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Source: DICOBE-00309 – Ruth F – 23RD SESSIONS-BY-THE-SEA – 1980-09-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00309-ruth-f-23rd-sessions-by-the-sea-1980-09-15.mp3 Duration: 01:01:52
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Good morning. My name is Ruth Fristow, and I'm a grateful, happy, enthusiastic member of Al-Anon. Hi, Ruth. Hi. I always feel better when I hear that, hi, Ruth. I'm a member of the High Moon Al-Anon Family Group in Atlanta, Georgia, and I have a second home group now. That's the institutional group at the VA hospital in Atlanta. I love this group dearly. I meant to go just one time. I never wanted to get involved with an institutional group, and Billy said, go just once.
They need, they need help, and you might be able to just lend a hand, just one meeting. I went one meeting, and I fell in love with that meeting, and I've been going ever since. So that's my second home. I'd like to thank all the people from Session by the Sea for inviting Billy and me. It's not at all what I thought it was going to be like. I told my mother before we left, well, it's called Session by the Sea.
It's not a convention or a conference, so I imagine it's very small. I think it'll probably be an intimate little group of about 150 people. Multiply that by 20, and you'll come closer to getting what this is. I never saw such a vast group, but isn't it fun to have tables and have coffee and donuts in the morning together? I think this is neat. Bill said such nice things about me last night that I was quite overwhelmed, and I would…
I never know what he's going to say. And I would love to go home and leave you thinking how nice I am. But I'm going to have to be honest and tell you how I really am this morning. You know, in Al-Anon we are supposed to tell our story, not their story. And it's so convenient when they tell their story the night before, then I don't have to tell his story. I think I came into this marriage with certain character traits.
I was a certain way, and when I got involved in the illness of alcoholism, as families do, these traits became more pronounced or worse, and they became character defects. That's just my idea about it. But I'd like to give you two pictures of some of the reasons why I'm like I am. My mother is the cutest woman. She'll be 85 next Saturday. And she's very independent. She's just a sharp lady. And when she was about 78 or 79, she had to have a very serious operation.
They found a large tumor attached to her kidney, and we really thought we might lose her. And I went to the hospital to be with my father during the surgery. I left him because he doesn't want to be bothered at serious times, and I knew him that well, so I left. And he told me this later, that when they brought her back to the room, here this little bitty, oh she hits me about here, no white hair, and she was just very groggy.
And she would rise up and moan and point her hand and say, oh. And the nurse helped her back on her pillow and helped her back down. And a few minutes more, she raised up and she said, oh. And they got her calmed down again. A few minutes more, she did the same thing again. And the nurse said to my father, what do you think is, she wants something, what do you think is the matter? And he said, I think if you'll straighten that picture on the wall.
They straightened that picture on the wall and she was at peace. Now I am a straightener. I love to straighten lives, a husband's life. I like to straighten children's lives, and I never liked to straighten the house very much, that was too dull. But I was just a barn manager, and I think you can see why. But knowing why doesn't give you any excuse to go on being that way, once you know what you're doing.
[00:05:04]
I didn't know what I was doing until I came to Al-Anon. And over the months, began to see myself as I really was. The other picture I'd like to give you is of our family. As he said, I am a mother, we have four children. And this scene occurred during his late days, the last year of his taking pills and drinking. We were sitting in the kitchen around the supper table. Bill sat to my right, and the baby here, and the other children around this way.
And Bill was loaded on something, I imagine it was his favorite Doriden, which made him just like a zombie. I don't know what it was, but he couldn't feed himself very well. And his fart wasn't hitting his mouth, it was hitting over by his ear. Sometimes that didn't bother me, but that particular night I had just had it. And I turned to him, and in this low, discreet undertone, said, If you can't eat any better than that, leave this table.
Now you know women are real dirty fighters. And I said that in a ladylike tone, I thought. But I was really giving him the knife right in his gullet. And I wanted him, I was just furious at him. And I ordered him, if he couldn't eat any better than that, to leave the table. And John, who sat right over here, and was the one who caught the crossfire in our family. John was about 11 years old, and John looked me square in the eye, and he said, Mom, why don't you get off his back?
And that nearly killed me. I thought, oh, I'm just doing this for your children, you know. I don't want you all to see him like this. That's a bunch of baloney. And I didn't even know it, except I remember the hurt, that John could criticize me and not criticize the drunk. I got to Al-Anon, and after a year or so, got the courage to look at myself. And I understood that scene at the table. I understood that I hated Billy's guts for what he was doing to me and the children, I thought.
