Summer Conference in New York City, NY

Hi, everybody. I'm Barbara Namaskorley Al Anon. Hi, Barbara. I don't have a drinking problem, but I have a thinking problem. I belong to the Tuesday mother group, and it is called mother because, so far as we know, we are the oldest Al Anon Group in California, and the rest of you are the chicks.

I want to thank our, chairman here, Deborah. She thanked her committee, and I wanna thank her. I think she did a beautiful thing. I'm a little anxious because not only do I have to tell you about myself, I gotta tell you all about New York too. So we're practically spending the day together.

I'm a start out to kinda relax this a little bit. I'm a take up a little jokes. Did you know that Christopher Columbus was an alcoholic? Well, he took a trip, and he didn't know where he was going. And when he got back, he didn't know where he had been, and a woman paid for the whole thing.

Some geographical cure. Now that I've picked on a a, I'll have to pick on a little bit and even it out. Do you know why the Al Anon always closes her eyes when her a a husband is making love to her? She can't stand to see the having a good time. Now I needed Al Anon from the embryo stage.

I was born into alcoholism. My father was what they call a high pocket drunk. He never missed a day's work, always provided for his family, and was always there for us as such. And growing up when I was small, I didn't realize what was going on exactly. By the time I was about 4, I began to suspect that something was kind of abnormal, but I thought it was normal.

Because when you live in an abnormal family, you don't know it's abnormal. You think abnormal is normal. But, it was Christmastime, and, I kept getting up and going over and looking up the chimney. I was looking for Santa Claus. And my dad said, go back to bed.

And I go back to bed. And when he wasn't looking, I was in there looking up the chimney again. And finally he grabbed me and he spanked the daylights out of me and threw me in the bed. And then he left and he went out and slammed the door. And we lived back in the deep south, and it was cold and blizzard out there.

And he came back with an ice cream cone for me. And I couldn't understand why he was bringing me something cold for this end when it was early and it was hot. I used to run and jump up on his lap, and sometimes he would throw me in the floor. And other times he would hug me and kiss me and love me and make over me. And there was that emotional yo yo and that unpredictable personality.

And, I grew up with that. As I got to be a teenager, I could remember coming home and finding my mother in a dark closet out in the hall, hiding and waiting for my dad to pass out and go to sleep because she didn't wanna argue with him or fight anymore. I thought that was normal. As a teenager, my dad used to lock me in my room and he'd take the light bulbs out of the lights. And, so, and I was resourceful.

I got a flashlight and I got a book, and I had my radio, and I'd get under the covers with my flashlight and my book. And then I got even smarter. I got a key to the door. So I would go out and do my thing and come back and lock myself in. And the next morning, he'd unlock the door and think I'd been in there all night.

It became embarrassing when I started dating because, he used to put my date through the 3rd degree and asked him all kinds of embarrassing questions. And the night I came home with a girlfriend off a double date and we were a little late, My dad was standing out on the sidewalk in his pajamas with the alarm clock and wanted a big explanation of where we've been, what we've been up to. So after that, when I dated, I would spend the night with my girlfriends and I didn t have to expose myself or my date to these situations. I grew up swearing and declaring that I would never ever marry anybody with a drinking problem. Right?

So, anyhow, I went with a lot of guys. I, was always a leader of the pack, always planning things, had a lot of beautiful proposals. But when I decided to get married, I picked the introvert, the guy that sat in the corner at parties and was very quiet. He had much to say because I had to change him. You see?

I had to make him more outgoing like I was. And I'd talk my full head off and bubble over, and he would say nothing. But then if he had a couple of drinks, he would talk a little more. Well, I went with him for 5 years, and we finally got married. And we lived together miserably for 13 years.

We had 2 beautiful children. And there was brutality, and it wasn't a very happy family. And finally, he left. We were right in the middle of building a home when he walked out on us. The day that he walked out, I brought my mother home from a mental hospital.

My father had died, and, I thought she had the breakdown because my dad had died. And when I talked to the psychiatrist in the hospital, he said, no. She had the breakdown because of guilt. You ever hear of guilt? He said she used to pray that God would remove the alcoholism, and when he removed the alcoholic, she felt that she had prayed her husband to death, and that was very hard.

