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Source: DICOBE-00246 – Sallye C – GOPHER STATE ROUNDUP – 1979-06-01.mp3 File: dicobe-00246-sallye-c-gopher-state-roundup-1979-06-01.mp3 Duration: 01:11:56
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Hi, I'm Sally and I'm a member of Al-Anon. Being a good Al-Anon, I'll apologize right off. I don't have my badge on. I had my choice between the elevator and the badge. Maybe when I sit down, you'll wish I had chosen the badge. I hope not. And I would like to thank Lorne and all of the committee for asking Keith and I to come to the Gopher State. As Marie told you last night, for some reason, I have been exceptionally excited about this convention.
I get excited about every convention, but I was really looking forward to this. We had met Willard early in the year and he had told us about this convention. And the way he described it, it was the brand of Al-Anon and AA that I believe that Keith and I and all the people from California are used to, the kind where you feel the love. No one has to say it. You just know it's there. And as Karen told you, when I first met her, I believe, as I think in retrospect, probably Karen and I were the minority, but I know that it's nothing that we have done.
I think that it's what the programs have done for the people, that these two programs have grown closer together. And Keith's group of AA, whenever they take a birthday cake, they give a dollar for every candle. And then at the end of the year, that group sends that money to New York. And Keith's sponsor tolerates me. But he has told me now that since I take up a seat in that meeting every Wednesday night, I have to give half as many dollars as Keith gives.
And I'm glad to do that. I would gladly give more than that. Because literally I think I almost gave my life for this program and I didn't know it. However, as Karen said, we come into this program quite different than we are today. And that's what I would like to tell you, as best I can remember it, as best I see it. What I was like and what happened to me and what it's like today. And had anyone told me what I was like, I wouldn't have believed them.
And had anyone told me what was going to happen, I wouldn't have believed that. But today I'm here to tell you that I believe everything that my program tells me. And I'm always willing to listen for anything that anyone in the program has to tell me. A few years ago, I went to… And this thing about being a minority, you know, sometimes today it still gets to me. Sometimes people can't tell the difference between Al-Anons and AA.
And you'll hear a mumbling behind you, something about the Al-Anons. The hackles don't rise on my neck anymore, but I still react a little bit inside. And I have gone to Arizona to talk at a convention. And the Al-Anon that I have been raised in in Southern California, Al-Anons just do not ever, ever participate on the same program in a conference like this, at the same meeting with an alcoholic, unless it's a family meeting of Al-Anons.
And this is the first time that I have been asked to do this. And there was a man on the same program that night, Joe L. from Tyler, Texas, and I'm sure a lot of you know Joe. And I had known Joe and Mary, and I loved them, and I respected Joe, and I stood in awe of anyone with that much sobriety. And early in the afternoon, I took the program secretly to the lobby of the hotel. And I was sitting on a couch, and I was looking at my name right there in print, along with Joe L.
And there was an old man sitting on my right and another old man sitting on my left. And I think probably between them they had a hundred years' sobriety. But I don't think they'd enjoy the day of it from the way they looked. And one said to the other, this is an Alcoholics Anonymous convention, what do they have that Al-Anon on there for with Joe? And my heart fell again. And I thought about it, and I went to my room, and I cried a little because I thought, maybe this is wrong, maybe I'm not supposed to be, why am I here?
And I gave it a lot of thought. And I was in Arizona, the same reason I'm in Minneapolis today, is that my life has been affected by the disease of alcoholism. And short of the obsession to physically drink it, I was more obsessed with alcohol than Keith was. And that, this is my story, my obsession with alcohol, without having to drink it. I was born in Oklahoma, and at that time Oklahoma was,
[00:05:04]
Marie's identifying, Oklahoma was dry. And I didn't, I never saw anyone drink. I don't know that, probably, I had an uncle that lived in Texas. And on holidays he would bring a six-pack, if they even had things like six-packs then, to our home, maybe on a holiday. And maybe I saw someone drink a beer, I really don't know. I could never remember having ever seen anyone drink anything until I met my husband.
And I saw a lot of it then because I was a very intent watcher. So I was unfamiliar with alcohol, and I was certainly unfamiliar with alcoholism, and the disease, I knew nothing about that. And that was to come later for me, to learn about that it is a disease. And I believe today, I know today, for me anyway, it is a family disease. And I don't know how some of the other Al-Anon's feel who've come to the programs, but I feel that perhaps I spread this disease more throughout our family than Keith did with his drinking, because our children accepted his drinking.
They knew their father drank, and they knew that he would be drunk. It was me that they never could figure out. I think probably that how I spread this disease through the family unit was with the uneven personalities that I took on, and I took on many of them. But my children would get up in the morning, and maybe one morning I would be warm and wonderful and have blueberry muffins baked for them, and the next morning I would be giving everyone the silent treatment, and the next morning I would be screaming and yelling.
So my children probably never knew just what it was going to be like with me, and they were always sure with their father. And when Keith drank, he was pretty much like the little girl with the curl. When he was good, he was good, but when he drank, I thought he was bad. And when he wasn't drinking, and even when he was drinking, I know today, he was a good husband and a good father. But I didn't see those things, because I was unfamiliar with this thing called drinking.
So I was 14 years old, and like any good self-respecting Okie, I went to California. And if you're sincere about being a Californian after you've been an Okie, you go to Bakersfield, because if any of you have read Grapes of Wrath, that's where they all went. So that's where I went. And I was in high school, and Keith was in junior college, and he would come over to the campus where I was going to high school.
And I had never seen anything like that, I'll tell you. There wasn't anything like that in Oklahoma. And he was big, and he was handsome, and he was popular, and he was active in sports, and he gave me a lot of attention, and I loved it, and it was exciting. And he drank, and I thought that was exciting. His family drank, and they looked like they were having fun to me. So I remember that most of the year, all the times that we were going together, and until sobriety came into our life, I do not remember any occasion, Christmas, Thanksgiving, children's birthdays, whatever, that there was not drinking involved.
There was always drinking involved. And in the beginning it didn't bother me. When we were going together, everyone drank, and we all went out to the river and they would drink, and after games we would go out and drink and dance. And it didn't bother me because it wasn't interfering. I was going right along with it. And it only began to bother me when it began to interfere with what I wanted. And it took me a long time to find out just exactly what I wanted.
But Keith and I got married. I was 17 and he was 19. And we moved from Bakersfield to San Jose, and he was going to go to school there. And he was on a scholarship. So he would eat at the training table at the college, and he was gone a lot on trips over long weekends if they were playing out of town. And when he wasn't playing, he was practicing. So what happened was I was young, and because he was gone a lot, I was not immediately thrown into that eight-to-five daily routine.