And I realized that the children, they were smarter than I was. They knew what was wrong with him. He'd had too many pills. But what in the heck is the matter with her? You know, why is she so goony? One minute I'd be laughing, and the next minute I'd be crying. One day I'd say, we're going to have a picnic. And an hour before we were to go, I'd say, we can't go. I'd blame it on Dad, you know. He's not able to go.
We could have gone on a picnic without him. He doesn't like picnics anyway. I would have dragged him along. You know, because he ought to like picnics. He doesn't like picnics because he doesn't like ants. I just happen to love picnics. But I wouldn't go on picnics. And they didn't know what was the matter with me. And I think I was much harder to live with than he was. How did I get this way? Well, they tell us to tell our story, just like you do.
What we found and what we're still finding and trying to do with what we're finding. As Bill told you, we met at Vanderbilt. And I was just crazy about him. I thought he was the cutest thing. And I dated a lot of fellas, nice boys. And yet he was the one I wanted the most of all, and he's the one I got. There have been times when I live to regret that day. But I still think he is the cutest thing. And I could have melted last night when he said those nice things to me about me.
We ended up in Jackson, Mississippi. And that's when he really began to take the pills for the first time. Now, I could understand some of the drinking. I mean, I knew what he had done. But when he began to come home and not speak to me, and when he seemed completely and totally cut off from me, I didn't know what was the matter. And this went on for some weeks. And finally he told me he was taking sedatives in the middle of the day.
[00:10:01]
And I decided, well, if that's all it is, shoot, I'll just work on that. And I love a good, tough assignment, you know. And so I started. I decided he's just not having enough fun in life. He's working too hard. And so I said, we need to go out more. Well, we would go to the movie with some other friends, and he'd go to sleep in the middle of the movie, you know. And I'd end up driving home. He'd say, Ruth, why don't you drive?
Well, that wasn't my idea of being a real, you know, a wife just doesn't drive everybody home. But I did. I knew I better. I quit saying let's go out. We started having people in, you know. And we had them in for Sunday night suppers, and then Thanksgiving came along. I thought I'd have a lovely Thanksgiving dinner. And being born and reared in Atlanta, Georgia, I had visions of being a southern lady.
And I thought we'll have a Thanksgiving turkey, and I want him to stand at the head of the table and carve. You know, first you sharpen the knife. Now, I don't know why in the world, but, you know, you just got a picture of gracious living, and I want Billy to go out there and sharpen this knife and then slice that turkey just as thin. Well, he started off just great, but he does everything in a hurry.
And he got to slicing that turkey, and finally he took one swing at that turkey, and that thing shot off in the corner. That's not my idea of gracious living. I quit having people in. And we joined the Methodist church, and I liked that church down there. And Billy got in the choir. He just seemed like it was something he thought he ought to do. And I was so proud to have him in the choir until I realized, I didn't realize, I realized later, I was hearing that sermon with about one-third of one ear, and the rest of me was totally watching him to see if he was maybe under the influence.
Now, see, choir people sit up in front of everybody. And he'd get bored looking at the preacher, and I'd think, sit up, Billy. You're acting like you're not listening. Church wasn't doing what I had hoped it would do for us. And along came something just out of the blue that I thought, aha. One of our good friends, another young doctor who was just starting practice too, said, Ruth, we're going to sign up for dancing lessons.
You know how Arthur Murray will give you six lessons, you can dance in a hurry? Oh, I thought that was the grandest idea. That was just what he needed. And never thinking, I adore to dance, and he can't stand it. But I thought it would help him. So we signed up, and we learned rumba and samba, and I had the best time until the sixth lesson. That was our graduation night. And guess who was passed out at home?
And I had to end up dancing with the lady teacher. That was highly indecent somehow. Well, I had been trying things. I had been trying to change things, you see. But I'd been trying to change things in order to change a person. And I learned in Al-Anon, you don't do this. Well, I didn't know. And so I don't have any pride about asking people if I'm in trouble. If I'm lost, I stop and say, where am I?
So I thought, well, I'll just get somebody to help us. I don't, I need some help. So I went to the preacher. And the preacher came to our house. Now, this was one of many preachers that came to see us. And he sat there, and I'm not too good a housekeeper, and I had all the clean clothes. And I was folding diapers while he talked to me. And I got around to telling him about Billy, and he said, what kind of housekeeper was Bill's mother?
