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Source: Mary T. (Pearl) – Traditions in Healthy Relationships – Part 3 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: mary-t-pearl-traditions-in-healthy-relationships-part-3-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:19:16
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But I've got a new, and we're having house guests in two days, and I said, but I'm not going to clean this mess up. You made this mess, now you can deal with it. And so he decided he would have to cross-fence the yard at the end of the patio until the mud went away. It was spring. The mud wasn't going to go away. And for weeks and months. Now, the first part of May, we have a yard party in our backyard.
And we play yard games. And it's a fundraiser for a conference that we put on, our home group does. And I said, that's going to be fun out there playing yard games in the mud. Because we still had mud. And he said, I just didn't mean for it to be this way. I said, I understand that. But I said, what are we doing? What are you doing? What are you doing about this? So he goes over to his best friend and partner in crime, my sister.
I come back from a weekend gone, and we have AstroTurf. They carpeted the damn yard. So we could have yard games. Yeah. They don't give that stuff away, you know. And I'm going, I don't believe it. So after the yard games, anybody needs some AstroTurf, cut off piece, take it home with you. Because we're going back to yard. I mean, that was their solution. It was sort of inventive. It was very expensive.
And of course, him doing all this landscaping himself was to save money. Time went on. I am not a happy camper. I know everything he does makes me mad. I can't get over this man. I just can't seem to get over that. And so I'm praying about it, and I'm trying to be civil to him. It's very difficult, because I am so angry. And it seems like everything that happens makes it worse, you know. He's out there working on it.
He's got it filled. He's put some plants and stuff in it. And then I saw him going past the window with big sheets of marble. What is he doing? He's out there with a sledgehammer breaking up big sheets of marble. Why don't you buy marble pieces if that's what you want? I'm sure the big sheets of marble cost more than marble pieces, but I'm keeping my mouth shut, and I am chewing the insides of my jaws raw.
I am so angry. He makes a mosaic thing around the top of the water garden. Now it looks like a swimming pool with a crummy deck. It is not attractive in any way, shape, or form. And he says, what do you think? And I tell him. He says, you're not going to like that no matter what. I said, probably not. And he says, well, what do you hate about it the most? That would be hard. I said, it's not safe. He said, what do you mean?
I said, the dogs play out in that backyard. And I said, the dogs play soccer out there in the backyard. They're going to hit that ball, and it's going to go over there in the pond, and they're going to go right into it. He said, they can swim. I said, not for forever, because there's no shallow point to which it could get out. And I said, when that dog goes out in the five foot of water, he's going to swim as long as he can, and then he's going to drown out there, because I'm at work, you're at work, and there's not going to be any way.
We can never not have that fenced, because it's not safe. I don't believe that. I think they've got enough sense. And I said, I'm not willing to run that risk. I said, because these are my kids to me. And I said, I can tell you one thing, if one of my kids drowns in the pond, you're leaving, and that's not a threat. I said, that's a real thing, because that is an unnecessary risk on the life of something I love.
And JD had already killed one of my dogs previously, through his landscaping efforts one day. He dropped a landscaping timber on him and squashed him. And so I said, I'm not having that again. And so, like I said, it was not good at our house, but I kept praying, and then God put us a new TV channel on. It's amazing how God works things out. You know how your cable company just adds a channel, and you didn't ask for it, but now you got it, and they upped the bill?
Don't you just love that? And anyway, I got my thing, and I noticed we had a homing garden channel that went on. And one day I was sitting there, and they were going to talk about water gardens. And there was a part of me wanting to turn that off for all I was worth, but instead I watched that. And they were showing how to do different kinds of water gardens and things. And they talked about a gardener's dream and a vision, and how it takes a long time for a water garden, when they first put in, they're not that pretty, but four or five years, as they cure out and become part of the natural scene and what have you,
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then they begin to take on a life of their own. And, you know, I could look at that, and I knew that it wasn't what he had envisioned in his mind. It just didn't turn out that way. And haven't you tried to do something sometimes that it just really didn't turn out the way you wanted it to turn out, but the idea seemed so good at the time? And so I mentioned to him when he came in that evening, I said, you know, J.D., are you happy with your water garden?
He said, no. And he says, I'm not happy about all the trouble it's caused. He says, I wish that I'd just filled the hole in and had never done that at all. And I thought, that's an idea. And anyway, I told him, I said, would you be willing to do something different about it? And he said, what do you mean? And I said, now, I have for years had been a rock collector, big, big rocks. And I had a cactus garden area, and I had it fenced with these big, big rocks, so it had a natural look to it.
And these rocks were from all over the United States and Canada, and I had each one labeled where I got it, when, what, how. And it used to tickle me when I'd get on the plane, I'd have this great big rock in that box, you know, to check. And the sky cap would say, what do you got in here, rocks? And I'd go, no, rock, one rock, 75-pound, you know, rock. That's from Sedona, Arizona. Climbed two fences and ran across the field to get it, you know, but I love that rock.
And so I told him, I said, I'm willing to give you my rocks if you will build a thing around the top of it. And I said, and if you notice in all these books, they're using natural rocks and stuff to do that. That will create, if the dogs would not, I don't think, jump over a wall to get in the water. I think it would be safe. And in the meantime, you see, J.D. was into turtle rescue. And the box turtles, if you saw them anywhere, we had over 100 there in the backyard.
And he was very fond of his turtles. Now, box turtles are not water turtles. They drink out of little bits of water. And when he had that flat surface there, two of his turtles got in there and bellied up when we got home. And so he knew now that it was not safe. You know, a turtle couldn't survive. Well, a dog wouldn't either. And so I gave him those rocks, and we spent an entire weekend putting those rocks and placing them around that until it had a really nice look to it.
And then I said, J.D., if you want a waterfall, I know how to make one. He said, how? And I said, I was watching that home and garden channel. I said, that's how this all came about. I said, I just couldn't believe that, you know, that I could change my attitude. And I said, there's another thing. Participation is the key to harmony. I had no participation. I had been, you left me out of the process.
Therefore, there was no harmony. And I said, that's one autonomous action that almost broke us up after all of those years of being together. And he said, what's when we made an agreement? We would not do any renovation in the yard without mutually getting together, talking about it and agreeing on it before it went forward, you know. So you can see, you know, and the thing of it is, the funny part about that is, over a period of time that it began to look really, really good, and we got the waterfall built and everything.
And then in the year 2000, we had the ice storms in Arkansas, and it took a big limb out of that pecan tree and it came down through that liner. And the water all leaks out. Do you know that? That much water can leak away. And we had to redo the water garden. And this time, he began bringing in loads of sand and what have you. And he filled it. Now it's down to the two-foot level. It should have been in the very beginning.
And we've enjoyed it. We had a bunch of fish in it until we got our latest set of dogs in 1991, and that fall. And the first thing they decided to do was, they went fishing. And they ate the fish. So we just now have plants and everything. But J.D. told me, it was so funny, he told me earlier this year, earlier this year, he said to me, the water garden's finished. And I went, you're kidding me. No more this, no more that, no more this, no more that.
He said, no, the water garden, it's just the way I dreamed it would be, because C. nides had five years to cure out. Oh, and by the way, when we put the new liner in, he changed the shape of it, and it became, you know, 12 by 18. But it's only two foot deep, so that's okay, you know. The funny thing about it is, you have to clean those out every year. And when it was so deep, he had to get out there in his bathing suit to get it out, to siphon the water out, and then you got to get all that slime and stuff out of the bottom.