She lived with me for a few years, and that was a lot of fun. I kind of traded one situation for the other. She used to get up in the mornings when I was getting the kids ready for school, and that's not the right color, and they didn't have the right breakfast and etcetera. And when they get off to school, she go back to bed. And, anyway, when my husband left about that time, I wound up on the doorstep of a friend that I had worked with at the state, and we'd kinda lost contact with each other.

We were down to Christmas card exchanging. And I walked into her home and sat down in her kitchen, and I poured my heart out to her. And I told her that I had turned into a fish wife, that I screamed at my kids, that I was lonely and frustrated and full of despair, and and everything seemed hopeless, and I just didn't know what to do about it. And, I told her about my husband's drinking. And when I got through, she said, you just took your 5th step.

And I didn't know what she was talking about. I had never heard of Al Anon. And she said, the reason you don't see my husband and I around is because Jim quit drinking, and we move in a different circle. We don't associate with people that drink anymore, and we have a beautiful life, and we're happy. And she took me to my first Al Anon meeting.

And I remember going in the door thinking, I don't know what I'm doing here. He's the one that's got the problem. Anybody ever feel that way? Well, I kept going because she kept taking me. And one night, she called me up, and she says, I can't, pick you up tonight.

You'll have to get there on your own. I thought, oh, I've gotta take myself to that meeting. Well, I went and I drove down to the meeting, thinking, I don't know what I'm going to that meeting for. I'm not getting anything out of it. It's not doing anything for me.

There was something I heard in the first meeting, though, that stuck in there. They told me they cared, and they said, please come back. And they said, you have choices. I didn't know I had any choices. I thought I was trapped.

So I went into that meeting, you know, all defensive and closed minded, and, sure, sure, I wasn't gonna hear anything I needed, but I was there. And an old timer was talking about a conscious contact with a higher power, that, oh, brother. Here they go on that god business, and I wanna hear about that. I was raised Southern Methodist in a upper middle class family, and god was hell and damnation. If you sinned, you know, you went to hell.

I asked a Sunday school teacher one time, does does it count with children? Do children sin? And she says, no, not little children. They are innocent. I said, what age does sin start?

And she says 10. And I was 10 at the time. So I knew I'd blown it. But, anyway, in this meeting, she says, if you don't have a conscious contact with your higher power, maybe you're not plugged in. You gotta have a little faith.

When you switch on a light switch, you don't question all the intricate parts in the wall, the electricity of the power dam, or how it all works. You just have faith that when you reach out and turn it on, it's gonna be there for you. And you have to have faith in your higher power. And when you pray, you have to wait for the answers. And he says yes, no, and wait a while.

And that last one's a lulu. Well, I thought she didn't know what she's talking about, all that god stuff, and I got back in my car, and I'm driving home like a maniac, like I came down there. And, all of a sudden, I hit my bottom. I had run the gamut. And when they were talking about letting go, I let go.

And I said, please, god, if there's anybody up there, please help me. And this beautiful, serene feeling came over me, and I released my foot off of the accelerator, and I actually touched the brake. And I started crying, and I hadn't cried for years because I had been told not to cry. First, I was told that you were sissy if you cried, and then I got hurt if I cried because they couldn't handle it. And I was crying so hard, turned on the windshield wipers.

Now the water was inside. It wasn't raining outside. But during that time, when I hit that first bottom, I took my first, second, and third steps. And I knew that I was powerless and I accepted it. I just didn't admit it.

I accepted that I was. Teeny kind of bit of Santa to came back. And I went back to my meetings, and I was open minded and teachable, and I was ready to hear what she had to say to me and to absorb some of it. And I continued to go to my meetings, and, finally, they said, Barbara, we want you to chair a meeting. Oh, my God.

I went to the city library and I got down got down all the books on alcoholism. And I started researching. I was gonna give the most profound intellectual talk that they had ever heard. They had to know that I was intelligent and I was smart. Well, I got all my researching together and, the one who chaired the meeting always brought refreshments.

And I brought a great big, huge, huge sheet cake with the American flag on it, red, white, and blue, and all the stars. It was the 4th July and I got to the meeting. There was only 3 of us there, including me. So I decided I wasn't going to waste all that research on just me and a couple of others. So I told him about taking my first step and my second and third and and and having these feelings and this spiritual awakening.

And, it was a good meeting they shared with me. And one of the gals told me afterwards, she said, Barbara, you don't have to worry about being intelligent. Anytime you talk, just speak from the heart. We're not speakers. We just speak from the heart and tell our story, and that's what I try to do now.