We had a little apartment and we had a little baby girl, and I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. I had this little apartment to clean and I had this baby to play with, and she was just like a little doll that I could dress up. And so I had my own little world. And if he drank, it was no big thing because I always had something that I wanted to do with her. And he did drink. And there were times then that it did begin to interfere, or I would think about it, maybe just small things.
If he said he was going to be home, he wasn't, or when he did come home, he brought half the team and they played poker all night. Those kind of things began to bother me. But I knew it really wasn't any problem because I knew as soon as he graduated that we were going to move to this little town.
[00:10:04]
I didn't know exactly what little town. I hadn't picked it out. But in my mind, it was the perfect, it was a perfect little town, and he was going to be head football coach and I was going to be the pillar of the faculty-wise, and we were going to have these children, and it was just going to be perfect. That's the way it was in my mind. Always in my mind it was that way because always I knew that tomorrow it would be different.
It wouldn't always be like this. And as soon as he got out of school, he wouldn't do those kind of things. So that got me through a lot of years, and I'm forever grateful that I did have that kind of thinking. Today I know that my mind, sometimes my mind is out to get me, that's true, but most of the time my mind can take me exactly where I think it should be because I have learned to change those kind of thinking into reality.
But he graduated, and he did not take a job as a coach in a little town. He signed a contract with the San Francisco 49ers and immediately told me that he was going off to training camp and I should stay at San Jose. And so he played with the 49ers, and during that year he came to me and he told me that he had signed a contract to go to Canada and play. And I thought that was nice because I knew as soon as that season was over we'd move to the little town with the little house.
And now we had two children. So that just made my picture more complete because we had a daughter and a son. And you know in good fantasy you have to have one of each. So he went up to Canada to Edmonton the first year. And about six or eight weeks ago Keith and I were in Edmonton. And he was talking at the conference, and I had never been to Edmonton and he had never been back there since he had played.
And I guess he got kind of carried away with his reminiscing. And he was talking about the places that he drank and how much he drank there and all the things that he did there. And I realize today in listening to what he was saying that alcoholism was definitely very strong in his life at that time. I had no idea his drinking was to the point that it was then because that was well over 20 years ago.
And when he was talking I remembered that when I first went to Canada I noticed it and also in the States too they had this big sign that said, And last month when I was listening to him I thought, I'll bet he knew about AA then and thought, what an order, I think I'll go through with it. But he was in Canada and I was in San Jose and he came back and then we all moved up to Toronto and he had a little short spurt there and then we moved to Winnipeg and then Toronto.
We were working our way north. And then we ended up back in Ridgecrest and Ridgecrest is on the desert. Now we had the little house and our daughter was in school and our youngest son was almost ready for kindergarten. And now I knew we were going to get down about this business of living. But I didn't know, you know, that my husband was an alcoholic. All I knew that now the drinking really was beginning to get in the way.
That the drinking really was causing him to do funny things. That his drinking was beginning to make me violent. And violent I was. Homicidal, you know, I was. Suicidal, never. There were times when it just may have flashed in my mind but I really did think about a lot of times, you know, how I could just conveniently get away with just doing him in. Because I knew that if he was out of my life things would be different.
But we lived on the desert and our daughter was in school and I was making a desperate stab at that picture life that I had. And he was still drinking and he was drinking more and more and more. And it didn't change. When Keith was playing he had a coach that told him it took three D's to succeed in the game of professional football. And that was desire, determination and drive. And that pretty much capsules my story because Keith had the desire to drink and I had the determination he wasn't going to.
And it almost drove us both crazy. Because as Karen said, watching him drink was a full-time job for me. When I talk about an obsession with alcohol, I was obsessed with it. From the minute my feet hit the floor in the morning as the drinking progressed until I went to bed at night, I thought about his drinking. Where will he drink? How much will he drink? Who will he drink with? How can I find him?
Who can I send to get him? All day my thoughts revolved around his drinking. We stayed in Ridgecrest on the desert for a while and then things were going to be different. I rested on the desert for a while, and then things were going to be different if we moved back to Bakersfield.
[00:15:02]
So we moved back to Bakersfield. Now we're back in a town where we both went to school, and we knew a lot of people, and there was a lot of opportunities. That's what he told me. That's what he always told me when we moved. There were more opportunities there. So we had another little house, and it was going to be the one that Better Homes and Garden knocked on my door and wanted to do up in their book.
And it was the one where he was going to be sitting in his easy chair with his pipe, with our Irish setter with the children at his feet, and me in the kitchen cooking. He did not smoke a pipe. We did not have an Irish setter. But that didn't matter to me. That's what I had in my mind that this was going to be. But now he's back in Bakersfield, and he knows a lot of people in Bakersfield, and he does a lot of drinking.
And the drinking progressed, and the drinking progressed to the point where I think that probably those years that we spent there, I couldn't believe that all the hopes and dreams that we had started there, and I could see them slowly falling apart there, and I didn't know why. And that was, to me, the most frustrating thing. I didn't know what all of this was about. I didn't know that this intangible thing that was coming into our lives and frustrating me and killing him, I didn't know what it was, and I didn't know how to combat it.
The only thing that I knew was that I had one good weapon, and that weapon could be my caustic, sarcastic tongue. I knew that I could say things to him that would rip him up one side and down the other, and that's what I did. I often say I was practicing primal therapy long before it was popular, because I only knew two tones, silence and screaming. And so he would drink, and he would come home, and I would react to his drinking, and that's just about the way it was.
And if you're new to Al-Anon, and you think that possibly there's something that you can do to stop someone's drinking, I can tell you that I tried everything that I could think of, and I have a free-acting mind, and I tried everything. And if I found anything that worked for short periods of time, I hung on to it. But the thing that I found that worked best for me was the ability to inflict that old guilt on him, because I knew that if I could make him feel guilty enough, I would get what I wanted.
And that usually was something like mowing the lawn, or cleaning out the garage, or doing what the neighbors did. I knew they did a lot of that because I watched them a lot, and I compared our lives to him. And when we come to Al-Anon, we learn about a higher power. And you know, when Keith was drinking, I had a higher power. That higher power's name was Jeannie, and you probably have them here. But what they are is they're little things about this size, and you keep them on your visor in your car.
And when you drive up, you click it, and your garage door opens, and you just drive in. And our neighbor had put one in for his wife, and I thought, My goodness, anybody that would have an electric garage door open for their wife, their marriage must be perfect. And you could set your clock. At 4.30, I went to the window to watch her come in from work, and click her Jeannie, and that garage door would open.
