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Source: Babs B – Fellowship by the Sea 1987 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: babs-b-fellowship-by-the-sea-1987-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:09:37
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Unless I sing Happy Birthday to Babs. Now, I can't lead you because I can't sing. So, Babs, help me. I'll lead you. Come on, lead me. Come on, Babs. I can't sing. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Babs. Happy birthday to you. All right. That's it. Thank you, Babs. I'll be all right in about an hour and 45 minutes. Thank you very much. Good evening, everybody. My name is Babs B., and I am a grateful, recovering Al-Anon.
Hi, Babs. Hi. Some days I'm grateful, and some days I'm recovering, and I think you're lucky because today I seem to be doing both. I want to thank the committee or the powers that be or whoever makes a decision about who comes to these things. I was really looking forward to spending time with you last year, so that makes this year even better. I brought with me my friend June from Dallas, and we both bring you Texas greetings.
We got a big bowl of fruit in our room and a colored TV and a balcony. I mean, what more do you need? We have an indoor shower and, of course, the ocean. Of course, the ocean. We may never go back. We take our clues when asked to do what I've been asked to do tonight, as we do so many other parts of our Al-Anon program, from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. It says that when you find yourself where I am, it says, I believe that our stories disclose in a general way what he used to be like, what happened, and what he's like now.
And some of you aren't laughing. You really think we do that, don't you? Are there by chance any sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous in the audience? Would you raise your hands if you happen to be here? Good. God, Gussie, we're outnumbered. Well, I would like to take this opportunity, if you don't mind, to thank each and every one of you for sharing your marvelous program of recovery with us as generously as you shared your damn disease.
I would like to say that the first alcoholic I ever knew was the one I found myself married to, because I think that makes us look a little swifter. But I find in Al-Anon group after Al-Anon group that a great number of us were well acquainted with the disease of alcoholism before we ever went out and got our very own. I was born and raised in a small town in northwestern Illinois. And I think by the time I was the age where I could put two thoughts together, I felt different.
And to this day, I don't know if that different feeling comes from the circumstance or does maybe the feeling come first and then we look for the reason. I think the latter may have been true in my case. And I had plenty of reasons to feel different. I was born in 1933, so the Depression was going. My mother was 18 when I was born. And by the time she was 19, she and my father had divorced. I didn't know anybody else in town.
By the time I knew what that word meant, I didn't know anybody else in that little town who was divorced. And so I felt different. At least that's what I thought the reason was. I was raised, when I was young, by my mother's parents. And those grandparents loved me in the way that I have come to understand all of us have a right to be loved by at least one other human being. And that is they really loved me unconditionally.
I was never guilty. Even when I was caught red-handed, my grandmother would be the first to say, I know you didn't know what you were doing. And I felt safe with them. The only bad thing about grandparents is they start out old.
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Have you ever noticed that?
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And by the time I got to comparing them with the grown-ups that the other kids lived with, I realized they were really rickety. My mother had left town when I was a baby to go off and seek her fame and fortune. But in that little town up on a hill, there was a two-story white house. And the neatest man I ever knew lived up there. He had cold B. hair that he parted in the middle. And he had a bushy mustache.
And he had hair that came up out of his shirt collar, up his neck like that. To this day, I'm a sucker for facial hair. He used to throw me up in the air and call me Snickle Fritz. And I really was quite taken with him. He was the husband of my mother's older sister. My aunt was 11 years older than my mother, so she was at a stage in her life where her life was fairly settled. He was the town dentist and the town mayor and just a hell of a guy.
Sometimes my grandmother and grandfather and I would get to go up there to visit. And each time we did, I didn't want to come home. They had two little girls that were a little bit older than I was. They had a white dog and a B. cat. And I thought, if I ever got a chance to live with them, that I'd never ask another thing. And I know none of you in the audience have ever said that. But that was my prayer.
And I remember making a deal with God, If you just let me go live with those people, I'll never ask for another thing. And one day the prayer was answered. I think I probably just ran my grandmother out. I mean, she just couldn't take it anymore. So when I was about four and a half, I got to go live up on the hill. And it was just as good as I thought it would be. It was neat. I don't remember them ever introducing me as their niece.
They always introduced the three of us as their three girls. They did everything to make me feel a part of that family. But I knew I really wasn't. That spectacular man I was telling you about, that was early alcoholism. We don't talk about that very much, do we? When I find it necessary or I choose to talk at public information meetings or that sort of thing, and people come up to me with that look in their eye and they say, I can't imagine that you were married to an alcoholic.
And I know what they're thinking. They think that I went over under a bridge somewhere and pulled up this guy and peeled the chili off his tie and stood him up in front of a judge. I didn't marry somebody like that. I married a winner. And my aunt had certainly married a winner. She married a fellow that did the impossible. He put himself through dental school at Loyola in Chicago by working as a red cap.
And he worked at both stations. That's about 11 or 12 hours worth of work. And then you've got to go to class and then you've got to study. And he graduated at the top of his class. I mean, he couldn't do that, but he did. But that was early alcoholism. And by the time I was in high school and my two cousins had grown and left, our house had changed. That insidious. I had fears that I'd never had before.
I had anger in me that was unspoken and I certainly didn't understand. I had that love-hate thing with him, you know, when he's become now the ridicule of my friends and they ridicule him and I defend him. And then another inside of me, there's this thing that hates him because his behavior is embarrassing me. And there's the other thing in me that says, who do they think they are talking about him like that?
And all children in alcoholic homes go through that. By the time I was a senior in high school, I knew that my answer lay in going to college. I had already looked over the crop of fellas in that little town. Everybody there worked for the railroad. And I really didn't want to be a railroad man's wife. Or I could have been a farmer's wife and that didn't appeal to me too much either. Back in those days, you didn't leave home to go get your own apartment.