And, always, before I talk, I say, okay, god. My mouth is yours. And he usually puts something, a little something in it worthwhile, and I hope he will today. Well, I kept going to meetings and pretty soon I was treasurer. First, they let me wash coffee cups, and then they let me set up chairs.

And when you start working in service, you have to learn very fast that there is criticism connected with the job from washing the cups to being delegate. All of it. You're gonna get criticism. Well, you know, somebody wasn't pleased with it or this and that. Then I was treasurer, which I hated.

Hate handling money. And, secretary. And then I was group representative. And I was group representative for 2 terms and finally I said, How do you get out of this? And they said, don't volunteer the next time we have election.

So the next time they had election, I didn't volunteer. Do you know they picked somebody else? Really interesting how this thing works when we get out of the way and allow a little rotation of service, which is so important. So I did all those things, and I got interested in information service. And I started going out to schools and working with the alateans and and, public information and all the different parts, speaking here and there, all the parts of information service.

I was pioneer with teleservice in our area when they said, won't work, won't work, can't afford it. And we did it, we tried it, and it worked. It's still working. Then they asked me to run for district rep, and I did. But in the meantime, to back up a little bit, after I had been in Al Anon for about a year, one of my AA loved ones came up and said, Barbara, it's time you attend some AA meetings.

You've got your Al Anon together a little bit now, and you need to hear how the other side feels. I said, why? I said, why you need to hear about the recovering alcoholic. So I went to my 1st AA meeting scared to death. I was afraid they would call on me and they did and I just gave my name sat down, which you know is unusual today.

And I started attending. And I was very fortunate that I attended a group that had a family night and, they allowed the Alenons to even share meetings. And it was a very beautiful group, very open, very warm and loving, and we gave a lot to each other. And I learned there wasn't that much difference. Once the ALCI put the plug in the jug, we were all looking for a way to cope with life one day at a time.

After I've been going there for a while, I was in an open meeting one night and then they sent me a little note and it said, I'd like to take you out to dinner. And I immediately wrote on there, no, and sent it back to him. And my sponsor had told me not to get emotionally involved, you know, because I still didn't know myself yet. I was still very vulnerable, and and it wasn't a good time. And I listened to my sponsor pretty much.

She was good for me. She knew me. And, then I got to thinking about that. That wasn't very nice. Here's this guy in recovery trying to get his life together just like I am.

That was terrible. So I wrote him another little note, and I said, if you'd like to call me and talk sometime, here's my phone number. So being typical, by the time I got home, the phone was ringing. You know what I mean? I mean, you guys don't waste no time.

So I invited him over, and we sat in our kitchen, and we talked half the night. And this was a very intelligent man. He had designed part of the space modular that went to the moon. He was an artist. He was into hypnosis, where you hypnotize ladies that are having babies and they don't feel the pain and all these exciting things that this man had done.

And I was just having a wonderful time. The companionship was great because I hadn't been compatible. There had been no communication with my husband. For 13, that was 14 years. And to have a man to talk to was great, was wonderful, And I really liked this.

And, he was over one night quite, quite late, and we were just talking and everything. And my mother came into the kitchen and she started rattling pats and pans and she was getting all upset. And I said, mom, what are you doing? And she says, well, if you're going to let him stay all night, I'm gonna fix his breakfast. And he says, missus Kennedy, your daughter is a grown adult.

This is her home. She's taking care of you. And if she wants to have company all night long, she can. And I thought, whoopee, I like having him around. That's pretty nice.

And she put the pots and the pans down, went back to bed. But I continued to see this guy, and we went to a lot of meetings together. And one night, he was supposed to pick me up, and we were going to an open AA meeting, and he didn't show. And deep in my heart, I knew that that something was wrong. We know.

We can sense when it happens. But I denied it. Well, I went by his apartment on the way to the meeting, and the front door was open. And I walked in, and he was laying on the floor in a drunken stupor passed out and my higher power said to me, you have been here before. Do you want to do this again?

You've got another tiger by the tail. Are you can you walk away and let go with love or what? Well, yeah, what? I was in my crusader rabbit stage. I had to save this man.