And I just thought that was marvelous, and I just knew, I just knew, if I ever got to that, that my life would be perfect. But we were a long ways from that in Bakersfield, because the drinking now was beginning to interfere in a lot. And now we had another son, a younger, eight years in between the last two. And Keith was drinking very heavily, and he was doing the things that alcoholics do when they drink.
And I was reacting in the same way probably that everyone in this room reacted, that lived in a drinking situation. I, as I say, had this one thing that I thought worked best, and that was guilt. And I won't bore you with all the things that I could inflict guilt with, but one particular one was that I knew that if I looked superior to him, that I would get what I wanted. Now we know that it doesn't take too much to look superior to someone who's rubber-legged drunk on the floor.
But I had to do it, because I knew that the children would respect me if I was superior to him. So he would drink all day, or whenever he drank, and he would come home at night, and Bakersfield gets very, very hot. It's like Palm Springs, very hot. So, you know, we do things, when we're living in this disease, we do things to ourselves that we would never permit anyone else to do to us. And so what I would do, and I had a system, and my system was to conjure up all the sympathy that I could from other people without them ever telling me that they were sympathetic towards me because of my condition or the marriage that I had.
[00:20:04]
I did not want them to tell me, but I wanted to believe in my heart that they thought it. So I would go out at noon in Bakersfield, and I would mow the lawn. Now the lawn had to be mowed on Wednesday, not Tuesday, not Thursday. It had to be mowed on Wednesday at high noon. And I would go out, and I would mow the lawn with a push mower, and I would trim it, and I would rake it, and I would do all those things to it.
And I knew what was happening. The neighbors were looking out, and they were saying, look at that poor little thing out there working, and he's out having fun. Now they could say it to each other, but don't ever say it to me. Don't ever tell me that my husband is an alcoholic because I had in my mind that the word alcoholic was such a dirty word that if I could put a contentation on it, that I wouldn't say it in church the way that I could tell Keith that he was an alcoholic.
And that was always what I said at the end of my very best lectures. That was the capper, and you're an alcoholic. I often realized that that's probably why maybe he had second thoughts about wanting to be one, because I had probably convinced him it was about the worst thing in the world you could be. But I would mow this lawn at noon in the heat, and then I would go in. And because I had worked all day outside, obviously I had to do the inside things at night, and that mostly was ironing.
And this was before the days of wash and wear, and I loved to start. To me, things were not clean unless they were starched and ironed. And I would start ironing early in the evening, and first I would get out my TV guide to see what good movies were on, and they were not good unless they were something like The Lost Weekend or Come Fill the Cup for Too Much Too Soon, anything to do with drinking, and I was on because I wanted to watch those movies.
And if I saw anything in them that I thought might be a benefit on my upcoming lecture that evening when he got home, I recorded it right away. And I think it was in Come Fill the Cup that James Cagney said, you know, one is too many and a thousand is not enough. And I don't think I was ever more anxious for Keith to come home so I could tell him. I fail to remember that he also squashed a grapefruit in somebody's face in that movie, too, and I was very lucky that didn't happen to me.
Because when I came to Al-Anon and they talked about physical violence, you know, I didn't know what they were talking about because Keith never hit me. And when I would give him these lectures, if I had been him, I would have hit me a hundred times because I used to tell him, and this is how I would spread the disease. I would tell him, hit me, I dare you. Are you watching, kid? Boy, watch this, hit me.
He never hit me. If he had, I would have had a different speaker today. But he would come home and I would have been ironing all evening and I would have hung the ironing in the doorway where he had to come in, into the doorway, into the bedroom, in the bathroom, all over, anything that would hold ironing. And the object behind that obviously is so that when he comes in and he could see, I don't know how much lawn work you can see at three o'clock in the morning, but I assume that he looked, and he could see that I had mowed the lawn and done it all up nicely.
And obviously the reason I was ironing now is I had to do this because I had to do his job in the daytime. And I knew instinctively that he would feel guilty. So he would stagger to the front door and I would conjure up all the intelligence that we seemed to come up with and meet him with that famous phrase, you've been drinking. And he would give me his standard answer. He had a couple, so what? Now I knew that he had a couple, but his mistake was to have said, so what?
Because then he was in for the early morning lecture and he would sit over there in his listening chair and I would stand in my talking position and I would tell him, so what, about that day and the day before, and so did your mother, and ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. And when we got all through, he would go in and go to bed and pass out or go to sleep, whatever the case. And you know what I was doing. I was laying there with that open knot in my gut wondering, you know, what's happening?
Why does he have to do that? If he loved me, he really wouldn't do that. But he did. And I kept reacting. And the only thing that I knew was to think up new things to do. The only thing that I knew was to think up new things to hurt. And I left a lot. One of the ways to make the big exit was, I'm leaving and I'm never coming back and I'm going to take all the happiness out of your life. I wasn't willing to take the kids with me, but I was going to take all the happiness.
So I always left and I went all the way to Pasadena, which is an hour and a half. And I would get there and then I would call him up and I would say, I'm gone. I'm really gone and I'm never, ever coming back.
[00:25:04]
And because my script was down so packed that I knew after that phrase, I knew what his line was. And his line was music to my ears. His lines were, I'd never do it, I'll never do it again. And I wanted to hear that. And I believed it every time that he told me. And since I've been in Al-Anon, I know that he believed it every time that he said it. And I would go back and things would be okay or good or ecstatically happy for a couple of days.
And then we were off and running again to that kind of thing. And he came to me one day and he said, we're going to move. It's going to be better in Los Angeles. And I thought, well, you know, it couldn't be any worse, that's for sure. So we moved to Los Angeles. Now our daughter, who is the oldest, is in junior high. And our youngest son is just starting school in the middle and is in elementary grade.
And the drinking progresses. And now I'm in a city where I'm not familiar. It's not so easy for me to call up and find out where he is because I don't even know what town he's in now. Bakersfield is a small town. So he would drink and he would come home and we'd have these horrendous fights. And, you know, I had that thing going, I guess, in my head that our neighbors either were very nice or deaf.
I never really thought about what I really thought. Because we would have these fights at night. Or I should say I would do all the screaming and yelling at night. And then I would go out in the morning and, you know, I would just be the pillar of the neighborhood. Just the perfect mother, the perfect wife. Never thinking that perhaps they heard what went on the night before. Or maybe they looked out their window and saw me laying in the driveway in front of the car, daring him to run over me.