And he was putting the water back in, he was out there rearranging stuff. And I was gone, and he said he tried to get out of the pond, and he couldn't. He couldn't, it was so slick. He could not get a hand on it to get out. And he thought, boy, am I going to be pruned by the time she gets home.
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And he said, he began to pray, and he said, God, I need to be out of the pond. And God sent him help. He said he looked up, and across the pond, here comes Slither, our little snake that's out there in the water garden, and he got out. A little divine inspiration, you know. And the funny thing about that, too, was, everything at our house gets hysterical from time to time. This year, J.D. says, Slither's had a baby.
I said, we have two snakes? J.D. said, yeah. I said, wrong, we have three snakes. Slither do not make baby alone. But we live together in harmony, all of us, snakes included. Okay, tradition five. This is my favorite. Each marriage or relationship has but one primary purpose. To serve as an expression of God's love. In order to serve as an expression of God's love, you must know what God's love is.
You have to have an awareness of that within yourself. Because we can't transmit that we don't have. We can't give to somebody something that we don't have. And see, I always wanted somebody to give me love so I'd have love. And that's not the way it works. Love comes from within, and that's what the people of the program, they loved me until I knew what love was about. They gave me a living example, but it had to come from within.
And if I don't love me, I am not going to present the real me to you. And that was the reason I always doubted if you really liked me. Because you see, who I appeared to be was not who I knew I was on the inside. And so therefore, I always felt that if you really knew me, you wouldn't like me. So I always doubted your ability to like me. But you never knew who I was. And so it was a big act of trust to be able to actually put out who I was.
And see, we know in our fellowships that we can love the unlovable. Because you know, when we're practicing our defects and we come in sick as we come in, we are not lovable, lovely little things. And they said that when I marched into Al-Anon that night, there was two ladies in my home group, that was all the size of my home group, and they had two visitors. God knew they were going to need help. And they said that their comment after I left that first night, well, a rich bitch has arrived.
And I said, you are only half right. Only half right. I heard a definition of love after I'd been in about a year. And I had been told to take my focus off of him. Because you see, he was everything. He was my higher power. You know, what he did or didn't do determined how I was going to feel. I'd look at him in the morning and say, I wonder what kind of day we're going to have. See, it depended on what he did or didn't do.
During that year, I began to try to develop a relationship with a power greater than a human being. No human being could have relieved us of our sickness, but God could and would if he were sought. And I kept hearing that, and so I finally began to develop that. And then I realized that when I took my focus off of him and just worked on myself, we got along a lot better. We got along. But I went to that meeting that night, and there was a lady there, and she says, we're going to talk about love tonight.
And she said, I'm going to read a definition I found of love. Love is acceptance, understanding, and tenderness. It does not strangle, grab, or possess. It sees the other person not as a god or an idol, but as a human being, possessing the strengths and weaknesses of all human beings. Love doesn't ask to be served only when it may serve. Quiet, gentle, trusting. It is composed of affection and desire without anxiety.
And I knew in my heart of hearts I had never loved not like that. That was an unconditional kind of love, and I wanted to learn how to love like that. So I went home, and I told JD, I said, I've never loved you. And he said, okay. And I said, not like, and I read him. After the meeting, I went over to her, and I wrote down that in my ODAT book. It's still in my original ODAT book. And I said, this was what they said love was, and I've never had that for you or for anybody in my life, except my dogs and my daddy.
I have never had that kind of love, and I want to have that kind of love. And since I've already got you, why don't I practice with you? Since I've Already Got You, Why Don't I Practice With You?
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Because he was saying, do you want a divorce? And I said, no, I might as well, just go pick me another sticky, JD. It's proven, there's an 85% probability if I get rid of one alcoholic spouse, I will go and find another. And I said, I've already got one, let's just work with what we got. You know? And he said, well, that's really exciting. He said, because I love you. And I said, and I'm grateful you love me. And I want to love you, but I want to love you in the right way. I want to love you this way. And so I had to ask, you know, you know, what is God's love to me? Because that's what I want to give you. I want to give you God's love instead of my kind of love. My kind of love is conditional, destructive, you know, all those kind of things. But if I'm going to give it, you know, God's love is unconditional, no boundaries. It gives me comfort. It protects me. It's kind, forgiving, strong, gentle. I can trust it. It's trustworthy. It never, it's constant, unwavering. It enhances everything I have and do. It makes me happy, joyous, and free on the inside. God's love is God's will for me. God is love. And if God is love, then that's what God wants you to do is to love. You know, God goes ahead of me all the time and plans in love. God goes ahead. God is all wise. God is all powerful. God is whatever I need him to be at any moment in my life. God can be anything. He can take any form, any shape. You know, it's like when Dorothy died in the car with me. There was a hospital that had just been opened that was seven blocks away. If I'd had to take her on the other side of North Little Rock, she would have been stiff. No, probably not. But you know what I mean? She would have been impossible. But there was that hospital. We have very few motorcycle policemen anymore.
And that morning when she's in the car with me and when she choked and threw her head back and her heart stopped, her chest stopped moving, I said, oh God, do I do CPR? I'm driving. I'm in bumper to bumper traffic. It's the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving and we're right in front of the biggest mall in the state. Everybody's out for Christmas shopping, you know, and it's at noon for God's sake. So everybody's out now eating and doing too.
You know, couldn't have been a heavier rush hour. And I'm going, how do I, how do I get over there? And all of a sudden I saw the motorcycle policeman coming and I began to blow my horn and wave and tell him I need help. I need help. I said, I think my sister's had a heart attack. She's not breathing. And he just turned, he never said a word. He just turned and he began to make the traffic move over and we got through there and he drove me right up into that emergency room entrance. And you see, in my panic, I hadn't thought about the fact that hospital was there. I was thinking we were going to have to go to the other side of town. And he took me right there. And by the time we got there, Dorothy was blue. But you see, that hospital was right there when God needed it to be there. And they were able to do an emergency dialysis on her and start her heart again. And like say she was in a coma. And when it became time for me to have to move her someplace, the rehab place gave me 24 hours to get her out of rehab on Christmas. There was a day before Christmas Eve and they gave me 24 hours to get her out. Very unkind thing, I thought, which I told them about later. You have to cool down past kill so that you can do it in a manner that you don't have to make an amends for, but still be very effective. Anyway, and so this nursing home had just opened the week before and Dorothy was patient number four. Do you see how God went ahead of her? And it didn't smell like nursing homes will sometimes smell. It was a beautiful, clean, overstaffed facility. She got excellent care.
And as a result, they taught my sister how to walk and they taught my sister how to talk. And they worked with her until she could be self-supporting to the amount that her memory would allow her to be, which would never have happened otherwise. She was able to have all that individual care just when she needed it. God goes ahead and plans in love. You know, when God's love is removed from a relationship, that's when self-will will kill that relationship.
It's like that tornado roaring through people's lives. When we're in self-will, when it's all about us, we just roar through their lives and we haven't, and we're going this way and we never look behind. It reminds me, I saw a movie one time where they were having a race and the guy said, well, who's behind us? And he reaches up and grabs the rearview mirror and throws it out the window and says, what's behind us? It's not important. That's self-will run right, going that tornado going right ahead, not looking at all that debris behind it, you know. I have to have one focus here. My focus is on one thing, expressing God's love or God's will in my life. Not what I would want always, but what my higher power
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would want. And how do you know if something is God's will? How do you know? How do you know? Well, I know what isn't God's will. Now I'm halfway there. If I don't do the things that I know I shouldn't be doing, I'm halfway there. And then I have that test, bless it or block it, bless it or block it, you know. One of the best tools that I've ever been given in this program was to look at people through God's eyes. To look at my mother.