So I did let go at the time. I mean, you don't wake up somebody that's passed out. I went on to my meeting and he showed up. And, I continued to see him for a couple of years. And the AAs were quite concerned in the Al Anon's and I kept saying I am not emotionally involved with this man, we are just friends.

And he was coming out to my house and crawling around on the lawn at 3 o'clock in the morning looking for his teeth. And, and a taxi cab driver brought him out 1 night, knocked on the door, and says, I brought your husband home. I said, he's not my husband. He does not live here. And he says, well, he's gone.

He said, you'd pay for the cab. I said, I will not pay for the cab. He's gee, whiz. He says, this is my 5th one tonight. It says, you know, I'm studying sociology in school, but I'm getting more of an education driving this cab.

So I see you take him wherever you found him. He can't stay here. Well, the violence began, and I had to tell him to go away, that I couldn't handle it anymore. And, I had to detach from this man. He was a beautiful man, and he had a lot of potential, but he just wasn't ready to stay sober.

I continued to go to my meetings, and, I was attending meetings. I met somebody else, and guess what? Guess what? He was an alcoholic, and I met him in the meeting. And we started going out, And we went together for 4 years, and things went pretty well.

There were some indications that there was a few problems, but I didn't really wanna look at it. I had my blinders on because, you see, I had grown in Al Anon, and and I wanted my kids to have a father and I wanted just to be a family again. And he had asked me every day to marry him and, finally, I said yes. And and we got married and we were married for 4 months 10 days and we had our first argument and he split, went down the road and got his old apartment back, filed for divorce, and found another woman. I was in despair.

I hit another bottom. I just could not believe that this was happening to me again. I went to Al Anon. I talked to my sponsor. I read my literature.

I did everything that you taught me to do, but I hurt. I hurt. I hurt. So one night, I decided to get drunk. That that's all right.

I'm not an Alki. I can get drunk if I want to. So I, it was a holiday and I had 2 of my babies that I was sponsoring over with me. I wanted to do this by myself. So, we went to the store to buy a bottle and we got a big one And, we looked at all the labels to see how much alcohol content and how much they cost And the guard there was just laughing He said, these teetotalers, you know And then we got a little pint just in case the big one run out Because I said, I'm not gonna drive after we start drinking.

I don't want no 502s. So we took them home and we mixed our drinks and we started playing cardinal puff. Have you ever played cardinal puff? That's where you take your glass, and you say, here's to cardinal puff. And you hit your hand once and you hit your feet once and you stand up and sit down once and you take one drink and then you do it twice.

And you keep doing it till you goof and then you chugga log. Well, I started goofing because I wanted to get drunk. So I was doing a lot of chugga log in. Well, I begin to feel it real good. And so then I went and I got the big book.

We didn't have all the literature we have now. And I'm on I got a a big book, and I got Al Anon's literature that they had living with the alcoholic and something else. And I got in the middle of the floor and I started preaching to my babies how to work the program. Well, 1, the drunker, she got the more sophisticated she got. She looked down her nose at me like, well.

And the other one was just hanging on to every word. Oh, you know, the higher power is speaking. And, boy, I had her attention, and I went on and on until I begin to feel kinda bad. You know? And I said, I gotta go to bed.

Well, I had a problem. I couldn't get up. Can't get up out of the floor. So I had to crawl down the hall to my bed, and that was the longest crawl I've ever made in my life. But I finally got in the bed.

Well, alcohol doesn't hit the nonalcoholic the way it does the alcoholic. You know, you look full of euphoria. With us, it emphasizes the pain. And when I hit that bed, I said I hurt. I hurt.

I hurt. And I said that all night long. And that poor little baby, she didn't know what to do with me. So you know what she did? Oh my god.

Do you know what she did? She called my estranged husband. Well, he came over and he took lung one look at me, and he didn't know what to do with me either. He never seen me drunk, you know, and and he was about to leave, and, boy, I hit him where it hurts. I said, when anyone, anywhere reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA to be there.

My God. How could he leave after that statement? You know? Well, he stayed a little longer, squirming and churning, and finally he left. Well, I felt and looked like the wrath of God.

And, the gal suggested we go to a meeting. There wasn't an Al Anon meeting that night, so we went to an open a a meeting. When I walked in the door and they looked at me, I think they thought I was ready for the other side of the program. And, I listened, and one of the old timers came up to me afterwards. He said, Barbara, I need to talk to you.