I know what my aunt would have said. What is it you need to do in that apartment, Barbara Ann, that you don't think you can do right here at home? I mean, those were different times. And so the honorable way to get out was to go to college and I did. I chose a school farther away that made a deal for me. Since I was an out-of-state student, they made a tuition deal. It was a place called the University of Texas.
And I'll tell you, even this day, young girls growing up in northwestern Illinois do not dream that someday they'll be able to go to the University of Texas.
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It's just not what you'd call a real bastion of higher learning. It wasn't then and it isn't today. I didn't know whether Texas had a university nor did I care. It's just that they replied to my letters of application. And one day I found myself in a place called Austin, in a hot Kwanzaa hut that they called an airport, with my suitcases and everything I owned in them. I went by myself to a dorm. By then I had talked to maybe 10 or 15 people in the city of Austin and I realized they were all severely, they had a severe speech handicap, each one of them.
I thought it might be something in the water. It seemed to take them forever to say anything, to think anything, to move. And I had this terrific urge to just reach in their mouths and yank their tongues out. I had been born in a hurry. I was always in a hurry. I seldom knew where I was going, but I was usually there first. And I thought, I'll never fit in here. I'll never, ever fit in here. They had some sort of a freshman reception thing and I found a buddy who was from Omaha, Nebraska.
She and I were the only really chic females on the whole campus. I decided that. And of course, we scoffed at the freshman reception. We were far too dignified and mature and refined for any of that nonsense. And then this old bat that ran our dorm suggested that those that didn't show up at that reception would be placed on social probation, which meant they really clipped your wings. So we reluctantly agreed to go.
I remember getting into my freshman reception outfit that I had spent quite a bit of time shopping for in Chicago. I put on my lined wool skirt and my cashmere sweater set with my little chatelaine chain and my little wool knee socks and my cute little loafers. And we began to walk to the gymnasium and it was 110 in the shade. I got in there and it was exactly what I thought it would be. A few scraggly pieces of orange, first of all, orange and white.
Are those school colors? Give me a break. They're school colors. I'm not kidding. You are orange and white. There are orange and white things hanging off the baskets. There's a little bowl of that vile punch, you know, that they serve and some stale cookies. And people stand around looking at their feet. I mean, I knew what it was going to be. So I'm going over there. I pour myself a cup of this stuff and I decide I'm going to stay until I get my star, get my card signed.
However, you had to go buy this deal so that I could get out of there. And that's when I turned and really surveyed the crowd and I began to look. I had no idea. This was in 1951. The Korean War was winding down and all these vets from those womanless jungles were enrolling in places such as the University of Texas. Every last one of them was horny. And the census that night, the ratio was about nine guys to every girl.
I said to myself, you know, this might not be such a bad university after all. The only requirement for being a sex goddess in 1951 was that you'd be breathing in and out. And I stood at that punch table and took those deep breaths. And I'm telling you, it was just like blowing a whistle at a dog. They just, oh, yeah. I loved it. I loved it. I really did love it. I was sorry to leave when it was time to leave Austin.
I liked everything about it. I liked how important it made me feel. Every now and then I went to class. My mother was helping me with the money. So, of course, I didn't have to work or anything crass like that. And I loved it. I really did. College life was a lot more than I thought it was going to be. Now, there are some of you in this audience who courted back in those years. And I'm sure you remember what the old rules were.
When I tried to explain them to my daughters when they got old enough, I thought to hear the bitter truth about their mother's past. Incidentally, if you haven't made that mistake, don't. And I became a sex goddess. and I began to tell them about these little mating dances we did. Do you remember that?
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One of my kids said, that's just like that little poodle we used to have every time she got in heat, I said. Right. This little poodle we had, whenever she came in heat, we'd put her in the backyard and she would rub her rear end along that fence, one end to the other. And the alley was full of dogs going absolutely crazy. And she had this dumbest grin on her face, knowing that she was safe behind that fence. And that's kind of how courting was in the early fifties. We ran hours in the dorms back then. And Saturday night, of course, was a big night. You got to stay up a quarter to one Saturday night.
So you kept them at arm's length or more. Of course you, well, we won't discuss that. I see. And some of you are young, not ready to hear this, but things didn't start heating up till about 1230. And this is when he drove you back to the dorm. There would be cars lined three or four rows of cars lined up bumper to bumper. You couldn't see in any of them because the windows were so steamed. Now you had 15 minutes to do your deal. So, I mean, you just came at him in all fours, you know. God, you made promises that you'd never had any intention of keeping. It was like pulling him through a keyhole and just, just when his glasses that, you know, really start fogging bad and those little whisks of smoke would come out of his ears, then he'd kiss them on the cheek and you'd run in the dorm.
And we did that a lot. I never thought that was dishonest or unfair. I thought that's how the game was played. By the time I was a junior there, I realized that most of the good ones had been picked off. I would ask about them and they'd say, we got married last weekend. And I thought, well, all right. I mean, enough of a fun and games. I'd had certainly had a good time, but now it was time to get down to business because I didn't intend to leave that campus without a husband. I knew what the pickings would be like once I got out of there. I mean, I could either take the accountant on my right or the file clerk on my left. I knew that I'd never have another chance with this big bunch of them. And so I began to kind of weed them out and, and look at their qualifications. I was, uh, I was really only concerned about two things. The criteria was rather broad in my, of course, I would like a fella. I thought that would be nice. But aside from the gender deal, I was terrified of divorce. I knew that that's why I was never the Virgin Mary in those Christmas plays that the nuns gave was because my parents were divorced. And I blamed a lot of my, of my own failings on my parents' divorce. And frankly, I wasn't sure I could, uh, I could survive someone divorcing me. So I knew I had to have myself a Roman Catholic. Now we all know that they don't divorce. And then I was afraid of alcoholism. Now what I knew about alcoholics were that they didn't know how to drink. Somewhere there was a something missing in them because that's what people say to him. I'd say, is he drinking again? He'd say, yeah. And he knows he can't drink. So I needed somebody who could drink like a Roman Catholic who could drink. I didn't know that was a redundant sort of requirement at the time. And I asked God for help. And here he came just like a lamb to the slaughter. You know how they do. Uh, he was good looking. I wish I could tell you that that wasn't important, but it was important because the better he looked, the better I looked. And so I needed somebody that looked good. As I say, he was a blind date.