How would my mother see God? You see, God has no grandchildren. We're all God's children. We're all equal. And so when God looks at you as his child, he's gonna see you the way he created you. He's gonna see you with all the capability to love and be loved. And he's not gonna look at you in a negative and say, well, there's a piece of crap. I just don't believe God does that. God can't hate that he creates. And see, I thought God was mad at me and hated me and that's the reason bad things happened in my life. And what it amounted to was I gave God the credit for all the bad stuff I put myself in position to get. I put myself in situations that normal people who think wouldn't do. And so I was told to try to see my mother as God's Caesar and act as if I'm a loving child. And I don't know how to do that. You see, I've hated my mother for a lifetime. When my daddy died, we declared war on each other. Whoever dies, the other one wins. You know? I went out of my way.
I wanted her approval. I would have thought that was love. My mother was one. I, you know, I was a class valedictorian. You know, I made straight A pluses all the way through school and I'd bring my report card in and my mother would just look at it, sign it, and whatever. She never said, you did a good job, whatever. You see, this is what she expected me to do. It wasn't above and beyond. This is what she expected me to do. And I couldn't understand that because you see, when I'd take and tell daddy stuff, you know, he would praise me and he would do all these kind and things that would build your self-esteem. But my mother didn't have that tool. My mother's life had been totally different than my daddy's.
But you see, I compared her against my daddy. And when daddy died, I canonized him. I made him a saint that he never did anything wrong. Well, you can do that when you're 12 years old. Looking back now, when I see the fact that I would go to her and she'd tell me no and I'd go to him and he'd say yes, I'd kill a man that did that. You know, there was no unity in that house regarding child rearing. So he was the good parent and she was the bad parent. I see this a lot today in people I sponsor who have children who are especially in divorce situations. And one parent is the good parent because they only has it on the weekends and you can keep it together and let the kid do anything he wants to for two days and then send it back and let mama deal with it for the other five days or something.
You know, I've seen that so much. And I think of that. And you know, it's like I know today that my daddy was not perfect. But I didn't know that all those years. And his being perfect made her so far less than what she was. And that was my attitude. And as I began to do that, it's like, how do you become a loving daughter? I don't know. Well, find somebody who is a loving daughter and ask them what they do. And so I had a friend and I was talking to her about it and she'd say, well, what is such the big deal? And I said, well, every time we're together, you know, she'll say something that'll hurt my feelings and I'll say something back that'll hurt her feelings. And she says, and what causes that? And I said, I don't know. And she said, well, what are you doing? Are you trying to change your mother? No, I'm just trying to help her. Okay. I'm going to help her. I'm going to air condition her home. You know, she built that house back in the twenties and it needs air conditioning. And so I had the electricians go in and wire and put air conditioning in my mother's home. You know what my mother said? After two weeks, take that stuff out of my house. What are you talking about? She said, I don't like my windows being shut.
I like to have the air open and I'm freezing to death in there. And you know, this is an old woman, you know, and as there comes a point where when you're going through menopause, when you need all that air, but when you get past that time, then you get cold easier, you know, and her blood was thinner and, and she said, I don't want it. So I had them to take out, not the wiring, but the air conditioning and everything out of her home. And that really irritated me because I was trying to do something really nice for mother. Now I'm looking at that from this point in time, I was miserable when I went over at my mother's. It was too hot over at my mother's. So why was I air conditioning mother? So it would be comfortable for me when I went over there. That was one of the considerations. You see, it wasn't a totally selfless act. It had some self-centeredness in it. I decided I'd buy mother a microwave because I really enjoyed mine. My mother did not ask for a microwave. She had a little
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Muncie toaster. She put the microwave down and put the Muncie toaster on top of it and use the Muncie toaster. I said, mama, why don't you use the micro? She said, I don't want all those little funny little feelers and stuff. She says, it's all that stuff up in space now. It's screwing up our weather. Who knows? She may have been right. I don't know, but it would be frustrating. You know, it would be so frustrating because every time I'd try to do something good, it would sort of turn back on me. But there was the other fact that when I was over there, I would enjoy the convenience of having the microwave. You know, it wasn't a totally selfless act. Then it would come time for Mother's Day. Oh, there's an agonizing period in time. You've got to buy a card and a gift. Now, they didn't make Mother's Day cards that said happy Mother's Day, bitch. I gave her a Maxine shoebox card one time. It says, the longer you bitch, the longer God lets you live. Well, Mother was in her 80s. I thought that was appropriate, so I gave it to her. She didn't like that card. I thought it was hysterical because it was so her. That's the reason she didn't like it, you know? And it was like, no, you've got to get her a card. And I'm going, that is so hard. I can't get a card that says you were such a wonderful mother. You did this, you did that, because she wasn't. And it's so hypocritical, and it's such a lie. And they said, a loving daughter gets her mother what she wants. And the first year I got it, I got the most generic card I could find. I could barely put my name on it. I couldn't send it. I couldn't. And my sponsor mailed it. I just couldn't. And then the next year, it got a little easier, and it got a little easier, you know? And I'd just go and get what I thought that she would like to have instead of worrying about if it fit. When my mama died, she had saved every one of those nice cards. You see, my mother needed reassurance that she had been a good mom, and I never gave her any of that. I never gave her. But that card said what my mom needed to hear, you know, that kind of thing. There was another thing I found that is a gift of love, and that's the gift of time. The gift of time.
We do it all the time for one another. Somebody calls you and takes an hour of talking to you on the telephone, you're giving them the gift of time. When you sit with somebody through a day-long fifth step, that's a gift of time, you know? And I don't know about you, but in my point in my life, time is my most critical factor. You know, I have to work. I have to take care of my sister. I have a home. I have people I sponsor. I have my own recovery.
All of those things have to be wasted. So time is a very important thing for me. And my mother now lived alone, had lived alone since I was 19 years old. She never remarried. She never dated. She was just over there working. My mother was a dressmaker and designer, and she could do tailoring, she could make men's suits, she could do anything like that. She could find a picture, if you found a picture in a bride's book, and we had people come from a lot of different states over, because mother had worked with the entertainment field and making costumes and stuff, and that is a very labor-intensive type stuff with all those little sequins and seed pearls and crap like that. And mama could take your measurements, look at that picture, draft her own pattern, and make you that dress. That's an amazing thing. I took it for granted. I didn't know how amazing that was when I was a kid growing up. I just knew I was sick and tired of homemade clothes. I wanted store-bought clothes, for God's sakes. You know, it never occurred to me that people who have money, you know, will sometimes do that. But I would give her the gift of time, and I would go and spend time with her, and the moment I had the need to have to tell her, I went home. Shut your mouth and go home. When I had to fix her, shut your mouth and go home. Because my mother had said to me so many times, why don't you just quit trying to change me? I said, mama, come into the 20th century. She said, I don't like it over there. You know? And so I would go back home, and mama would say things sometimes to me that would just absolutely devastate me. And my sponsor said, why do you take that to heart? Your mother's frustrated.
