Happy Birthday to Me

A year ago today, I walked into my first AA meeting. I wasn't convinced at the time that it was the thing for me, but since heavy drinking didn't seem to be solving any problems and had landed me in jail, I thought I'd better give it a try.

I guess it's different in different places, but the AA meeting I go to on Sundays celebrates annual "birthdays." And there's cake. My kids have gotten wind of the cake. I had to promise to save them some.

They sing a version of the birthday song to you, and my sponsor gave me two tokens--one of hers from when she reached one year, and another one that reminds me that when I have tried everything else, I can be still be sure that I will step forward and the earth will support me or that I will be given wings.

I cried. And then I did what was expected, which is to tell the story of how I got there, or as we say in AA, what it was like then and what it's like now.

I talked about being a good girl from the suburbs. How I'd only had a few drinks before I went to college, where I met the delicious wine cooler Bartles & James. I reminisced about how alcohol removed all anxiety and fear. How I became a heavy drinker, but not all the time, which gave me the illusion that I had it "under control." And then I talked about a bad year, where I had to put the Greatest Dog in the World to sleep, suffered a major professional setback, had a miscarriage and stopped communicating with my husband. And how it all fell apart. And how I know I can't go back now, because it isn't something that gets better. I crossed some kind of invisible line.

Sometimes I feel guilty because nothing truly bad happened. Mine is not the scariest story I've heard. It makes me feel like I don't deserve to feel good about the progress I've made. But then I say that out loud, and it sounds kind of fucked up, so I figure that's just part of the disease of alcoholism.

I don't feel like drinking anymore. In fact, I can say that by some miracle I now think of drinking as something other people do, but not me. What remains is the inability to know how to live life without drinking. Without meaning to sound pathetic, I seem to be a bit deficient in the coping arena, and learning to cope without liquid courage turns out to be quite a project.

Another favorite AA cliche, "One day at a time."

I invited my stepmother to the meeting. She brought me flowers and took me grocery shopping afterwards. Then she brought me to her and my dad's house for Sunday chicken dinner. Happy Birthday to me.

It's the little things

I read once that it isn't the big traumas in life that make people unhappy, but the small, everyday annoyances that wear away at a person's serenity. A squeaky door for example. A leaking faucet. The idea is that if you deal with the small things that bug you, the satisfaction you will feel far exceeds whatever effort you put out to fix the thing.

I'm pretty sure this happens in reverse, too. A lot of small things conspired against me in November and December and I got stuck. The weather was a problem--it was colder and rainier than usual, which made getting around without a car a bigger headache than usual. Then my bike seat was stolen. My debit card number was pirated somehow, too, so I had to cancel my card and wait for a new one. Don't even ask about switching health insurance and getting my prescriptions filled.

I know I sound like a big whiner, but it was too much. I got stuck. I took to my bed when the kids were with their dad, unable to do much of anything.

And then I got unstuck. Right after Christmas, I went into cleanse mode and started cleaning out the house, closet by closet. I'm throwing stuff out, stacking it for donation. It's been psychically cleansing too. I bought a new bike seat. And it's still light when I get off the bus now. So ends the winter of our discontent.

From My Kids' Perspective

A conversation between my eight- and ten-year old, as relayed to me by their father:

"I can't wait 'til April 8."

"Yeah, when Mom can drive again."

My ten year old, "I bet she'll never drink again. She could get in so much trouble! [and to his dad] She could go to jail, and then we'd have to live with you for a year!

Dad, amused at their horror at living with him for A WHOLE YEAR, says diplomatically, "well, I think we've all learned a lot this year."

The ten year-old persists,

"And we'd have to visit her in jail and it would be like going to that hospital in the middle of the water."

Dad puzzles over this description, and finally comes up with,

"Alcatraz?"

"Yeah."

It's just a good thing that 10 year-olds aren't tasked with determining sentences for misdemeanors.

David Sedaris Doesn't Drive

This comforts me somehow. I don't know why. I'm not a wildly popular author with one of the finest-tuned senses of humor in the world with a quirky voice. I'm a convicted drunk driver. We're not even close to being of the same world. Yet it comforts me just the same.

