calling over here and asking if she can do anything. Theres nothing anyone can do. I told my mother to ask her to buy her a carton off eggs or a loaf of bread. My mother said she didnt need those things. I said it would make her feel better to help out. My brother had spent a lot of time at his girlfriends house. Her parents had gotten to know him. They had been dating for two years. He had gone over to his girlfriends house all the time. I figured they cared about him. I did. My mother didnt like that idea. We went back to the hospital later in the day and saw people standing outside of a big church. There were a lot of people. It was the funeral of one of the boys whod been riding in the car with my brother. I thought we were lucky. We could be having two funerals. My brother had been in a car accident with three other boys. It was their first week in college. We got to the hospital and went in to see my brother. He was still alive. The doctor said we could talk to him, that he could hear us. He just couldnt answer back. So I talked to him. I told him that he was going to be well. I told him that I loved him. I told him that he was alright. I petted him. He didnt move much. I thought we should all go to the same churches on Sunday. We went to both churches. They said prayers for my brother at both churches. My father had the Catholic church and my mother had the Episcopalian church. Two churchesnot that different. Not different enough to keep a family out of church together. MovingmovingI dont remember talking to my mother that much and I dont remember talking to my sister very much. She was with her friend, Ruth. There was room in the car for five people so I guess she didnt want to be with me because she never went to the hospital when we did. She was with her friend.

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After church, we went back to the hospital. I was supposed to go back to work on Monday but I didnt want to go. My parents said I should get back to work. So my father took me to the airport. My mother stayed with my brother. He told me what had happened to my brother. It happened two days before my father called me. He said my mother didnt want him to call me. He said that my brother had been driving back to college on a two lane highway. A big truck was coming the other way. The driver fell asleep. He veered into the other lane and it knocked out his headlights. He hit a pole. It also woke him up. He roared up out of the ditch and slammed into the car my brother was riding in with his friends. It killed one of the other boys. The truck hit my brothers side of the car. The friend that was sitting in the front seat died. My brother had been in the back seat. It knocked him out of the drivers window and onto the asphalt. The driver had two broken legs. His shoes were thrown out the window. The ambulance came and took him to the hospital. They took him to the best hospital for brain injuries. He was getting the best care from the doctors. He told me that my brother might never wake up. I thought I would take care of him if he was sick. He told me goodbye when we got to the airport and he just dropped me off because he wanted to go back to the hospital. He took me to the airport early so he could go back. I wanted to go back. I walked into the airport and had to wait for my airplane. They had a bar in the airport. I had two Black Russians. I went and got on the airplane to fly back to Fort Worth. I didnt like to fly. I sat next to a man on the airplane. He started to talk to me. I flew home and somebody came to pick me up at the airport. I think it was a friend. She knew how much I cared about my brother and how special he was to me. She was sorry. Maybe she took care of my dog for me. I was thinking about my brother. I wanted to be back where he was. I wanted him to be okay and awake. I was talking to her about it. She asked me questions. I answered her. She told me how she found out about it. I forgot to tell anyone before I left town. I was thinking about my brother and how I needed to get to where he was. That happened very fast. The next morning when I went to work, it didnt seem to me like anything should be going on in the world. Do you ever have that feeling? It seemed like everything should stop. I wanted to be where my brother was sick. I could hardly move. It felt like walking through soup. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and I went back to see my brother. My father picked me up at the airport again. We went to the hospital to see my brother. My mother was there. I hugged her. My brother was doing better. He still had a broken neck. He was still in a coma. But he was alive. It was a good thing. My mother and father talked to my brother. I talked to my brother. We would say hello and talk to him like he was awake. The doctors had told us he could hear us. I talked to him and told him that I loved him and that he was going to be okay. I petted his legs and his arms. His scar was getting better. His forehead was getting better. He still had a broken neck and his arms were still taped to the bed. He couldnt move. Time for a break, dear reader. Sleep calls. Ive been sitting in the same position all day writing the great American novel. Ive loved writing it but Im tired. Ill see you in the morning.

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Im back. Did you miss me? Its amazing what a good nights sleep and a shower will do for you. It is a chilly morning in Austin. I have on my lavender robe. It is very warm and soft. I am as clean as a newborn baby. God woke me up again this morning so I didnt want to go back to sleep. Theres a book to be written. There are more stories to tell. My brother still had a broken neck and he was still asleep but he was alive. I was so happy. My father picked me up at the airport. We went to the hospital. My mother was there. I think my sister had gone back to her job, in Boston. We were talking to my brother and he acted like he heard my voice. He acted like he heard my fathers voice too. We had deep voices. We still went back and forth to the hospital every dayseveral times a day. I didnt have to sleep in his room anymore. I just would go in and look at it. He seemed better and he was still alive. That was a very good sign. Now we were worried about when he would wake up. I knew I would take care of him if he didnt but I hoped that he would wake up. It was the weekend. My father didnt have to go to work. My mother usually slept later than my father so I would talk to my father in the morning. My mother came out later, in her nightgown and robe. She had a cup of coffee and ate her breakfast. I sat with her at the table. She said that my brother had been choking in his own blood, from his mouth and that one of the people riding in the car behind my brother had given him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Can you imagine an eighteen year old boy seeing all that blood and mess and having the presence of mind to go around and see if anyone was still breathing? His name was Charley Newell. Because of him, my brother was still alive. He had damaged his teeth and was drowning in the blood in his mouth. Apparently, the driver who hit the car my brother was riding in was drunk. She told me the boy who died had a father who was a doctor. He took care of his son after his son died. He died on the way to the hospital, throwing up his internal organs. His father did the autopsy. I think he just wanted to be close to his son for a while longer. He had been his parents oldest son. He was going to be a doctor too. My brother was going to be a dentist. I felt sorry for his mother. My mother said she wasnt doing very well. Its pretty horrible to lose a child. Its not normal, my mother said. Children are supposed to bury their parents, not the other way around. I drank a Dr. Pepper. I didnt eat breakfast. My mother went to her room to get dressed. We werent supposed to bother her while she was getting dressed so we didnt. I talked to my father. He was sad, I could tell. Then my mother was dressed up and we went to the hospital. All weekend long we followed that ritual. By the time it was time for me to go back to work, my brother seemed like he knew I was there. My father took me back to the airport while my mother stayed at the hospital. We talked some more. He was worried about my brother having brain damage. I didnt care as long as he was alive. My father dropped me off again and went back to the hospital. I went in to the airport and waited for my plane. I got on it and flew back to Fort Worth. He told me he would let me know when my brother woke up so I was glad about that. But I wished I could still see him. It was a hard time. One day, my father called me and told me that my mother had slipped and fallen while walking into the hospital. She broke her wrist. She was in the hospital too. My father would visit my brother in one room and my mother in another room. He would go home by himself. He must have 99

been very worried. Hell, I was worried. My mother stayed in the hospital for several days and when she went home, she had a cast on her arm. She could talk on the phone with her other arm. We talked every week. My brother was still in a coma. Then one day my father called me and told me my brother wasnt in a coma anymore. He woke up and said his girlfriends name. He still had to stay in the hospital because he was comatose and had a broken neck. I was so excited. I called my mother. I was excited. I must have called her more than once because she said, How many times do I have to talk to you in one day? It hurt my feelings. I guess she didnt want to talk to me. I thought it was strange. My father told me that he wheeled my brother up and down the hall in a wheelchair, teaching him to add again. My brother got hit in the head very hard. He still had blood in his left eye where his brain slammed against his skull. He had a blood clot on his brain. He couldnt remember anything. Sometime during the six weeks that my brother was in a coma, several of my friends from college found out about it and called me. We talked about it. It was a difficult six weeks and I hadnt slept very well. One of my friends lived in Austin and asked me to drive down and see her. I did. When I walked into her house, there was a bowl full of little white packets on the living room table. I didnt know what it was. We talked and had something to eat. Then she started cleaning leaves on a screen. I didnt know what she was doing. She got in a circle with some of her friends like shed done a bunch of times when we were in college. They passed a cigarette around the room. I had never tasted the cigarette before but I decided to try it. It tasted good. I passed it on to the next person and we kept passing it around until it was gone. Then I got up and went to bed. I slept for the first time in weeks. My first taste of marijuana. I was twenty-five years old. It made me sleep like a baby. I woke up late, even. It felt great. I drove back home and remembered the nice nights sleep Id had. I remembered the name of the cigarette, marijuana. They sure didnt taste like regular cigarettes. By then, it was almost November, 1974. My parents told me they were going to come and visit me in Fort Worth, for Thanksgiving. They were going to stay at a motel. They were bringing my brother with them. I had been up there to see them in October and I knew that he was walking around, with a neck brace. He didnt like it. It made his chin itch. He would pull and pull on it. It was steel. Hed already bent one, I heard. He wasnt supposed to bend any more. It held his head up because of his broken neck and it had a pad under the chin. It itched. My brother wanted to scratch it. But he couldnt take it off even when he slept. Anyway they all drove down to Fort Worth from Kansas City. I had a one bedroom apartment where I lived with my dog. He was a good little dog. He couldnt run around when I wasnt there but he sure did when I was. It took them all day to drive. They called me when they got there. I went over to their motel. It was nice with two big beds. My parents slept in one bed and my brother slept in the other bed. When I went over to the motel the next day, we went to get something to eat. My mother kept talking about my brother and saying that he wasnt normal. My brother and I were sitting in the back seat. My brother whispered, Ask her to stop saying that. I kept listening to my mother. She 100

kept talking about how what he was doing wasnt normal. I finally said well, I dont think any of us are exactly normal. My brother smiled. My mother got mad at me. What do you mean were not normal? I said nobody is. She didnt say much. She was mad. Whats normal mean anyway? like Sally Fields said in Steel Magnolias. Just go see it. Youll love it. Anyway, back to my mother being mad at me. She didnt talk to me when she was mad at me. She stopped saying my brother wasnt normal. I had cooked Thanksgiving dinner so my parents and my brother came to my house, to eat dinner. I had cooked turkey and all the fixings. They were waiting at my apartment. My family came over to my apartment, to eat Thanksgiving dinner. I had to show them where my apartment was. The food was ready and I had a table with enough chairs. We ate and talked. My parents talked about what my brother had been doing. My brother mostly listened. Sometimes I would ask questions. He would answer the questions or they would. He still couldnt remember a lot of things. My father had bought him some mathematics and English books to study. He wanted to know how much brain damage my brother was going to have. My brother didnt say anything. The dog was in the bathroom because my parents didnt like him running around. We finished dinner and they went back to their motel. It had been a good Thanksgiving. I let the dog out. He went outside and did doggie business. Then he came back inside. What a great dog! He would sleep with me. The next morning, I got up and went over to their motel. It was around lunch time. My father wanted to go out to lunch and my mother wanted to go to Neiman Marcus. She loved Neiman Marcus. In the car on the way to lunch she talked about my brother not being normal. Anyway, she got real quiet and didnt say anything for a while. Then we got to the restaurant. She started talking again, to my brother and father, but she was still mad at me. She didnt say anything about normal anymore. My brother looked happy. We had lunch and then we went shopping, to my mothers favorite store. Now I never liked shopping. It made me uncomfortable. I was embarrassed about try this on and let me see it on you. I didnt like trying things on. I didnt like going out and modeling what I was wearing. It made me very uncomfortable. My mother loved to try things on. She would look at herself in the mirror in them to see if she liked them. She would always ask us how it looked. It always looked very nice. Sometimes, she would try on shoes. She loved the shoes in the store. She sometimes asked me if I wanted a pair of shoes. She would buy them for me. I liked the shoes too and we had very narrow feet, AAAA. They were hard to find. She usually bought something and bought me something. She put it on her credit card. My father and my brother had been walking around with us. By the time we finished shopping, it was time for dinner and my father wanted to take us to a nice place. He remembered how to get around and went to the place my mother wanted to go. We had a nice dinner. We went back to the motel where my brother and parents were staying. I went back to my apartment. Saturday morning I got up. My parents called me when they were up and dressed. It took a long time for my mother to get dressed. They called before lunch and I went over to their motel again. We spent Saturday doing pretty much the same thing as wed done the day before. 101

