1975

What a great year. I was 23 years old. I was in love with a man who loved me. We were married in June. A June wedding. Oh, isn't that wonderful. The only thing wrong with that was the fact that I had already had my church wedding (to marry the man I didn't even want to marry when I was 18) , so I couldn't marry my Catholic husband in our shared church. I hated my church for a good 17 years over this.

But we had a big wedding, there was no other way with this man and his many friends and big family. He had groomsmen and I had bridesmaids, we had gowns and tuxes, cakes, and an open bar - for a long time. It was a nice wedding. After we left the reception, we went to a honeymoon suite and sat on the bed and tore open the cards and counted the gift money to see if we could afford the honeymoon we had planned. We left the next morning in our Jeep for a three week scuba diving trip in the Florida Keys. It was just the way we wanted it. It was great fun.

We would drink a bit at night, but you cannot drink a lot and scuba dive. It is much too technical of a sport to be hungover. I was already looking forward to ski season because it was much more to my tastes - I could drink like mad and still ski reasonably well. In fact, my skiing improved as my intake of alcohol increased. (And after I got sober, I had to give it up entirely.)

After three weeks, we came back to Chicago having spent every last cent. In fact, we had to run the last couple of toll gates driving back through Chicago because we didn't even have any change left! We both had jobs to return to and married life to start. We found a nice little townhouse to rent.

In the midst of this joy, I phoned my dad one day just after we got home from our honeymoon and was horrified to realize that he was drunk! After 10 years of sobriety, my father was drunk. And he never got sober again. He lived until 1993 and he never got sober again. He may be my greatest teacher.

By my 24th birthday, I had just learned that I was pregnant. Here I sit, 34 years later, and I have tears of joy in my eyes just to think about learning that I was pregnant with my son. Well, I didn't know it was my son then. I just knew that I was married to a man I loved and he loved me. I was pregnant with his child. We both wanted a child. We had wanted for me to get pregnant. I had always wondered what it would be like to get this news from a doctor and actually be happy! I don't think I ever thought I would be so fortunate and yet here I was.

And I will be eternally grateful that God blessed me with the revulsion for alcohol during my pregnancies; thereby saving my children from terrible afflictions caused by my drinking.

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You know, I am actually enjoying writing these for the most part. There are a number of things I have wished I could write about instead in the last week or so. I have particularly wanted to acknowledge awards so kindly given to me by Ed G., Pammie, and Annette. I need to properly write about that, but it needs to probably wait until I am done with this series.... thanks!

1974

There is only one thing I really remember from 1974. I am sure other things happened. But who cares?

On October 22, I met the man I loved. The man I would marry. The man who is the father of my children. The grandfather of my grandchildren. I think it is safe to say, 35 years later, the "love of my life".

I met him after a football game he was playing. A huge group met at a bar for a drink. It was not my kind of bar and it was not my kind of group. A friend from work thought I ought to meet a man who happened to be the roommate of the man I was destined to love. I didn't like the roommate one little bit. But when I saw the tall good looking one smile, oh, I felt like cupid shot me through the heart. I hope you can forgive me for being so sentimental. It was so powerful. You have heard a lot of my stories, but you must admit you have not heard one like this. Oh, this was the real deal.

He also drank like a fish, but there was something different about the way he drank. He had tons of friends, unlike me. He had a close family, unlike me. He was a real stand-up guy, he was quiet and unassuming. He was big and strong, but I not once saw him get into a fight. Everyone loved him. He was so funny. He had gone to college on a football scholarship. He was a skier and a scuba diver. He taught me how to do those things. So, we drank, but then we got to bed because we had to get up early to get up to the ski slopes or to the dive boat or whatever we were doing - and we were ALWAYS doing something. Oh, we had such fun!

His friends loved me. His family loved me. My few friends loved him. My family was skeptical about him, but I really didn't care because it wasn't like I was spending a lot of time with my family. I felt like I belonged with his family and it was a strong family.

I felt like all my problems were a thing of the past. You know that I was wrong, but it was fun to believe this for a while....

1973

The year I would first go to AA. I knew almost from my first drink (when I was 14) that I was an alcoholic. But it was really getting to be a problem when I was 21.

I was going to bars, quite frequently. I loved, loved, loved bars. The seedier the better. Sometimes I would go out with friends and meet them at bars they liked. I couldn't get the concept of getting all dressed up to drink. One time, in one of these bars, I walked into the women's restroom and saw a couple of young women touching up their fingernail polish at the sink - and I KNEW I was in the wrong place!