And I said, oh, immaculate. She was the best housekeeper. And he said, had it ever occurred to you that this house might be bugging him? And I thought, well, by George. So I cleaned the house. And I worked on that house so hard, and it didn't faze him. He didn't even notice. My folks came to see us, and my father said, Ruth, what in the world is wrong with your hands? I have these grubby nails. I've been cleaning woodwork, and I hate that.
And here I got all these red hands and broken fingernails, and it didn't help him a bit. I asked my friend Marjorie, who was in the dancing class, My friend Marjorie, who was in the dancing class, and when we were driving down to that
[00:15:01]
dancing lesson, I said, Marjorie, Bill is not really at the hospital like I said. See, I was lying already. I said, he's not at the hospital, he's at home, passed out. What do you think I ought to do? And Marjorie said, oh Ruth, all men do this sometime or other. This is just what men do. And I thought, well, maybe I just don't know about men. But you know, I just didn't think there was something quite right about that.
I thought Marjorie doesn't know and the preacher doesn't know, but I know one person I know what to tell me to do, and that's my mother, over in Atlanta. So I called long distance in the middle of the day, and she knew something was wrong, because we don't ever call until after six o'clock. What's the matter, honey, she said. And I said, well, it's nothing too serious, but I just thought I'd like to ask you. Bill is drinking too much. What do you think I ought to do?
She thought for about 30 seconds. She said, I know exactly what you ought to do. You just drink as much as he does. And when he sees how disgusting you are, he won't want to drink anymore. Well, I was disgusting, all right. After two drinks, I get numb right around here. And three, I began to feel sick. And there's nothing as disgusting as a sick drinker, you know, to one who can hold it at that time. And he said to me, Ruth, if you can't do any better, you go to bed. Well, that didn't have the exact effect my mother thought it would have.
Well, I had run out of friends, and I didn't have but one mother. And lo and behold, help came in another form, and that was Billy's good friend. Now, we were in Mississippi, and he was in a charity hospital, which was a government, city government hospital, state, I guess. Anyway, this was a politician who had helped the governor get elected, and he got this job. And I thought, well, he's just a political bureaucrat, and I thought, well, he's just a political bum. And no wonder, if Billy's associating with people like that down at that hospital, no wonder he's doing this way. And this guy's name was Buck. He was a great big old guy, and he called and said, and I just didn't like him worth a hoot, and he called and said, Ruth, I'd like to talk to you about Bill. I'm very worried about him. And I thought, oh, thank goodness, here's somebody else as worried as I am. He said, could I come out and talk to you? And I said, please do. So Buck came out to my house, and I fixed a big pot of coffee, and we drank coffee and talked around about this and that and everyday things, and finally he said, I want to talk to you about Bill, and I hope you're going to take it in the way I mean it.
And I said, just tell, what do you think is the matter? And guess what he thought was the matter? Sex. And I thought, by golly, I hadn't thought of that. I couldn't wait for that man to get out of my house, and I began to work on myself. And I washed my hair. I went down to Woolworths, and I got all this eye stuff. Now, I still, as old as I am, I haven't ever learned how to put on this eye stuff. My girls have just despaired.
On this wedding day, she said, Mama, please let me fix your eyes. But that day, I went to Woolworths, and I got the eyebrow stuff, and I got the silvery blue. I just adore the way that looks on women. And I got the eyelash stuff, so these eyelashes. And I fixed my fingernails and my toenails, and I perfumed myself, and Billy came home from work, and I was gorgeous. Well, I'll tell you, if you've got a man who's on sleeping pills, and they take too many, nothing works.
Now, I could really laugh about this today, but I wasn't laughing that night, I'll tell you right now. But something happened to us at that time that should have been a message to me. I think God tries to get through to us sometimes through people, and this was the most unlikely person. Our daughter Kathy was the oldest, and she was in the first grade, and she is a beautiful child, was. And I thought she was smart as a whip. Well,
[00:20:00]
she wasn't learning to read very well, and so I thought, well, I'll just help her, you know, the big helper. So I would drill her at night and help her with her words and make her go over it and over it and over it, and she still wasn't learning very well. So I thought it's the teacher's fault. So I went for a conference. I didn't bother with the teacher. I thought, she can't teach Kathy to read. I can't help her. I went straight to the principal, and I told, I laid it on him, you know, how this teacher was not teaching Kathy to read.