We went to his fraternity house for a party. He was a little shy, seemed to have a little trouble, uh, being at ease with people. So I introduced him to his fraternity brothers. I'd probably been more, more than he had anyway, but anyway, I was kind of the hostess there. And then we started drinking and something magical happened to him after about two drinks. God, he took over as the MC, became very glib. When he picked me up in the dorm, I thought he was going to trip over the flowers and the rug. He was that awkward, but he had two drinks and all of a sudden he's Fred Astaire.
He's dancing with everybody, just having a hell of a time. And I remember looking at him and thinking, I've never seen anybody that could drink that well. And he drank a lot and that never changed. He never got drunk. He didn't get all, you know, wall-eyed and lop-legged and all that. It was time to go. And he drove everybody home. And as he brought me back to the dorm, he said,
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by the way, I'm going to 630 mass in the morning. Would you like to go? I didn't know there was a 630 mass, but I figured if there was, there was probably just two little nuns there anyway. But you know how we are, phony from the beginning. I said, oh, 630 mass, my very favorite mass. Love to go. And so he picked me up. In the morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, not the first sign of any hangover or anything else. And we went to that mass. He knew the priest part and our part and all the Latin. And we went to breakfast afterwards. He confided in me that when he was an altar boy, he had always dreamed of being a priest until someone explained celibacy to him.
And I said to myself, what more could I want? I have a horny, almost priest here. I mean, my cup runneth over, right? And his fate was sealed from that time on. I mean, he really thinks he was in pursuit, but between you and me, no, indeed he was not. He was not getting away. And he didn't. We went through all the stages you're supposed to. We were pinned and we were engaged. And, you know, just about the time he started acting a little weird and I was beginning to have second thoughts, he took me to Houston to meet his parents. And then I met his mother and I understood why he was like that. And I felt sorry for him. And I knew once I got a hold of him, I could certainly straighten out any damage she had done. I mean, we had, you know, the typical start is what we had. And one Saturday morning in Houston at St.
Anne's Cathedral, two priests, there were two priests because we couldn't agree on priests. So we had his priest and my priest. And I never thought of that as maybe a problem. Two priests said those eternal words over us. And I walked out of St. Anne's married. Now I'm telling you, I was married. Everything I had was married. And after we'd been married about a week, I thought maybe he hadn't heard what they'd said.
I remember following him around that little apartment and I was saying, but listen, I'm your wife. And he said, I'll drink to that. And he would. Years later, when I got into Al-Anon, some Al-Anons believe that we, that we kid ourselves, that, that we assume things. Well, listen, I didn't assume this. I mean, he really said this to me. I didn't make that up. He really said that to me. Some strange things went on. You know, we were engaged. That engaged men probably don't do. At least I assured him. I didn't think they did. And his explanation to me was that he was sexually frustrated and God knows I was doing what I could to frustrate him. But that would all change. You see, once we were married, that would all change. Now I didn't make that up and it made a lot of sense to me.
Well, we're married and it's not changing. Nothing's changing, but me. I'm working and I'm, I'm keeping house. The first time I'd ever cleaned a bathroom that a male had used, I thought, my God, on top of everything else, I have to toilet train him. I don't know if I've got time for all this. I was trying to be patient and he's just bumping along, you know, bumping along, you know, just couldn't have been happier.
Then it occurred to me, we didn't have any children. Well, now seriously, what kind of a Catholic family is that? You know how those Catholics are. And once we had a child, that would be a kind of a route and there would be some responsibility. And I knew he would, he would rise to that. I mean, I just knew it. And so I got pregnant. It was hardly no big deal. And in due time, I delivered a little girl. You notice I didn't say we delivered a little girl because we didn't. I did. Back in those days, childbirth consisted of you laying on this God awful table, screaming your lungs out and knowing you're going to pass away any second.
While various medical people stand over in the corner and tell dirty jokes. I loved every minute of it. I can't tell you how much it meant to me. And I brought this child home and suddenly I had a child and he really didn't fall into step there like I had. I just knew he would. And when I questioned him about it, he said, well, it's a baby and they scare me. I said, well, you know, she scares me too.
Well, when she's older, when she's older, I'll bond with her. And he went on his merry way. You've heard that explanation of the second step, doing the same thing over and over and over again
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and expecting different results. Well, that was my experience with pregnancy. I discovered, I figured that one child wasn't enough. You could indeed ignore just this one little child. So of course I got myself pregnant again. And in due time delivered another little girl. And soon after that, another little girl and nothing was changed except of course, now I have diaper rash up to my elbows. I'm combing my hair, try to comb my hair every Sunday.
I've not gone to the bathroom by myself now in three years. That's always a committee meeting time. You know, no matter how old they are, if they're ambulatory at all, they crawl right in there. Then you all sit and talk. I mean, it was a lot of fun and, uh, and he's just not with it. He's just not in there with me. Then I realized, of course it was because he didn't have a son. Now, if he had a son, you see, they could go hunting and fishing, all that stuff you read about. Of course he didn't hunt nor fish, but it seemed like a good idea to me. And so I got pregnant again and we were transferred from Houston to San Antonio. My mother had hoped it was maybe something in the water in Houston.
I went to San Antonio pregnant and didn't have a doctor and really avoided going to one. They're now making funny noises about birth control and stuff like that. But I finally got so uncomfortable. I had to go. I picked a guy out of the phone book, went to see him. He asked if he could take some pictures. He then took me in his office and I'm seated on this low couch. They always put you on that low couch. I guess it's to keep you stable so that you can't jump up.