I liked redneck bars and old man bars. I liked bars with great old music on the juke box - like "For the Good Times" by Ray Price. (I just found a version by Al Green that I love) I still had my job and I liked it. They liked me to and it was a good thing, because I had a little bit of a problem with attendance. When I was there I was great, but I had a problem getting there.

Because I was an alcoholic, once I took alcohol into my body, I had no idea what was going to happen to me. It might be that I would have five or six beers at home and go to bed. I would get up in the morning, feel great and go to work. I might drink the six beers and decide I really need to go to the bar. Once at the bar, I might run into a great friend and we might drink shots and stay there until closing - which I believe was 4 a.m. Or I might decide to go home with someone. Or I might pass out in the bar, or in my car. I might not be able to get to work the next day.

On Good Friday of 1973, I went to the bar with my best friend (this was almost always a recipe for disaster, she was an alcoholic just like me). We went to the old man bar in my old town. I loved that bar. She insisted we go to the young man's bar down the street. So we did. We got quite drunk. She found a ride home with someone else. At about 2 a.m., I smelled something burning, turned around and found that it was my hip length hair! I dipped it in my beer. And noticed that a group of men were laughing - they had set my hair on fire. I confronted them and found that their ringleader needed a "good talking to." Luckily not much of it actually burned. But does this sound like the beginning of a romance to you? No? Well, I guess it did to me.

I came out of the blackout sometime on Saturday afternoon driving his porsche across the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He was passed out in the passenger seat. After a little trip to the east coast, I called in sick to work on Monday and flew back to Chicago. We had a romance for a few months. He had a great job and was very very handsome. He was a worse drunk than me, and I even found it scary!

By July, I was in an AA meeting because I kept doing things that scared me and got me into trouble.

But in AA, I was greeted by people who had truly been to the depths of despair, and I knew I hadn't. I know I was welcomed warmly. I know that I was invited to peoples' homes. I know that I even went on a 12 step call! (I was, after all, sober more than a day!) I think I stuck around for a weekend. There was a man who told me what I probably wanted to hear and I hung on his words for the next 11 years. 1. You are too young. 2. You have not hit bottom.

But I left AA feeling so hopeless. I knew I had a terrible problem, but I didn't know what to do about it. So, I just drank.

I think it was in 1973 that I decided I needed to make more money, so I got a job at the Post Office of all places. I lasted 9 months. I was a window clerk and it was truly a horrible job. Whenever someone talks about "going postal" I really understand. I am unclear about exactly when this 9 months was. I know that when I started looking for another job and someone called my old boss for a reference, he hopped in his car, drove to the Post Office, lined up at my window and asked me if I wanted my old job back - with a hefty raise! Heck Yes!!!

By the end of 1973, I was 22 years old. I loved being 22. I had long straight hair still. I had a beautiful wardrobe - and some debt from it. I remember when that Porsche guy saw my closet, he asked me if my ex-husband was a millionaire! I had a pretty apartment with a lot of my original art hanging in it. There were some good things about this time, but what I remember most are the mornings - with the fear and remorse. What a way to spend your youth!

1972

The year I would turn 21. The age of majority. The age of drinking in bars. Oh, how I loved drinking in bars. Second to AA meetings, bars might have been my most natural habitat.

But I didn't turn 21 until December. My birthday is December 15 (coming right up, eh?) so for most of the year, my birth year doesn't seem to add up right until the last 16 days of the year...

In 1972 I got a decent job by some weird twist of a great economy and a lack of people to fill jobs. I had absolutely no skills. I lied and said I could type 30 wpm. Unfortunately my lie became evident when they had me sit down at an IBM Selectric to perform a typing test! I typed 11 wpm, with too many errors to count, and still they hired me. I loved that job. They loved me. I got raises and actually made a living wage.

Can you see what is coming? I got a teensy bit of gumption and decided I really didn't want to be married to a pot smoking, drug dealing, miserly postal worker anymore. I had my brand new 1973 Datsun hatchback, and my pretty apartment, and a credit card for a women's clothing store so that I could purchase the clothing I needed for my office job. I was about to be 21 so I could get my own booze, and besides, I could drive to Wisconsin (where the drinking age was 18) to drink in bars whenever I wanted! Who needed a husband? Not me!

My father by this time had remarried and moved to Brazil! And back in those days, it took 6 weeks to get a letter to him and 6 weeks to get one back. So if I needed money, I wasn't getting it from Daddio. I was truly on my own.

It was absolutely thrilling.

These are the great moments from my past that I later would have an insistent yearning to recapture. The bars were new to me. I was new to the bars. It was true love. Oh, I screwed up plenty, but for the most part, I really had a lot of fun.