When you're frustrated, don't you sometimes say things that later you wish you hadn't said? Yes, I said, that's what amends are for. And she said, but your mother doesn't have a program. She doesn't know that. I took her to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and to an open speaker meeting, thinking, you know, because my mother had been so damaged by alcoholism. Her father died of wet brain. Her mother died of cirrhosis of the liver.
All the members of her family had So the liver, all the members of her family had alcoholism. The drinking side, except my mom, she didn't drink.
[00:30:02]
If she drank, she might have been. I always felt like she needed to drink. She was real intense, you know. Not that I would know what that is about. When she'd call me on the telephone, and I'd hear her voice, I would say, Mama, hold on a minute. And I'd put the phone down, and I'd run to the bathroom, get on my knees, and I'd say, God, it's her. Help me not to say anything that will hurt her. And God, help me not to get anything from her that would hurt me.
Put a bubble around us, and protect us from one another. And then I'd go back, and Mama, she got to her, she'd say, Have you got a bladder problem? Because it's possible, it's possible, anything's possible. But I began then to listen, and you know, my mother's conversations, a lot of times I would have taken the phone, and when Mother would call, and I would say, and I'd put the phone down, and every few minutes I'd go, uh-huh.
Really? Huh. She bored me to death. And later, when I began to listen to her conversations, it was the same conversations, but I heard it differently. She told me what she got up and did that morning, what she had for breakfast, when I came by, my mother was sharing her world with me, and my mother had a very small, small world. All of her contemporaries had died. She had no friends to visit. The only people she saw were her sewing customers, my sister, me, and my husband.
Her world was very, very small, but she shared what she had to share, and that's all you have, you know. And you see, it was so boring, it was so mundane, but it's all she had. And she was doing the best she could. And then I began to accept her, the fact that she was the way she was, because that's how she was. And I quit trying to make her different when I asked God to be my mama. I said, God, you've been my father, would you be my mama too?
Because my mama's not capable of being. My mama's not capable. And you know what God showed me? You've had a mama like you wanted all your life. You just never looked at her. That was my sister. My sister, who was 16 years older than me, had always been there to love me, nurture me, take me to town, take me shopping, take me to movies. She bought the first store-bought dress I ever had. And I was a pianist, so mama made all my formals and everything.
But for my graduation formal, I wanted a store-bought dress. And Dorothy took me to the finest place in Little Rock, and they ordered me a dress from New York, an original, 90 yards of red lace. I'm not a shy violet, you know. And with that cold black hair I had, man, I was strutting my stuff, you know. And I felt like a million dollars. And Dorothy later said that broke mama's heart because she wanted to do that for me.
You see, she wanted to do that for me. But I wanted the store-bought dress. And so I began to see a lot of things differently, you know. And I began to love her. And, you know, the thing about it was one day I'm praying this prayer, let me see mother like you see her. And then all of a sudden one day I drive in my driveway, or mama's driveway at home, and she's way out in the back field and she's raking leaves, and I saw my mama for the first time.
She was a little short woman. Came up to about here on me. I thought mama was big. Why in the world did I not know mama was this little short woman? Why didn't I know that? And the voice said, because you always come as a child. You never come as an adult to another adult. You come as that little child wanting mama's approval. And when you don't get it the way you want it, you go away hurt. And mama's the big bugaboo.
How many times have you come over here as an adult to bring your mama something? And I'm not talking about tangible gifts. I'm talking about gifts from the heart. I was always waiting for her to love me so I could love her. Never. And as I'm walking back to see my mom, it's like God let me see inside her heart, and there were scars all over her heart. And you see, I always felt that she withheld love to punish me because I was bad.
And I realized she didn't have it to give. Mama had given the best she had, but she didn't have it. How could she have had it? We are taught love.
[00:35:00]
You know, we are taught how to love. My mother didn't have that. Look from where she came. Look from where she came. And so I went back there, and I treated her like the book says. Sick people, treat them like you would a newcomer. And I gave my mama a hug, the first hug. And she stiffened up. Boy, she stiffened up because, you know, we don't talk, we don't touch, we don't do anything like that. But it has to start somewhere.
And as our literature tells us, let it begin with me. And y'all had taught me to love so that I could pass love on to my mama. And every time I would go out with my mother after then, I would make a point to pat her, give her the power of the human touch. There's great power in that. And I would give her those hugs, and then later she would stand up and walk into those hugs. She didn't know how to hug, but she was going to be able to receive those things.
And then came a day I went by my mom's, and we were talking about things that happened when daddy died. And I thought, oop, we're going to get into it. Because, see, by this time I realized my mother and I can't talk because we're both alike. I'm just like, you know, one of these days you open up the mirror, and you look in, and you go, it's her, you know. But it was on the inside, I was like her. And that's what I realized, I was like my mom.
And that's the reason two people who are just alike have a hard time getting along with one another, you know. Because any defect you have, when you see it in somebody else, it bothers you ten times as much. You'll excuse yours, you won't theirs. And she said, how come you became such an ornery kid when your dad died? And I said, because I was mad at God. And I was mad at you for not loving me. Daddy loved me, and God took daddy, and he left you, and you didn't love me.
And she said, how can you say I didn't love you? I said, mama, did you ever tell me you loved me? Did you ever comfort me? Did you ever tell me I did good? Did you ever point out any area where I had accomplishments? You looked for that soft underbelly, and you ripped me apart every time. And I just didn't know you loved me. And she says, but Mary Pearl, I gave you a roof over your head. I gave you clothes to wear and food to eat.
It was more than I ever had. You see, my mother had survived in that home where everybody's drinking. And this is the early, early, my mother was born in 1900. And my daddy was born in 1889. So, see, I was a change-of-life baby when I hit there. I always teased them, and I said, I know what y'all were doing when the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor. Because I was born nine months later. And anyway, I told her, I said, I didn't know.
And she says, well, you know, her daddy, when he drank, was a very mean drunk. And she had scars all over her body where he'd cut her with a knife and stuff when she was growing up. And she was terribly afraid of him. She'd had appendicitis, and they took her to the little country doctor. They had an operation, and they took her back home. And they had a very small, two little bedrooms, one for mom and dad and one for all the kids.
And they used newspaper for wallpaper. Very, very poor, very poor. And he came in drunk and told her to get up and put a stick of wood on the fire. He didn't have a clue. She had just had her appendix taken out. And when she said, Papa, I can't, he kicked her. And he busted her incision. And she nearly died. She nearly hemorrhaged to death before they got her put back together again. She had a huge scar that was deep.
You could stick your thumb deep down in her side of her stomach where it had. And as a result of all this damage that she had received, it made it very difficult for Mother to conceive. And she always had to take lots of treatments to be able to conceive, except when I came along. She thought she had gone through the change. And then when she felt life, she said, Oh, my God. And she went to the doctor and he told her.
He said, You're pregnant. She said, I can't be pregnant. He said, Well, you are. You know, and I always wondered, you know, maybe I was adopted. You know, did you ever feel like you were an alien just dropped here, you know, somehow or another? You just don't fit with the rest of them. And Dorothy would tease me and say, You were adopted. And I'd look at our pictures, and I'm going, Really? Because we look so much alike, you know.