And I'm sitting there and he said that, well, Mrs. B., it looks to me like there are four, possibly only three. And I said, babies. And he said, yes. Well, tell you the truth. I figured I'd been a damn good sport up to now. I mean, you know, I brought these other kids home and I was changing their diapers and nursing and feeding and all that fun stuff. I mean, people would stop me in a safe way and say, were they planned? How the hell do you answer that? Or when others would congratulate him on his beautiful children. You know, I kept my tongue. I didn't tell him that I had to remind him what their names were. I didn't say that. I just thought I was going along really well.
And now they're coming in litters and I was pissed. I got in a car to go home and tell Father Dion the news. And as I'm driving out that freeway in San Antonio and they have college scholarships for him and the tour bus from Myrtle Beach drives up so all the people can see where the Quinn flip. So by the time I got home, I thought it was damned exciting. I mean, I really did. I'd left home with a possible tumor and now I'm coming home and I've got, we're going to have five babies and we'll probably be in Life Magazine.
Edgar R. Murrow would want to see us now. I really was excited. I ran in the house to tell him the good news. He was babysitting. I could see the children locked out in the backyard and he'd had just enough beer to drink. You know how they have just enough to drink to kind of take the edge off? And I could tell that was his condition. And it was my first experience with instant sobriety. Have any of you ever seen that? That's like, you know, when the state policeman pulls you over and I don't got to get cold sober in a wink, don't they?
Well, he turned around, he'd got that lopsided grin and he said, how are you, honey? I said, I'm fine. What did the doctor say? And I said, the doctor said there are four, possibly only three. Now I don't know what I expected him to say, but I didn't expect what I heard. First he got that instant sobriety and then he squinted those beady little eyes and he looked at me and he said, my God, Babs, what have you done to me now? And I felt guilty.
Prematurely, those babies were born and there weren't five or four. Immaturely, those babies were born and there weren't five or four or three. There were just two little tiny ones, a little boy and a little girl.
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But that meant that when I brought those twins home from the hospital, we had five children and the oldest had not yet celebrated her fourth birthday. I'm not going to say anything about your handicaps and I wish you wouldn't mention mine. And I've discovered that I don't particularly like children. And if that isn't bad enough, while I was in the hospital having the twins, he got a traveling job. So he leaves for South Texas before dawn every Monday and he comes dragging in late Friday.
He's out with adults. He's having adult conversations. I'm having some sort of a strange relationship with Captain Kangaroo. It seems that I make Kool-Aid from dawn to dusk. I know some of you in this audience are guilty. I know you are. It seemed that no matter where we lived, there was always down the street some old bag that had one or two little runny nose bratty kids that got on her nerves every morning about 10.
And she would say to those little darlings, why don't you go on up the B., she'll never even know you're there. I maybe wouldn't have gotten in such shape if I only had my five, but I had your two and your four. And so I'm running a ding dong school there. And the resentments really beginning to set in with me. We shortly after that, that I did something I never thought I'd ever have the guts to do.
I stood toe to toe with a nun and I lied through my teeth to her. I told her that Kathy, our oldest was five. Kathy was four years and four months. And I assured her that the birth certificate was in the mail. But on the basis of my assurance that the kid was old enough, I remember I had my hand over Kathy's mouth. Kathy knew how old she was shut up, Kathy. They allowed her to go to this little parish kindergarten that they had started.
The school bus came and picked her up and off Kathy went to kindergarten, far too young. The only thing she brought back was a case of pinworm. I tell you this because it was about this time when I realized that no matter what tone of voice I used, no matter what the circumstances. My husband had this uncanny ability of cutting off his attention to me. Oh, how he ended in that. I've heard a description of an alcoholic that I like, I'll share with you.
An alcoholic is somebody who has everybody else's attention and nobody has his. And that's the way it was with us. There were a lot of things I needed to say to him and I couldn't catch him long enough. I couldn't make eye contact with him. I couldn't, he couldn't hear me. So anyway, Kathy goes off and then calls me and said, there's pinworms around that school. Kathy's probably got them. Then she told me how you find them.
It's another trip all in itself. So every night Jack Parr would go off and then we'd have the national anthem. Of course, I always stood and then the Jets appeal, you know how they do. Then I get my little flashlight, turn it on, put it between my teeth. What you have to do is you have to sneak in while the child's asleep and you real easy pull down that little sheet and you pry apart those little knees and you shine that light.
And I do that and then I'd run out of the room. Of course, to this day, my daughters sleep with two pair of underwear on and their legs tied in a knot. And I'm probably the real reason why I only have two grandchildren with all those kids. But it was done in love and one night I found one about two o'clock in the morning. I called the pediatrician. I said, it's right here on my finger. What do I do?
He said, well, first of all, you go back to bed and let me go back to bed. In the morning, you go to the drugstore and you get a bottle of the red medicine. I'll phone it in. Now, to this day, I don't know. I work in a hospital today. I don't know the generic name of that stuff. I just know it's got to be some of the most powerful, powerful medicine ever invented. My youngest son, Timothy, is 26. He visited me a couple of weeks ago and said, gee, mom, I wish I could come by more often and help you.
I said, well, the grass is getting kind of high. Well, listen, next time I'm by, I said, you know, the strangest thing, Tim, I was cleaning out small boxes. I found a bottle of that red medicine. Remember that? In a flash, he had that more going. I'm telling you that red medicine works. I was to go get it and give him a teaspoon for every 10 pounds of weight. And I did that, put a little Kool-Aid, dosed them all up.
Everybody drank their stuff. I washed everything with Lysol. In the morning, it was potty time.
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Kids thought it was a blast. I thought they were dying. I called the doctor and told him what was going on. He said, oh, I should have mentioned that. It seems that the red medicine loses none of its color on the way through. But he assured me by the next day, everything back to normal, and it was. A week or two later, they're squiggling and, you know, squirming around, and I got the light out. Son of a gun.