I didn't want him to take the car or lay on the windshield or, you know, whatever it was I decided to do. Leaving, you know, me screeching out of the driveway. Going to the whatever bar that I had decided that he was in and whatever attire that I happened to be in. It was kind of like a come-as-you-are party. Whenever the mood struck me, I went. And I would go into these bars because I had learned, you know, I'm a fast study.
I had learned not to call up and say, is he there? Because you know they're never there. So I would just figure it out where he was. And I would go storming into that bar. And if he wasn't there, you know, God forbid the trip should be a total loss. Because then I would tell just anybody else I happened to run into that they should be home too. You know, to my knowledge, Keith was never thrown out of a bar drunk.
But the bartenders liked him drunk better than they liked me sober. And that's just the way it was. It was just up and down and on and off and drinking and fighting. You know, Keith's sponsor talks about the valleys and the mountains of alcoholism. And I believe that. Because I believe that I remember some of the mountains in the drinking years. And those were the high times and the good times. And if I just dwelled on the valleys of that disease, I don't think I ever would have wanted to stay.
Because that was what I hung on for a long time, is I knew there was something else there. I knew that there had been. And I knew that I saw other people with these things. And I knew that it could happen, but I didn't know how. And so I was trying to make it happen the best way that I knew how. And Keith was sober two years. And I used to go to open AA meetings with him in the beginning. And I would listen when they read the fifth chapter.
And the B part in the fifth chapter says, No human power can relieve the alcoholic's drinking. And I heard that one night, and I realized that's what I had done for those 18 years of drinking. I had tried to relieve the drinking. And it just didn't happen. When we moved to Los Angeles, and the two older children then were in high school, I had lost my sounding boards. They didn't believe me anymore when I said, We're going to do this, and I'm going to do that.
And they would say to me, I don't want to hear about it, Mom. If you don't like it, do something about it. But don't tell me. I'm busy. So I didn't have anyone to talk to. I had this big secret that my husband drank too much. And you know, it's not anything that you discuss with people at PTA or whatever. It's just a secret. And it just gnaws away at you. And I couldn't tell my mother because she would say, Well, you poor little thing. You come live with me.
Or I couldn't tell his mother because she always said to me, Well, I don't know. He didn't drink like that when you married him. And that was true. So I had one friend who had more problems, I thought, than I had. She had been married several times and had several children by each marriage. Children by each marriage. And so, and her father was an alcoholic, and she used to tell me,
[00:30:00]
Keith is an alcoholic, and I would kind of listen to it from her, because we had all gone to school together. But I really didn't want to hear it, because it frightened me. And I didn't know, I didn't know what it was, because my idea of an alcoholic, I'm sure, was the same as anyone else's that doesn't know anything about it. And I just thought, you know, let him be anything but not an alcoholic, because I didn't know what would happen. And the two older children were busy with their own lives, and things were beginning to change. And I was beginning to change in the sense that when I got up in the mornings now, I didn't have that bounce back. I didn't have that knack for saying, well, it's going to be different today. I just knew it was going to be the same. I knew that I had not seen anything to see any reason that it was going to be different.
And I knew that it was just always going to be that way. And so I would try these little tricks that I had. And, you know, they, as I say, they got me through a lot of days, and they were very ordinary things. If you, if you put the sheets on the bed with the flowers at the end instead of the top, you won't drink today, you know. If you can stick your hand in the dishwasher, dishwater, and come up with a spoon instead of a fork, you won't drink today, you know. And, you know, standing at the window, you know, watching for whatever, for him to come home. You know, and playing those little games. If two Volkswagens pass before ten American-made cars, he'll come home before two o'clock tonight. Or, you know, if you lose that one, you play three out of five, you know. You just, you do anything you can to keep your mind on his drinking and to try to figure it out.
And none of these things worked. None of them worked. And in these years that he drank, and he drank actively for 18 years, by that I mean he was a daily drinker. He did not get falling down drunk every day, but he consumed alcohol on a daily basis. He said last night that he drank those 20 to 40 half quarts of beer a day. That is the truth, because many mornings I would get out of my nice warm bed to go out to the truck to stack and count the number of beers that he drank, because I wanted to have the validity in my lecture that I was going to give him how much it cost and how much he drank. And I would just go out and I'd stack these cans in the truck or I'd throw them all in the front seat or just whatever, you know. I just was obsessed with alcohol. Just was obsessed with his drinking. And my, that was my life. That's what I thought about all the time, how to keep him from drinking. And he began to drink more and more. And he didn't, you know, he didn't only drink beer, he drank the telephone in the house, the cars, gas and lights. He drank everything. Everything we had went, little by little. And I was looking in the paper one day and I saw an ad. And it was for a job. And I thought, well, this is it. Because all the other times that I had decided to leave, I had never had any money or a place to go or a car or anything. I had just decided I was going to go and I would make my big exit speech and I would go. And this time I knew that I had to, I had to have a plan and I had to stick to it. And also to what happened was I was beginning to see something happen to him that even when I used to pray for it, you know, I don't think I would have wanted to see it happen that way. Because I could see him slowly changing in a way that wasn't, it wasn't due to the drinking. I could see him changing physically. And I could see that he really was falling down drunk as long as the human body can stay that way. And I heard Father Fred talk once and he said that probably members of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon are the only people who really love alcoholics. And I believe that because I think what happened was in those last three weeks of Keith's drinking, I really knew that I loved him, but I didn't know what was happening to him. And whatever it was, I couldn't stand to see it. But I had gotten this little job and the job that I got was in a room and we had tables and had about 20 women working in it. And you know, as Johnny says, the little horses get the little crosses and the big horses get the big crosses. And I got just exactly what I could handle because in this place where I went to work, it was these ladies putting one little piece in another little piece for a company right here in Minneapolis, Control Data.
And that's what I did all day long. And that's all that I was capable of doing because I would go to that job and I would sit down at that table and I put those little pieces together and I would sit there and I would think about, you know, how my plan, you know, I just wanted out. I just wanted to go. I didn't want to see what was happening. And in these times when I would iron and I would watch those movies, I always wrote down those things that I thought were pertinent to drinking and that I could tell him. And I also wrote down anything that I found in Reader's Digest or any other magazine. I wrote down anything I heard on the radio. I'd go to
[00:35:02]
the library and I, what I had done was over the years, I had compiled a scrapbook about drinking and alcohol and I had songs in there, dreary songs, you know. I love the Western songs. They're always, you know, they just say it's a beautiful, I heard one the other day, it was called, I'm drinking doubles because she's acting single. Anyway, I was making up this scrapbook and I kept it and I kept up with it for years.