We rode in my fathers car. My brother and I sat in the back seat. He scratched his chin. I smiled at him. I knew it had to itch. We went to lunch at the restaurant at the motel. My father told my brother not to scratch his chin. He didnt want him to bend the brace again. We went into the motel room after lunch and my father showed me the books that he had gotten for my brother to study. He told me my brother wouldnt study them. My brother looks embarrassed. My mother and father talk about what hes been doing and how hed been acting. He was sitting right there. I didnt know what to make of it but it sure seemed to make my brother uncomfortable. We talked all afternoon. Sometimes, we would watch TV. My mother didnt like to watch football so she would just take a nap or something. We liked to watch football. We kept the volume low. We didnt want to wake her up. Then, it was time for dinner. My mother got ready and we went out to dinner again. We went to a different place that my mother wanted to go to so my father drove us there and we ate dinner again. We had a nice time. Nobody talked about normal or brain damage. Im sure my brother was relieved. They asked me what Id been doing and I told them about my job. I told them about playing bridge with my friends. We talked and talked. My father talked about his job and my mother told me about what shed been doing. They told me about what my brother had been doing. Sometimes, he talked. He made perfect sense to me, even though he couldnt remember some things. I thought hed remember what he needed to remember. The next morning was Sunday. It was time for my visitors to drive back to Kansas City. I went over to their motel to see them before they left. My father had to check out of the motel while my mother finished getting ready. We all walked to the lobby with my father. He checked out of the motel. He put it on a credit card. We went back to the room. My mother was finished getting ready. They were packing up their suitcases and things to load them in the car. My father mentioned the books again as they were packing things up. My father asked me to say something to my brother about the books. So I said, You can do these books. You can do anything you want to do. I know if you dont do them, its just because youre being lazy. Youre smart enough to do these books. I know that you can them. My parents just looked at me. My brother just looked at me. Im not sure hed heard anything like that before. I wasnt mad at him and he knew it. He looked like he was confused. We finished loading the car and it was time for them to get in the car and go. Everybody hugged and kissed everybody. I told them to be careful driving home. I went home and watched football. Five weeks later, I got a letter from my brother. He said that he had finished two of the books and was working on the third one. He asked me if I was proud of him. I told him I most certainly was proud. Dont you love it when a plan comes together? I guess he needed for someone to tell him that he could do the books. I dont know. I know he did write the letter. I saved it. I saved a lot of things. I drove to Kansas City for Christmas. My sister was there too. Shed gotten off from her job. We were back sleeping in the same room. It was good to see everyone, my sister, my parents and my brother. My brother had gotten even better. We all talked about what we had 102

been doing. My mother and my sister sure had a lot to say to each other. I might go to bed but my sister would stay up late with my mother, talking. They were always laughing and talking. I might be asleep by the time my sister came upstairs. Sometimes, she woke me up, getting ready for bed. I just went back to sleep. She would usually be sleeping in the morning when I got up. I would go downstairs, just to see who was awake. Usually it was my father. We would talk about things that he was doing at work. I wanted to know about it. Sometimes, we would talk about sports. I loved sports. There might be a game on over the weekend that he was off work for Christmas. He told me he didnt know if my brother was ready to go back to college. By now, his neck brace was off and my brother could shave. His chin didnt itch anymore. He wore a soft collar sometimes but it didnt itch. He was much more comfortable. Life calls. Time to get dipped and clipped and put gasoline in my car. I dont want to be late for my appointment and I have some cleaning up to do. More later Well, it turned out to be much later. I got dipped and clipped at the beauty shop. I bought some pecans for pecan pie and a new bracelet. I got my nails done. Amy is so good at doing my nails and my hair. Then I came home and lay on my new couch. My sister and my father gave it to me. I think its the nicest couch Ive ever had. I watched football. I took a nap. Love a Saturday nap. Then I watched some more TVNCIS and Law and Order were on TV. I fell asleep after Law and Order. Then I got up and went to bed. I read for a while. I love to read. God woke me up this morning so Im back at it. The great American novel begs to be written. Here we go, back to 1974. I went to Kansas City for Christmas. I think I drove. My brother was getting even better. He still had a red spot in his left eye but at least he didnt tell me thank you all the time like he did when he first came home from the hospital. It was a long drive, about ten hours. I took my dog with me. We got there and I was happy to see everyone, my sister and brother and my parents. We still did the same thing on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. My mother would go to her church on Christmas Eve. Sometimes, one of us would go with her. Then my father would go with us on Christmas morning. He played Christmas music on the record player. It would wake my mother up. We opened presents. Everybody gave everybody nice presents. My mother started cooking Christmas dinner. It was always a nice meal: turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and a nice salad. She always made nice salads. My father would carve the turkey and mash the potatoes. My sister and I would set the table. It was very important that the table be set right. We used the Christmas dishes. We had a drink before dinner. We sat down to eat and said grace. We always said grace. I said an extra thank you that my brother was alive. We ate dinner. Then we had dessert. I washed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher or washed them by hand, depending on what my mother told me to do. The good dishes didnt go in the dishwasher. I washed and dried the good dishes. The really dirty dishes like the pan the turkey got cooked in took a long time. I didnt mind. My sister was talking to my 103

mother and my brother and father were talking to each other. I didnt know what they were talking about. Soon, it was time for bed. I was tired so I went to bed when my father and brother did. They went to their rooms and I went upstairs to the room I shared with my sister. She was still downstairs talking to my mother. I wonder what they talked about. They always had something to talk about. By the time she came upstairs to our room, I was asleep. I got up the next morning and walked the dog. He had been sleeping in another room. My mother didnt want him running around. He did his dog business. We went back inside. It was cold outside, colder than it was in Texas. I drank a Dr. Pepper. My father ate breakfast when he got up. Toast and coffee was the meal. My mother got up later. She was in her gown, robe and slippers. My dog liked to play with her slippers. He would sometimes hump her slippers. They were pink and fuzzy. She thought it was awful. I told him not to do it. He was just running around the kitchen. She had coffee for breakfast and maybe some scrambled eggs. She liked to eat breakfast. I didnt. We sat and talked for a while. She told me about how much trouble it had been to take care of my brother. He seemed to be doing pretty well. It had been decided that he was going to try to go back to school in Lawrence, KS. It wasnt too far from my parents house. My sister went to college there too. That sounded like progress to me. I dont think my sister liked what I got her for Christmas. She said it was horrible. Everyone else seemed to like their gifts. I felt badly about my sisters gift. I thought I had done something wrong. She made fun of it. She made fun of a lot of things that had to do with me. She and my mother began talking about her job and her life in Boston when she finally woke up. It didnt seem like a conversation that included me so I left the kitchen. I took my dog with me. My father and brother were watching TV so I sat with them and watched TV. There was probably a football game on. I had my dog with me. We would go outside from time to time so he could do his dog business. My brother talked about what he had been doing and my father talked about what hed been doing. They asked me how my job was going. I said fine. The mortgage company where I was working had held the mortgage on my parents house in West Texas. I thought that was pretty interesting. The papers said it was five percent interest. I had learned a lot about mortgages. They talked about their lives in Kansas City. My brother talked about going back to college. He still had the red spot in his left eye. Soon, it was time for me to drive back to Fort Worth. I packed up my suitcase and got it ready to go. I put it in the VW. I said goodbye to everybody. We kissed and hugged. I got in the car with the dog to start driving. My father gave me five dollars but told me not to tell my mother. He walked me to the car. He told me to be careful and to call when I got home. I did. It was a long drive. We had to stop along the way so the dog could go to the bathroom.

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Fast forwardI had to take the dogs out. Im drinking water as I write the great American novel. The candles softly burning. I have on my lavender robe again. Ah, daylight savings time. Were back to normal. I digress I went back to Fort Worth and back to work. I lived in an apartment and would ride to work with some of the work pals. I was standing in my apartment one day and my brother called me and told me that people at school had been telling him that God had been trying to send him a message with the car wreck. People say the damnedest things. I told him that was silly. I told him that God sent a message two thousand years ago and that God didnt need to kill eighteen year old boys to send a message. He sounded very concerned. He wanted to be sure he fulfilled Gods plan for him. He just couldnt figure out what the plan was. I told him there wasnt a plan, that he just needed to do whatever he was doing. He seemed to feel better. Please, a plan. A man drove drunk and hit him with his truck. That didnt sound like much of a plan to me. The man decided to drive drunk. My brother didnt have anything to do with it. He had just been out with his friends on a fraternity scavenger hunt. He had pledged a fraternity, the Betas. He and his pledge brothers got sent on a scavenger hunt. There were three carloads of them. My brother was just riding in one of the cars. Gods plan indeed. I told my brother it didnt make any sense to me. Like I said, he seemed to feel better. By this time, I had moved from one apartment to a duplex that I shared with another woman. She was close to my age. It didnt work out very well so I moved into another apartment. My mother used to call my roommate and tell her that I was crazy. That was embarrassing. At first, I moved to the home of the parents of the children who are my godchildren. My dog and I stayed in the way down room. It was a big room with a bathroom. They didnt charge me anything. They had a dog too, Miffy. She was a French poodle. My dog was smaller and black with yellow trim. He barked sometimes when I would let him out in the morning. I had to go to work. I would stay with the children while the parents went out to parties or out of town. I was supposed to raise the children if anything happened to them. We drove around in their station wagon and I would take them to visit friends. After a while, my boss told me I didnt have a job anymore. She wasnt real clear about why I didnt have a job. She just didnt want me to work there anymore. It was very confusing. I think I went on a date with a man and that my roommate came over and saw a man that was visiting him. The man was my bosss best friends boyfriend. I think my boss didnt like that. I didnt have anything to do with it. I was just on a date with a nice man. He was divorced and had three children. He was a dentist. He rode on his bicycle over to see me one day. It was all the way across town. I was very surprised. It was a nice surprise. We dated for months. He would invite me to football games at Texas Stadium and to dinner at his apartment. He had a nice apartment and was a good cook. We went dancing one night and had drinks. We were riding home in his car. He had a nice car. I decided I would spend the night, if he asked me. He did.

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We went into his bedroom. I had had three or four drinks. Two is my limit. Then I throw up. I hoped I didnt throw up. We kissed when we lay on the bed. It felt good. Things started to heat up and he had to stop for a minute to do something. Then he came back. I had fallen asleep. He didnt wake me up. When I woke up early in the morning, I asked him to take me home. I was embarrassed. He was confused. He took me home. He called me again and asked me if I wanted to go to a tennis match. He knew I loved tennis. I told him I couldnt go. I was still embarrassed. He was so handsome. I felt bad about messing up our evening. I was embarrassed to look at him. Anyway, he stopped calling me but I still lost my job. I think it was because of my bosss best friend. When I told my mother Id lost my job, she asked me what Id done wrong. I told her I hadnt done anything wrong. My father didnt say much. I had to find another job. So I stayed in the way down room and looked for a job. I found one pretty fast. I got a job working for an insurance company in customer service. It was a big company. I got trained to answer calls from people who called in with questions about their insurance policy. One of the women I worked with had a brother who was in a car accident. I was sure sorry. He died though so she wasnt doing very well. I worked for a man who didnt eat all week. He had lost a bunch of weight. He would run five miles every day and not eat anything. He would do that Monday through Friday. Then on Friday after work, he started eating again. He would eat and eat over the weekend until he just couldnt eat any more and then on Monday, he would start the diet again. It was a strange diet. He got grumpy towards the end of the week. His eyes would look like they were about to pop out of his head. On Monday, he was better. He had a strange theory about calories. He thought the body could only consume so many and then it would just throw them off, like a baseball to a right fielder. It didnt make any sense to me but it made sense to him. I got vacation with my new job so I went to see my parents. My brother was home from school for the summer and had to write some papers for school. I was talking to my mother and she was complaining about how hard it had been to take care of my brother. I told her I wished she had had some help. She jumped up from the table and ran to her room. I went after her. She sat on the bed and started to cry. She said she didnt know how she had two children who turned out so well and one that was such a failure. That was me. She told me she didnt want to have anything to do with me anymore. My father came into the room when he heard the commotion. He sat on the bed next to my mother. He told her we have three fine children. She didnt stop crying. I turned around and left the room and started to go up the stairs to pack my things. My mother didnt want to have anything to do with me anymore so it seemed wrong to be in her house. My father asked me where I was going. I told him I was going upstairs to pack. He said, Who will help your brother with his papers? He had me there. I was supposed to go and get my hair cut. My mother drove me but didnt talk to me. She dropped me off. When it was time to come and pick me up, I called her. She wouldnt come and pick me up and I didnt know my way around Kansas City. I asked to speak to my father. He agreed to come and pick me up. 106

I got in his car and he said we had a problem. I said no shit. I usually didnt curse in front of my father but no other word would do. He asked me if I wanted to go and get a beer and talk about it. While we were driving, he asked me how long my mother had had problems with me. Twenty-five years. He said where was I? I told him he had been looking for oil. Then we got to the place that served the beer. We sat and talked. He said he knew something was wrong with my mother but that he didnt know what to do about it. He said, Shes my wife. I told him I would take care of me and he could take care of my mother. He was so relieved and I was so disappointed that he was relieved. It would have been nice to have some help. I told him we better get back to the house or she would think we were plotting against her. We went back to the house. I dont think my mother talked to me very much for the rest of the day. I felt like a miserable failure. I walked around her to keep from making her mad again. My sister says she doesnt remember this but she wasnt there. My brother was there but he wasnt paying attention. So, I helped him with his papers for school. I went to bed and got up. It was pretty much working on the papers time. My mother asked me if I wanted to go and get a new pair of shoes. I didnt feel much like new shoes and I sure didnt want to take a chance on making her mad again. There was a lot of silence. My last night there, we went out to dinner. We ordered our meal and I got up to be excused to go to the bathroom. I got back from the bathroom and my mother wasnt talking again. She was very quiet. My father and brother asked her what was wrong. She said I knew. I didnt know. She said she couldnt believe that I would get up and go to the bathroom and not ask her to go with me. I didnt know she needed to go. She was upset. I had indigestion and couldnt eat very much. She stayed mad throughout dinner. She would talk to my father and brother but she sure didnt talk to me. I had a stone in the middle of my chest. I was a failure. I got in the car the next day to go back home. My brother and father told me goodbye but my mother didnt seem too unhappy that I was leaving. I had helped my brother with his papers for school. My father walked me to the car, like always. He told me to be careful and to call when I got home. The dog and I made the long trip home. I cried a lot. I couldnt believe my mother thought I was a failure. Maybe I was. I got home and wasnt staying in the way down room anymore. I was living in my own apartment. I didnt live too far away from my friends. It was 1975, the first year that I had Christmas with my friends. We opened presents Christmas Eve after church and then we went to bed. On Christmas morning, we woke up for Santa Claus. I got a new red bible for Christmas, from my friends. Love the red bible. I still have the red bible forty years later. I didnt think my family would be too happy to see me and my friends knew what had happened with my mother. It was a hard Christmas, for all of us. I think my friends mother had died unexpectedly. She and her mother were very close. I went and picked the girls up and took them to Baskin Robbins to get 107