Still got those suckers. I called him. I'm a little indignant now. And he said to me, how much of the red medicine did you take? I said, I don't go to that school. He said, I know, but you have to dose up everybody. So I read the directions and I drank about four quarts of it. I don't know how much it was. Still taste it today. And in the morning, we all had our technicolor BMs and life went on. A couple of weeks later, we still got them.
Now, I'm really angry. I called him and he said, how much did you give your husband? Well, since he was only a weekend visitor, I really hadn't mentioned it to him. I mean, it's not the sort of thing you bring up over breakfast. Oh, by the way, honey, the kids are wormy. And I'd really hope that it would just be a little secret between the children and I. But now my way is clear. I know what I must do.
So when he came in off the road that Friday night, I had the kids in bed all playing or rather playing in their room. I had steaks on the grill. I said to him for the first time in a long time, let me fix you a drink before dinner. He said, oh, I don't mind if I do. He was drinking rusty nails back then. And rusty nails are all booze. You know, thank God. And I fixed him a rusty nail like he'd never had before.
It had about a teaspoon of the red medicine in it. And he tossed that one off and I continued to fix him rusty nails till he was damn near comatose. We had the steak and I remember about 10 o'clock at night I had come on to an ideal birth control ironing. You started about 930 and I'd gotten out the ironing board because he had that look in his eye, you know, and I'm ironing. And he said, you will come to bed soon.
Oh, in a minute. I said, how about one more drink? Oh, this is a nightcap. Well, that nightcap had about a teaspoon of dramboolia and the rest was red because I had a lot of red medicine I had to get into. And he just tossed it back and I remembered as if it were yesterday, he smiled at me and he said, honey, I sure do love you. And his teeth were blood red and he staggered off to bed. And I knew as we always do.
I knew that I had surmounted an insurmountable problem in the morning. I'm making coffee and there's a screen that comes from back there in the bedroom. And I ran back there and I said, what is it? And he said, Babs, I'm dying. And I knew I knew as I never knew anything before, I had that man's attention. And so I, too, rose to the occasion. I looked soulfully at the evidence and I sighed and I said, well, I tried to tell you, Clayton, what was going to happen if you didn't stop drinking like that.
And he stopped. Not a drop for, oh, Lord, must have been four or five days. Years later, after he was sober and I heard him talk from a podium about the medical miracle that AA had cured his bleeding ulcers. It seems that after that little experience, he'd gone out and loaded up on Jell-O-Cell and Maalox and between the booze and the Jell-O-Cell and the Maalox. Apparently, he slugged that stuff away until he got sober.
It was my sad responsibility as part of a ninth step to admit to him that he never had bleeding ulcers, he had pinworm. But anyway, that's what life's about, isn't it? Apologizing to people and setting the record straight. We were transferred back to Houston and in Houston, another little boy was born, and that meant we had six children. My husband's alcoholism was not all that unusual. I found many other sobered members of AA, who the more they drank and the deeper they got into alcoholism, it seemed the more successful they were.
And each job he got was better than the one before, and the job he got in Dallas was the best of all. So we moved to Dallas and, you know, we're an alcoholic family, right?
[00:40:00]
Built a house that was about thirty thousand dollars more than we could afford. Bought a sailboat, neither of us knew how to sail, but that doesn't mean anything. You need a boat. So we had a sailboat. And the disease kept on and kept on. By now, our children are all in school, except the baby, Timothy, was three. And I had found a way to cope with what was happening to me. I heard it best described by another Al-Anon when she said that she froze things off.
I don't know if freezing feelings is a conscious thing that you do. I just know that it seemed to come naturally with me. And one day I didn't feel any more at all. I wasn't frightened and I wasn't lonely. I wasn't angry. The problem is when you freeze feelings, they all freeze. So also for those years, I didn't feel joy. I didn't feel hope. I didn't feel surprised. It was a hellish way to live and I don't ever want to be back there again.
By the time our oldest daughter was 13 and the second oldest was 12. I knew that I was going to have to get out of there. I was going to have to take the children and leave. I called my mother and asked if I could borrow the money to see a lawyer. She agreed to send me a check. He came in that weekend and for the first time in 14 years of marriage, he wanted to talk. I don't know if it's a sixth sense they have.
I don't know what it is. So we went out on the boat. I wish I could tell you what was said. I don't, I don't know what he said. I do remember that he said, I don't know if it's a sixth sense, but I don't know what it is. I know that I watched him drink himself sober. Have any of you ever seen that? But then he was drinking scotch out of a bottle, out of gallon jugs. I don't know how much scotch he put away that day on the boat, a lot.
And it seemed that the more he drank, the more lucid he became. It wasn't working anymore. I remember they told me he felt he was the loneliest person in the world. And he accused me of not caring. And that angered me. I remember standing on that boat and screaming at him, you locked yourself in that damn little glass room that you stay in all the time. You won't let anybody get around you and you complain to being lonely.
You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. We had a long way to go, he and I. That Monday, I got a call from a man at the Dallas Council on Alcoholism who said that my husband had been sitting in his office for an hour and he thought my husband was alcoholic. And I remember I said to him, well, does that mean he's Republican, too? And I don't know what you're telling me, who cares?
I mean, as far as I'll tell you what he is, I said, what we call him is he's a revolving S.O.B. Any way you turn him, he's still an S.O.B. And I said, I don't care what you say is wrong with him, but the children and I are getting out of here. I know my answer and we're getting out. Well, it's just before you do that, he's agreed to go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous tonight. I said, you're kidding me.
No, he said he has. And I think you ought to go with him. And you know what I said, I don't drink. And of course, I didn't anymore. You know, three or four years before I quit to show him how easy it was, he never seemed to get the lesson. I was talking to a recovering alcoholic on that phone, don't ever have a battle of wits with a recovering alcoholic because you're not going to win. I'll tell you right now, deck's stacked against you.