On the eve of my 21st birthday, my best friend and I sat on the steps of the bar on a snowy Chicago December evening and waited for midnight to come. At midnight we walked into the bar. I ordered a beer and the barkeep asked me for ID. I asked him what time it was. He said it was exactly midnight.... We screamed and showed him my driver's license. That bar hadn't seen a young woman celebrating her 21st birthday probably ever - so the whole bar joined in the party. They let me tend bar. They let me dance on the bar (to Holly Jolly Christmas by Burl Ives), they "let" me do all kinds of things and there are probably old men in nursing homes today who fondly remember that night... I woke the next morning to the sound of roosters crowing, and when you live in Chicago, you know something has gone extremely wrong when you wake to roosters. Hungover as I was, I got to work anyway. And had another date that night - in another bar.

If it were 2009 instead of 1972, people would be trying to get me into "rehab" or something, but I thank God it was a different time and place and I had the luxury of plumbing the depths of my own bottom, because I was nowhere near it!

1971

I don't know why I am doing this. It seems such a waste of precious time.

So, in 1971, my mom died.

I got drunk.

I got drunk some more.

I felt guilty.

And then I drank some more.

1970

I did it! I graduated high school! I know that others think this is just a ho-hum accomplishment, but this may have been the hugest thing I ever accomplished in my life. Ever. It was 1970, so when the young man held out his hand to help me down the stairs from the stage at the graduation ceremony, I turned my nose up at him and walked down the stairs on my own capable womanly feet, ensconced in great huge platform shoes. My hair by this time was down far past my waist, and I was feeling quite free!

I had a scary experience with an illegal substance that summer and decided that I didn't care to use drugs anymore. So I stopped. And that truly is the end of that story.

I had a job in town that I could walk to. I enjoyed it and the people I worked with. I don't remember there being any real problems on the horizon. Until....

Boyfriend started applying pressure for us to get married. You may have noticed that in my descriptions of him, I have not once said how I felt about him. I certainly didn't love him. I wasn't physically attracted to him. After he decided not to go to a real university and instead to work for the post office and go to community college at nights, and devote most of his energy to selling pot, I didn't really respect him. So, one might ask - why the hell did I marry him? I have certainly asked myself that question, and I have had to write about this for the Catholic church in an effort to have this abomination annulled, and I just have to say that I was full of fear and was incredibly self-centered and dishonest.

In September we were married. We had a beautiful little church wedding, with a little reception to follow at the country club. I had a beautiful little wedding gown - it was a real gown, with beads and veil and all, just a mini-mini... it was hot! We moved to a little one-bedroom apartment in a northern suburb. I left the job I liked and got a job I was fired from in a short time.

After a while, I fell in love for real. With a lasting love. Beer. Oh, I never fell out of love with Beer. I stayed at home in the day time and drank beer. The mister worked in the daytime and went to school and then had a very busy schedule selling pot. I would want to go out with him, and ended up spending a lot of time sitting in parked cars outside of places he didn't want me to go into. Oh yeah, those were the days.

In November of 1970, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. She had a kidney removed and for a minute we thought that was going to stop the cancer. I think by Christmas we knew it was going to be her last. She was 56 years old and had just gotten her youngest child (of five) out of the house... after over 30 years of raising children. To say that she was angry would be an understatement. My father was sober, so was she. They had a beautiful home, she had a job she loved, everything was good for almost the first time in her life - and she was dying of cancer. I dealt with my mother's emotions the best way I knew at the time - I stayed as far away from her as I could. I can never make direct amends for the harm I caused her by my selfishness, but I got to make a kind-of, sort-of indirect amends when I could be with my dad when he was dying because I was sober.... but I digress.

I was 19 but felt like I was about 89. I think I am younger now than I was then. Thank God.

1969

This was the year I should have graduated from high school. The rest of my class graduated. But it wasn't like it was heartbreaking to watch my friends graduate, my friends were all gone, they had dropped out. I was stuck in school with a bunch of people I didn't know or care about. I was laser focused on my goal of graduating in 1970.

I found the perfect recipe to get me through my days. I would get Ripple (69¢ a bottle) wine by the case and hide it in the attic, each day I would take out a bottle, wrap it in a paper bag and put it in my purse. I would drink it all day long at school. I really don't know why I wanted to drink a skid row bum's drink while living in a nice suburban home and attending a nice suburban high school. Maybe it felt more authentic to my state of mind? A cheap bottle of wine, wrapped with a paper bag. And I thought it was funny.