And then there came the time when her daddy came in drunk and he tried to rape her. He exposed himself to her many, many times. And it scared her so bad, she picked up that stick of wood that night and she hit him over the head and she ran. And she was never to go back home again. And she walked hundreds of miles and she stole food out of people's gardens and she slept in the culverts
[00:40:02]
until she got to Memphis where she was living in an alleyway in Memphis in a box. This wasn't real popular in 1913, girls. And there was a lady who had a boarding house on that alley, and she took my mom in to help her and she gave her room and board for working there in the boarding house with cleaning and helping cook. And my daddy was running the recruiting office for the Army, and he took his meals in that boarding house, and that's where they met.
And when she turned 16, they got married in the parlor of that boarding house. Now, if that had been your life experience, what would be the greatest gifts that you could give a child? A roof over its head, clothes to wear, food to eat, and never to have to worry about somebody coming in and doing anything to you in the house. My mother had done those things. And you see, I thought that these were just, everybody does this.
They would have been luxuries in my mom's life. And all of a sudden, it became enough. And I looked at her because, see, I had tried to make amends to her many times, and it never went well. We'd get into it before I could ever get to the part that says I was wrong. And so I told her, I said, Mama, I was not a good child. I know that. I was a real trial to you, and I know you must have been terrified being left alone with a child who was so disobedient.
You see, I wanted her attention, and I didn't get it with positives, so I went with negatives. It's just that simple. You're going to get the attention one way or another. And I told her, I said, I wasn't a good child. I said, Could you forgive me for all the things that I have done that have hurt you, so many of them on purpose, in my sickness? Could you forgive me? She said, Could you forgive me for not being the kind of mama you needed?
And I said, Mama, I forgive you. And my mama got up. She walked across the room, and she held me in her arms, and she gave me that hug, and she said, Baby, I love you. I've always loved you. And I knew that she had, to the best of her ability, she had. And that hole inside me closed up. Now, that was about a five- or six-year process. That didn't come overnight. You know, harms and hurt feelings of years' duration do not just go away instantaneously.
And, yeah, we would have arguments later, but there was never that feeling on the inside that she didn't love me and that I hated her for not loving me. That went away. And after four or five years, Mama got a mental illness in which they turn on the people they love. And so she turned on me and decided that, you know, that I was a threat. She tried to kill me. You know, those kind of things, just everyday occurrences in our lives, you know, as the stomach turns.
And I couldn't be around my mother anymore. And I told Dorothy, I said, You know, Mama needs help. Mama needs to be put away. Mama is dangerous. And Dorothy said, I promised her I couldn't do that. And I've told Dorothy many times, I'm never promising you that because I'm going to do what's best for you regardless of what you say. But, anyway, my mother had a series of strokes. And in the series of strokes, she had to be put in the nursing home, and she knew that Dorothy had done it because Dorothy had the power of attorney.
And Mama lost her ability to communicate. She couldn't read, write, or talk anymore. But her mind was still going. And physically, she could zippy-doo around. She made some fabulous escapes from the nursing home. But she, with Dorothy there, she, we walked in, and she said, or she motioned to shut the door. And I shut the door, and I turned around, and I thought, Oop, not a good thing. And she hauled off, and she slapped Dorothy across the room, just backhanded her.
She was so angry with Dorothy for putting her there, and I became the good kid again. And I was able to spend, I'd go walking every day, and after I'd walk, I'd go by the nursing home to see my mom. And let me tell you, if you have anybody in the nursing home, if you can, get by to see them as much as you can. At unannounced times, they get a lot better care. When they know somebody's going to be coming, but they don't know exactly when, they're more on their toes to take better care of those people.
And I know they have, most nursing homes have way too many people in there for the number of staff. And it's just strictly, it's not that they're meaning to abuse people always, but that is the case. Anyhow, I have good memories of being with my mom and getting her hair done. And it was so funny because she would get real agitated under the hairdryer. And so I told the lady, give her a manicure while she's under the hairdryer.
And then after the girl started, I went, oh, that might not have been a good idea. Because my mother had always said, don't paint your nails, you'll be a whore. My mother had a lot of really good wisdom there. You know, she'd say, you know, you start painting your nails. there, you know, should say, you know, you start painting your nails, next thing you're going to be smoking, then you'll be drinking, then you'll be whoring, and you know, pretty much, yep, that's how it went, but anyway, she wasn't altogether wrong, you know, but
[00:45:05]
it fascinated her, and it kept her mind off of the worrying of the hair dryer, and when I got her back to the nursing home, she ran in and she went like this to all the other patients, and she pointed to me and she went, you know, and my mother, she hugged me, she would run to meet me at the door to come see her, you know, my mother was more able to give love after that than she had ever been before, it's like something happened within her, she was able to give and receive, you know, and that's some of the best part of God's love, you know, J.D. and I today, you know, we're more intimate with each other than we've ever been, and I'm not talking about sexual intimacy, I'm talking about heart-to-heart intimacy, which for most women is much preferable, you know, you can always do sex, that's not a big deal, but the other, to give of your heart is one thing, you know, to give of your heart, and it's because we do that, you know, and I try to expect less of those that I love and allow them instead of having all these expectations on them, what they should or shouldn't do, you know, it's like when our, in year 2000, we lost both of our dogs, and J.D. took it really, really harder than, I mean, I nearly died when I had to put Voodoo down, but, you know, it was like five months to the day I had to put Dancer down, I knew J.D. couldn't do those things, you know, sometimes women are stronger than men in these emotional things, and even though, and he grieved hard, and I had to, I kept wanting him to stop grieving now, because every time he'd start, I would, you know, it would touch me, and I didn't want to go there, I was dealing with this, and, but I had to not fix him, I had to let him do his own thing at his own pace. You know, another thing I had done back during the drinking, I was a rotten customer at the grocery store, because I couldn't watch him if I was at the grocery store, because he had quit going to the grocery store after I embarrassed him. We were there, and he was drunk, and I was looking in the meat counter, and I moved on, and he didn't notice that, and a little old lady stepped in between us, and so he slapped her on the ass and said, what do you think about those pork chops, honey? And she just went ballistic, you know, and I said, well, and he's going, my wife was right here, and she's right over there, and I'm sorry, I didn't mean, and she looks at me, and I said, I've never seen that man before in my life. So he wouldn't go with me to the store. So I'm on a mission now at the store, and I'll just want to get through the store and get out and get on, you know, it's just, and it's irritating to me, and I have a photographic memory for numbers, and so every time the prices go up a penny or anything, I'm just ballistic, I'm mad all the time, and I took it out on those people that couldn't fight back. You know, that's sort of a chicken thing to do, but you know, it's like, God forbid they should, this was before scanning even started, and they're punching it in, they punch it in wrong, and they're doing it on purpose, they're trying to screw you, you know that. And so I would attack them, and the result was, I couldn't get anybody to check out my groceries. They'd have to go on break, go pee or do something, and so the manager, I'd have to get the manager to check my groceries out, and I didn't realize that this wasn't happening to everybody, because your world's so small, it's all about you. I'm the only one on this planet that's important, get out of my way. And the arrogance of that, you know, and so my sponsor told me, she said, why don't you try being a positive customer, why don't you go in there and be nice. And so I thought, oh God, this is awful, how do you do? Well, I do everything to an extreme, as we know. So I go in, I'm skipping behind my cart, and I'm going grocery shopping, you know, and I get up there, you know, and it took a while before I could get me a real checker, and then finally they noticed I wasn't being a beast, and so I got up there, and I'm trying to do that, and I'm being nice, and I'm telling them, you know, I like your makeup today, or what have you, and I'm trying to find honest things to compliment people over, instead of just saying things, you know. And I get home one day, it's around Christmas time, and I've got my sack full of groceries there, and I'm emptying them, and oh my God, I have shoplifted a card. I didn't buy a card, there's a card in my grocery sack, oh my God.