He said to me, Mrs. B., I'm afraid if you don't take him, he may not go. God, I just rose to that bait like a goldfish. And I said, give me the address of that place. I'll have him there. And he did. As we came home, I had a drink all day, starting to get a little jumpy. I loved it. I loved it. Somewhere in his alcoholism, I had appointed myself keeper of the fly. I don't know why I did that. It's just that we seem to rush in where there's a void.
One of the early things to go seemed to be his memory and he would visit the bathroom and come back, you know, a couple of times a week, you know, to visit the bathroom and come back, you know, at half mast or whatever. And I got very good at it. I could just pass by him and zip. I got very good at it. I could just pass by him and zip him up and nobody even noticed. I mean, I was good at it. And I seem to think the condition of his fly was my responsibility.
[00:45:01]
So he came home and I got him dressed, helped him get dressed, and I dressed. I remember when we got off the elevator in that building where the meeting was going to be, I checked him over one more time and sure enough, thank God I was there, I zipped him up and we walked into a big room, a lot of people, good looking people. Meeting was at eight o'clock and it was about quarter of when we got there. I couldn't wait for him to bring the alcoholics in. There were some closed doors and I knew behind one of those doors, you know, where the eight or ten, I didn't know how many we'd have that night. They'd probably have on those little chino pants and those paper shoes, you know. I was hoping there was a nun back there, you know, probably giving them a little cold gruel and that a nun would shuffle out and usher these guys in. I was thinking, that'd do your Catholic soul good, see her, bring them in, wouldn't it? There were some chairs, folding chairs like this, and I figured that we'd put them probably in a circle, these other well-meaning people and I, put these chairs in a circle and then all the alcoholics had to sit there. And I figured they'd probably ask him questions and of course they'd lie. And then those of us that knew the truth, we'd tell the truth. I mean, I figured that's what we were there for and I couldn't wait for that damn meeting to start. I hoped they'd seat him next to one with bugs because he wouldn't be able to get up, you know. Oh boy, oh boy, it was getting, listen, I'd waited a long time for this and I was going to savor every minute. AA was the most fantastic punishment I could think of for him and I had a right to be there. But five minutes of eight, this ugly, ugly woman, she was ugly on the night of October the 4th of 1970 and she remains ugly to this day, walked up to me and looked down and said, pardon me, my dear, are you an alcoholic? I couldn't believe my ears. I dressed very carefully for this meeting.
I had on my turquoise pedal pushers and my matching turquoise thong sandals, my little white maternity top. I wasn't pregnant, but you'd have to hold your stomach in if you wore that. So I wore them a lot. My little bluebird leader's pin up here, my miraculous metal hanging way out here. I mean, I couldn't believe that she would accuse me of such a thing. So of course I said to her, of course I'm not. And she said, I didn't think so.
You have to leave. My God, she was one of them. I didn't know they had women in there. Why don't they wear big signs or something? I mean, how do you tell by looking? I didn't. Well I remember looking at her and saying, she said, this is a closed meeting. Alcoholics only. And I said, well, pardon the hell out of me. I mean, who do they think they are? Please. And I mean, they took me out of there. They really did just march me right out in this little bitty room. Strange people in there. Weird people. That was Al-Anon. Now those people didn't have their answer. I knew my answer. I knew my answer. I was going to try this one last thing, you know, so that somebody couldn't come up to me years later after we were divorced and he married that little dumpling with all the money and somebody couldn't come up to me and say, boy, if you'd only tried Al-Anon. Okay. I'll give it a shot.
You know how we are. And that's the only reason I'm sitting in there. It's not that they have anything to say to me. I know my answer is, I'm leaving. I'm getting out of here. That night we had two speakers and Al-Anon, I can't tell you, begin to tell you what she had to say because it had nothing to do with me. And the second speaker was a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He talked about alcoholism in a way I'd never heard before. He talked about what it's like to be an alcoholic. He talked about that loneliness my husband had tried to tell me about. He talked about the hopelessness. I remember I cried and cried.
He looked me in the eye and he said, you know, if your husband had never laid eyes on you, he would today be an alcoholic. Oh, God. Could that be true? You don't suppose that. Well, I mean, you know, I never really thought it was all my fault. I knew his mother. I mean, you knew her. But I did believe that the majority of it was my fault. I had taken this fine promising young boy and settled him with all these kids and given him all this responsibility and he had all this stress. I believe that my husband's alcoholism was a result of my inadequacy. And this guy's saying that's not true. That's not true. Oh, I wanted that to
[00:50:02]
be true. I wanted, I wanted what he said to be right. That was, as I said, October the 4th of 70. I don't know what they were saying to my husband in that AA meeting. I just know that when he came, by the time he came out of there, he had grabbed AA by the horns and he never let go. They told him there was a meeting every night and he needed to be there and he was. So of course I was too. Well, you can't let them go alone. God knows what trouble they get into. So I went. Of course, I couldn't go in his meeting, but I sat in that stupid thing next door. Listen to those poor people. Things begin to change in our house. Sobriety brings that. The Al-Anon said to me, do you have any teenagers at home? I said, well, our two oldest daughters, I guess, are teenagers. She said, there's an AA meeting here Thursday night at 730. You have them here or neither you nor your husband can return again. Now she always swore that she didn't say that, but I know damn well what I heard her say.
And so I took two girls that were very reluctant, more than reluctant. They insisted they would not go and I threw them in that room with children of alcoholics. God forgive me. It's a closed meeting. Of course, it seems like the only good meetings around there were closed. They wouldn't let me in. My sponsor, Lugallo was to become my sponsor, said, make a deal with them that they'll go to six consecutive meetings and after that you won't mention it. And I said, okay. And I told him that. Now it's five weeks later. He is five weeks stark raving sober and he's caught the Holy Ghost. He's bringing God home to the heathens.