Let's go have some coffee. So me and my babies went out with him, and we had coffee. And he said, Barbara, there's nothing wrong with you. He said you're a good alanine. You got a good program.

You just keep picking little boys. That's all. And I said, god. What do I look for? What do I look for?

You see, when I married the first time, I picked the exact opposite of my father thinking if he was opposite, he wouldn't have a drinking problem. I threw out all of my dad's good qualities, and he did have good qualities. And I thought that all men took care of their wives and were responsible for their families, and I wasn't finding that. And he says, well, I tell you how you find out about the little boys and the men. He says, when you got a problem, you're going with someone, you tell them you got a problem.

And if they say that's your problem and walk away, you've got a little boy. And if they say, what can we do to work it out? You've got yourself a man. Well, that sounds simple enough. You see, what I had done with my program was everything but the important thing.

Why I was hurting so terribly was because I hadn't let go. I had not turned it over. It's like when you pull the bow and arrow, and you don't let go of the arrow. And, finally, when I got drunk and I hit my bottom again, I let go and I turned it over, and then the healing process began. We grieve, you know, not only with death, but we grieve when we lose a loved one and in a separation, we break up with a lover, or we lose a good friend.

There's grief, and you have to go through the stages of grief. 1st, the I don't believe it's happening. It isn't real, and then the reality hits and the anger and then finally the rebuilding. Well, I went through my stages. Somewhere in there I was praying to God please send him back make him woo and pursue me and beg me to marry him again and let's make our our relationship work out.

And god didn't send him back. And my southern upbringing had taught Anna can't chase men. Can't chase them. They have to pursue you. You don't go after them.

And, of course, Al Anon had said let go with love, which went right along with it. You detach. You don't try to change somebody else's mind. So about the time the healing process had taken place, he came back. They always come back.

And he wooed me and pursued me and begged me to marry him, and I told him no. And he says, what do you think you learned? I learned not to trust. And I was able to at least tell him how I felt and the things that went on inside of me, and this made me feel better. And then I let go.

So we got a divorce. But, in the meantime, before the divorce was final, I was still attending AA meetings. And, along comes this other guy, and, he was, guess what? Guess what? He was an alcoholic, and he was going to meetings, and he was attending a lot of meetings.

Boy, was he attending meetings day night and all the time. Every time I went to 1, he was there running around doing his thing. And he asked me to go out to lunch, and I said, no. I can't yet because my divorce isn't final, and I have to close one door before I can open another. Easy does it.

Okay, he says. So, he left me alone Well, my divorce was final So, I got one of my girlfriends to tell him my divorce was final So he says, that's nice, and that was all. Well, it was Halloween, and we went out, took a treat, and then we had all kinds of candy. And we went to an open meeting afterwards, and he was there. And I walked over to him, and I said, gave him a sucker.

It was called the sugar daddy. And I said, would you like to be my sugar daddy? And he said, would you like to go for a drive tomorrow? And I said, yes. And that was the beginning of our courtship.

He had a little Nash Rambler he was manager of a recovery house and I used to pile in that car where it seemed like 10 alky's, and we drove all over the countryside to meetings. I tell you, and it was fun. We never seem to have a date alone. We always had all these other people with us. We were real chaperoned.

He told me later he was scared. He felt like a cub bear with boxing gloves on, and he knew if he had the others around him he didn't have to make any decisions about kiss kiss and all that stuff and that was fine with me because I wasn't quite ready for all that either, so we became friends. But in the process, we fought. We fought like cats and dogs. We called each other sackfuls of names.

He was learning in AA that he was not a doormat and that now that he was sober, he had a right to be respected. And I'd already learned that in Al Anon. So we locked horns and maybe we went at it. Well, we were having a fight one night, and it was a lulu. Before that, he had brought me he came over.

He left a purple hat, and then he left a sweater. You know, they always leave something over so they have a reason to come back. All these honey little cute things. And, then he brought me a bouquet of flowers, artificial flowers, and they were faded and had dust on them. But they were a gift of love, and I accepted them, and I put them on my coffee table.

Well, we had this terrible fight 1 night, and he said, you're the damnest female I've ever met in all my life. And I don't understand you, and I don't want to anymore. And I'm never gonna darken your door again. And he grabbed his purple hat and his sweater and my faded dusty flowers. And he went out, and he got ready to slam the door.