And I was at this job one day and Keith called me and he had said, he had seen that number that I had put around and he had decided that maybe this would be the day. And he called me and he said, I have called AA. Now I want to tell you that the day before I had laid across my bed and I had cried those prayers that Marie talked about, you know, why me God? What's happened? You know, why does this have to be like this? And he called me the next day and said, I have called AA.
And my immediate thought was, well, he's not, you know, really that bad. I mean, he doesn't have to be that bad. AA just cut back a little, drinks like I think he should. You know how easily we forget. Anyway, I thought maybe it would work. And I went home and he told me that a man was going to come to see him. So the man came and he must've been in the house maybe two minutes. And I knew that the one chance that I had to get this man sober, this man and AA had screwed it up because the man talked about and said that he was four years sober and I had no idea what he was talking about. I didn't even know what sobriety, I didn't even know what alcoholism was, much less sobriety. And he said that he was four years sober and that also he was a bartender.
Now, you know, and I know that bartenders are bad news. They are the ones that when you call and say, is he there? They say, are you here? And then they come back and say, no, he says he's not here. They are the ones that make them drink. If it weren't for bartenders, you know, everything would be beautiful in all our lives. So when this man said he was a bartender, I just, I couldn't believe it. And then he told Keith's story and, you know, we all get here for whatever reason that we get here. And his story was unlike any story I have yet heard today.
Just, he was physical, he was violent, he was all the things that Keith wasn't. And so I thought, well, that's not going to work. But in order to avoid any more trouble that he might cause in other suffering homes, I decided that if I gave him my scrapbook, that he would be able to pick up a little more knowledge about this thing. And the next time they send him out to do his job, that he wouldn't. And so he was very patient and kind and he looked at it and kind of gave me a funny look as I think about it. And he left and he came back and he took Keith to a meeting.
And now I knew we were in business. Keith had gone to the meeting and I thought, no, this is Thursday. Saturday he can clean the garage and probably Sunday we'll go on a picnic. And, you know, by, well, by, this is July, you know, by January we'd be filing income tax in a higher bracket and everything was going to, I knew it was all, it was, that's just the way it was. And he came home from that meeting and he was, his ideas I think had changed, but I, you know, I can't remember exactly what it was. But while he was gone, a lady called me and can't remember, I thought, what a yassity broad. And something about you should go to a meeting and it will help. Now she didn't say it would help me and she didn't say it would help him. And I know today that she knew a lot of good Al-Anon lingo because she just said help. And that she said that I should go to this meeting and it would help. And I thought, well, if it will help, then I will go.
And then when Keith came home from the AA meeting, he told me how many people were at the meeting and basically what happened. And I thought, well, I was going to go to this meeting the next, the next night. That night I said I would go to the meeting the next night. And I thought about all the people that must have been there. Now, I don't know what happened to any of you when you lived in a drinking situation, but I told you that I took on a lot of personalities. And the end, the personality that I had in the end is best capsuled, you know, as pitiful Patty, I guess, because I could, you know, to be, to perfect pitifulness, you have to work very hard on it. You have to have the size in the right places. You have to be able to take on that stature of the poor me victim.
[00:40:06]
You have to wear just the certain thing. You have, you have to really project the victim because what it is, is we don't spend money on ourselves because they have spent all the money. And so we, we take on this whole new personality. But when I thought I was going to go to this Al-Anon meeting, I thought, well, you know, now keep it sober a whole day in a row here and I'll go and tell them how I did it. And, uh, you know, that's it. So I got all dressed up and I went to this meeting. Now I had told this lady that I would go. I did not say that I would like it, but I said that I would go. And I went and I thought, well, before I go, I must convince her that I don't really need to go ever again, because she had kind of slid in a phrase or something about, you know, you never graduate. But I thought, well, I will let her know right away that I don't really need to go to these meetings. And, uh, but I wanted to, you know, again, prove my point. So the best thing to do is to look for all the reasons why I don't need to go.
And I found them when I walked in. I mean, my goodness, heaven's sakes, I was all dressed up and one lady over there, she had on something that I didn't think looked good. And this lady didn't even live with an alcoholic and hadn't lived with him for years. And another lady wasn't even her husband that drank. And, uh, they were talking about, uh, steps or whatever it was they talked about. And I sat there and I listened and they did keep saying that it was a simple program.
And the longer I sat there, I thought, well, you know, you certainly all came to the right place because you're very simple people. So I had on my superior attitude now and I started out the door and, um, I looked on the literature table and, uh, right there in plain sight. Now, when I was growing up, I was never allowed to read comic books or true romance or photo play or modern screen or any of that. And right there on the literature table in plain sight for, well, obviously it was for all these simple minded people, was this comic book. Now, you know, I thought, you know, they're right. They have even now condensed it down into a comic book so that they can all understand it. And I, I was in Al-Anon, I guess, over two years and I was getting some new person, my best, you know, we love you, we care, keep coming back and here's your literature packet.
And I looked at the picture on that comic book and you know what that picture is. It was, it's what I used to do a lot of. And I'm sure there's some old window standers in this room. It's a lady at a window with two little children. And, you know, as I told you, I used to count the cards, but I used to stand at that window. I spent a lot of time at my window. And when we talk about the guilt that we have to work on, that's where some of my guilts took place because that was the time that my children would ask me questions and I don't know what they asked me, but I'm sure my answer was always, don't bother me. I'm busy. And I was, I was looking out the window. So two years after I came into Al-Anon, I looked at the picture on the comic book and I realized, you know, it is a simple program. It even fit me. But I went home from this meeting and I thought, wow, he's sober and we've got big, big plans. And he didn't know about them, but I, I haven't. And I thought I'm not going to go back to that. And so I didn't go. I mean, I figured what's ahead. He went to the meetings and I thought I'd give him a week and he'll get it all together and learn, learn, learn all these things that he's been doing wrong and get it right. And then we'll get about the business of living. So he is going to meetings. Now, a funny thing happened when Keith got sober.
He always worked when he drank, always. He was never, well, 62, count them, folks. And you know he was never without a job before he got sober. And he, he always had a job, not for long sometimes, but when he got sober, he didn't go to work. Now I could not handle that. So I thought, well, the only thing to do then, and now you must realize that I have not been to Al-Anon. I do not realize that it's the things that we learn to quit doing rather than the things that we learn to do.