And he listened there patiently, and finally he said to me, Miss Bristow, why don't you go home and be this little girl's mother and let her teach you, teach her how to read? Well, you know, that was darn good Al-Anon advice, and I didn't even know it. And you know what I thought? Well, this is Mississippi. What does Mississippi principals know about anything? No wonder she can't read. We're living in Mississippi.
And long back then, Billy decided it was time to move, and that was one of our geographical moves, and I was ready. I said, yeah, let's get out of here. Except we were going back to Atlanta, and that's where I was born and raised, and I didn't want him in Atlanta to know about us. And so on the way over, I didn't know he was promising himself that he wouldn't take any more pills, but I was promising myself, I can't manage him. I can't, somehow I can't force him to do the things I want him to do, so I'm just going to do all the things that I think should be done. And by the time we got to Atlanta, I was in high gear. We moved in, and I started joining things. For some reason, I thought it was very important that children be proud of whom they were. You know, I don't have got this idea, but I thought they should be able to hold their heads up in public. You know, that's an old cliche. And I thought they just got to be proud of us, and they're not going to be proud of him, so I better just do it myself. So I joined everything, and I wasn't content to join. I had to be an officer. And I joined the garden, I got in the garden club, and the PTA, and got on the board for the kindergarten, and I joined the church, and taught Sunday school, and joined the missionary society, and I think I was in charge of spiritual life. Isn't that a hot thing? I couldn't even manage my own life, and I was in charge of their spiritual development.
And you know the reason I wanted to be an officer is because they put officers' names in the paper, and in the church bulletin. And I thought that was very important. And I know now what I was doing, is I was running. I was scared, and I couldn't admit it, and I didn't know what to do, and I was escaping. And I was ending up managing other things that I could manage, when I couldn't manage the things that I wanted to manage. I was getting frustrated and frightened, and I couldn't even face that. I didn't know it. I wouldn't admit it.
I wanted to seem perfectly assured. Sometimes I'd go to that medical auxiliary, even the doctors have had done us, and I'd go by myself, because I thought if they see me there, and smile, and they're going to think he's all right. And I'd lie, I'd say he's at the hospital delivering a baby, and he'd be at home on the bed, or following down the steps, or something, I don't know where he would be. Or just out, you know, out there. And I'd say, I'm going to go see him, and he'd be out there. And I'd just smile, and you know, that's hard.
But I wouldn't have said so at the time. I thought I was doing my duty. Somebody else knows. I got another straw in the wind. It should have been a message to me, and I couldn't understand the message. By then John was in kindergarten, and Miss Driscoll was his teacher, and I had another conference with Miss Driscoll, and she said, Miss Fristow, I don't want John to go to first grade. I want to hold him over another year in kindergarten. And I thought, flunk, kindergarten?
My child? He, I said, Miss Driscoll, he's real smart. And she said, I know he is, but emotionally he's not ready. I think he just needs a little more time. And she said, I know she was trying to find a reason for John's slow development, and she said, what sort of home life do you have? And I said, oh, we're happy, you know, smile. And then she said, what does John's father do with him at night? And that's all the excuse I said, nothing. He doesn't read to him, he doesn't play with him, he doesn't play ball with him,
[00:25:05]
he doesn't take him to ball games, he doesn't take him fishing, he doesn't take him hunting. Now here John was five and a half years old, and I was blaming Billy for not taking him hunting. And I didn't even realize how dumb that sounded. Imagine, I bet Miss Driscoll had a good picture of Billy saying, here honey, here's your, what do you call them, shotgun. Shoot a quail, boy. But I needed a scapegoat, and I had one. And I didn't even know that what I was doing was depriving John of what he needed the most. When he needed love and concern, just about him as a little boy, he had a vice president. I was busy calling a list of people on the phone, lining up some good little spiritual deal, seeing if we couldn't get more people to turn out for the PTA. And John just needed a mama. At that time he didn't have a daddy, because his daddy was caught up in something bigger than he was, bigger than any of us were.
And his father was miserable, and I didn't even know it. All I would have said was, he's making us miserable. Tom talked the first night about loneliness. And I remember one time my mother came to take the children, because she came a good, when we finally told them what was the matter, she and my father said, we don't know how to help somebody like this, but we feel that when we are around, he gets worse. And so if you'll let us help you with the children, that's what we can do.
So I called her one night to come get the kids, and she came, and she took the baby, and I said, oh, it's just terrible. I had this baby on my hip, and I said, if it just weren't for this baby, I could get out and get a job. She said, Ruth, I think this baby has saved your sanity. He's kept you busy, and he's kept you at home. See, she knew. And I said, it's not good to stay at home. And she said, why not? And I said, it is so lonely.