ice cream. The younger one ordered coconut. I couldnt image that shed like coconut but I think she liked the color. Pretty soon, she was picking the coconut out of the ice cream. I asked her if she wanted another flavor. I dont want to waste your money, she said. She started to cry. I told her it would be okay and she got another flavor. She liked that flavor much better. I took them back home. Their mother was very sad about her mother. I wanted to do something to help. Anyway, it was a hard Christmas. We did Santa Claus and then ate breakfast. We got the turkey ready for cooking. I helped. The children were playing with their presents. Richard built a fire. And then it was time to eat. We had turkey and dressing with all the fixings. We ate at the dining room table. I helped to carve the turkey. It was a good meal. Well, I had to take a break, dear reader. Jump forward thirty-five years. It is a beautiful day in Austin. Im going to see my Daddy. Hes ninety-one now. I went to see him at his house. We were going to watch church together on TV. Turned out, the Pope was blessing a church in Barcelona. The church service took a long time. They were blessing a new church. Some of the service was in Latin. I remembered the Latin. Some of it was in Spanish. I remembered some of the Spanish. My father fell asleep during part of the service. It lasted for two hours. Then we watched football. I love watching football with my father. We watched Philadelphia and Indianapolis. It was a good game. My father told a couple of stories about living in Philadelphia. He likes to tell stories. He had on the new shoes I gave him. He said they were comfortable on his feet. I lay on the couch. Its a comfortable couch. My feet dont get on it. I was drinking my diet Dr. Pepper. It had a coaster under it. Then we watched another game. Apparently, I fell asleep. My father woke me up with his cane. He told me Id taken three naps and wouldnt be able to sleep at night. I knew I would. I got up to leave because it was 5:15. I wanted to see the President on TV. So, I went home, in my new car. I was very careful. The dogs were ready to see me when I got home. They wanted to do dog business and eat their supper. Theyve gotten used to the new abode. They walked around and did their business. Then we walked some more. Neither of them barked too much. We went for a nice little walk. Then they ran up the stairs because they knew it was time to eat. I called my father and told him I got home safely. He was contemplating about his dinner. He said he decided to eat a hot dog. I fed the dogs and turned on the TV. I didnt want to miss the President on Sixty Minutes. They were still playing football. The dogs ate and I folded sheets and towels. Then I put my dirty clothes in the washing machine and turned it on. Turns out I ate some new potatoes that Id bought at the grocery store. They had to cook for ten minutes. I kept looking for the President. He wasnt on yet. Football was finishing up. I watched the rest of the football games. Finally, they were over. Oh boy, time for the President. I put butter on my potatoes and let them cook a while longer to melt the butter. I ate and watched the President. He was talking about the first two years of his administration. I love the President. He is doing such a good job. I think a lot of people dont like him because hes African American

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but I love to listen to him talk. He has such good ideas. He is so handsome and tall. Hes very thin. His hair is greyer than it used to be. It must be a hard job being President. He has really good ideas. I wished everybody was listening to him. They would have been very impressed. I was. The interview lasted a long time, about thirty minutes. It had been filmed several days earlier, after the mid-term elections. The interviewer kept asking him good questions and he kept giving good answers. Some people are very critical of him. Theres that African American thing again. When in the world will we get over that? Its so ridiculous. He is not the bogeyman. He doesnt want government to take over everything. He inherited a mess from the last president. He was really somethingarrogant as he could be. He left us in a mess that he didnt tell us about. He got us into the war in the Middle East. Wars are expensive. He didnt tell us four million jobs had been lost. He didnt do a very good job when the hurricane hit New Orleans and wiped out the Ninth Ward. It was a mess. He wasnt a very good president. He spent a lot of time at his ranch in Crawford. He had to cut down trees and ride around in his truck. Sometimes, world leaders visited him there. Its not very pretty so Im sure they were surprised. It has a lot of dry land and mesquite bushes. The countries they came from were pretty. I wonder why he did that. He could have met with them in the White House where the president lives. Anyway, I watched the President. There was a picture of him and his wife getting on a plane to fly to India. She is so beautiful. They make a beautiful couple. They were going on a trade mission. They get lots of security on account of lots of people might want to kill the President. He has improved our image in other countries. Then I went to bed and read my book. I love to read. Im reading a very good book. Dave Robicheaux is the main character. I really like James Lee Burkes writing. He is a very good writer. I had no trouble falling asleep and now Im back at work on the great American novel. Back to the past. After Christmas, I went back to work. I got a promotion at work and went to work in the training department. We wrote training manuals about insurance. Sometimes, we got to teach people about insurance. I do love to teach. I talked to my friend I made when I was teaching school. She said she felt bad about what my mother said to me. We would sit on the floor at her house sometimes and study the Bible. I liked being with her. She was a nice mother. She had a husband and three children. She was a good mother. She liked all of her children. She even liked me. She would hug me when it was time for me to go home. I liked the hugs. She was still teaching school. So I went to my job with the promotion. One day, another woman at work wrote me a note. She said she was going to kill herself after work. Nobody else saw the note. It scared me. She didnt even like me very much. I asked her if she could wait until after work. I thought then we could talk about it. It was a secret.

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We went after work and talked about it. I told her I didnt think it was a very good idea. We talked for several hours and then I went home. She wasnt going to kill herself anymore. It was a Friday night. I told her she could call me if she needed anything. One day I got a suicide note on my door at my apartment. I called her and she was okay. Her plan was to drive her red sports car into a bridge. I got scared. She asked me if I wanted to go with her for a ride in her car at night. I didnt think that would be a very good idea. I was afraid shed kill me too. Then she gave me the key to her apartment. I talked and talked until I was talked out. She would go back and forth about killing herself. She acted just fine at work so I didnt say anything. Then one day she didnt come to work. I was scared. I went and told my boss that we needed to go over and check on her. I told him why. He was the first person I told about it. We got in his car and went over to her apartment. She didnt answer her door. I had the key and we went in. I told him to look in one direction and I would go to the bedroom. She was lying on the bed, not moving. We called the ambulance. They came and took her to the hospital. We went back to work. We told people she wouldnt be in to work that day. I think my boss told his boss why. His name was Dick and he was one. They told me they couldnt believe it. They said they would believe it if I did something crazy like that but they didnt believe she would. My boss said he saw her so they believed it. She stayed in the hospital for several days. Her mother came over to see her. She kept calling me from the hospital. It turns out she had overdosed on alcohol and pills. She had some friends over from work the night before and then, she did it. I thought it was a pretty mean thing to do to the friends she had visited with the night before. They would wonder if they could have done anything. What a mess! She tried to come back to work right afterwards but it didnt work out very well. She had to go back to the hospital. Her mother took her to a treatment center in Dallas. She kept calling me from the treatment center and telling me what a bunch of baloney it was. Carol Dickerson, that was her name. Her mother would call me and ask me what happened. I told her as much as I knew. It was getting pretty exhausting to be the gatekeeper. Anyway, she kept calling me from treatment and telling me how ridiculous it was. I finally called her doctor and told him I didnt want her to call me anymore. She wasnt getting any benefit from the treatment. She was mad at her mother for getting a divorce. She didnt talk to the doctors about what her problems were. I thought she should. So then, she couldnt call me anymore. It was a relief. She came back to work after her treatment was done. I didnt talk to her too much anymore. I made friends with people who sat on the other side of the room from where my desk was. They were nice. We laughed a lot. I started playing tennis again. I loved to play tennis. Sometimes in the morning one of the women that lived near me would meet me early in the morning and we would run. It was fun running with her to get stronger for playing tennis. Then we went back to our apartments and got ready for work. We ran in the dark mostly. In the afternoon, we played tennis after work. We practiced at the courts at TCU.

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One day, my sister called me and asked me to come and visit her in San Francisco. It was a nice surprise. She moved out there from Boston where she was in the publishing business. I thought that would be a nice trip so I went out there. We drove up and down Castro Street and went to Chinatown. The smells were incredibly good. I couldve eaten there a lot. She introduced me to her sweetheart. She lived in a nice apartment up some flights of stairs. She introduced me to a friend of hers that she worked with, a man named George. He was really handsome. Her sweetheart, she and I had dinner one night with George. He came over to her apartment. She cooked dinner. George talked about all sorts of things. Since he worked with my sister, he talked about work and all of the things he could cook. He said he could make noodles from scratch. Id never heard of someone being able to make noodles from scratch before. It sounded pretty interesting. We had wine with dinner. It was a lovely evening. One day, she and her sweetheart and I went to the Redwood forest. He liked plants and knew a whole lot about them. Id never seen such big trees. They were huge. I dont know too much about plants. She introduced me to some of her friends. We had lunch together. They were all very nice. I liked them a lot. We went to Ghirardelli Square. What a place! We saw sailboats on the Pacific Ocean. Id never seen the Pacific Ocean before. We went into the market and looked around. It was just amazing. Then one day we rode the ferry to Sausalito. We went into a bar and had some drinks. The man who waited on us was very nice. After a while, my sister told me to look around. She told me we were the only women in the bar. I looked around and, sure enough, we were the only women in the bar. It was a gay bar. Men were sitting together and talking. They were coming in from work in their suits and meeting friends in the bar. It was a very lively place. One of the men even walked in a kissed another man on the mouth. Id never seen anything like that before. So my sister said maybe we should finish our drinks and go. So we walked around Sausalito until it was time to get back on the ferry to ride to San Francisco. We looked in some shops. Then we got back on the ferry for the ride back. My sister began talking about my parents and I told her what my mother had said to me about me being a failure and not wanting anything to do with me anymore. She got mad. She started telling me what a failure Id always been as a daughter and a sister. She was really mad. She went on and on and I started to cry. She told me everybody knew Id rejected my mother from birth and that everything was all my fault. I was still crying. We got in her car to go back to her apartment and she finally stopped talking. I hadnt said a word. She asked me what the matter was. I told her through tears that she and my mother just pounded and pounded on me, like they were trying to get some response but that I didnt have a response. She said youre right, we do that. Anyway, I couldnt stop crying. We got back to her apartment and her sweetheart came over. I didnt want him to see me cry so I went into the other room. I dont even know if I ate dinner. Surely I did but I dont remember. I cried and cried. I cried all night long. My sister was in the other room with her sweetheart. I heard them go to bed and talk into the night. I was all by myself and crying. I cried all night long. When I got up the next morning, I was still crying. My sister went to work. I hurt all over from crying. 111

Around noon the following day, when it didnt look like I was going to stop crying, I called my sister at work and told her maybe I should just go home. I couldnt stop crying. All I could think about was being someplace safe. I felt like a wounded animal. So she came and got me from work and took me to the airport. She asked me what she should tell our mother about our visit. I didnt know what she meant. When she told me, I said Tell her I acted terribly. I got my suitcase out of the car and went into the airport. I hugged and kissed my sister before I left. I came back to Fort Worth. I wasnt crying anymore. I told my friend who I taught school with what had happened. She acted like she was very sorry. She believed me. My sister called me some time later to see how I was doing. I was surprised. She talked and then she told the story about me rejecting my mother from birth again. I told her I didnt want to hear that story from her any more. I told her babies cant reject their mothers. I dont know where I learned that. But thats what I told her. We finished talking and hung up. She called me several times at work to ask me how to handle problems with her sweethearts children. They were very young. The children were having a hard time getting used to their father being divorced and having a sweetheart. She told me how they were acting. She asked me how to handle them. I told her she shouldnt take it personally, that they were just having a hard time adjusting to things. We talked for a long time. Then we hung up. George called me a bunch of times. He told me he loved my long legs. We would talk about what we were doing. He talked about coming to visit me. I loved it when he called me. It was nice to talk to him on the phone. He asked me when I was coming back to San Francisco. I couldnt imagine Id ever get invited again but I didnt tell him that. A failure as a sister and a daughterwho would want me around? My sister tells the story today. It is vastly different in her story. She says I came to see her and acted terribly. She says I made her spend extra money to fly back to Fort Worth. When I try to say something, she says, Thats the way it happened. I know better than to argue with my sister. She thinks things are exactly the way she sees them and there isnt any other way to see them. Im very quiet. I dont want any arguments.

Chapter 1 Now

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Maybe it started the morning I got to listen to Tavis Smiley on the news on the way to work. He was talking to Donna Brazealle, I think. She quoted some talking head who reportedly said, We want to do everything we can to ensure that Obama is a one term president. I nearly swallowed my tongue. Theres that black man bogeyman thing again. Will we ever get over that? Ive worked with thousands of them and encountered very few that I found frightening. I think scary people are pretty much evenly distributed across all ethnicities.

Matter of fact, some of the nicest things that have ever been done for me have been done by black males. They got me out of the way when someone came after me with a knife. They pulled someone off of me who had backed me into a corner. They kept a woman from throwing a chair at me. It was pretty cool. Id never had anyone stick up like that for me before. So the bogeyman thing is lost on me. And I love listening to Tavis Smiley. I was introduced to him on TV about ten years ago during a brief period of temporary insanity. I was living in Iowa, short for idiots out walking around, and I was miserable. (Probably wont have good sales in Iowa). I was in shock for the first three or four months because Id been living in Texas for more than forty years. The people are different. They arent very welcoming, though they think they are. The head of the department was nice enough and another man came to meet me at the airport when I flew in for a visit but...other than that. The fact that the wind was blowing seventy miles per hour when the plane landed for my campus visit should have been a big clue. We were on a little plane, a twelve seater. One of the flight attendants asked me to move to the other side of the plane. I thought if my 100 pounds makes a difference in the planes ability to land, we were in serious trouble. It was awful. I literally blew in. I needed a cocktail.

I had accepted a position to teach social work at a small school in northern Iowa. What was I thinking? I moved and weve established that I dont do that very well.

I settled in to teaching and tried to unpack enough boxes that I had essentials. Some people came by and introduced themselves though it was no one from the social work department. I even got to go to a minor league baseball game.

The announcer at the game was my African American next door neighbor. I had on a Negro leagues Tshirt. He said that he wanted it. I told him that would be an embarrassment to everyone. We laughed about it.

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Anyway, school started. We had a week of meetings the week before school started for new teachers. I met people who thought I was pretty strange. There was another new member of the social work faculty who was there. Our names are similar. Everyone got a kick out of that and tended to get us mixed up. Nothing I wasnt used to, having lived for over fifty years with a name people had a hard time with. Then, school started.

I had an office in the building next to the main social work office where all the other professors were. I went around to every faculty member and visited with them about themselves and asked them what they liked to do. I dont think anyone ever came to my office or asked me those questions.