You know, and now I'm going to have to go back and admit, I have shoplifted a card, and so instead I opened it up, and it was a card from all the checkers and the sackers about how I was their favorite customer. You see that change in the attitude in treating them like God would have you treat people, you know. It made a difference, you know.
[00:50:01]
And I have fun with it, too. One of the little sackers later became the store manager of another Albertsons there in town, and, you know, he sent me Christmas cards every year, and a couple of years ago I got a card with him, and in it was a little writing, and what it was, when I do my readings in the morning, and I would read my Odette, I would write down in one line what I thought my God directions were for the day, based on what I'd read.
And he was having a hard day one day when he was a little kid now, and I had given him my piece of paper I'd been carrying around, because I'd carried around with me and read it over and over during the course of the day. And I gave it to him, and he sent that back to me as a grown man in his 40s who had cancer and was dying and wanted me to know how much our friendship had meant. You know, that's a God deal. That's a God deal.
One of the checkers one day, I got up there and I was buying some all-waste pads, and when it went through they had been $2.49, $2.49, and all of a sudden this big thing was now going $4.29, $4.29, and I'm thinking, wait a minute, y'all have got that put in wrong in your scanning device. I said, that's $2.49, because remember I've got the memory for the numbers. And the girl said, we've got a new assistant manager who is a real jerk. She said, why don't you talk to him about it? She said, have some fun. Well, I don't need much encouragement, you know. So he came over there and I explained to him that they're not $4.29, they're $2.49, and so she re-scanned it. He went over and checked and he says, well, you know, sometimes when we get a new product in, for six months or so we sell it until you, I said, until we get addicted to it and then you put a big price on it. Is that, was that what, well, I want to know, is this a sexist price change?
And he says, well, what do you mean? I said, did condoms go up? Give it to her at the $2.49. You know, having fun, just having fun, you know. Okay, tradition six. A partner ought not be overly supportive, spiritually, emotionally, or physically to the marriage or relationship lest problems of ego gratification divert him or her from the primary purpose. This is about caregiving rather than caretaking. You know, if I'm taking care of you, I can make a vegetable out of you in a short period of time. I will do things to help you, help you, help you so that you will need me. You know, that's it, to create that sick need.
My need to be needed and my self-esteem dependent on others is what that was all about. I started that out real early. That little girlfriend down the street from me who wanted to ride my bicycle, I helped her with her homework. She had a hard time with her homework and I was fine until we were, you know, in the seventh grade and she got her eyes tested, found out she was so nearsighted, you know. And that's the reason she couldn't see and do her work and all of a sudden, you know, she could see and she didn't need me. And that was a real bummer for me, you know. That's just like on my jobs. Every time I've had a job and they give me more and more to do because, see, I can do it, you know. You leave, I can take over your job and do yours and mine without any problem whatsoever because I'm one of these people that I can get my nose down there and I can focus and I can go and do, you know. And the only problem with that is when they find someone like you, they're going to give you and you'll take on more than you can do time after time and kill yourself doing it just to prove to them that you are that good because you need to be that good, you know. You need to be better. It's like I used to get tickled when JD worked.
When he was drinking, he worked maybe two, three days maximum a week. And I'd say to the head of his personnel department, I'd say, why do y'all keep him on? Why do y'all keep him on when he and he says when JD's here, he works more than five times as much as any other guy here. So in the two or three days a week we get him, he puts out more work than he, and most of them do in the five days. So he says, that's why, you know. Because I wondered, you know, how could he keep a job in the shape he was in? He drank on the job all the time. They just wouldn't let him get near an overhead crane, you know. Don't want him killing anybody, you know. During the active drinking, I took over everything.
I took over everything. I lost respect for him. He lost his self-esteem. I had lots of resentments. And the thing about it is, when he got sober and tried to begin to take an active part, man, I would not let go. I'd strangle that down, you know. Because, you know, I don't want him. This is my stuff. I don't want him in my stuff. And it took
[00:55:03]
me several years before I would let him look at the checkbook, not have it, look at it. Because first of all, I didn't want him seeing where I was doing stuff, you know. We always scrutinize everything. We scrutinize everything he does. We do not look at what I do. Do as I say, not as I do. And, you know, I felt like if he didn't need me, he might not want me and he might leave me. That was a scary, scary proposition. And see, we had such a mother-child relationship. Now, it didn't start off like that. But as the drinking progressed, it began to be that way. And he was the bad little boy. You know, I would tell him, don't go out and get drunk. He'd go out and get drunk and come back home. Well, what do you do with a bad little boy? You whip him. I mean, it's real simple, you know. Physical abuse was the method of punishment in my home when growing up. My mother, and like I say, my mother always, she didn't always anything. But more often than not, when Mama was angry, she would whip you when she was angry. And she wasn't content until you cried. Brilliance here, I'll not cry. So therefore, you get more when you don't cry. You know, and so she wasn't happy unless she had brought blood, made bruises, those kind of things. Things today people would be locked up for doing. But I'll have to say, in my mother's defense, I asked for a lot. You know, it's like she would tell me not to do something and I would have to do what she told me not to do. Even if I knew the penalty was she would cut my arm off, I would do it. I would do it. I was that kind of a kid. You know, I was the kind of kid that I would kill. You know, anyway, like I say, I addressed JD, you know. Now, I don't know who did that before I got to him, you know. He was born in 1936. We started dating in 65. So he wasn't a child then, you know. And when we went out on dates, he came from another location, so obviously he had gotten himself together somehow. But after a period of time, you know, he had to look the way I wanted him to look. And he had to dress the way I wanted him to dress, whether he liked that or not, you know. That became the thing. So now he's sober and he doesn't want me doing all these things. There's some he does and some he doesn't. You know, that's what throws you to. And so I told him, I told my sponsor, I said, I'm sick and tired of dressing him because it makes me late. Well, you know, you lay out his stuff and you go in to put on yours and he's griping about he doesn't. So then you've got to figure out something else for him. And then by the time you get in there, then you're running late, you know. And so I said, what can I do? She says, well, you can quit dressing him and not bitch, or you can continue to dress him and not bitch. I don't like my choices. Because you see, I want to bitch about everything.
And she said, no, we're going to stop some of that. And so I went in and made the announcement that I was not going to dress him anymore. I was not his mother and I wasn't going to do that anymore. So, okay, he says, you know, he laughs. And I think, okay, you think it's funny. We're getting ready to go to the meeting. He says, what do you want me to wear? And I said, that's your choice. I don't care what you wear. He said, no, come on, seriously.
What do you want me to wear? And I said, I'm not going to tell you what to wear. I said, it's just that simple. I'm not going to tell you what to wear. And so he said, okay. So now he's going to force me to do that. So he comes out, he's got a pair of pants and a shirt that don't go anywhere together. He's got a shoe on one foot and a boot on the other. I mean, you know what I mean? He's going to force the issue. Well, he went over the top.
I didn't say anything. Well, he couldn't say anything. So we went to the meeting. And when we got back, he said, I've never been so embarrassed in all my life. And I said, well, I'm not going to dress you anymore, little boy. I said, it's not happening. You're going to grow up. You're 40 years old. Grow up. And so he says, I don't know what goes together. You've done it for so long and you pay attention to the fashion changes and all.