And I don't think she understood, and it just burst out of me. And I couldn't understand, I couldn't explain to her, Mom, it's the loneliness of being near somebody that you love, and feeling that they don't love you. It's being near to a person, and when you reach out to touch, they draw back. It's been, it's thinking you love a person, and yet hoping that they'll die. Because it was right along in this period that I began to think, maybe he'll just die. You know, that would be the way out of all my dilemma. And yet, I had such a hang-up about things being in the newspaper, I thought if, I wanted him to die, but if he would just do it discreetly. You know, not make a boo-boo on this last vow. He kept saying he was going to kill himself, and I thought, well, if you'll just do it in such a way that it'll be nice. And I had several problems. I didn't want to be on the front page. I wanted to be back in the obituaries. Front page is where you do something real bad, and everybody knows it. Back page in the obituaries is genteel. You know, everybody ends up there, if you do it properly. That was one of my problems. My second problem was, Lord, please take him, and then when you've taken him, let me behave myself.
I so want to go to the funeral and look sad. And please don't let me, now I had it all pictured at Patterson's in Atlanta, because that's the quote nicest to me. And they had these big long cars for the family, and I knew I could see myself in that back seat. And you know, at funerals, people look to see how the wife is taking it. Now, A.A. and Al-Anon people go up and hug each other and love each other at a time like this, but I wasn't in Al-Anon.
And I had visions of me sitting in that car all by myself with the children, and I knew everybody was going to be peeking in that window to see how I was taking it. And I thought, Lord, just don't let me smile. Let me wait a discreet time and then look out. I'm going to start living. Well, it was long back this time that he got the idea of going to the Georgian Clinic.
[00:30:02]
I did go to the library and read. I was desperate, and I did all those things he said I did, because I was getting scared. I had to get out of this thing, and I thought, well, we'll do it legally and properly, because it didn't look like he was going to die. Who could go up steps, going up and fall down backwards, and not even be hurt? It would have killed me. It didn't even hurt him. So he went to the Georgian Clinic, which I thought was a disgrace.
I just wanted him to get well by himself. He went to the Georgian Clinic, and then he got kicked out of the Georgian Clinic. And that was even more disgraceful, to get kicked out of there. See, I couldn't be satisfied. So he got into a psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist said to me, Have you all considered AA? And guess what I said? We haven't since we got a call from Shepard Pratt, and he was worse than ever.
I delivered our last child, and that was in the spring of 1960. And all that year, things got worse and worse and worse. He got worse, but I got much worse. I changed physically. I became awkward. I got so I couldn't talk to people. I'd closed off everybody. The only outings that we had were going to the psychiatrist, and I, you know, I'd get all dressed up to go to that psychiatrist. I'd wash my hair and get it fixed, and that got to be the big deal in my life.
And I'd go to the Colonial Grocery, and I'd talk to the meat man about what kind of meat we were going to have that week. And that was it. And I used this new baby as my excuse to close in and close out the world. And I couldn't talk, especially to men. And I stuttered and I stammered. I thought I was going deaf at one point, and Billy thought I was, too, or he said I was. And that made it worse. And I got where I'd be afraid to say, what'd you say, because then he'd yell at me.
And you know what that devil, I discovered later, he was on some kind of pill that make your lips rigid, and he told me that like this. And who could have heard that? But he could con me into believing the sky was green. I never learned. And I thought I was going deaf. I became so unsure. And if we were out in public, and I had to go to the bathroom, and we were in a living room full of people, I couldn't walk across the room to go out to the bathroom.
I'd just sit there. I thought everybody was looking at me. People weren't looking at me, but I thought they were. I thought I'm different, I'm queer. I'm just not right. And they weren't looking at me. But I thought they were, and so they might as well have been. I had reached my bottom. I never have to go back there again. And long about that time, Billy found AA. Now that's when the preacher came to see him at his office.
He kept it strictly away from home. And he went to a meeting. Didn't ask me to go, and I didn't want to go. I didn't care. I thought, let them have him. They'll find out. This is one they can't do. They'll find out. And he came back, and I said, what'd they do? He couldn't tell me. He went two weeks. At the end of two weeks, he said, would you like to go to the AA meeting? And I couldn't be honest and say I'd love to.