I didn't realize that I had to learn to quit just saying the things that I thought hurt most, but I would leave in the mornings for my $1.40 an hour job. And I would say to him, well, I'm going out to do a man's work. And where I was, is I was beginning to resent the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I resented the people in it. And he would say to me things like, I'm doing the best I can do. And you know, my, by this time I was so resentful and hostile, I thought, well, you know, that's the best. And, or he would say, I'm sober, aren't I?
He would say, um, I'm sober, aren't I? And I'd, big deal, you know, in 18 years, I tell him to quit drinking, this guy comes in, tells me to chase his mother with a butcher knife, and he says, oh, I think I'll quit drinking, I couldn't understand it, and the thing that he said most often, it seemed, that I detested most, were three little simple words, and those little words were, my sponsor says.
[00:45:16]
I really didn't want to hear what his sponsor said. All I wanted to do was to meet him, the sponsor, and tell him, like, you know, like Karen said this morning, tell him what he was really like, so he would be able to hurry up and get this whole mess straightened out. But, um, I met that sponsor one time, and I told him all the things that I was going to do, and he reduced me to tears and told me all the things that I wasn't going to do. And, um, I believed him, there was something about that man that I believed, everything that he told me.
And, um, these months that Keith was sober and I was not going to Al-Anon, what really happened was, to me, nothing, absolutely nothing, I just stayed status quo. But Keith took to AA like he takes to life and like he drank, with a lot of enthusiasm. And he was going and he was doing and he was taking panel places and he was meeting morning, noon, and night, it seemed, and he didn't do anything but go to AA. And, uh, I realized that I was really, literally living with someone I didn't know. I told you he was a daily drinker, and so he was sober now, and I had never seen him totally sober, and I did not know what to do.
And, you know, the two young people that were married and had all these hopes and dreams, we didn't just wake up 18 years later and he was drunk on the floor and me crazy and screaming, you know, they tell us that alcohol is cunning, baffling, and powerful, and the disease is very, very patient, because it waited to strike in our lives just when it needed to, to get us where we were. And that's the morning that we woke up, and I was crazy and he was drunk, and that's when he went to AA. But as I said, I did not choose to go to Allen at that time. So for these few months that he was in AA and going to all these meetings, I started going to open meetings with him, but they really got to be kind of a drag, because first of all, you know, I'm sure that every starlet that had ever signed a contract now was in AA, and after my husband.
And also, too, there were these women that would corner me and say, are you going to Allen on, honey? And, you know, something told me not to say, no, I don't think I need to. I had learned that was not the answer. I had learned the answer was not, yes, I go out in the valley, because invariably they had somebody that they knew out in the valley. So I just learned the best thing to do was just steer clear of those AA meetings and let him go. And we got up one Saturday morning and he said, as he said on every Saturday morning, it seemed to me, well, I have to go up to Tehachapi. Tehachapi is a men's correctional institution that's above us.
And that wasn't unusual, because he went a lot of places without me now. And so I was standing there, you know, in my usual Saturday morning attire, you know, the scuzzy bathrobe and the go-ahead and, you know, just another day he's going to leave and not move along. And he was all dressed up and he said that he had a ride that would pick him up and that they would be back whenever. And I thought, well, you know, that's the way it always is. So sure enough, I heard the car drive up in the driveway. And now, you know, we see things as we want to see them.
And I really, to this day, don't really know what it was like. But to me at that time, it appeared to me that a long black sports car just built for two drove up in the driveway. And a very tall, light girl, kind of a cross between Raquel Welch and Farrah Foster, got out of this car. And I'm sure in that month she did not have a mink coat, but sorry, Cece. I'm sure she did not have a mink coat with her. But if she had, I'm sure that it would have just kind of drug along behind her. And remember how Loretta Young used to open the door and come in.
And she just kind of floated into the house, you know, and she's just you're just everything that, you know, you think that that beauty is. And she just kind of floated right into the house and she said, Cece!
[00:50:02]
And then she said, what was her name? Well, her didn't like that. So off they went. And I thought, well, now, this is not really what I thought should happen when he should quit drinking. And the next day it rained and it rained very hard. And he said he had to go to Malibu. And on the way back, I think probably that when we talk about insanity and what our minds can do, probably I had my first really realization that I was literally going crazy because when we started back over this mountain, he said, I think I'll take a shortcut. Now, he can go anywhere and find his way back one time.
And he said, I think I'll take the shortcut over this road. And we wound around this road and it was foggy and rainy. And he had, I was sure, maneuvered this map so that I would be on the sheer side of the cliff. And he had what he called an alcoholic truck. And it was that way because it was all banged up and the bumpers were wired on. And it just looked like an alcoholic's truck. And the door on the passenger side wouldn't open from the inside. You had to open it from the outside. And so it's raining and I have the window down and the wind and the rain are blowing in my hair. Because I had my hand on the outside of that door because I knew, I knew why he was there. I mean, I had seen evidence of it the day before when she had come to pick him up.
And I knew that he had maneuvered that map so I would be on that side of the cliff. And my knees turned to water and my hands got cold and clammy. And I thought it's just any minute he's just going to open the door and just push me out. And because I felt so left out, I felt like so much not a part of his life. I didn't know anything about this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous. And I thought he'll just go to one of those meetings with those people. They all live in one big house and are happy. And I live out here by myself.
And I thought he'll just go to one of those meetings and they'll all say, what happened to, what's her name? And he'd say, I don't know. And then they'd all just, you know, go away. I knew. Now that, as I say, this man never laid a hand on me and yet I thought that he wanted to kill me. But what it was is I knew that I really had no place in his life anymore. We had grown that far apart in sobriety. And, you know, sometimes we say when they were drinking, we wanted to divorce them. And I'm sure when Keith got sober, he wanted to divorce me. And I knew that that's what was going to happen. And I can tell you that I went to my first Al-Anon meeting with a little different attitude then. And I started to go to Al-Anon. And I began to listen to what they said.
And they did talk about a simple program. And I gave up the idea that my problems were deep and complicated and I needed a complicated program. I knew that I needed Al-Anon. And I became interested in what they talked about when they talked about working the steps. And I asked someone, well, how do you work the steps? Do you write on them and then talk to someone about them? And they said, no. But when you walked into your first meeting of Al-Anon, you worked the first half of the first step. You had admitted you were powerless. And that's another thing Father Fred told me, that there is a tremendous amount of power in that word powerlessness. And I believe that. Because when I admitted that I was powerless, something came over our lives. When I let go, as Karen talked about, when I began to let go, things began to happen to us.