I don't know. He said, if I ask you, does this go together? Can you say yes or no? Yeah, I can do that. I can do that. And so that's what we had. Now he's such a fashion horse. There's no telling, you know what I mean? The man's got twice the amount of clothes I have. I created a monster there, you know. I had to develop this hands-off policy with people that I love. And it's called MYOB. Mind your own business. Mind your own business.
And it's like, what is your business? Your business ends at the end of your nose, you know. And I thought everything that affected me And I thought everything that affected me was my business, which means everything, because everything affects me, you know. No, not true, you know. And I got a taste of what this felt
[01:00:01]
like one time. My sister, it was so funny, she, somebody would ask me something, Dorothy would answer for me. I began to feel like we were Charlie McCarthy and his dummy. You know, and I went, Dorothy, what is the matter? And especially if we were around people she worked with or that kind of thing, she would answer for me. And I thought this must be how J.D.'s felt all these years, like I don't have enough sense to answer for myself. It was really, it just made you feel bad about yourself, you know. And so she finally quit doing that. Dorothy and I, though, we are so much alike in so many ways that for years and years, I could start a sentence, she could finish it. Or we'd say the same thing together at the same time. We did that once in this last year. That was a miracle. And we both looked at each other and laughed, you know. We said, we're doing it again. We're doing it again. That's good. Either I'm going or she's coming, who knows. And when I practice this tradition by taking my hands off and letting him do his own thing, I can see things differently. You know, he's very smart. He may not be smart in book learning. He quit when he was in the 11th grade. But he is a smart man from experience. He's very talented.
Oh, he is witty, let me tell you. You know, people say, how is it to live with her? I say, hell, you should live with him. He, you never know what his mind's going to come up with. He is bizarre wittiness, you know. I come home one night and I've been on the road and I'm tired. And I told him, I'm just going to sit in my chair and I'm going to relax a while before coming to bed. And he said, okay. And in a few minutes, I begin to notice this glow of light coming from back there in the kitchen. And there's JD standing in his underwear with his arms like this. And he's got a lantern on his head. And he looked at me, he says, I'm an angel sent by God. He loves you very much. And so do I. And you may call me Monica. Would you ever think to do something like that? You know, he is so funny. One of the girls I sponsored was a sponsor of Alateen Group. And she'd been over at the house visiting. Well, you know how our purses are. These are lethal weapons, you know. And she had one of these big purses that's just open and everything goes to the bottom. And JD was moving it from one of the bar stools. He wanted to do something with it. And he said, later, he says, did you know her purse weighs 100 pounds? He said, that is the biggest. He said, that is heavy, heavy. He says, she ought to walk like this.
He said, how does she do that? Some JD women just learned to do that. And he says, well, I fixed her. And I said, oh, what does that mean? And he said, well, I had a couple of pieces of asphalt out there in the yard. And he said, I just put them down in there, you know. And he said, she walked out the door, swung it on her arm like it was nothing. And he said, I know that was 5 pounds. I know that was 5 pounds. So later in the week, she calls me and she says, I've really got to do something about my group, my Alateen Group.
She said that somebody put some big chunks of asphalt in my purse. Well, one of the kids had moved her purse and made a comment that it felt like rocks. And so later, she was at her office that week, and somebody needed a safety pin. She said, I've got one somewhere here in my purse. So she turns her purse upside down, and these two chunks of asphalt and all this other stuff were there. So she assumed that the Alateens, and I said, wrong kids.
And she said, Turkey did that to me. So he, they have fond names for one another. And I said, yeah, I'm not supposed to, I'm not in this, but I'm just telling you, don't punish the kids. Don't punish the kids. So she stayed at home with our animals when we traveled. And so the next time we traveled and we came back, I was, I had not done the laundry or anything. I just throw it in the, in the, and JD came to me after a couple of days and he said, when are you going to do the laundry? I said, well, my God, JD, you got a drawer full of clothes. What's the problem? He said, all my flies have been sewed shut. I said, don't mess with the Alinons. Don't, you know, just don't go there. Are you a questioner?
Are you an information gatherer? You know, we get all this information that we can't do jack shit with once we got it together. You ever noticed that? But we know why that
[01:05:01]
helps a lot. You know, we, we get that. But when you're, when you're too needy, when you're too needy of a person, you have a tendency to be a questioner. What's the matter? Somebody comes in, they're sitting there and they don't look like you think they're supposed to look at that moment. And you look at him and you go, what's the matter? It's like, what have I done? You don't have to say what I've done, but why do you need to know what's the matter?
You know, they'll tell you when they're ready. You know, are you okay? Well, you ask him that enough. They won't be, you know, if you keep on going with that, we do the who, what, where, when, why you go, we got to know all the W's, you know, and you got to remove those from your conversation and allow that other person to be. And if they want to tell you, they'll tell you in their own time and own way. But you see what it is is we want to find out what's the matter so we can fix it, you know, and that's not our job. We don't need to fix other people. So adverbs are dangerous, you know, and not knowing isn't a bad thing.
What does our Odette tell us? What we're meant to know will come to us without any action on our part, questions or actions. We don't need to question, you know, we just need to accept. So then the next tradition is tradition seven. Each partner ought to strive to be fully self-supporting spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Now you notice the other one before it tells you that we, we quit taking care of other people and this one is take care of yourself. How many times have you let yourself go by taking care of somebody else? I see this a lot with parents and they say, well, I, my child has to have this or this has to be, and what you're doing is you're, what example are you showing to your children when you let yourself go in order that they should have more? When you, when you do everything for them and, and cart and do and all like that, and I'm not saying all that is bad, but I'm saying to the degree that we, the overdoers have a tendency to do, you're teaching them that they are more important than you are instead of we are equals.
When they see that you're not taking care of your appearance, but you're making sure they're dressed, you're sending them a mixed message, you know, just those kinds of things. When I was helping other people, I let me go. It was real hard for me to learn the concept of taking care of myself spiritually, physically, and emotionally. Very difficult. I, and when I learned to take my life back, I become responsible for me and see when I'm not taking care of me, then I can blame you for where I'm at. I had to be viligant where my behavior's concerned since I have a tendency to be a controller. That's my normal tendency, to be a controller.
More of my contact with God is good, the less my fear is, the less I need to have to control. Works in that order for me. You know, I, I have had horrendous experiences in my life. Absolutely. And when I look back on them, you know, it's because of my need to have to control everything. J.D. and his daddy were going to go fishing up in north central Arkansas on the Little Red River. And they left, and my mother-in-law, who loved to go fishing, decided that she would help me stay, and we were going to pick peas and process peas for the freezer. And so we did that all day long, and so it was about nine o'clock that night, and we're shutting down, and she said, you know, I'd really love to go and be on that fishing trip in the morning. Really. And she said, yeah, she said, I tell you what, I fried a chicken earlier today. She says, we can take that fried chicken, we can go up there and surprise those boys. Really? Well, how do you tell her no? She's helped you all day long. So we get in the car and we start driving north, and the rain begins to come. And I said, it's raining, we need to go back home. She said, it might not be raining where they are. And the closer we're getting, the harder the rain. I said, it's coming from there, Virgie. And little did I know, there were severe warnings out for bad tornadoes and everything else in this area, because we've been doing peas. We hadn't had radio TV on. And so when we get up there, we have to go past the reservoir, and then there's a house on this side, and then there's a road on this side, and we turn onto that Red Gumbo Road. Do I have to tell you what Red Gumbo does when it rains? We're talking slick. It's like, you know, you're just sort of whipping back and forth, you know, just the rear end meeting the front end going down that road. And I get to this little bitty narrow one-lane bridge, and the water is going over the bridge. They're having flash flooding.