I didn't get my driver's license until I was 20 and going into my last year in college. This was unheard of in southern California at the time. Now, there are more restrictions--kids can drive at 16, but I don't think they can drive with anyone else in the car for ages, certainly not their friends. An armed guard, maybe.

Then, however, you skipped the morning at school on your 16th birthday, and drove all of your friends to the beach that afternoon. It was a middle-class neighborhood, but kids got cars for their birthdays.

My 16th birthday came and went with a learner's permit fading in my wallet. My parents tried, they really did. My father patiently tried to teach me to drive a stick shift, which introduced far too many actions for my brain to handle at one time. My mother, worried that I was about to hit the cars on the right side of the street, cowered near the passenger door, begging me to move more toward the center of the road.

The summer before my senior year in college, however, I was determined to get it done. I was living with my boyfriend at the time (very scandalous). He had a little blue Toyota Tercel. Hatchback. No radio.

The weekend before my appointment to get my license, we went down to Laguna Seca to a Grateful Dead show. On the way back (the following day, totally sober), boyfriend suggests I drive, as practice, for the test the next day.

I get us all the way up to Palo Alto without incident. Right before we hit the off-ramp, boyfriend notes that now is the time to be careful, that most accidents occur within two miles of home. I successfully downshift on the off-ramp, but to this day, I'm not really sure what happened next. I think I tried to slow down, and hit the clutch instead of the brake? At any rate, with a carful of guys screaming "brake, brake," I plowed into a pick-up truck in front of me. The Tercel was no match. The hood bent into a ninety degree angle. No one one was hurt, but in a million years, I couldn't tell you how mortified I was.

I did get my license the next day. My dad bought me a Datsun B210 four-door coupe. The boyfriend and I were through soon thereafter. And my driving career began.

And Now What?

The crappy part of not being able to drive is that on a rainy day, you can't just jump in the car, drive to Target, and spend a little bit of cash on something you don't really need but will amuse you and the kids for awhile.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it'll make me more spiritual, quality time with the kids, blah blah blah. All I really want is a pair of knock-off UGGs and to buy the kids a hot dog.

Instead, I'm in my p.j.s close to noon, we have a fire going, and Sponge Bob is on t.v. I gave A. an old iPod of mine, so we're filling it up with music. Kid's taste is unpredictable. He'll take Meatloaf, but no Tom Petty. He likes some re-mixes from the Shrek soundtrack. A new group I found called Free Energy works, but no Neil Young. I had to buy the Green Day song from the Transformers soundtrack, my Green Day albums were too old, I guess.

The dogs are circling our small house like sharks, looking for food to steal, confused about the weather.

Luckily, I have chocolate chips. Fresh batches of cookies solve everything.

Missing

Someone stole my bike helmet. And my seat. When I went to pick up my bike from where I park it when I catch the bus, it looked sad and a little decapitated. My friend Heidi says she's lost five seats in the last year--she rides her bike everywhere. So this is to be expected?

When I was in college, it was a good prank to steal someone's bike seat. But now? I guess I understand the helmet, but where do the seats go? Is there a booth at the swap meet full of bike seats?

I loved that seat--it had some kind of gel core, and was wide and cushy. It had a design that matched the bike.

I'm guessing I can find another one. I haven't really tried yet. And then I'm going to need a large bag so that when I lock up the bike, I can take the seat and the helmet with me. Geez.

Requiem for a Dream

It's worth noting that what started on a lovely day in October of 1996 ended today--another lovely day--in a courthouse in San Diego.

We didn't even have to go in front of the judge, we were prepared with all of our signed paperwork, and the facilitator took care of the rest.

Then we went to breakfast and did some shopping. We talked about what to get the kids for Christmas, planned A's birthday party, and made each other laugh. Then we went together to the kids' parent-teacher conferences.

We were friends years before we married. We are friends now. We have children together, and one day, I hope, grandchildren. So this is an ending of something that existed on paper, but I believe the best part lives on.