I said, yeah, I guess I will. And I got dressed. Now, I didn't want to dress up too nice, because I thought they might be real poor, and I'd look, you know, I didn't want to make them feel bad. And I had two horrors. One, somebody in that meeting was going to get nauseated. I hate drunks throwing up, and I'd had my fill of that. And I was scared somebody would lie on the floor and be teased. I just had a horror of that.
And we went to that AA meeting, and I was very hesitant about entering. And I walked in that room. That was in May 1961. And I felt I'm home.
[00:35:04]
I didn't know the drunks and the non-drunks. They were all nice to me. They were just as nice as they could be. And I just loved it from the first Sunday. And I couldn't wait to go back on Thursday. And Al-Anon had disbanded at that time. And I went to AA with Billy. And if you're new in the program, I urge you non-alcoholics to go to open AA meetings. You will learn so much, so much. And I went with him, I guess, about three or four weeks.
And then they said, I went one Sunday, and they said, Ruth Al-Anon's getting started. You've got to go to that. And I said, what's that? I didn't even know what it was. And they said, that's for the families. And I said, well, I don't want to go. And they said, well, you have to. And I said, y'all have been letting me come in here. And they said, well, you needed to go somewhere. But Al-Anon is for you.
I had loved AA so much, I was ready to hit the road and start talking about AA. Now, wouldn't that have been great? If they had asked me, I would have done it in the first place. But I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go. because I've been watching them, and they're going to be sweet and wear a lot of white powder and pray.
And I thought, the first one that tells me to go home and pray, I'm going to throw up myself. And you know, they never once told me to pray. They didn't tell me much of anything. They just said, come in and sit down. And like Billy said, I didn't learn but one thing, and I'm not aware of when I learned it, but they said, this is an illness, and you didn't cause it. All along I thought there was something I was doing that was bugging him so much that he really must hate me so much that I must be so unlovely and so unlovable that it was making him be the way he was.
And then they said, it's not you. I could hardly take that in. And then they said, so quit trying to get him well. And that was a relief too. Now, I couldn't quit all at once, except having come through my bottom, I had given up. And so I was ready for something new in my life. I learned in AA about Bill. Communication has been and still is lots of times very hard for us. And I didn't know how he felt, and he couldn't tell me because, you see, he made the program six weeks and then he was off to the races.
And so through AA people, I learned how he felt. I had no idea how he had felt. To you being honest, through AA women who were so good to me, the AA women were so good to me when there was no Al-Anon. I loved them dearly. And you know, AA, there were three AA women who were brand new in the program, and they loved to talk about themselves, you know, that's part of AA program when you're new. And they talked about themselves all the time.
And I just drank it in because I was learning, learning, learning about him. And you see, if I had stopped right there, just going to AA, I would have learned a whole lot about him. But I didn't learn anything about me. I didn't think I needed to know him. What's to learn about me, you know, I'm just a wife. Well heck, fire. I learned that's not enough, especially when he's going to continue drinking.
And that Al-Anon group taught me about me. Now in our opening it says, little by little, one day at a time. And for me it was very little by little. I couldn't take it all in. And with him continuing to operate, we lived from one crisis to another. And I got by on the slogans and the serenity prayer for the next two and a half years. When I first came in, I looked around the room and I saw that, easy does it.
And let go and let go. And I thought, ooh, isn't this corny? After I'm around a while, we'll see if we can't get a little more sophisticated things
[00:40:03]
going along. Well, I learned. I'm still trying to learn easy does it. But I think the first one I learned was live and let live. And when that broke through to my mind, I thought that is the most beautiful thing. Because all of a sudden I wanted to live. I had gone through my thirties, just existing. And all of a sudden I was ready to live and I was like a bird let out of a cage. I went through all sorts of phases.
I had become such a manager and so domineering in the home. And all of a sudden I thought, I don't have to wear the pants in this family any longer. He's not wearing them to manage like he should, but I don't have to be the ring leader. I don't have to be the general. I've got to know where I'm going, but I don't have to direct the whole traffic system. Just live my life. And all of a sudden I got real feminine and that was what I needed.
And when I went through the silliest stage, I hadn't been silly for years. And I'd do something real stupid and Billy would say, you dummy, what's the matter with you? And I'd say, oh, I'm just a woman, ha, ha, ha, you know. And I didn't care whether he liked it or not, I just, ha, ha, ha, that was the best. I wish I hadn't come through that all the way. I passed through that phase, but I needed it.