Classes started and I had three classes to teach. One of my classes was an undergraduate class and the others were graduate classes. There was one African American woman in the undergraduate class and there were two African American women in my graduate class.

Seemed strange to me because I had been surrounded by African Americans in Texas. There were no African American professors on the faculty...in a field like social work that is supposed to value diversity. Didnt make any sense to me. More on that later.

I volunteered for several committees, one of them the Search Committee, charged with the responsibility of recruiting and interviewing new faculty candidates. I was also on the Grievance Committee. I thought it would be a way to get to know people better.

One of the strange things about the social work department is that faculty members didnt seem to like each other too much. There were definitely cliques. Most of the drama centered around one faculty member who reminded me of my grandfather. People laid him to filth and made him sound like the devil incarnate. He wasnt but well get to that later.

Abut halfway through the month of September, things went pretty well. Then 9/11 happened. I can remember exactly where I was when I heard about it. It was a Tuesday. I always stopped at the same convenience store on the way to teach my classes. They had the TV on. I watched it in stunned amazement and thought about my sisters son who lived in Manhattan and my brother-in-laws family who lived in Brooklyn. I hoped they were all okay.

My personal 9/11 happened the following day when I learned that my best friend from high schools cancer had returned in a virulent form and that the chair of my dissertation committees cancer was marching through her. I was stunned. I had planned to fly out to visit my brother in Denver but there

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was no flying due to 9/11. Course the Saudi Arabians were able to fly out under military protection but domestic airlines were grounded for three or four days.

I walked across the street to see the friend whose family and I had become great friends. They were a lovely young couple with two young children. They were both boys, one six and one four and they loved playing with my dogs. I had four at the time, well five if you count Puff, my other rescue dog. He was a little big for the boys and would knock them over. But the other four were little ones and the boys loved to play with them.

The older one had a cleft palate and I just talked to him like it was the most normal thing in the world. His mother was surprised. It is. The scar looked really good and he had more surgeries planned but she just thought it was amazing that I talked to him about it like it was no big deal. It wasnt.

Sometimes, the older one would call me on the phone and ask me if he could come over. Is that too cute? A little blonde headed boy was a friend. He would get tired of being a big brother and sometimes just wanted to do things alone. I could sure understand that. He loved his brother and was a great big brother but the constancy of it would become too much from time to time.

Anyway, I walked over to their house and told the mother about my two friends. I cried and she was so tender and sympathetic. The boys knew something was going on but they didnt know what. They hugged me. What a cute couple of kiddos!

I had scheduled a test in my undergraduate class and someone covered my class for me. I stayed at home since I already had the time off anyway to go and see my brother. I hung out with my neighbors all weekend. The husband loved to cook and he would cook up a storm. Pizza, he loved to make pizza. Sometimes, we had political conversations. It was great fun. Then I could just walk across the street and be home.

When I got back to school for my class, youd have thought I stole peoples birthdays. The students who had the test were mad. They thought it was too hard and they were hotter than a $2.00 pistol. I tried to calm them down but they just got madder, especially three or four of them. The other twenty didnt seem so mad but the ones who were mad were hot.

I tried to tell them it was the first test and that there would be plenty more. They were not assuaged. I think several of them even went to the head of the social work department and complained. I know that

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by the time they were through beating me up, I was in tears. The African American student didnt complain at all.

The head of the department asked me about the test. I told him about it. I was nervous, a life-long condition. He didnt make too big a deal about it. Some of the students who were so angry told their advisors, one of them the man who looked like my grandfather.

He stoked the fire. He didnt know me at all and thought I had been contaminated by all the other faculty people who talked about him. I hadnt. Id also made my way around to his office to ask him about himself and what his research interests were. We had a nice long conversation.

The routine became teaching my classes, going to meetings at the school and preparing for classes. I didnt really have any friends other than the couple across the street and, of course, the pups. I was pretty depressed.

The weather got colder and I was miserable. I hadnt lived in cold weather for over forty years. I was not used to it. I hate to be cold. I had purchased some winter clothing but, gosh, it was miserable. Everybody just laughed at me when I was dressed up like the Michelin man. When I complained about the cold, they laughed and said, Just add layers. Any more layers and I wouldnt have been able to move.

Later in September, we had cultural diversity week. I really looked forward to that. All the faculty had to dress up in their robes and sit together. It was a sea of mostly white. The African American students served as ushers. I was appalled. I thought the Pullman porter days were over. It was cultural diversity week, for goodness sake.

The speaker was Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center. He marched with Dr. King during the Civil Rights movement. He had the most interesting stories to tell. His life is in danger because he defends people who are discriminated against all over the country.

There are plenty of them. I loved listening to him talk. I joined the Southern Poverty Law Center by sending some money.

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After the event was over, I happened to see to African American female students walking to their dorms. I offered them a ride. I asked them what they thought about the talk. They loved learning about their history. Couldnt believe they had to serve as ushers.

I felt like Alice slipping through the rabbit hole. I mean, it was 2000. Surely we had made more progress than that. But I wasnt Dorothy and it wasnt Kansas so I knew the obvious. They did too. I apologized to them. They werent mad at me or anything. They were grateful for the ride.

Its funny what a person recollects. I dont remember my first pair of shoes and I dont remember my first birthday but I remember this as if it were yesterday. I had agreed to mentor a young, African American football player. I took him to eat lunch one Saturday before football season started. I had found a place in town that served food like he was used to eating.

The only African American males on the campus seemed to be football players. Did I mention that Iowa is ninety-nine percent Caucasian? Yup. There was a small town about two miles from my small town. Most of the African Americans in Iowa lived in that small town.

Not very many lived in the small town where the university was. There was some kind of unspoken rule.

Anyway, he ate like he hadnt eaten for years. He seemed to enjoy the food. I picked him up at his dormitory. He was a great young man. I loved listening to him and connecting with him. I dont think anyone on the faculty knew I did that. They sure didnt do it.

He was big and a long way from home. He missed his family. I felt for him. They are so young at eighteen...and not ready to be so far away from family. But he wanted to better himself and get a college education. I hope he finished. I hope he is prospering. I hope...

I went on with my teaching and some of the students wondered why I talked so much about the importance of diversity. I couldnt believe it. I finally had to tell them they wouldnt get to be social workers and hang out a shingle that said, whites only.

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It was astonishing to me. All Id taught when Id been adjunct faculty at the school where I got my PhD was diversity. Its a core social work value. Apparently, they hadnt read the social work mission statement. I had and took it pretty seriously.

I couldnt believe the Caucasian students would ask the questions in front of the African American students. It seemed beyond insulting. Im as white as the driven snow and I was offended. My goodness.

I decided that, if I wanted to see my dissertation chair again, I better go see her. Her condition was deteriorating and she had to be placed in hospice. I flew down to TX to see her. My best friends picked me up at the airport.

She let me use her car to go and see my dying friend and mentor again in hospice. I sat out in the lobby and visited with all of my past professors who had come by to see her. She was very popular among other faculty. I dedicated my dissertation to her. She was an amazing woman. Amazing doesnt do her justice...heroic is a better choice of words.

Her partner didnt want to tire her out too much so she let people visit her in shifts. Makes sense. When I finally got my chance, I walked quietly into the room and sat in a chair across from her. She was sleeping.

I watched her sleep for about thirty minutes and then she woke up. She asked me how long Id been sitting there. I told her. She told me that she must have dozed off. I said, Its the morphine. She nodded. Id seen the morphine nod plenty of times so I knew what it was.

She tried to stay awake but was in a lot of pain. I walked over to the side of her bed and kissed her on the forehead. I dont remember what I said but I was thinking safe travels. She thanked me for coming.

Her partner asked me if there was anything of hers that I wanted. Yes, I said. A copy of the picture with her and her dog. I loved that picture. She had it in her office at school and I had spent plenty of time in her office. We had known each other for fifteen or sixteen years, since I started working on my masters degree in 1987.

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Her partner agreed. When they cleaned out her office at the school so someone else could move in it, another faculty member took the picture so I never got it. I think I know who took it. I asked her and she said, No, I never saw it. I didnt believe her.

She wasnt a very believable professor plus she was mean as a snake. She was the one who took over my friends office. You couldnt have gone in that office and not seen the picture. Garbage.

After I talked to her partner, I left. I asked her if my friend was ready to go. She said she was. That made me feel better. I walked back out into the lobby and left. She had all sorts of visitors.

I went back to my friends house with their car. I spent the rest of the weekend with them and then flew back to school. It was a sad time.

The following Thursday, I got the call. She had died that morning.

I went to school and taught my classes. Then I walked across the street to tell my friend about the death. I cried. She was very supportive and very sorry. It was nice to have someone to talk to about it.

I didnt tell anyone at the school. I didnt think theyd be too interested since they hadnt been too interested in anything else about me.

It was a strange faculty. People seemed to argue with each other over the silliest things. And everybody didnt come to monthly faculty meetings. I couldnt believe it. I would have thought they would be mandatory but they werent.

Apparently, when you have tenure, you dont have to do anything except whatever you want to do. What kind of job has that perk? None Id ever had or, for that matter, wanted.

I felt like a cat at a dog show in faculty meeting. Every time I said something, which wasnt often, there were fifteen reasons why what I said wouldnt work. Apparently, as new faculty, I wasnt supposed to talk. So I didnt say much anyway.

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But when I did, I got chased all over the room. They werent very nice to each other either but thats beyond my pay grade. I think that they were all miserable and wanted to go somewhere else. But they couldnt get a job somewhere else. So, they were stuck with each other.

The first semester ended and I came back to where things made sense in Dallas. I spent Christmas with my best good friend and her husband. They are African American. Their friends are African Americans. I was back in diversity heaven and got to talk to all the pals who teased me about being the token Caucasian. I loved it. They told me to hurry up and get back to the hood because there was nothing in the hood that bombers and attackers wanted there. We laughed.

I ate Christmas dinner with my friends whose children are my godchildren, like Id been doing for twentyfive years. It was wonderful to see them all. They are all grown up with children of their own. Christmas dinner with them has always been wonderful.

It was great to be back in friendly territory and I spent the time hanging out with my friends and their friends. Ah, diversity. Heaven! But then it was time to go back to school so they took me to the airport and off I went, back to frozen hell.

I did make one friend on the faculty and I had driven her and her partner to the bus station. I picked them up when they got back. I think they brought me a sweatshirt from New York.

The second semester started and I had three graduate classes to teach. There were two African American females who were in the graduate program. Once again, students asked why I emphasized diversity. You know the answer by now. They asked it in front of the two African American students. I was horrified. When we went on break from class, I apologized to them. They said, Youre the closest well ever come to an African American professor. It made me so sad.

I joined a committee that was formed by one other faculty member who wanted to increase the enrollment of African American students. I finally met the one African American male in the undergraduate school. He had a radio station in the small town adjacent to the campus town.

He talked about guests he had on his show like Jesse Jackson and Cornell West. He introduced me to Tavis Smiley.

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See. It may take me a while but I do get back to the point. Ha! Just when you thought the dots would not connect, they do. So, I began looking for his radio station and channel surfing to find programs with African Americans and other diverse groups in them. I must have watched a panel discussion moderated by Tavis Smiley seventeen hundred times. I knew I was probably the only person in town watching it.

I knew of Cornell West from my reading but Id never seen him. He is a righteous brother, an artist with language. Some people paint pictures. He paints the most beautiful pictures with words. Listen to him sometime. You have to listen to Mos Def. The brother can sing, dance, act and talk smart. He is amazing to behold.

I was only going to campus to teach classes and go to meetings. It was too cold outside, the people were too unfriendly and I was too miserable. I couldnt decide whether or not to sit in the garage with the engine running or drink flavored bleach. I decided to watch TV. I must have watched The Legend of Bagger Vance ten times. I still like that movie to this day.

The dogs didnt like the snow. They would run out the door to the yard, do their business and come back in as soon as they could get back in the door. It was clear to me that I had made a horrible mistake for all of us. I just didnt know what to do about it.

No one seemed to notice that I wasnt around very much, which was a good thing. But then, around February, things started to heat up on campus. It was time to begin the search for new faculty members for the school of social work and I had volunteered for the committee so...there I was. It was five other faculty members, me, and the one African American male student in the undergraduate program.

We would go through applications and other faculty members would throw out applications with bad hand writing. They all wrote like serial killers and what handwriting has to do with being able to teach and do research, I never knew. I think they thought the prospective candidates were African American applicants.

We finally arrived at the day the whole committee was going to meet and select candidates for prospective employment. There were six of us there, all Caucasian, including the department head and the one African American male student. We reviewed the applications.

The student noticed that none of the prospective candidates were African American and began to raise the issue. The silliest conversation ensued with members of the committee trying to justify the lack of diversity, especially the African American kind of diversity. I was livid but a junior faculty member so I

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had to be careful what I said. Then I changed my mind and started talking. The student started talking. He was relentless and he got nowhere.

Finally, I reached my hands out to him across the table and told the other faculty members I had things covered. I held the students hands and I said, I feel you, baby brother. Do you understand me? I feel you. Tears started to stream down his face. I told him that I was as upset as he was and was prepared to do whatever I needed to do to support him. The other faculty members sat in dazed amazement. I talked to him some more. Then, the meeting was over.

Right after the meeting was over, I went to the office of the head of the department. I waited for him. I went in his office with him and closed the door. I said, Im never sitting through another meeting like that as long as I live. Ive spent the last twenty years of my life on diversity related issues and I am not prepared to go backwards. Ill meet you where you are and help bring you forward but I will not go backward. This is a core social work value. We need to do this better.

He sat there in dazed amazement. And then, I left. Several weeks later, I called him and told him that I would not be returning to the campus for the following year. He asked if we could talk about it. I agreed. I saw him every day for the next sixty days and he never said a word about it. I even went to lunch with him. I guess it wasnt too important to him that I was going to leave.