My prince charming was morphing into something not so charming. I have never really gone back and thought much about this relationship because it is such ancient history. As I wrote yesterday about him not going to college when he was supposed to, it occurred to me that he was probably going to resent me for that. I think he did resent me for that. I think he showed early signs of being a total control freak when he directed my life out of the gutter, but I was so happy to have someone steer me out of the gutter that I wasn't looking for signs of a control freak.

By the end of 1969, I was almost done with high school. I had been attending night school, day school, summer school, and had compacted 4 years of school into 2 years of time. I was wearing an engagement ring, I think we had some vague plan to marry after I graduated. He was working at the post office by day, and attending community college sometimes at night. But his real job by this time was a very lucrative marijuana business. It kept him in enough money and pot so that he was an overweight, slovenly man.

I was very depressed, but had found a way to maintenance drink my way through life. I learned that I could keep a steady flow of alcohol into my body all day long and not appear drunk. It would help me to be able to cope with the demands of life. I know that occasionally I would get "drunk," but for the most part, I just drank every day.

I think of this as a time so dark I can barely remember it.

1968

There is no way to describe 1968 to someone who wasn't there. To be 16 years old and already freaked out in 1968 was a formative experience.

I stopped going to school. I would leave the house in the morning so that my parents thought I was going to school, and then come back home after they left for work, and drink all day, many times with lots of friends. (It wasn't as difficult to obtain alcohol under-age as it probably is now - I always had friends who could get it for me.) By April, my parents were told that if I missed one more day of school I would be expelled, so they allowed me to drop out. I should have been a junior in high school. I don't believe I had any credits at all. I had lost all of my freshman year due to the move from a Catholic to a public school, I dropped out in my sophomore year due to pregnancy, and now I was dropping out in my junior year.

Not only did my life seem hopeless, but frankly the world seemed hopeless. The chaos was so frightening. In April, Martin Luther King was killed. This is in the history books and everyone is keenly aware of this today. But I think what has been forgotten is the fact that in response to the killing, there was rioting, looting, and torching of cities. Cities were burning. At this time, I left Chicago to visit my brother in Ohio, and flew over the midwest... from the air it was horrifying to see the smoke rising from the midwestern cities of the United States of America. (I found the above photo in a publication from the UK.)

It was shortly after this that I attempted suicide for the first time. My parents sent me to stay with my sister in Boston and to be seen by a psychiatrist there. He diagnosed depression - what a brilliant diagnostician! And prescribed antidepressants. This was 1968 and there were no fancy schmancy SSRIs, I was started on a tricyclic, which caused me to sleep for 3 weeks. At the end of 3 weeks, I lied and said I felt much better and could I please go home? While I was gone, my parents had found an all-girls Catholic boarding school for me in Wisconsin - which I absolutely refused to go to. The psychiatrist agreed that it would be futile.... he said there would be boys in town and I would find a way to them even if I had to climb over walls. Nice. So, I was sent home with a bottle of pills.

A week or so later Robert Kennedy was killed.

It might sound like these killings were political or external issues, but to a 16 year old depressed girl, they were terrifying.

And another week or so later, I met a young man at a club I was fortunate enough to attend weekly in those days. Honestly, I have no idea why there was a teen club with world class live music at an affordable price - that you could stand and dance to! What? It seems so crazy now, but it was real. I saw some really great live music there. Anyway, I met a young man who had just graduated from high school and was going away to Southern Illinois University in the fall. He was an award winning student. He was a poetry writer. He was a speaker of foreign languages. He thought I was pretty cute, but thought I needed to make some major changes in my life. Gosh, writing this, I can maybe see why he seemed like a good guy....

He insisted that I knock off the drinking - at least when I wasn't with him. He insisted that I knock off a lot of the drug usage - at least when I wasn't with him. He insisted that I go back to school, which for me, was basically starting high school when I should have been starting my senior year. He insisted on a lot. And for some reason, I complied with a lot of this.

The really sad thing is? He "fell in love" with me and on the night before he was to leave for college, he decided he couldn't leave me and didn't go. That made me sick then, it makes me sick now. What a horrible, horrible mistake. Where were the adults? Why didn't his parents MAKE him go? This brilliant kid got a job at the post office and went to school at night at a community college.... oh good grief!

I did clean up quite a bit, with the help of this young man. In the fall, I went back to school. I signed up for every credit I could get. I signed up for night school - I took things like sewing and typing classes for easy credits, anything to get me to my goal, which was to graduate in 1970, only one year later than I should have - which was a lofty, lofty goal.