So I started going to Al-Anon. And Keith, of course, was continuing his AA meetings. And little by little, I withdrew that resentment I had against AA. Because, you see, I had thought AA had come between us. And I thought all he does is go to meetings and all he does is talk about those people that I don't know. And I only didn't know them because I didn't choose to be around them. But when I started going to Al-Anon and listening to what they were saying, and I started talking to other people, and I started sharing those things with other people that, you know, that you think that you would never share with anyone. And Al-Anon is the only place that you can share those. You know, you just can't tell the checker in the market, you know, just as you write a check, you know, well, our car was repossessed last night. They just don't understand. The people in Al-Anon understand.
So I didn't have to have any more secrets. I didn't have to hold this tiger by the tail anymore. I could tell these people about it. And they shared with me. And time went on and, you know, the programs began to change us in a lot of ways. And I was never aware of the change in our relationship either. I was never aware of the certainty of the change in me, except periodically we would go to conferences and we would see people that we didn't see all the time.
And they would comment, you know, which they did to everyone, but I believed them when they would say, my goodness, you and Keith have changed or you have changed. And I knew that it must be obvious. Then I began to feel different. And, you know, that's what this program is all about for me. I used to could tell you what I thought, but I never could tell you how I felt because I was raised where you didn't do that.
[00:55:15]
You know, I was raised in a family where you didn't talk about distasteful things in front of the kids. If, you know, if anything distasteful came up, we were sent to our room to tidy up or something. You just didn't discuss it in front of the kids. And you didn't touch people and you didn't tell people that you loved them. Those things you just didn't do. So this was all a new ballgame for me. I didn't know how to do this. And Keith was from a family that was very gregarious and demonstrative and touching.
You didn't need the room to go to the bathroom. They'd kiss you all goodbye. And when you came back, they'd kiss you hello. I just wasn't raised in a family like that. And little by little, I learned in these programs that I liked it. I liked it. I realized that when I did it, I got it in return. And that's what was important. But I'm in the Al-Anon and Keith is going to AA and, you know, everything is better. You know, it was not beautiful and wonderful from the very moment that we entered the programs, but it began to get better. And if nothing else, there were times when the biggest prayer that I could come up with is, thank God he's sober, because there were times when whatever the problem was, had he been drunk, it certainly wouldn't have been a better problem.
Those were the times that I knew that sobriety was really all that his program promised him. All the other things that were to come into our lives were fringe benefits, but the program of Alcoholics Anonymous only promised him sobriety. That's what it was for. And my program of Al-Anon only promised me to understand myself enough to have lived in this disease and to find out what it's like today. And I would work with new people, and I wanted to do the right thing so badly. And Keith was sober for five years, and for his birthday, Clancy gave him a copy of the twelve steps, the way they were originally written. And the way the seventh step was originally written was, it says, humbly on our knees.
Now, they don't print the on our knees in there anymore, but I put it back in for me, because I did not have a quarrel with a higher power. I was a good little Presbyterian girl, and I went to church camp, and I went to Sunday school, and I knew about God. So I knew that he was there, but of course I have a different concept today. And so I thought, well, maybe if I do it on my knees, I will feel like that I am doing it. I will feel like that it is happening for me. And I have found today, you know, that he's really very courteous anyway. He's just there. He just doesn't come in unless you invite him. And so on my knees is the way that I chose to invite him. And so I started doing that every night.
And a lot of times I'll say, well, I never have since I've been in Al-Anon, or I always do, or I never will. I say that the way you say a lot of things. But I can honestly say today that there has never been a night since I made that commitment to myself over ten years ago that I would not be on my knees at night before I go to bed. I would be on my knees no matter where I am, and I do that. And my prayer is very simple. You know, I am grateful for the things that I don't have. Much more grateful for the things that I don't have than the things that I do have. Because the things that I do have I know are rewards from these programs. But the things that I don't have is that feeling of, you know, what the AA's call impending doom. That feeling of, you know, it's a long great tunnel and I don't see any light at the end. And that feeling of that cold wind blowing through. I don't have those feelings anymore.
And that's what I'm grateful for. Because I know if I don't have those, they're only going to be replaced with something good. And when Keith got sober, our youngest son was nine, and our daughter was 18, and our second son was 17. And when Keith was, I guess, a little, almost two years sober, up until that point, our daughter Kim, once I had a teacher come and tell me that, he said, having your daughter Kim in my room is like having a ray of sunshine.
Now, I wanted to believe that because I was her mother. And that's really what she was like. She was just like when she walked into a room, you knew that she was there because she had that magnetism and that enthusiasm and that warmth that Keith had. And she just brought a lot of joy to a lot of people. And she came, or went to Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri to take training for, I don't know, a career in the military.