And he turned around, and he said to me, I've never asked you, but I'm concerned about you how you and the kids eat. And he took some money out of his pocket, and he put it down. And then he went out and slammed the door. They almost came off the hinges. I thought, I finally found a man.

He cares. As mad as that man was, he cared. He cared what happened to us. He didn't walk away leaving me with nothing like I'd had in the past. And everything inside of me wanted to reach out for him, but I knew I had let go with love and leave it alone.

So in a couple of weeks, I saw him in a meeting. In the meantime, one night, I was hurt so bad. I wanted to see him. And I got in the car, and I drove down to his apartment. And I sat out in front of his apartment trying to get up the nerve to knock on the door.

And in the meantime, he was out at my place trying to get up the nerve, knock on the door. We found that out later. I didn't know it at the time, neither did he. But, I saw him in the meeting, and he said, would you like to go over to my apartment, have some coffee, and talk like so called mature adults, see if we can work this out? And I said, yes.

And he said, you were waited 5 years to marry your first husband, and you waited 4 years the second time. He says, I ain't got that much time left. Let's get it on. Let's get married. I do love you.

And I said, okay, so we set the date for February 14, St. Valentine's day, so we'd have the saints on our side, and we've been married over 12 years. And my husband, who is sitting here beside me, has 14 years of uninterrupted sobriety. Well, we have a program, but that doesn't mean that life is gonna be a bed of roses. He walked into a family where there was a teenager, and he says, oh my god.

I don't know anything about raising teenagers. I said, join the club. Neither do I. So we suffered together, and he tried so hard. He wanted so hard to be a good father and a good husband, and, we had problems there.

And then I had to go in the hospital for surgery, and I had a hysterectomy, which I don't like. It should be her rectomy, not his. Maybe his did record, I don't know, anyway. Well, I was in the hospital with this herrectomy, and they kept running me in and out of surgery. I developed some kind of a staph infection, and and they couldn't find a culture for it.

And I kept going into surgery and out of surgery. In the meantime, he was running out to the hospital every night to see me and run into a meeting to reinforce himself. And he was coming back from the meeting 1 night on the freeway, and there was a driver on the freeway going the wrong way. And he would move over and they would move over and he would move and they would move and they collided and the car turned over. And, luckily, he didn't have his seat belt on, or he would've been killed.

Side of the car was smashed up. He'd given that car to me, and I'd always felt eerie about it. I never did like that car to me about it. And one night, I noticed some bruises on his arm, and I said, where'd you get those? And he said, I might as well tell you before someone else does.

I was in an automobile wreck. And I said, what did the doctor say? I haven't been to the doctor. I said, well, for God's sake, go see a doctor. He did, and he had 2 broken ribs and a dislocated collarbone.

And he was seeing me every day and going to work like that. Well, I finally was released from the hospital, and I finally got well. I had this old doctor in the hospital. He was an internist. He come in every morning and put on his little rubber glove and stick his finger up my, you know, where.

And that wasn't so bad except he would and sing when he did it. So one morning, I said, doc, have you ever had anybody stick their finger up your what? Your knees is? No. And I sound like it.

So, you know, he didn't do it after that anymore. And he stopped whistling and singing too. Maybe that's why I got well. Well, it wasn't too long after that that we found out that Henry had cancer, and it was cigarette cancer. And it went into the the hospital, and he had surgery, very severe surgery.

And the doctor told me that he would not live 6 months, and I hit another bottom. I had finally found somebody that I loved and wanted to share my life with, and now he was going to be taken away from me. God, this is not fair. I served my time in hell, and I prayed and others prayed. 2 years went by, and I listened every night of my life to his breathing and any change in him to see if he was going to leave me.

And the doctor says, well, we're kind of past some of the danger stage. We have to go 5 years is for sure. It's been 8 years, folks. During this time, while he was going for his radiation treatment, I was taking a shower one morning, and I found a big lump on my breast. I went into the doctor and he says, Barbara, I think you have to face the fact you may have to have a mastectomy.

So, again, the higher power came in awful handy. Thank God for some serenity that I had developed through this program. Said, okay, God. Let's do what we have to do, and I accepted before I went to the hospital. I was awake when they performed the surgery, and, it was open mouth surgery.

I got to talk. He told me jokes, and I told him jokes, and I told him how to do it. And, I couldn't see. They at least put a screen up, but I told him how to operate exactly. You know?