My daughters are starting on Friday to tell me they'll be damned if they'll go there next Thursday night. And I made a deal with myself. I've also had five weeks of Al-Anon and one of the things I heard him say was, I need to be good to me. So I made a deal. I said, I know I said six meetings, but I'm not doing it again after tonight. I'm just not doing a deal with it. And just then I heard Julie yell into her sister, Kathy. Kathy, you better hurry up with your hair. We don't want to be late for the meeting. In no time getting old enough to go to Allentown was a big thing in our house. It was kind of a rite of passage.
All six of our children were given what they had a right to. The same thing I was given and their father was given freely. The right to recovery from this illness. If your Al-Anon group doesn't have an LAT group, why not just start one? It's not that big a deal. I remember when Clay, who was in 12 and the young one was only, what, eight, seven. We were sitting at dinner one night, five of them were in Allentown and Tim's still too young. And Clay said to him, yeah, yeah, Tim, you're too young for Allentown. And Tim clenched his fist and looked at his father and he said to hell with him, dad, I'm just going to wait and grow up, be an AA just like you. And he did. After I'd been in six or seven or eight months, I discovered my husband was paying bills. He was meeting responsibilities. He was zipping his fly. I mean, he was doing a lot of things, I guess I wasn't ready for him to do. They asked me if I would chair a newcomer meeting. Sound like a good idea. Wasn't an ordinary newcomer meeting that night. Instead, I got so worked up that I gave him a lecture on the BS of compulsion. I thought this was the big lie that alcoholics told Al-Anons particularly.
Since they are victims of compulsive behavior, they are not held responsible for anything they do or don't do. And I let them know, I thought that's the biggest lie in the world, that I had never, ever done anything compulsively in my life. I've always known what I've done. I've always taken… I remember after the meeting, I said to my sponsor, what did you think? And she said, that was interesting, Babs. I came to dread those words, but at that time I thought that was a compliment. Friday night in Dallas is traditionally open AA night. So we're at the open AA meeting and I'm sitting on the aisle. I like to sit right up close so I could see the whites of their eyes, you know. And I noticed this little man in a kind of ill-fitting brown suit who was a stranger to the group. He had a flyer.
He'd obviously been sent for his group to lay this flyer on the podium so that the AA chairman would announce it. And as he did and turned around, I realized that he was
[00:55:00]
not fortunate enough to have a keeper of his fly. So my sponsor and I are chatting and I, you know, once you have that knack, you never lose it. And just as he drew abreast of me, I got a good hold on his crotch and I zipped him up. And just as my thumb hit his belt, I realized that I didn't know whose crotch that was. And I looked up in two of the most terror-filled eyes. Oh, dear God. I truly believe that some night in some strange place, I'm going to be in an AA meeting and a man's going to stand up and say that twenty or thirty or however many years ago, he was sent to deliver a message. He planned to go out and get blasted. And on his way out, some woman grabbed his crotch and he hasn't had a drink since. At any rate, God, I let go of him. And I mean, his little feet never hit the floor. He just right out through those double doors. I mean, I'm sure he didn't know what was coming next, but he didn't think he was going to like it. And I just, I just sat there. I could not believe what I had done. And Bonnie put her hand over mine and said, tell me, honey, do you suppose you might classify that as a compulsion? Because the Al-Anon program indeed does work. And because I have been practicing this program of recovery a day at a time. Tonight, as I stand before you, those with open flies have a problem, but it's not my problem. We went to meetings a lot. We became very quickly an AA family, the best kind of family there is. Our house was filled, filled with members of the fellowship.
As soon as he was able, my husband began sponsoring and so did I. I began hearing finally what they were saying. One of the first things I heard in Al-Anon that I really wanted to be true was I heard someone say that I had value, that I had value. I remember crying to my sponsor and saying, I really don't, Bonnie. And she said, yes, you do. Your value tonight is to fold up the chairs and put them against the wall. So I did that. I'd been in a couple of years and we needed a secretary, a permanent secretary at our Al-Anon Information Center, and they asked me to do it. So for the next six years, I worked there from nine to three on weekdays with a bunch of volunteers. So it was one long Al-Anon meeting all day long. And then at night, I'd go to a regular group meeting and I loved it. I loved every moment of it. The steps brought recovery in my life that I never thought I could ever know, particularly the eighth and ninth. I really liked the eighth and ninth steps because I liked the results of the eighth and ninth steps. And because of those steps, I had been able to heal a relationship with my mother. My husband's parents had come to live with us in sobriety, and I was able to get along with his mother. But it wasn't me, it was Al-Anon. Dad built a garage apartment above our house and he and Alice moved in.
She was very ill. The relationship with my children was good. But I must be honest with you, there was no relationship with my husband. I didn't know how to do that. Today, I'm not sure we could have done it without some outside help of some kind. We'd never been honest with each other. He was by far the biggest thing in my life. And to open yourself up to somebody makes you enormously vulnerable, particularly if they are as powerful to you as he was to me. And so we didn't do it. I found all sorts of excuses, but the fact is we didn't do it. And one day, after eight years of sobriety and very active involvement for all of us, AA and Al-Anon and our team, my husband announced that he wanted a divorce and I thought I would die. I wish I could say that I took that well. I always wanted to be the sort that said, fine, don't let the doorknob hit you in the ass.
Oh, I wish I could have said that, but it turns out that I wasn't like that. I just lost it, just lost it. I was terrified. He was determined that that is indeed what he
[01:00:06]
wanted to do with his life, and so he moved out, and I remember his father came downstairs and said, Babs, if you'll let Alice and I stay here with you, I'll help you fight this. Of course, my husband had all the terms of the settlement and everything all, you know how, we didn't need a lawyer or anything. Here it is. This is what we're going to do. And my father-in-law tore it up, and he said, we'll see what we're going to do. He became my attorney of record. He was 78 at the time. It soon became apparent that we needed an attorney that could practice law in the state of Texas, and so we found one, and Dad and I would go see this attorney. As this, I mean, I was terrified of divorce, and I guarantee you it's as bad as I thought it would be. It was hell, just hell, and I don't want to do it again. But it rolled on and on, and one April, I found myself standing before a judge with my father-in-law by my side, and he declared that I was no longer married.