Over spring break, I went back to where things made sense and interviewed for another job. I got the job. I told them when school would be out and they agreed to that as a start date.

I told my sister that I would be able to pack up my house and leave the city without anyone noticing and she didnt believe me. Sure enough, a big moving van parked in front of my house on one of the busiest streets in the small community. It was a big van. No one noticed.

I gave final exams in all three of my classes and turned in my grades. My one faculty friend agreed to cover the last day of class for me. My friends across the street let me stay with them for a couple of days because my bed was packed up. For a small community, word did not travel. I left after tearful goodbyes with my neighbors and headed back to TX.

Never have I been so happy to cross the border into TX. Normalcy was returning to my world. I stayed with my African American friends while we waited on the moving van. And then I was in my own place with my dogs. Puff had gotten so big that we left him with a farmer who had lots of property where he could run around amongst the corn and pigs. I had four left.

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I was happy to be back in the land of diversity. It took over a month for the people at the school to realize that I was gone. Well, I take that back. The man who looked like my grandfather who people portrayed as the devil incarnate knew. We talked for hours before I left.

He told me about how Id been used by other faculty members for their agendas, unwittingly. I agreed with him. We had a good long talk. He could tell I was leaving. I didnt want to be used in a tug of war in the most visceral way. Been there, done that. It makes me nauseous to think about it.

My faculty friend knew. She called me and told me what people were saying about why I left for the summer. I had to threaten to sue a couple of them to get them to cease and desist. In August, four months later, the head of the department e-mailed me and asked me if I was returning. I told him I wasnt. He replied that he supposed I should submit my letter of resignation. I insisted on being paid for the work I did on a grant proposal. I got the money and he got the resignation.

Turns out they did hire someone from India, which made me glad. I had picked her up from the airport and taken her to dinner. When she arrived on campus, she asked for me right away. She was sad when she found out I wasnt there. I was sad when I thought of her being the only diverse faculty member in an all Caucasian department. I hope she was treated better than I was.

Anyway, ten years later they are probably still doing the same thing, expecting a different outcome. I, on the other hand, am rolling in diversity. And I made three African American friends at work. One of them noticed the pictures on my desk and told me about this great radio station. Ive been listening to it ever since.

I got a Michelle Obama calendar over the weekend and one of the pals wanted to look at all of the pictures of her. I said, Of course. She loved it. I told her I couldnt hear her radio. She keeps it tuned to that station. I turned on my radio and tuned it to the same station. What do you know! I can get it on my radio. Its turned down low so it doesnt bother anyone.

One term president, my backside. Michelle probably thinks that would cut down on the death threats. I do too. But I think hes such a good president and he inherited such a mess. I hope he gets the full eight years to fulfill his promise. I hope he lives to serve them.

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They some crazy people out there and most of them are stirred up about him being a brother and President. They are afraid he might do what they did when they had power. Still scared of brothers with power.

They need to get over themselves and quit it. Hes a lovely and gracious man and hes not going to turn us in to socialists. He practices Christianity and he was born in this country. Its no accident that the chief justice messed up his inauguration.

I loved how Barack handled it...out of an abundance of caution he made him swear him in again in private. I promised I wouldnt swear in this book but isnt that a damn shame? We are a mess.

So I wish the talking heads would leave him be and Im related to two of them. Its hard to listen to. I can avoid it when its on television. I cant ignore it when its my family.

So, I work with diverse people and I listen to diverse people and no ones the wiser. Well, I am, because I get to experience people who are different than I am. I love it.

Dont blame this on me. God woke me up this morning.

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Chapter 2 Now

Maybe it started the morning I realized I was working for the greatest company in the world doing the greatest work there is to do.

I was listening to my radio station again on the way to work this morning. They were playing gospel music. I love gospel music. Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are right, and whatsoever things are pure and of good report, think on these things. But Im not going to spend another day on the radio station. Im sure youll appreciate it if I move along.

The company I work for is just great. I get to work with children who are in foster care because they have been abused or neglected by their parents. I talk to the people on the phone all day who deliver the care. I help them figure out the best way to treat the patients. You would think that kind of thing would be depressing to me. Its not.

Im sad that the children are in the situation they are in. Im sorry that they have been through so much. I feel for the doctors and nurses who have to work with them. It must be really hard. But, at the end of the day, if they are not suicidal, homicidal or psychotic, we need to think about getting them out of the hospital. Its not healthy for children to have long stays in the hospital. So, after eight days, we ask our doctors to talk to their doctors.

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Some of these children are really sick. A lot of them want to kill themselves or kill someone else. A lot of them think they see and hear people talking to them who arent really there. Theyre the psychotic ones. They are really hard to treat.

There are about thirty thousand children in foster care in the state of TX. Most of them have adjusted well. I work with the ten percent who have problems of all sorts. Most of them were abused or neglected by their parents. Most of them have been passed around from place to place. Most of them have parents who are mentally ill or use drugs/alcohol. Thats sad to me. Its very sad. I feel badly for the children. Some of them never had a chance.

The company I work for has been reasonably established as the worlds greatest company. They celebrate Employee Appreciation Week. I never worked for a company that had an appreciation day let alone a week. They have vacations. They have excellent benefits and, best of all, they have wonderful people. I was hired to do the work in Dallas and was thrilled to have the job. I started in the Dallas office and things went pretty well until one day, I asked two African American women if they were having a sister meeting. We are not sisters she replied and looked like she was mad. I apologized for offending her.

I was attending an all African American church. I was the only salt in the pepper. They didnt seem to mind it and everyone called each other sister. I didnt know what Id done wrong.

Pretty soon after that, one of the people in Human Resources called and said she wanted to ask me a question about something. She asked me if I had said what I did to the two women. I said that I did but that I didnt mean any harm. She was very nice to me and told me to be careful with what I said around whom. I agreed I would be careful and was so happy I wasnt in trouble with Human Resources. Usually trouble with Human Resources is a bad thing.

But this was not a bad thing. I was careful with what I said. I stayed away from her for the most part. I didnt want to offend her again. My best friend told me not every sister is down with that. What do I know? I meant absolutely no harm.

So after starting my new job, I went to training for a week. I never worked for a company who taught you before you started working and paid you for it. I thought that was a swell idea.

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I stayed in a hotel about two blocks away from the Austin office and we walked to training every morning. There were three other people in my training class: one from Michigan or Wisconsin, one from Florida and one who was going to temporarily work in Dallas until she could sell her house and move to Houston to be with her grandchildren.

The training classes seemed important and the person who was going to move to Dallas temporarily asked a lot of questions. She asked so many questions, the trainer couldnt talk very much. She got on my nerves. We had an hour for lunch and I was anxious to make a good impression. She took thirty minutes to decide what to eat for lunch and it was always about a fifteen minute walk. I didnt want to be late for class.

Lunch was not much fun.

None of us liked to say Hurry up. But we did.

She would ask questions that the trainer had already answered. She told everyone she hated computers. It didnt make any sense to me that you would go to work for a company that had computers and say you didnt like them but thats what she did.

The girl from Michigan or Wisconsin had to help her find computer keys and things on the computer. I moved over by myself so I wouldnt be distracted by it and so that I could focus on the learning.

The training lasted four and a half days and it was hard. I had driven down in my car. The other people had flown. I had four big binders that I could hardly carry to the car. Everyone else had to take theirs on the airplane. I was driving my car. I would get home faster than anyone else.

One night when I was down here, I took my car to see an old friend Id known for nearly fifty years. Some of her children were there. They were all grown up. I drove to their house when they gave me directions. One night, my sister and her husband picked me up and took me to dinner. They were in town.

Thursday night, the fellow trainee from FLA and I walked around downtown Austin. We had a great time. We walked up to the Capitol. We saw a Texas Ranger sitting in the car in front of the Capitol. She was an African American woman from Houston. The 5th ward? I asked. You know about the 5th ward? Yes maam I do. Her family still lived there. We talked all about it. The woman from FLA is just looking at me like I have a tail.

We had a great conversation. Her family still lived in the 5th ward. She was trying to help her family. We said our goodbyes and walked away. I didnt want to keep her from doing her job. But it was a

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great conversation...about her family, about Barbara Jordan and about what it was like to be poor and black.

We walked away and the woman from FLA surprised me by saying, Boy, you really do know about the 5th ward. How do you know all that? I studied it. It was important to me.

She was really impressed. She didnt think I had a tail. She thought I was interesting. We walked around all over the 6th street area in Austin. We saw a lot of things, just walking. We stopped in one place and had a drink. We stopped in another place and had some dinner. It was a fun evening.

The woman from FLA still calls me from time to time and asks me if I remember our night in Austin. I assure her that I remember it well. She asks me how to do things. I tell her the way I understand it. It feels good to hear it.

Anyway, we went back to our corners of the world. I was happy to be home. My dogs were glad to see me. Boo, Alice and Bandit had had a visitor come by every day, three times a day, and take them outside to play and do their business.

She came and met the pets before she became a visitor. I agreed to pay her rate. She agreed to come by and take care of my pets. I agreed to pay her. Apparently it had worked out well because the pups seemed happy. She got a tip so she was happy. They charged my credit card. Nobody stole anything. It was completely safe.

I spent the weekend getting ready to start my new job. I went and visited my best friend and her husband and told them about the job. She said, Interesting. He said he didnt get all the counseling philosophies but he was glad that I was happy. He has always been glad when Ive been happy. My friend was working somewhere else. They asked if I was sure if I wanted to do the work. I said, Sure, why not? She nodded and smiled.

She looked at her fingernails which means shes thinking something she doesnt want to say. Drives me up the wall. I just wish shed say it. But, at this point, Im not going to change her and she has changed me so its all good.

Sometimes I tease her about it. She doesnt like it. Her husband really doesnt like it. He doesnt know shes afraid to say what she thinks. Shes been in relationships with abusive men and she doesnt want

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to take any chances. He has assured her that he would never hurt her but I think shes not sure and doesnt want to take any chances.

So, I started my new job on Monday, the first week in June, two and a half years ago. I met new people. I sat on the phone and listened to calls that another care manager was receiving. He showed me how to do it for a day. The next day, he left.

I was supposed to train for a half a day with the other care manager who was doing what I would be doing. He didnt seem to like being busy and I didnt want to bother him. The afternoon of the second day, I started making calls myself to people that were working in hospitals being managed by the man who trained me the first day.

I did the same thing the third day. It was busy. I didnt mind. I love to be busy. I asked questions when I needed to but I didnt want anyone to think I was stupid. On the fourth day, I did the same thing. The fifth day, the man who had trained me the first day came back from being out of town and he was my supervisor. I was glad because I had had enough years of being a supervisor. It was time for younger people to learn to be supervisors.

It was an exciting time. With a new job and a new supervisor who seemed to like the work I did, it went pretty well. I got assigned some hospitals. The other care manager got assigned to do some hospitals. Every Wednesday, the other care manager and I would have a meeting with my boss, his boss and the medical director. We did it over the telephone. I would report on my sixty or more person caseload. The other care manager would report on his less than twenty person caseload. No one ever said anything about it.

We kept right on reporting it this way with over sixty for me and fewer than twenty for him for a long time. I asked the other care manager if it was common to have such a large caseload. I wasnt trying to get out of any work. It just seemed out of whack. He said, They dont like it when you complain about your workload. I never complained. He kept sitting at his desk and reading books. He probably read three books a week.

It went on for months. Nobody said anything. Well, they asked me why I had so many patients in the hospital. They made it sound like it was my fault. I was just taking calls and entering information. I didnt have anything to do with who showed up at the hospital. I just took the information.

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Pretty soon, they hired a third person and I didnt have so much to do. I trained her for the most part and the other care manager spent some time with her. But mostly, I would train her.

She would listen to calls just like I did and before you knew it, she was ready to take some hospitals. My caseload dropped to in the forties as she got trained. I didnt have to do nearly seventy anymore. Plus, I could do some of the training as we sat outside and smoked. It seemed to work out pretty well.

My caseload was now in the forties and it was manageable. The new employee gradually took on more patients at hospitals. She would report twenty cases in the hospital, the other care manager would report less than twenty and I would report forty something. It was nice to have another person in rounds. Then I didnt get asked all the questions.

I didnt seem to get fussed at as much about having so many patients. Nobody said much when it was my turn to talk, which I liked. Sometimes, I would go first, just to get it over with. My bosss boss sometimes had to go and get the medical director. They were both in Austin and he would be doing something else. She said to someone, Go get him. They did.

He got on the phone and my boss wrote me a note to not say much. I learned to not say much when he was on the phone. He always asked a lot of questions. Sometimes he would sound like he was mad about people being in the hospital.

The other care managers in the room from Dallas all went around the room and said how many patients were in the hospital. I always had a fairly large number. I thought it meant I was doing something wrong. My boss told me I wasnt but I just needed to say less.

Both the new care manager and I continued to go outside and smoke. She thought it was odd that the other care manager read books all the time. We would laugh about it. I dont know if my boss didnt know it or if he didnt care about it. He didnt come out of his office much.

He sat in his office in the dark with the door closed. We had to knock if we wanted to go in. Sometimes he was on a call and couldnt be disturbed. Hed wave us past and sometimes we got our questions answered and some of the time we didnt. We didnt know what to do.

The president of our company and the president of our sister company came to visit us. Id never had the president of the company and his bosss company come to visit. I was so impressed with both of

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them. They were good people. I was proud to work for them. I wrote them both a note and told them thank you for coming, in an e-mail. They both answered my e-mail and said, Thank you for writing. They said they were glad to come. It felt good to be working for them.

The president of our company had meetings with employees every six months. We would call in and listen to him talk about the status of the whole company. We had a chance to ask questions. I never asked any questions. I pushed the mute button on my phone.

He always sounded so nice. It felt good to be working with such good people. He had that meeting every six months. I couldnt wait to hear from him. He always sounded so positive in the meetings. I was so excited about working for such a good company.