And I said, you know, doc, I started out with a size 30 bra with 4 darts. And I've grown a little since then, and I don't want you to take it all. It took a long time to grow that. I won't take any more necessary, he says. So they did the biopsy, see, and it was not malignant.

It was just some ducks were clogged. And, I got up, and I walked out to all my AA and Al Anon friends waiting out in the hall for me. And I went home, and I was okay. And that was during the time when I thought I was going to lose him. We had hospital bills coming out of our ears.

I couldn't believe the hospital bills we had. Henry lost his insurance, and we wound up with about $16,000 worth of doctor and hospital bills to pay. We're still paying them, but we're getting them out of the way. And it's okay. We got the children out of the nest.

My daughter ran away from home when she was a teenager, and that was excruciating pain. And I couldn't come to you, and I couldn't talk to you about it because I felt I had failed, that I wasn't a good Al Anon. But if I was a good Al Anon, my daughter wouldn't be doing these things. And I had to speak in Daly City. And, in front of, I guess, about 500 people, Kathy spoke with Henry and I that day.

And I told about my daughter running away from home. And yet I was down there. I wasn't sitting in front of the phone waiting for a call. I had to let go and keep going. And I don't know how many came up to me after the meeting and told me they've been through the same experience.

They did find her, and she went to we had the police pick her up. She was staying with another girlfriend in her family, and the mother called me up to tell me they enjoyed having her there. And I said, don't you know it's against the law to have a minor in your home without the parents' permission? This lady was an alcoholic, but her husband was a chief of police. So, anyway, we went into juvenile court where it was divided into 3 parts.

It was for the greenies, those that hadn't really gotten into trouble, those that were beginning to, and then the hardcore criminal teenagers. And, we loved her and hugged her, and they canceled the whole family. And then we put her in a place called the house, which is a halfway house between, running away and getting back with family. And it's a volunteer thing. You have to there's no locks on the door.

You have to want to be there. And they canceled her. And, she came home and she was an ideal gal for a while. She went to school, made good grades, and then all of a sudden, there was this guy she was in love with, and off they went. And they started making babies and all sorts of things.

And she didn't ask me. And, but her life has turned around. She's learned, and she's come to me, and she says, mom, I wish I had listened to you. And I think we all can look back in retrospect and regret some of the things we do, but it's okay because it's in the past, and we have to live in today, and we learn from our past. My son got into drugs, and, when he was in high school, brought home this pretty plant.

He put it in his room in the window, and he had the front bedroom window right on the street. And I said, gee, that's a pretty plant. And I started watering it, and it started growing. That sure is a pretty plant. I mean, that, though, and we were suspicious of the marijuana.

And one day, I saw some seeds in the basin in the bathroom, and I saw these same little seeds in the bottom of that plant. And I said, Raymond, what kind of plant is that? And he said, marijuana. And I said, you let your mother water your marijuana plant? And he says, well, yeah.

You didn't ask. He's always the kind of kitty. You don't ask any questions. You you don't get any answers. But if you do, he'll tell you.

So then I didn't know what to do with the darn thing. I didn't wanna put it in the trash because the garbage man might find it in reporters. Couldn't bury it in the ground. It would grow. So I chopped it up in little pieces and threw it down the garbage disposal.

So maybe it's floating around out the sewer there somewhere. Well, he was goofing off in school, and he was skipping. And I got tired of it. And I went to the counselor, and I talked to him, and he told me what you guys had told me, let go. Would you like for us to handle it?

You just let go. Don't pick up the pieces. Don't rescue. So I did, and I told him, I said, you have choices. If you wanna graduate, you're gonna have to start attending school and doing what you're supposed to, but I'm not making excuses for you anymore.

You know that kid graduated outstanding student of the year? He got out of school, and he didn't do a darn thing outstanding for a whole year. He kinda bummed around, and I said, you know, Raymond, I said, you don't have any sense of direction. And one of these days, you're gonna have to make a decision as to what you wanna do with your life, but it's your choice. I know, mom.

I know. Well, he had a little bit of alatine. He'd gone to alatine meetings, so the seed was planted. Well, he came in one day and he says, you know, mom, I don't seem to have any sense of direction. He says, I think I'll go to college for a year, and then I'm going in the navy, which is what he did, and they sent him to Australia, way down under some place nobody's ever heard of.