I have a photograph from Christmas of 1968. I am sitting by the Christmas tree with my mother and father. I look healthy and happy. I am certain my parents were relieved that I was back in school and so focused on my goal of graduating. I think they didn't really like this new boyfriend of mine, but weren't going to complain because he seemed to have a good effect on my life. And my life had been in dire need of good effect. Things were looking pretty good right then.....

1967

The year started with me, a 5'7", 100 lb. pregnant girl, just turned 15 years old. I was so sick, I could barely function. My mother overheard a telephone conversation between me and my boyfriend and discovered that I was pregnant. She sent me to the doctor who confirmed what we already knew. The thing that amazes me as I look back on this is that there was no adult who said, "OK Mary, this is the deal, here is what is going to happen, this is the plan..." So I just kept getting bigger and bigger and going to school and having no idea how I was going to have a baby. My mother wouldn't even tell my father I was pregnant, fearing he might drink again or have a heart attack or something.

Finally, I went to see a priest and asked him what he thought I should do. He called my parents and talked to them. By this time I was 5 months pregnant and showing - heck, there was nowhere for that baby to hide! The priest got my parents to take action and they got me into a home for unwed mothers. Once again, for those readers more than a couple of years younger than I am, this probably sounds like something from a 19th century novel. But there were such things. And thank God. And thank God I got to go to one.

It was at 721 N. LaSalle in downtown Chicago. I was on the floor for unwed mothers. There was also a floor for nursing students. It was a grand old building. It was run by nuns, and you know I had to feel at home there! I loved that place. I loved going to mass every morning. I loved the structure of the days. I loved my little job of serving the meals to the nuns in the nuns' quarters. I loved every single thing about this place that should have been more of a penance than a blessing.

Having all those days to contemplate the mistakes I had made in my short life, I knew that I would mend my ways once I had to go back to my "real" life. I knew that I wouldn't take back up with the boyfriend. I knew that I wouldn't drink again. I knew that I would continue to go to church and continue with my life of prayer. I didn't just kind of think these things... I knew them.

On August 15, 1967, I gave birth to a perfect little girl and named her Mary Catherine after a nun from the home who was beautiful and kind and wonderful. Surely some of you who read this have given up a baby, so you know. For others, there are no words that can describe what it is to give up a child. I remember walking out of that hospital on an August day, in more anguish than I had ever had been in prior, and maybe ever have been in again. Feeling that I couldn't bear to physically leave the building containing the physical presence of my daughter. Knowing that it was permanent. That I would never get to touch her. Ever. I never got to hold her. Ever. The word devastated comes to mind, but it seems a pale description.

I got to go back to the home on LaSalle Street for a few more days and then I had to go home. I thought I was prepared to go back, but I wasn't. I wasn't ready for anything. I don't know if I had ever heard of post-partum depression, but I sure had a world-class case.

I had left my house in April of 1967. The world was still somewhat "normal" at that time. I was still a somewhat skinny girl at that time. When I came back home in late August, the world had gone insane. It was the Summer of Love, man. My friends were all wearing bell bottoms and beads and doing all kinds of things they weren't doing when I left. I suddenly had a full-blown woman's body and it was rather shocking if you hadn't seen me for a while, which nobody had. I found out my boyfriend, who I thought was going to continue a chaste relationship with me (until we were married), had been carrying on with several unchaste relationships while I was away in an unwed mothers' home carrying his child. It was all a recipe for some crazy stuff.

I picked up a drink without a thought at all. Not a thought.

I went back to school in the fall, it was a nightmare. I think the other kids could accept the fact that I had just had a baby, even though nobody was supposed to know, everybody knew. The teachers, however had a harder time with it. When I look back at it, it is gross, particularly the behavior of some of the male teachers. (Later I found out that although I had a hard time, they ran my boyfriend out of town, he literally had to move to his grandparents to finish school.)

I broke up with the boyfriend. I hung out with my best girlfriend. We drank. We smoked pot. We took LSD. We hung out with some pretty unsavory characters. The Doors first album, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, Jimi Hendrix's Are you Experienced, Fresh Cream, oh, what a grand sound track to such misery!

By the end of 1967, I was a depressed mess. I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight, thanks to taking up a 2 pack a day cigarette habit. And by now, I had the requisite long, straight hair, a suede fringed jacket, bell bottoms, seed beads in many different hues - oh, I looked the part! In 4 months, I had gone from Catholic girl, who was never going to drink again to drunken depressed girl who hadn't been near a church in months and wasn't going to be near one again for a long time.

A year and a half after my first drink, and 16 and a half years before my last.