Its part of an even bigger company and I am impressed with the even bigger company. Sometimes he talks about TX and the message always sounds so positive. I felt lucky that I was working for such a bigger company for such a good man.

Pretty soon, my boss and his boss asked me if I would be willing to work on a project for them. There were 180 or more patients in group homes and residential treatment centers in Arizona. I said Sure. They told me we needed to get on the phone with the manager in AZ and find out what I needed to do. We called her on the phone.

She gave me instructions about how to do the cases in AZ and sent me a lot of documents about AZ by e-mail. It was open ended in terms of when it needed to get done by but I was happy to help.

So, I had my forty cases and 180 cases to learn about in AZ. I came in early and stayed late because of the time difference in AZ. It was three oclock in AZ when it was five oclock in TX. So I would come in early to do my work and stay late to do the AZ work. It worked out pretty well. The new care manager came in early too and stayed late to avoid the traffic so we became friends. She stayed late and came in early to avoid traffic because she lived far away.

Not everybody knows how to be a friend.

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Chapter 3 Now

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Maybe it started November 4, 2010.

I got up early to drive to the worlds greatest job. I really didnt have to be in so early because I work late tonight but I didnt want to miss anything. Ive been working for a long time.

The pups went outside and did their pup business. I finished getting ready to go to work. It is cold outside. I had to wear my coat to work. Since I have an 8/10 headache, the cold doesnt help much. Degenerative arthritis has set in in the joints in my face. I have to be careful how much I talk.

Anyway, I listened to my radio station on my way to work. Turns out I can listen to it all day at work, as long as I keep the volume down low so it doesnt bother anyone. They were playing gospel music again. I love gospel music, good gospel music. They were talking about the elections that were held two days ago.

The Republicans won the House of Representatives and they say they are going to return to the era of small government. The Senate is still Democratic. The President is a Democrat. He inherited a lot of problems from the previous Republican administration like two wars, a bad economy and a recession. He hasnt had very much time to fix it. He hasnt had very much cooperation in trying to get it fixed...even from his own party.

I think people are still afraid of him because he is African American. Some people are funny about that in this country. I love it. I think hes doing a fine job.

Anyway, maybe things will settle back down and we wont hear so much about politics. He nominated two women to be Supreme Court justices. One is Hispanic. Thats pretty cool.

They both passed through the confirmation process. They are on the Supreme Court now. There arent very many women who have been on the Supreme Court...two in the past forty years and he appointed two more in two years. Isnt that great for women?

They were talking on the radio about all of the jobs in America that companies have shifted overseas because companies dont have to pay people as much overseas as they do in America. These jobs started leaving America long before Obama became president.

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They dont have to worry about unions in other countries. Unions take care of the workers and make sure they are paid fairly. Companies dont like unions. The people in other countries dont mind getting paid less. It is more money than they would make in their country.

If my computer has a problem and I have to call for technical support, I get to talk to someone in India. Its a whole other country far, far away. Its not the Presidents fault that companies send jobs overseas.

Some jobs get sent to China where the working conditions arent very good. We have rules in this country about where children can work and in what kind of conditions. They dont have those rules in China. So, our children play with toys that were made in China. They dont cost as much.

So, Im happy to be alive. God woke me up again today. I have a great job and I work with great people. Hard to beat that. I didnt think Id ever be able to say that again.

Life has a way of turning itself out, doesnt it? Just keep living; youll see what Im talking about. Cant wait until my work pal gets to work. He has to take his son to school. Hes young enough to be my son but so handsome. I tell him that and he gets embarrassed. Too bad. Age has its privileges. I looked at my work list. Its going to be a busy day. Oh boy. I like having a lot to do.

Call me crazy.

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Chapter 4 Now

Maybe it started when I had to move my desk.

Back to Dallas. Sometime in there, my boss told me I had to move my desk. I was going to sit in a different place. There was a lady sitting next to me at my first desk. She talked so loudly that I couldnt hear the people I was supposed to talk to on the phone. Hell, I couldnt hear my head rattle. She was really loud.

I asked her if she could talk more softly. She said it was fine for me to ask her. We even went outside and talked one day. She told me she was ready to die. She was only sixty two years old, too young to die.

But she had made up her mind. It seemed strange to me. She would keep talking loud. Most of the time I didnt say anything about it. I only said something about it when I couldnt hear the people I was talking to on the phone. Well, listening, I was mostly listening but I couldnt hear them.

I didnt say anything to anyone else about it but then one day, I got moved. Then I was sitting closer to my new work friend. She wasnt so loud. I was working one day and I got another call from Human Resources. I was scared. I called them back and we made an appointment to talk.

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Turns out the woman I asked to be quiet who said she didnt mind really did mind and she complained about me asking her to be quiet. When I called Human Resources for our appointment, I didnt know what it was about. I was just afraid I was in trouble for something.

When I talked, HR and me, she told me that the lady who was loud had complained about me. I was confused. The lady had told me it was okay to ask her to talk softly. I told the HR lady that. She had some other questions to ask me. Then the HR lady told me it would be better if I didnt talk to the lady who complained any more. She said I could talk to other people but just not to her. I was getting paranoid. It seemed like I wasnt supposed to talk to anyone.

My boss told me just not to talk to her or have anything to do with her, at her request. Then she started coming by my office and asking me things. I was very confused because I had been told not to talk to her. I didnt talk to her when she talked to me. I told my boss. He told me to let him know any time she stopped by to talk to me. It was a confusing time. I was very embarrassed.

But it was nice over at my new desk. I was closer to the supervisors office and closer to the office of one of the other people who did what I did. She didnt talk very loud. We could pass notes through the wall between our desks. We would continue to go out to smoke. We talked about all sorts of things, mostly related to work.

We decided to take turns bringing lunch. She would bring it one week and I would bring it the next. That way, we only had to bring lunch every other week. Sometimes, we talked on the weekend. We never seemed to run out of things to talk about.

One day, she drove to Dallas on Saturday and we went to the movie. We met another pal at the picture show. It was a neat theatre, one of those where they let you order food. We ordered lunch/dinner and watched the movie. It was fun.

Another day, when I was outside smoking, a co-worker asked me if she could borrow five dollars. I went inside to get the money. I went back outside and gave her the money. I got stung by a bee. Im allergic to bee stings. No good deed goes unpunished.

My work friend is a nurse so she ran over to the Wal-Mart to get some benadryl. I didnt know I was going to get stung by a bee. She came back and gave me the benadryl and I took some. Then we went to lunch. My supervisor came into the lunch room and said hed heard I got stung by a bee. He wanted to call 911. I didnt want him to. But he did.

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Two ambulances pulled up in front of our building. The paramedics got out of their trucks and came into the lobby. I had to get checked out. Some man showed up and told me to breathe.

I was so embarrassed I have trouble remembering some of it. The paramedics took my blood pressure and did some other things and waited for the man. Then the man said I was okay and everybody left. I didnt tell them I was having trouble breathing.

While I was sitting with the paramedics, all of the nurses came in through the lobby. They stared at me. The one who didnt want me to talk to her asked me if I was okay. I am way too shy to get that much attention.

I went back to work and took more benadryl. I was beginning to feel dizzy but didnt want to tell anybody. I wanted to do my work. My work friend would ask me how I was feeling on smoke break. I would tell her but she didnt tell anyone.

Shed been working there a while and then another woman came to work for the company. She was going to do the same thing I was doing. There were going to be three of us. We spent the first week training her. She would listen to us do phone calls to hospitals. We would all three go outside together and smoke. We did training when we were out on smoke break.

They were both raised in Michigan so they had that to talk about. They both had sisters but no brother. I had a brother. My father was raised in Michigan so I knew some things about Michigan. We talked and laughed together.

The new lady sat in the office next to me. She left everyday at 4:45 because she had a private practice. People came to see her at her office to talk about their problems.

So now there were four of us doing the same thing, the man and three women. The new lady got some of the cases so we didnt have so many. I would always offer to help out when people were out for illness and vacation. We still had our meetings every Wednesday. I was very quiet.

After a while, the other two ladies stopped talking to me. I dont know why. They would go out on smoke break and leave me behind. I didnt know what it meant.

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The lady who sat beside me asked to be moved to another desk. She was moved. Nobody said why. I think she didnt want to sit by me anymore.

Then the other lady moved. I guess she didnt want to sit by me either. Both of them stopped talking to me. I had no idea what was going on.

We stopped eating lunch together because she never talked to me again. It was strange. After a while, we got an announcement that she was leaving the company. She didnt say where she was going. By then, it didnt matter.

Her hospitals were assigned to someone else. I got some. One day, before she left, she copied a bunch of company papers and put them in a binder and took them to her car before everyone else got to work. That was strange.

And then, she was gone. On the last day she worked for the company, she got together with some of the other people who worked in the office. She got together with some of the younger people. She didnt include me in the list of people she invited. It was fine. I went home to the dogs. I was confused, though.

Then, my boss had to hire someone to talk her place. He hired someone who was a friend of his wifes. They had worked together in another facility. She was young, closer to the age of my supervisor. Did I mention that I am old? I was at least twenty years older than my supervisor. I was old enough to be his mother.

We trained the new person like we trained everyone else. She sat with us and watched us do what we do. She learned to do it. She sat at my old desk. After a while, she was ready to have some cases so the rest of us didnt have so many.

By then, the man who had been doing our job started doing another job in the company. He moved his desk. We didnt know why he changed jobs. Maybe it was because he had been sick for a while. Another woman had been sick for what seemed like six months. She didnt do the same job we did. She did a different job.

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I had finished up with Arizona. It ended up being about 240 cases and it was fun. I got to talk to people in Arizona and hear about different people. It seemed like the people we were talking about had a lot of problems. It was very sad. I was glad to be able to help them. The people I was talking to acted like they didnt mind talking to me. I listened. They sounded nice.

Sometimes, I would have to work late because there was a two hour time difference between Dallas and Arizona. Sometimes the light would go out in my building and I would be sitting in the dark. I had to ask the people on the phone to hang on for a minute so that I could go and wave my arms and make the light go back on.

They thought that was pretty funny. I thought it was pretty funny. I felt like a windmill, trying to wave my arms to make the light go on. It was a movement activated light. The people I was talking to on the phone laughed when I got back on the phone. It was pretty funny.

I got it all done. We agreed that all of the people needed to be in the group home or the residential treatment center for a while longer. Sometimes, they would be ready to go soon. I entered all the information in the computer.

I had to get special access so that I could pull up Arizona cases. Sometimes, I talked to the lady in charge of Arizona that I was working for on this special assignment. She sounded very nice. She was happy that I was helping them. They were working on a special project and couldnt get it done in Arizona.

I didnt mind. I liked doing it. I kept track of what I did. My boss said, Save all the e-mails. This may come back and bite us. So, I did. He didnt really know what I was doing. He just knew that I was doing it. He didnt want to hear too much about it. I didnt care. It was fun to do.

By this time, I had been working for the company for over a year. I liked it. When you find out what I do, youll think I may have lost my mind. Maybe I have. If you find it, let me know. Youll know where to return it. Ill be the mindless goof walking around drooling with my hair messed up. You cant miss me.

I had worked there for over a year and things were going pretty well. Then another woman came to work for us and she was a friend of my bosss wife too. They had worked together. She knew the other young lady. They were friends.

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We trained her just like wed trained everyone else. She sat with different people every day for a week and then she was ready to take some hospitals. Then there were four of us again.

Now I am as happy as bugs in a bake shop when I am busy. When I dont have anything to do at work, it makes me nuts. I was always busy. There was plenty to do and I did it. I didnt talk to people in the office too much. I just sat at my desk and did my job. Turns out the lady who left started some rumors about me and it seemed like people who liked talking to me didnt like talking to me any more. I tried to ignore it.

One day my father called me and told me he was going to move. He lived in Tucson at the time. I asked him if he was going to move to Dallas. He said, No. If something happens to you, Ill be stuck. Im moving to Austin. My sister and her husband live here part of the year. So, he put his house on the market in Tucson.

The headquarters of the greatest company in the world is in Austin. So, I asked my boss if I could move to Austin. I told him why. He said he would ask his boss. I thought it would be nice to live closer to my father and sister.

My father would call me every Sunday and tell me about how many people had come to look at his house. I called him every Wednesday to see how he was doing. We had a phone date. Turns out, all sorts of people came to look at his house. He was always having open houses that his realtor arranged.

I didnt get an answer about whether or not I could move to Austin and it was time for me to sign a new lease at my apartment. I asked my boss again. He said, Why do you need to know? I told him I had to sign a lease at my apartment. So he called his boss and it turns out that she said I could move. I was pretty excited. It was around Christmas time.

My father was still having lots of people come and look at his house. He said that several people made an offer. We went to see him at Christmas, my sister, brother-in-law and me. The realtor had moved some things around in his house to make it look better to sell. It was the first time I didnt have Christmas dinner in over thirty years with my friends in Fort Worth whose children are my godchildren.

We cooked Christmas dinner, my sister and me. My brother-in-law brought wine. He is a wine connoisseur. He has thousands of bottles of wine, literally. Ive seen a bunch of them. He asked me to help him store them sometimes when I visited them in Austin. He keeps a record of them on his computer.

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We had Christmas dinner and ate turkey for two days. Then we ate turkey salad. We got to meet the realtor. She was a very nice lady. I liked her a lot.

Then it was time to fly back to Dallas. We had a good time. My father had turned ninety. He says hes going to live to be one hundred and six. He probably will.

I went back to the worlds greatest job at the worlds greatest company. Pretty soon, my father sold his house. He had had hundreds of lookers. It was getting to be February and things were moving along. I drove down to Austin to look for a place to live. My sister had sent me the names of some people to help me find a place to live. I met with one of them. I didnt know it but he wasnt very good. He showed me some places that were far away from where I was going to work.