to take training for a TWA stewardess and she came home and when she got home the boy that she had gone with all through high school had jilted her and was going with someone else and I guess this
[01:00:01]
was a blow that maybe triggered something that had been burning in this young lady for a long long time because she was the kind of daughter that people would say you know my you know him is just perfect isn't she and she was she was just too good to be true and so she came home from Kansas City and I guess she did who knows what she decided but she decided that she didn't want to be that good girl anymore and that's when she came to Keith and I and she told us that she had decided that she was going to go move within and live with Joe. Now we had never met Joe and when Keith got through with Joe, Joe wished he had never met us and you know none of that helped because she was certainly an adult of 19 and she moved in with Joe anyway and you know one morning at 5 30 I was sound asleep and the phone it didn't ring you just hear that click like before the alarm goes off and I was up and dressed because I didn't know who it was or where it was from or what it was but I knew that that phone call was telling Keith and I we should be somewhere and that's what it was it was St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica saying that they had someone there who they thought was our daughter by an anonymous phone call that's where they had gotten their information and they thought that we should get there and they would like to know what her religion is and we knew that the time was very limited and within 20 minutes we were from the valley to Santa Monica and Keith's sponsor Clancy met us there and we listened to what the doctor had to tell us and it wasn't free he said if she lives he said she will never ever be complete in her face and if she doesn't live it will be because she had lost so much blood between the two emergency stations and so we went down to the chapel in that little hospital and we got on our knees and our programs tell us you know we are forced to our knees and we asked God to do what he had to do and Keith has told you that he had told him that he would we would accept whatever he had chosen for this young lady and he decided to let her live and she lived for another three months in that hospital in intensive care and when she came out there was something that she couldn't handle and that was the fact that besides the TWA stewardess she had been a model and had done some professional modeling so her face was her fortune in a sense and when she looked at that face when she took those bandages off her reaction was nothing it was just a stoic look and we thought isn't that marvelous but the doctor told us that was the worst thing in the world that she could have done to have no reaction at all and so it was a long process of a lot of doctors and a lot of help to have her adjust to what was going to be a disfigured face and so for seven years and she couldn't live with the life that she had led for those few days and that was something I couldn't handle either when I went to that hospital and it seemed to me again that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous just more or less considered me kind of like a broodmare because it seemed like they were all with Keith and they were all with him and I said to Clancy don't they understand that I'm her mother that I have these same feelings and Clancy said don't you understand that sometimes the guilt of an alcoholic is more than the guilt of a non-alcoholic and he said you know you have something to be grateful for and I said what my daughter is dying and I feel so alone and he said because she only lived like that for 10 days he said what if she was 35 or 40 and you got that call he said then what would you have done he said she only lived like that for 10 days before she had to find out that she couldn't do it any longer but it wasn't only 10 days it was another seven years and she did the only thing that she knew to do to try to relieve whatever guilt anger remorse whatever she had for all of those those 10 days and they were horrendous that she lived with this man and she drank and she used and she ran away from home a lot she's 21 and she's running away from home but she did all the things that self-destructive people choose to do and she became an obsessive eater to the point of you know carrying a spoon in her purse so that she could eat it ice cream on the way home she did all the things to destroy herself physically and mentally and um about four years later we got another phone call and it was UCLA emergency this time and she had decided this time that she couldn't do away with her life in any other way that she would just shoot herself and so that's what she chose to do and Keith and I rushed to the hospital again and due to the fact that you know state of California you can't buy a rifle unless you're 21 I mean you can't buy a pistol you can only buy rifles she could only buy a rifle and I guess she couldn't maneuver it well enough for whatever reason she did not die and it was another three years then
[01:05:02]
that she drank and used and ran and Keith and I had our programs and we had the people around us to tell us that they loved us and that they had been through the same thing and it was going to be all right and her physical safety was the biggest thing in my prayers at that time I knew if she could physically stay alive that spiritually things would begin to happen to her and that's what happened she came to us one Christmas and said that she thought she would go to AA and she did go to AA and she was a good member of AA and whatever happened to her maybe happens to a lot of people she got her life straightened out and she does not go to AA today she's on her way to Bali and Singapore now but she's not going to AA but she just got back from Tahiti and she fell in love there she shared that love affair with Keith and I and she's the only woman prop assistant in KTLA in Los Angeles and she's a productive good person and she is a ray of sunshine when she comes in the room today and she is a joy in our lives and Keith and I love her very much and our oldest son Keith when Keith was out of high school he decided to go up to Washington and go into the fishing business and he's a he's a good kid and he went up there he and his wife on their own fishing boat now for salmon and they love it and they're home a lot and she's his wife now but when they we've been up there about three years in the state of Washington and he called home one day and he told Keith and I he was going to get married and right away I thought well you know they'll probably go up to her folks and get married and I'll never see him again and then about two days later he called us and he wanted to know if we would mind if he had the wedding in our backyard and Keith and I were so thrilled because here's probably the most important day in anyone's life and they wanted to share it in our yard and we knew that there were times when they didn't want to bring their friends home much less have this important day and so they had the wedding in our yard and they had a member of AA do the service and they had a couple of their friends she sang and he played the guitar and they were called the princess and the frog and we just thought that was so romantic and they made all their own food and they didn't want any paper and they didn't want any plastic and they wanted to do it all right and Annie has her name and Annie should be her name and Annie went out and she she came home and she brought home this this dress that she I know it was a dress because she told me it was a dress I was raised on a farm and it looked like a gunny sack to me but I didn't tell her that and she wore this dress and uh you know while the ceremony's going on I'm still thinking you know it's just it's just not quite like you think weddings should be but then on the other hand I had to to rationalize you know that her dress matched his tennis shoes and they made a dart and so they live up there and they are a joy to Keith and I and we love them very much and then I told you that we had eight years after Keith was born we had Kyle now Kyle um there I there are a lot of Kyles I guess in this world but there's only one Kyle like my Kyle and someone told me when he was real little and this was true you know they said that you know that kid of yours is just so cute you you kids are that cute you should just have him stuffed and he's big like Keith and and he uh you know he's the one that can just he can just melt my heart and he's he's tall and he's big and he can put his arm around me and he'd say I love you mom and that was the best meal could you loan me twenty dollars mother's day he called me collect and there came a time that we had to tell Kyle that even though he was the baby at 22 he had to leave home and so he did he moved to San Francisco and he was up there a month and this strangest thing with Keith job he had to go to San Francisco three times in that month and I bet he had been three times in the last six months but he was up there and he came back and Kyle just loved it and I came home one day and Kyle was home again and you know we had to be firm we said no you cannot live here so now he lives in Phoenix and he's doing okay he's doing okay and I you know this as I told you the things that Keith and I have today were not things that would have ever been on the list if you just said now write down all the things that you want to make you happy because we have our children and our life is pretty much put together you know and I think that everyone in this room you know can turn to someone and say you know to the person next to them you're my friend and when I started going to Al-Anon I ran across a man that I had known for a long time and there were times I didn't like this man I didn't like him at all and I don't think he liked me and a lot of things were said and done and you know today that man's
[01:10:06]
greatest friend I ever had he is a good member of Al-Anon and I am proud today to call that man my husband because Keith and I'll be married 31 years next January he'll be sober 12 this month and those are the kind of things that I like to think about you know and you know all the things that I was promised when I came to Al-Anon I didn't hear them I didn't hear them because I wasn't meant to hear them then but they've all come true now they come back to me the promises that were made to me they come back to me you know and no one ever promised me that I would come to Minneapolis with my husband no one ever promised me that sometimes you know we're in a meeting and just he can just look at me across the room and I kind of feel kind of giddy and no one ever promised me that when I see that here that car drive up in the driveway at five o'clock that I still kind of get that giggly feeling and no one ever promised me that sometimes you know just the greatest thing that can be said it's just a touch on the hand no one ever told me that would happen and I wouldn't have believed it but it has and I am grateful that I am in Minneapolis and I am grateful that my husband's an alcoholic because all the years that he drank I just thought he was crazy and I thought I was going crazy and the theme for your 1980 international convention is the joy of living and I'm here to tell you that you know I don't need to go to New Orleans because I've had more than my share I've had more than my share today of the joy of living and if you're new and you have any kind of feelings about you know is this higher power thing here what is this all about you know don't worry about it he's there I know because I spoke to him just before I came down here thank you