And I said, you're not supposed to go through running water. And she says, I've made it
[01:10:00]
across this bridge a thousand times. Why did she say that? I have to now. You see, I've never turned down a dare, for God's sakes, you know, and that's sort of the challenge, you know. She laid it out. Well, I started across the bridge, and the bridge caved in. So now we're down in the rushing water going to the river. And my mother-in-law looks at me and she says, I can't swim. And I said, too bad. And the water's coming in, you know, and I'm trying to get the window down. Thank God for crank windows, you know. Nowadays with electric windows, you're going to be pretty much screwed until the car fills up, you know, and the pressure, you can open a door. And I'm rolling down the window, and I noticed the chicken is floating by, you know. And I said, come on. And so I'm pulling her out, and I am trying to hang on to her and to get us over to the other side. It's not a big, wide gap. It's about, oh, I say, from here to about that third row back there from where we were. And all of a sudden, you know, I mean, and this is a real scary situation.
That water is swift. It is real hard to pull yourself, much less to be hanging on to somebody. I finally get over there, and I tell her to grab on to the roots of that tree. And so she's there hanging on, and I'm trying to get behind her and get her up without washing down, coming back. And all of a sudden, I have this tremendous pain in my chest right here. And I'm going, oh, my God. And I'm pushing her, and I'm going, get out, Virgie, get out, Virgie. And I'm getting out. And so then I got out, and I got that perch out of my bra that was fending the hell out of me. You know, that little perch just went zipping right in, and that flood water, you know, and he's in there trying to get away.
And you know when your bra is wet, it sort of cuffs out. So, you know, he's swimming back and forth, just cutting me to pieces. And we go to where the truck is down the road to where they were down by the dam. And the tent, they were all drunk, and the tent was underwater. It was just a disaster. And so this is a one-lane road. We came in the only way to get out. There is no bridge. I'm living testament to that, a person without the car.
And so I explained to them what the problem is. And so the men, you know, do not realize the seriousness of the situation. Of course, we've got these bubba's, you know, there. We can do this, you know. And so, anyway, they finally got everything that was left of what their supplies were, and they got it and loaded it all on the truck and came back. And then they stop, and they go, there's no bridge. You know, and it's thunder and lightning storming during all this, you know. And we're out there, and I said, the only way we're going to get help is we're going to have, somebody's going to have to go across this there creek again and get over and go to maybe that house that I saw and call for help. And so I figure I'm already wet. How wet can you get, right? And so I'm a Red Cross senior lifesaver. I've already saved one for the night. And so J.D. and I, we made it away across to the other side, and we walked down that gumbo road until we got to that house.
And a great big German shepherd came bounding out, woof, woof, you know, like this. I'm mad. And I said, get away from me, and that dog's growling. And I kicked that dog, and he goes, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof. And he ran off, you know, and I scared away the guard dog. And we go up to the door. Now, if you'd been witnessing this from the inside of your house, and there's somebody beating on your door saying, we need help, and you hear them, you're going to open the door. I'm not opening that door. Are you going to open that door? I'm not opening that door. Somebody open this door, or I'll kick it down.
Now, I mean, I am mad, you know. Get me in there. And they wouldn't, so we ended up walking all the way into town. And as it just turns out, that same night, they'd had an escape from the local prison. And, you know, I'm sure they didn't know, because, I mean, you know, we look pretty bedraggled, and, you know, they have no way of knowing. I have my hair pulled back and a long ponytail, so who knows? And like I said, I'd already molested their dog. And so we walked into town, and there was paved telephones, but they were inside things, like it was inside the service station or inside this. It was a little teeny old town. And so we finally, the only place that we saw a light was on and could possibly be built was a funeral home. And when I got there and we told them we needed help, the guy said, what can I do? And I said, I just need to lay down for somewhere. And he looked at me, and I said, no, no, not in one of those, no. And we called JD's uncle, and then he had a tractor, and he brought the…
J.D.'s Uncle and then he had a tractor and he brought the tractor and he came and, and, you know, it took us all the rest of the night and part of the morning getting our car because it has to come out the same way it went in, pulling it out backwards. And then, of course,
[01:15:01]
they have been continuing to drink and they said, you know, I believe if we backed old roadie, that's our truck, if they backed it up far enough and got a run and jump. And I'm going, I don't believe that. That can't be happening. And then I heard, it's happening. And my father-in-law's driving and all of a sudden, you know, now we have a truck in the creek. Like he thought he could jump the creek. Those were some of the things, you know, and it was like trying to take care of yourself was nothing in this. It was mind to take care of everybody else's needs and what have you. Always taking care of somebody else. Well, today I know I'm responsible for me and my growth. You're not responsible for my growth and what you do has nothing to do with what my reaction is to it. That is my choice.
You know, we make lots of choices. Sometimes they're instantaneous. Sometimes they're different. But I have something today I never had when those things were happening and that is God. I never had God with me. God was with me, but not in my awareness level. And it's like anything else. If I have something, I don't know I have it. I'm not going to use it because I don't know it's there. But God was there. God saved me from myself and a lot of this crap, you know. And I also, I worked in the insurance field and I worked myself up to the top paid position for a woman in that company. And I was my job. That was my identity. I was my job. And when I, you know, I thought, you know, if I don't have that job, then I'm not going to be worth very much, you know. And after JD got sober, he told me that he wanted to support me. He said, you know, my wife, my first wife worked. And he said, and then you've worked. He said, I would like to be a man and I would like to take care of you. And he said, could you quit? I made two thirds of the income, people. And it's like, whoa, I am really going to have to cut back on what I do. And you know, it took me about a year before I could successfully do that after I quit. It's like somehow my mind said, you know, you have money, you don't have to do this. You can do what you want to do. And then the stark reality happened and I was whining to my sponsor and I'm going, oh, we're going under, we're going under, we're going under, we're going under. And I said, oh my God, I'm going to have to go into some of my savings. And she said, savings? What are you saving for? And I said, a rainy day. She said, it's raining. You know, you have to learn to adjust your spending to what you have to spend with. And that was sort of a tapering off process. And you'd be surprised when it's all gone how you can live with it being all gone and it's not the big end of the world you thought it was. You see, it's easy to be financially secure when you have money in the bank. It's a lot harder to be financially secure when you don't. But you see, if you got God in the bank, God's going to take care of you. Now, God's not going to give you everything you want, but he's going to give you everything you need. And you have to know your capabilities as well as your limitations. You know, I have to know that if something happens to JD, that I'm going to be okay. You know, I have to be able to take care of myself. And one of the things that I didn't do for myself was for years, JD, I would make sure that he got to the dentist on time and what have you, but I didn't go. And I would say, well, we can't afford it for two. I'll martyr. You know, the word is martyrdom. To martyr is dumb. Tells you right there in the word, you know, you don't have to look far on that one, you know? And what was the truth? The truth was I was afraid of the dentist when I was nine years old, that he took me to the dentist and they, I had a bad little tooth and they pull that one and they dentisted the one next to it needs a filling. And I was doing a little tap dance in the chair at the time. And, you know, being, and back then they didn't give you Novocaine.