My sister and brother-in-law had to go to a meeting the night I got to Austin so she got me some dinner while I was out looking at apartments all day. I had taken the day off from work so I would have time to look for a place to live. It was Friday. When I looked at the places he took me to, there were several places that I liked. My sister told me they were in areas of town that were not very nice.

Turns out, he was not very good at helping people find a place to live. He was in too much of a hurry. I was depressed. My sister woke up Saturday morning and she was busy. She made coffee for me and her husband and then he went to work. They are both very busy. She started talking to me about where I was going to live. She sounded like she was mad. She teased me about living in a hut. I thought Id done something wrong.

She took me around to several places to look. She seemed mad. I liked one of them. Then we went to another place that a friend of hers had talked about. I liked it and it was close to work. Then we went back to her house. Her husband came home and we didnt talk about looking for a place to live. It was Saturday.

We looked at a couple more places on Sunday and I decided I wanted to live at the place her friend had told her about. It was close to work. I was tired of looking at places. We went back to that apartment complex and I signed a lease. I told them that I would move in during March. I had to pay for part of February to reserve the apartment. I did.

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So, I had a place to live in Austin. It was smaller than my place in Irving so I knew I would have to get rid of some things. I drove back to my apartment. My dogs were glad to see me. They had been taken care of by a man who came to my apartment three times a day to walk them. It was very convenient.

I went back to work on Monday. I was busy. I had two jobs now, worker by day and packer by night. I would go home from work and pack boxes. I had to buy the boxes. I packed up a bunch of things that I didnt really need any more. Its amazing what a person collects in six or seven years. I had a friend come and move away some big things that I wasnt going to use anymore. I paid him cash to do it. He had a truck.

I had the Salvation Army come and pick up things like towels and sheets and books that I wasnt going to use anymore. They didnt like coming to the third floor. I didnt either but they came up there anyway. They took away a lot of stuff. I didnt know I had so much stuff I didnt need. I packed up the things I wanted to take with me and the things I wasnt going to need. I kept them separated.

I had made arrangements with a moving service to move me. Then I found out that a friend wasnt working and he could do the move. He wanted to have the money. He is a friend of my best friends. I knew him and liked him a lot. I figured it would be a good idea to use him and he had a helper. I cancelled the arrangements with the moving service.

Theres a lot to do when you move. I would work during the day and pack boxes in the evenings and on the weekend. I stayed busy. I still had a lot of cases to manage at work. And, all of a sudden, one of the ladies that hadnt been talking to me started talking to me again. I was surprised. It was very nice to talk to her. She told me why she moved and it didnt have anything to do with me. She told me why she stopped talking to me. We got to be friends again.

We still had meetings every Wednesday. My boss, my three co-workers and I would be on the phone. My boss would call in to a number and we would be talking to people from Austin, Lubbock and...I guess thats all. We would talk about the number of cases we had with my bosss boss and the medical director. I always had a lot of cases.

I didnt have too many problems with my cases so I didnt talk very much. I would listen while the other people talked about their cases. And then, the call would be over. We met every Wednesday unless my boss or his boss was sick. Then we would talk on Friday.

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If I went into my bosss office a little early for the call, he told me I was too early. But I started to notice that when the younger ladies went in that were friends of his wifes, he didnt tell them it was too early. They were closer to his age. I guess he related to them better. They knew his daughter. They would laugh and talk about what they had been doing the night before. It usually involved some sort of partying and drinking. I dont think Id tell my boss I drank too much. I dont drink too much but it seems pretty inappropriate.

They both had cell phones and would carry them with them wherever they went. They sent people text messages during the meeting. My boss didnt seem to mind. I concentrated on talking about my cases, even while other people were talking.

The two ladies were friends and ate lunch together. Sometimes I ate bullion or oatmeal. Especially when my head hurt which it usually does. They would talk to me about nutrition. I know all about nutrition. It was insulting. I didnt tell them that it hurt to chew. It was none of their business. People! Why do young people act like they know everything? Good grief.

Sometimes, I ate with the lady who had decided to be nice to me again. She started asking me to go to lunch with her. It was fun. I was just happy she was talking to me again. It was nice. She sort of told me but I didnt really understand. I was just happy she was talking to me. She was mad about some things, not related to me. She told me about them but I didnt tell anyone. I dont gossip. Hate drama...save it for your momma. Gossip is like verbal murder. I hate it.

Apparently, the lady who left really liked drama. She was like Sara Bernhardt. Everything was a really big deal. She talked meanly to other people and called me stupid. It hurt my feelings. I didnt tell anyone. I thought they would think I was stupid too. I guess she told a lot of people that I was stupid. She was mad. I dont know why.

My father called one day and said that he had sold his house. My sister started looking for a house for him in Austin. Things were starting to heat up. She went out to Tucson to help my father move. He had movers come and pack for him. My sister told the packers how he wanted things packed. My father supervised.

My sister has the kind of job where she can work on her computer from anywhere so she was able to get some work done too. She talks to people on the phone long distance all the time about work. She is very busy.

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I was busy too, packing up my apartment. I did it all by myself. There are a lot of things you have to do when you move. I had to change my phone service and my television service. I had to change my banking. There were all sorts of things to do. Everything had to be timed just right.

Work went on and people knew I was moving to Austin. They didnt know why. Maybe the lady who started liking me again liked me again because I was moving. I dont know.

We talked on breaks too. She didnt mind if I asked her a question. She had a very hard year. She was in a car wreck and one of her pets died. One of my pets died too. I felt sad for her. She loved her pets like I love mine. Her husband died in a car wreck when her children were young. It was very hard for her to raise three boys by herself. She was sad. I felt sad for her.

I was a worker by day and a packer by night. I had to buy a lot of boxes. I have a lot of books. Love to read. I was always reading something. We all love to read, all the people in my family. My brother doesnt read too much, I dont think. Hes busy with his family.

So the day finally came and I packed up the things in my desk. I took a day off to do the packing and a week off to do the unpacking when I got to Austin. Then, it was time to leave work and go off on my new adventure. I had a GPS so that I could get to the address of my new apartment. My boss showed me how to use it.

My boss didnt let me hug him when I left. Hes a good man. He usually sat in his office in the dark with his door closed and we had to knock to go in. I tried not to knock very often. I hugged the lady who was talking to me again. My boss shook my hand. I wanted to hug him but he didnt do that kind of thing. I think it made him nervous. He was very good to me.

The man who was supposed to help me move was supposed to come over at eight in the morning but he and his helper were running late. I was worried that we wouldnt get everything done. I had packed everything so I was waiting for him to get there. I had to be in Austin the next day by a certain time to pick up my apartment key so I didnt want to be late.

He finally got there with his helper. It was around noon. We went to rent a truck. I didnt think he got one that was big enough but I didnt say anything. They stopped and ate lunch while they were bringing the moving van to my apartment. They finally started loading at about one in the afternoon.

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They loaded up my things all the time until it was dinner time. I asked them what they wanted for dinner and went and got them something to eat. They ate dinner. I didnt want anything. They continued packing until way past dark. Then, the truck was full and the mover had to go and get his trailer.

His helper and I waited for him to get back and then we packed some more. We didnt get finished until four in the morning. We stopped because his trailer was full as a tick. There were still some things left in the apartment but he didnt have any more room. Lets go, he said. So we did. It took us until five in the morning to get to his house. I had to follow him. I didnt know where he lived.

We got to his house and I slept on the couch with my dogs. I looped their leashes around my shoe. The couch wasnt very comfortable but at least I had a place to rest. I was tired and sore. Id been up for twenty one hours and I was sore from helping them carry things up and down the stairs. He went to sleep in his bed and his helper went home.

I dont think I slept very much. I was in my clothes. I had my watch on and got up in the morning to take the dogs outside. They were confused. They smelled a bunch of new smells and didnt know where they were.

They knew they were with me. I took them outside and they went to the bathroom. Then we went back inside and I waited for the mover to wake up. I sat back down on the couch. It was the only place I could see to sit. I found the bathroom.

He finally woke up and said he needed to mow a couple of yards. I told him that I had to be in Austin by a certain time to get into my apartment. He said he would be done mowing. Then he came inside and said things had shifted in the van and there was room in there now.

He said we could go way back to my apartment and get some more things. I couldnt imagine walking up three flights of stairs one more time. I hurt all over. He agreed that he would go back and get the things in my apartment and turn in the apartment key after I moved. Then he went to mow lawns with his helper.

I got worried about getting to Austin on time. I finally walked over to where he was mowing the lawns. I took the dogs with me. He said he was almost done. It was getting late.

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Finally, he came in and took a shower and changed and we were ready to go. He gave me directions to the highway and I drove my car. He drove in the truck with the trailer attached to the back of it. His helper drove his truck so they would have a way to get back to Dallas. Everything was tied down real well with a rope on the trailer.

I drove in the car with the dogs. After a while, I didnt see the mover or the truck any more. He had the address of where we were going in Austin. I petted the dogs and thought about moving. I drove to Austin. Its a three hour trip. I listened to my music. I was tired but moving. I was anxious to get there. Whew!

And then, I was here. Now its here. Austin. My GPS got me directly to my new apartment complex. I hurt all over. I parked my car and got out. It was just at the right time. I was so exhausted, I could barely hear what the lady in the apartment leasing office said.

She showed me a bunch of papers and told me to sign my copy. When I came out of the office, the movers were there with my things. We drove back to my apartment and they started unloading things. It was like magic. I couldnt believe they found my apartment.

I called my sister. She came over. We went to get the mover and his helper something to eat. I didnt feel much like eating. I bought something anyway. We took it back to the mover and his helper and they ate dinner.

Moving is just hard work. Weve probably thoroughly established that I dont move well.

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Maybe it started when I listened to Cornel West and Tavis Smiley.

Tavis was interviewing the musical group Sweet Honey and the Rock. Just go listen to them. You wont believe how good they are. Then he had Cornel West on his show. Just listen to him.

He paints the most beautiful pictures with words. Lift every voice and sing, he reminds us. Hes talking about how important it is to vote. I voted. Lost, but voted. Cornel West is telling people how important it is to vote. He especially wants black folks to vote. Just listen to him. What he says is important. Nobody talks like Dr. West. He is a miracle.

Anyway, Im back at the greatest job in the world with more patients than a one-armed paper hangar. I will be busy. Lots of new people admitted over the weekend. It always happens on Monday. Got to love Monday or any other day of the week that ends with Y. They are all good. Isnt it good to be alive?

Anyway, the guys started unloading my truck and my sister brought me a door mat for my new abode. She had made arrangements for me to sleep in a hotel the first night I was in town. Her husband travels so much, he gets free nights at the Hyatt. So I got to stay at this beautiful hotel. She told me we had to hurry up and go check in to the hotel so I could guarantee my room.

So we left the guys unpacking and drove over to the hotel. I had to follow her because I was in a new city. We got over there and checked in. She had to tell the hotel people whose name the reservation was in so that I could check in. I got the key to my room.

When we were leaving the hotel, my sister walked me to my car to tell me how to get back to my apartment. I started to cry and told my sister I couldnt believe she had pulled all of this off. My father was in his house and she had helped him move. We were all together. I think she was embarrassed because she hurried off. I wasnt embarrassed.

I drove back to my apartment and what do you know, I found it. The guys were still unloading my apartment. My sister had told them that the kitchen table and couch could go back to Dallas with them. I was getting a table from my father and she was going to buy me a new couch.

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So they took things back with them. They must have accidentally left some other boxes on the truck because I am missing a box of my favorite things and some pictures that were in a big box.

It was after 11:00 PM when they finished the unloading. They had to carry boxes up one flight of stairs. Better than three. They had to carry other things too. By this time, I was very tired.

The trailer was empty and I walked into the van and it was empty. The movers told me everything was in the abode. I paid them and they said they had to drive to the airport to drop off the van. The helper had followed the moving van in the movers truck so that they would have a way to get back to Dallas.

He agreed to go by my apartment and pick up anything we had left behind. He said he would take it to my friends house and I could pick it up there. He figured Id be back to visit. He agreed to turn in my apartment key.

They left around midnight and I went to my apartment and packed some things for my trip to the hotel. I got the pups. They were going with me to the hotel. The hotel allowed dogs.

We got to the hotel. They did their pup business. We walked into the hotel. It was really dark. We went up to the room on the elevator. The pups had never been on an elevator before. And then, we were in the room. I put the pups on the bed after they sniffed out the surroundings. I took a shower. I fell into bed.

I think I got up early to take the dogs out and then we went back to the room. The next thing I knew it was 2:00 PM. I told you I was tired. I hadnt slept in two days. And hurt, I was sore all over. I could hardly move. I called my sister and she said we were taking my father to dinner at 6:00 PM. I went back to my apartment for a little while and then I went back to the hotel. I think I told them Id meet them at the hotel. I wanted to be sure I knew the way.

I walked into my abode and made the bed. It was about all I had the starch to do. Then I went back to the hotel. I took the dogs back to the apartment. I fed them and put them in their kennel. I went back to the hotel to meet the relatives for dinner. I didnt have any clothes unpacked so I was still in my jeans. My sister, brother-in-law and father picked me up at the hotel. I was happy to see everybody.

My father had a cane. My sister had gotten it for him in New York. It helped him walk better. He talked all about his trip from Tucson and how he made it through the airport with my sister. He told me about

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how he got maneuvered around in the Dallas airport. He told me about how his house was unpacked and set up. My sister had helped him.

We got to the restaurant. It was a nice restaurant but I had on jeans. Everybody else was dressed up. My sister said it was okay but I dont know. We had a nice dinner and then they took me back to the hotel. I had decided to stay another night.

I woke up and checked out of the hotel. I got back to my abode and realized Id left some things at the hotel. I had to go back and get them.

Dont you just hate it when you forget stuff?

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Maybe it started when I was thinking about Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and Paul Robeson.

They were famous African American authors back in the twenties and thirties. They had to go to Europe to practice their writing because there was no market for their books in America. Isnt that awful? Back in the day, I guess no one thought African Americans could write books. Ha! Write books they did, good ones. Ive read them. Read Having Our Say by the Delaney sisters. Youll learn.