In the settlement, I believe my husband got his alligator shoes, his Rolex watch, three pair of underwear, and a car, and I got the house, the kids, furniture, the other car, the boat, the dog, the cat, and his parents, and we both thought we had won, and we did. Indeed, we did. I wish I could tell you that the adjustment after he left was a piece of cake. I mean, hell, I'd been going to those meetings for eight years. I should have heard something, right? It was not a piece of cake. My friend, June, told me before it happened that it's like an amputation, and indeed it is. It's like going around town with a limb missing. I had to have a job, a real job that paid money. I discovered that my father-in-law loved me the same way my grandparents had. He always had faith in me, and he always thought I could do anything. There was a nosy al-Anon that worked at a hospital in Dallas, and she was bugging me to come over there, and I kept saying, Ann, I've never worked.
I mean, I left the University of Texas, and I got married, and I began having babies, and I have no work history. She said, come, we'll find you something. Went over, and I couldn't do any of that stuff. I don't type. I can't, you know, nothing. Just as I'm getting ready to leave, she said, by the way, does the management engineer have a new research assistant yet? No, the last one just quit. Now, this was the third one he'd had in like a month. I should have smelled something fishy. Anyway, before I could protest, they bring him in, and he's in worse shape than I am. He has trouble communicating, and he kind of stumbled around, you know, and well, hell, we were there for an interview, so of course I interviewed him. I said, what do you do here? He said, well, I'm an industrial engineer.
I said, well, yes, I understood that, but why would a hospital need an industrial engineer? Well, he said, what I do is I'm pretty much, I'm into productivity, and I go into various departments, and I watch people doing things they've been doing for, oh, 15 or 20 years. I watch them for 15 or 20 minutes, and I tell them how to do it better. I said, you're not going to understand this, son, but I've been going to meetings damn near every night for eight years trying to learn how to stop doing that, and you tell me there's a career in it. And then, of course, he said those magic words. He said, I need you, and I said, I know you do. Can you be here at eight in the morning? Yes, I can, and I was there at eight in the morning, and I've been there for the 12 years since. I remember I went home and called Dad, and I said, Dad, I got a job. He said, of course you did. I said, no, I'm serious. I think it's going to be a good job. He said, of course it is. How much does it pay? I couldn't tell him. I didn't think to ask something like that. It was the ideal place for me, though, because Chet let me sit at that desk and just heal. Sometimes I just cry. For no reason, just start crying. Chet never said what's wrong. He never said, I wish you wouldn't let your nose run on those papers. I think I kind of embarrassed him, but whatever. It gave me time to heal, and the healing began. If any of you find yourselves today where I was, let me assure you, the healing does take place at different paces in all of us, but the healing does take place. I was concerned about my father, not because
[01:05:04]
his wife had died, and he just stayed up in that little garage apartment. Then a doctor in the emergency room, I took Dad there for a sore throat, and he said, mind if I talk to him? I said, no. He said, Mr. B., I'd like you to meet so-and-so over here. He's one of our volunteers. He's a retired attorney. Here's Bill, a retired pharmacist. Here's George, a retired accountant. We need people of your caliber, Mr. B., to volunteer here.
The next day, Dad went in and got his red vest, and he became the oldest volunteer at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. Up until a year before he died, he worked in the radiation outpatient oncology building on campus. He wore white Reebok shoes and a little red volunteer's vest. He was nearly blind. He wore a white toupee that he couldn't quite see, so it was always kind of cattywampus, and if you asked him what his job was there, he would have told you that he was there to help the old people out of their cars. Dad worked there until he was 88. I know that these programs, these programs bring miracles to those of us who are fortunate enough to be a part of them. I watched my children heal. I watched my alcoholic children at a very young age come into AA because AA to them was always a happy place, a family reunion place. It was a place where people laughed and people hugged. It was a place where their father and I were always anxious to go. Had it not been for that involvement, I think it would have been many years before they would have asked for help, but because of the way people like you treated us, our two sons today are sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Our four daughters are all married. Of course, none of them married anyone worthy of them, but that's the price you pay, and as I mentioned, I have two grandchildren, an eight-year-old grandson, Michael, and a brand-new grandbaby, six months old, named Annie Rose. Annie Rose is in the wilds of Indianapolis, but I get to see her every now and then. She's a beautiful child, and I try to love Annie Rose, and I try to love Michael in the way I remember my grandparents loved me. I tell you the truth, I think that's the only thing grandparents are good for, is to love just that way. I think I'm out of time. Oh, I can't tell you about Christy Sosa. You'll never know. We hear a lot about the promises in the big book, don't we? But there's another little passage in the big book that I loved the very first time I ever read it, and I think of it kind of as a promise, too. So it's a promise I want to leave with you. It says, we will be with you in the fellowship of the Spirit. Surely you'll meet some of us as we trudge this road to happy destiny. Surely I will meet some of you again as we trudge this road to happy destiny. If you ever find yourself in Dallas, please call me. Just call the Information Center or the AA Central Office. They'll tell you how to get in touch with me, and I'll take you to a hell of a meeting. My home group is the Addison group. Good, good Al-Anon. Next door, there are some AAs that meet, and I can't vouch for them, but I'm telling you, the Al-Anon group is first class. So if you want to make a real good Al-Anon meeting, please give me a call. I'd look forward to sharing it with you. Thank you so much for having June and I with you this weekend.
I think we're going to have a hell of a time. My name is Babs B., and I'm a grateful, recovering Al-Anon. Thank you.