That was just part of my growth and my development. I couldn't have stayed there, it really would have been dumb, but it was fun while it lasted. Well he went away to Lexington, as he told you, and that was a rough experience. I went with him up there and we didn't know whether they were going to take him or not. He had to, we, it was, it was a federal prison hospital. And I went to the gate with him and they put him in one big car and took him away.
And then we just had to wait and see if they would accept him. I ended up talking to Miss Gould, who was the social worker there, and she said, she talked to me about if I understood his illness, and I did, and we talked, I had a good talk. And finally she said, you've got it pretty much together, I don't see why you're not in tears. And I said, I've cried an awful lot, but he's where he needs to be.
And she said, but I don't see why you're calm. And I said, do you know anything about Al-Anon? And she said, isn't that that group that's associated with AA? And I said, yes. And I said, there are people all over the state of Georgia who know where we are and why we are here, and they're praying for me. And they're praying for him. And I don't need to cry. I don't feel that I want to cry. And I came back home, and we had some rough times, but we had some good times, too.
It was hard getting by without him. God helped us in many ways. And when he wanted to come home for Christmas, I wanted him home so much. I knew I loved him. I was afraid he might not still love me. And yet, in his letters, there was a thread of the old arrogance. I tried not to read and analyze. You know, they say don't analyze. But I was still afraid. And I felt this was our last chance at any treatment.
We didn't have hospitals like you do now. And so I couldn't make up my own mind, and I asked one of his sponsors. I didn't ask Russell. I asked another sponsor. Do you think I ought to say yes to him coming home? And he said, yeah, I want to see him. I want him home. And I said, I do, too. But one Sunday, that Sunday afternoon, I didn't go to one of our close friends. I went to one of the old-timers in A.A.
He's dead now. His name was L.A. And I said, L.A., what do you think? And he said he went there to start treatment, let him finish what he started, and then let him come home. Now, I didn't have to take his advice, but I knew he was right. And you know, in Illinois, they say don't make threats if you make a threat carried out. And I wasn't threatening him, but I felt L.A. was right, that if we had entered this thing together, as we did, then we both had to stick together.
had gone back on what I said I was going to do, so that's how it happened that I told
[00:45:02]
him not to come, and I'm telling you I'm glad I was 700 miles away from him because he could have killed me, but we were both better off for having that Christmas alone, and when he came home in that February night, we were all down at the station and we were laughing and crying and having a ball. Now, he was at home, he had found A8 in the hospital, and I thought now we're going to live happily ever after, and do you know what? All of a sudden, it wasn't a bed of roses. He wasn't doing the program like I thought he should.
He wasn't taking pigeons like I thought he should. He was either going to too many meetings or not enough meetings, and I had to rejoin Al-Anon. I had been living as a person from one crisis to another, and now I had to be a plain old nitty-gritty Al-Anon who takes step one and does it, and you can't do step four in a night, and then you take step two, and you know what I got hung up on is step four because I had never taken an inventory, and you know why I'd never taken an inventory? It was because I asked Billy one night, do you think it's really necessary, now this is when he was practicing, do you really think it's necessary to take that fourth step? I said, no, he said, but I think when we went to the psychiatrist and told him all that stuff, that was taking a fourth step. I said, good, I don't think I need to either. From then on, I didn't take it. I had a good excuse, you see. I knew better.
Well, when you've been in Al-Anon three years, and when you're active in service work and being a GR and all this stuff, and haven't taken a fourth step, you feel a little guilty around those other girls that you know that work in that program. They say that a change of attitude is a boundless help, and it's a thing that's got to happen in the way I look at it, and so many of my attitudes were wrong. Now, you can change the way you think, and that comes, now this is my opinion, you can change the way you think, but until you feel with it, it's no good. I know Eddie one time told me to go home and tell Billy he's doing a good job, and that I was proud of him. Well, I didn't really think he was, but I went home and I said, you're doing a good job, and I'm proud of you. He said, shut up. You see, I was lying in my teeth, and he knew it. I was saying the right things, but my attitude hadn't changed one bit.