Anyway, it was a period of time known as the Harlem Renaissance. Thats when black folks would sing and dance and write books. They could only do it in Harlem. Then they decided to go to Paris. I guess they dont mind black folks too much in France. Like Sam Cooke says, Some day things gonna change.

Eleanor Roosevelt invited Marian Anderson to sing for the Daughters of the American Revolution. She was an African American singer. The DAR wouldnt let her sing for them because she was black.

Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR. She had been in it through her family for a thousand years. Good for her. Marian Anderson ended up singing on the steps in Washington, D.C. It was beautiful. Ive always admired that about Eleanor Roosevelt. Im just sick that I never got to meet her. I have her picture on my desk at work. Ive carried that picture around for thirty years.

Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, and Billie Holliday. Ill never think of all of them but they sure could sing. They were pioneers. And, back in the day, no one wanted to let them sing. A shame! We should be embarrassed.

I went back and got my things at the hotel. They had them ready for me. Housekeeping had found the things. What a relief! I had been in a panic.

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It was Monday. I took the dogs out to do their dog business. Then I went back in and looked at my new abode. It was a mess of boxes and furniture. I couldnt figure out where to start so I went and lay down. I was waiting for the TV people to come and hook up my service.

The man from AT&T came. He was a nice young man with two small children. I had two TVs. He hooked up the one in the bedroom and the one in the den. He did a very good job.

He connected my computer to my TV service so that I could get on the internet from my desktop and laptop computers. One stop shopping. He finished and I couldnt figure out anything to do and I was tired so I watched TV.

I think I spent most of the week watching TV. I had the week off from work to get unpacked. I was just so tired. The only thing that was organized in my apartment was my bed and my TV. It seemed like the thing to do. I could not move around very well because of all the boxes.

I tried to unpack some things. I ate food that my sister had put in the refrigerator. She bought me some macaroni and cheese and some New England clam chowder. My favorites. I could eat macaroni and cheese everyday and not get bored.

I put my new bedspread on my bed. My sister gave it to me for Christmas. It was very nice. I couldnt figure out much to do because things were such a mess. I tried to unpack. I think I just ended moving stuff around. My sister came over on the weekend and helped me go through my clothes. I had a lot of clothes. I never throw anything away.

She took a bunch of my clothes to the Dana Center where they have a program for the homeless in Texas. Her husband is the Executive Director. We also went through my shoes and she took some of my shoes that Id gotten after my mother died. She took them to the Dana Center too. We went through shoes and clothes and then we put them in her car.

We also went through T-shirts. I had a bunch of them. I love T-shirts. We went through them and picked some out to give away. I think I only had three or four left. It was okay. I saved my Forrest Gump t-shirt. Its my favorite.

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We loaded up all the things in her car and she thought we had made good progress. She was going to take all of the clothes and shoes to the Dana Center. She told me what I should do next. Good thing. I couldnt figure out what to do so its a good thing she knew what to do.

She told me that people at the Dana Center just loved the shoes. I have narrow feet. They went through the shoes and the clothes. They even picked out some of the dresses and t-shirts.

They were nice things. I was glad for them to have them. I didnt have enough feet to wear all of the shoes. There were boxes of them. What the people didnt want, they gave to the homeless program. There was a lot of stuff that went to the homeless people. I was glad.

Pretty soon it was Monday and time for me to go back to work. I went to the office in Austin. My sister and brother-in-law showed me where the building was. They gave me directions about how to get there. And I had my GPS.

I found it and we had a parking garage. Neat! We got to park in covered parking and it didnt cost anything. I always park on the 4th floor. Then I went to the 8th floor to our offices. I had to get a badge from the receptionist so that I could get into my office space.

I got my badge. I found my desk. I met everybody. Someone had baked a cake. They made a sign for me that said, Have a nice day. It was a joke. They knew I hate that expression. I dont think people should tell me what kind of day to have. Now I dont mind it so much. It was pretty funny.

I was scared. I was in a new place with new people and didnt know what to do. I logged on to my computer. I got everything set up. One of the guys asked me if I wanted to smoke with him. I did. He is really nice. We talked and I told him about the Dallas office. He was curious about what our boss looked like. I enjoyed going outside with him.

I did my work and drove home. My dogs were ready to go outside. I took them out and fed them their supper. They are always happy to eat. The bigger one always wants to eat what the smaller one has to eat. I always give them an even amount. They fuss at each other about the food. The bigger one has gotten better about that. She finishes her own food first.

Theres a snow cone stand on the way home from work. I thought it would be fun to have a snow cone. So I got one...a large grape. It was so good. Especially after the long day I had. It is hard work. I was

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usually so tired by the time I got home that I couldnt manage to do much except feed the dogs and watch NCIS on the TV.

My sister came back over the next Saturday and we went through more stuff. She brought a sandwich. It was good. She took some more things away with her and took it to the Dana Center. She said they liked it all. She said I was a big hit with everyone. She said she told them the things came from me.

She gave me directions to her house that she shares with her husband. My father was going to meet us over there for dinner the next day. They have a nice house. I always love to go over to her house. She and her husband are very busy so we had to leave early so that they could do homework. He also is a math professor at UT. Hes really smart. They both are.

My sister gave me directions to my fathers house so I could go and visit him. It was so strange to all be in the same city. Good strange but strange.

We left in plenty of time so they could do their homework. It was a very good meal. My sister makes a corn dish and a carrot dish that are to die for. She really sticks her foot in it. I could eat about a gallon of the corn.

She didnt serve them at the same meal. I met the man who helped my sister find my fathers house. My sisters husband was practicing the manly art of Texas barbeque. We had just an excellent dinner. We had chicken wings. I could eat about a million of those. Gosh they are good. You can fry them, barbecue them, bake them or broil them. Im all in. And not spicy. Cant do spicy.

So everyday I drove to work and everyday I drove home and got a snow cone.

I laid low. I didnt much talk to anyone but my smoking pal. And what a pal he is. I wish I was thirty years younger. Oh my goodness. Hes handsome and about the nicest person youd ever want to meet.

He has a four year old boy. Hes not married to the mother. Shes nuts. I have permission, no an invitation, to smack her in the back of the head. She beats him up, in front of the child.

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Women dont need to be hitting men. Its a good way to get hurt. Why, if he wasnt as nice as he is, shed be buried in the backyard. I cant believe she beats him up. I was officially mad when I heard about that. He had scratches. Shes on official time out because of that. No more coming in his house.

Nobody likes to get hit.

May be it started when I was driving to work and listening to my favorite station. They were playing gospel music.

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It put me in the mind of Conversations with God. Its about the Human Genome Project. It was written by a mathematician and scientist. He was working on this project from 1992 until 2000. The project was supposed to unravel one human gene. It took a long time.

When they finished, it was quite a production. He writes about it in his book. He said it was very complex, the gene. If you were to try to write down all the chemical components in the gene, it would take thirty six years, without a break. It would take a long time to read it. If it were written down longhand and bound in a book, the book would be as wide as the Washington Monument is tall...over two hundred feet. I bet it would be hard to lift.

Can you imagine a book that big! Wow! And we have millions of genes in our bodies. That would be a lot of books. When President Clinton announced the findings of the project, it was said, We have glimpsed the mind of God.

Now I dont know about people who say we got here as the result of the accidental collision of particles in space. Ive seen lots of accidental collisions. Theyre called wrecks. Ive never seen a wreck produce little cars like planets. I just see damaged cars and hurt people. So I have a problem with the wreck theory.

I have a problem with people who say they dont believe in God. How in the world do we have hope without God? There are all sorts of ways of worshipping God and we do argue about whose God is right.

I dont think its a matter of right. I think we all have different ways of worshipping and God can take any form. We should stop fighting about it. Were supposed to be here to love each other and compliment each others cooking. Pretty simple.

And were here to be nice to each other and love each other. Thats what God wants...whichever God you pray to. I pray every day. I pray for my father, sister and brother-in-law, his mother and brother, my brother and his children and my sisters children and their families. I pray to do right. I thank God for every day.

Im sticking to the glimpsed the mind of God theory. It makes sense to me. It gives me comfort and hope. When I hear music, I think about God. How can we write such beautiful music? God. We have electricity so I can listen to gospel music on the radio. Im so glad to have my radio at work. It reminds me that theres God. Its not too loud. I asked.

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Anyway, I listen to the radio every day and love the station. Ill probably keep listening to it. Sometimes I cant hear it because Im talking on the phone. But most of the morning I can hear it.

Im going to talk to the pals. The great American novel will be put on pause. Its almost time to start working.

The mind of God. Imagine it. We cant even imagine the greatness. It is outside of our understanding. We have got to stop killing each other. We kill each other over whose God is right. We have got to stop.

Were all right. Give it a rest.

Maybe it started the day I realized I couldnt eat a meal without spilling something on my clothes.

My face has been numb from the nose down for nearly thirty years. It feels like I have novocain from the dentist all the time. Its very distracting. I also dont make saliva because something happened to my salivary glands. I have to drink something all the time.

Its residue from the surgery. We knew it might happen. I got the feeling back in my forehead but not the rest of my face. Other residue includes constant headaches. Every day I have a headache. Sometimes its 4/10 and sometimes its 10/10. On the days when its really bad, I have to stay home with the lights out. I try to not stay home from work very often. 8/10 is almost blinding but I work anyway.

My supervisor knows I have headaches. I told her degenerative arthritis had set in in the joints of my face. She asked me what had happened. I told her I had surgery and she wanted to know what happened. I didnt tell her much. I thought it would help her have a better understanding of how to manage me. I think she forgot. I try to forget.

Ive gotten so used to it that sometimes I dont even think about it. I have to ask myself when I hear myself get impatient with people if my head hurts. Usually it does. I take aspirin but it doesnt help. Only opiates would help.

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I cant take opiates and work. I would be constantly falling asleep. I have to have a job and I like my job. So I trudge along. Its hard sometimes. I dont tell anybody. Well, my smoking pal knows but he doesnt tell anybody anything. He would never talk about my business and I would never talk about his.

Its so nice to have a pal at work. A lot of the people at work are really nice. I really like my new supervisor, her supervisor and her supervisor. They are amazing women. I like the changes they are making. Its all good and fun to do.

The phones will start ringing here in a minute with people calling me for our appointments. More heartache and sorrow...its so hard to listen to sometimes. The callers want to dwell on the problems but I want them to move along. I only have so much time and a lot of cases to review.

At one place where I review, they can never find anything. They can never find the nursing note, the group note or the individual note. Its very frustrating. Usually one of the doctors doesnt even come in until after then end of work to tell me what the patients are doing. We have to have current notes to review. The music is not bad when Im not on hold. Dont you just love how music makes you feel? I like all kinds of music. This station plays classical music. Pachebels Canon is my favorite. Listen to it. Its beautiful. It will touch your soul. You can feel it in your body.

Oh go try it and see. Sway to it a little. Youll see what I mean.

It may have started the night I was worrying about my father.

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He is ninety-one. He doesnt drive at night. I tried for two hours to reach him by phone and couldnt. So, fearing the worst, I drove over there. I had my flashlight and a hammer in case I had to break a glass. He wont give me a key.

I rang the front doorbell and no one answered so I went around to the garage. His car was in the garage. Then, as Im looking at a window to break, I see him wandering around. He wanted to know what I was doing there. I couldnt reach you. Well, if you think Im going to call you or your sister any time I go out, Im not. You dont need to be worried. I was so relieved and he was confused about what was going on. He didnt act like he wanted me to stay.

So, I hugged him and left. Itd help if Id get a key. I drove home and went into the abode. I fell into bed. Pretty soon he called me and asked me if Id gotten home okay. I told him I had. We said goodnight. I called him this morning to ask if he was still mad. He said he didnt know what the rules are and promptly changed the subject.

I guess he thinks hes grown and doesnt need people checking on him. I know he loves his independence. Always has. But it baffles me that he doesnt think people worry about him.

Especially me. Ive elevated worrying to an art form. I would be a good Jewish mother.

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It could have started when I was driving to work one morning and a bird made a deposit on my windshield.

Id been thinking about psychosis and there it was. I felt like Wheezer in Steel Magnolias. Oh, go see the movie. This is not a major novel designed to analyze movies. Youll be glad you did.

Then I got to work and noticed that I forgot my FLOTUS magnet...First Lady of the United States. Didnt want to forget that. I swear. This book writing is a major distraction. Ive been writing since 4 AM when

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God woke me up. Yes, God. I said it. Did you want to pick a fight about it? Lets fight about God like weve been doing for thousands of years. Heavens.

Tavis Smiley is talking about why young black males underachieve in school and end up in prison. Its an epidemic. Black males make up twelve percent of the general population and forty percent of the prison population. We have just about made them obsolete. Except in sports...they are not obsolete in sports. But theyre talking about education. The rate of unemployment of the black male is twice what it is for other groups. Isnt that a shame! On the radio, Tavis is connecting it to education.

Sometimes they dont do very well in urban schools. Course part of that is related to the fact that we have abandoned urban schools in favor of magnet and charter schools. I think there is one where I work. One out of one hundred and forty people! Youre more likely to see a polar bear than you are to see a black male. For real! I dont think anyone does it on purpose. I think they dont do anything about it on purpose. They overlook it.

Anyway, Cornel West is on again playing those sweet melodies he plays with words. I swear, the man can paint the most beautiful picture in the world, just with words. He is amazing to behold. Oh, get over his hair. Stop it. Its the content of our character. Thats what its about.

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Maybe it started the day I just jumped out of bed and couldnt wait to write.

It is so weird. I woke up at 2:00 AM and wrote for hours. The great American novel is just jumping out of me. I can hardly hold a thought in my head.

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Now Oh, for joy. The neurologist says I have Parkinsons disease. Ive instructed all the people who know me to just call me twitch or shakes.

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