That reminds me, not too long ago, I had really gotten, oh, this summer I've been bad. We had a big wedding in the family, and weddings bring out the worst in me, and I had done something horrendous. I went back to the bedroom and I had to apologize, and Billy was yacking and yammering at me about this, and I said, shut up, I've got to do the tenth step on you. Shut up and let me. I had to change my attitude about many, many things. First, I had to change my attitude about the AA program and the AA members. I had to learn that was his program, and as much as I dearly loved it, for me to keep my fingers off of it, that I had enough to do in my own program, but I do love your AA program, and I do love AA people. You have given us a program, and isn't it funny, we can take the same program and make a total change from the same twelve steps. I had to change my attitude toward AA members. I don't know about you, when I first came in, I was very naive, and I thought, especially Billy's sponsor, could do no wrong. I thought he was next to God. And you know, when I caught him telling a lie or something, I was crushed. I had to learn they are not all perfect. None of them are perfect, but they're just trying. And had you been perfect, it would have simply discouraged me to death. We're all just plain old meatball people trying.
I had to change my attitude toward the Al-Anon members. There was one little old blonde woman,
[00:50:07]
and I didn't think much of her. I saw the way she looked at some of those AA men, and they weren't her husband either. And I kept my eye on that one, and I thought, I just don't know. I don't know whether I like her being in my Al-Anon group or not, because she was there when I got there. But one day, she spit out in very ungrammatical language the very thought that I had been wrestling with for years. And I thought, by golly, she knows what she's talking about. And I learned right then and there that you don't learn from people who are always the most educated or the most intellectual. You can learn about life from a child or from somebody that you might consider ignorant.
But by golly, they're smart when it comes to living, and that was what I needed to learn. So I changed my attitude toward my fellow Al-Anons. I know they've been where I've been, and that makes me love them from the very beginning. I had to change my attitude toward my husband. He has allowed me such freedom. I say allowed because he just has. I think he has appreciated my program, this is what I mean, and had not.
I remember that one night when he was, I don't even know when it was, but I was in my meeting and I was needing it so bad, and he walked into the Al-Anon meeting, and I said, make him get out of here. And they said, be quiet. And I said, he doesn't belong here. And they said, it's okay. So they wouldn't let me kick him out. And he sat there, and I was furious. And you know, when he got up and left, he took all of our literature, and he went home and read it, and he said, this is the finest thing I ever saw. And when my new books came, he'd read them before I could read them. And if I hadn't, if they hadn't made me let him stay, look what we would have missed.
I had to change my attitude toward my children. They're all full grown now, and we have really had some marvelous experiences, and we have had some rough days. We had a guitar playing hippie, and I'm telling you, if any of you all have had any of those who join the children of God, and that is a new experience. Al-Anon can really, that's a whole story in itself. I had to change my attitude toward myself.
And I've learned that it's when it, when I get the big eye, that that's when I get in trouble. You know that beautiful hymn, How Great Thou Art? Lots of times I tell myself when I, when all of a sudden I realize what I'm doing, when I'm trying to manage everything in the universe and outside too, I say, how great I art, you know. And that's when I'm really heading for trouble. I thought I could, I thought when this wedding came along, we're gonna have the biggest, prettiest, greatest wedding, I'm gonna manage it so. Now this is something, this is a thing that I can manage, and I can, I can plan so well that nothing will go wrong. Everything went wrong from start to finish, and you know in Atlanta it hadn't rained for two months.
We set this wedding for 7.30 on a Saturday night. People had been praying for rain and nobody's prayers had been answered. When do you think the thunder began and the lightning went shooting across the sky and it poured? Wedding time. And we rode to the reception and here was my new dress and my hair was just, and I was so mad I said, God, I did my part and look what you're doing. You have really loused up my wedding.
And I really had to do some, oh the next few days, and I'm still, sorry I said that. But he knows me and he knows my weaknesses, and he knows I'm just one of his children trying to be better, and I sure have said I sure, sure did. I had to change my attitude toward my God and the way I talked to him.
[00:55:05]
Prayer. I, I, I used to think I knew how to pray. One time Billy called a preacher to me. He'd been having sessions with, this was a new preacher that he went out and found, and uh, the preacher thought he needed to come see me, you know, see what kind of, what a how I was. So Billy brought him to the house and we sat down out there and, and Reynolds looked at me very seriously and he said, Ruth, I think you all need to pray.
I thought, here we go again. I said, Reynolds, what do you think I've been doing for years? He said, I mean pray together. I said, oh, we haven't done that, that's for sure. So he said, would you be willing? And I said, yeah, I guess I would. Billy said, yeah, he'd be willing. So when night came, we decided it was time, we, it was bedtime, and you know, I was a little nervous. I've never prayed with him before. I didn't, I just didn't quite know how to conduct myself praying with my husband.
And we knelt down by the bed and I said, you go first. So, uh, Billy, not usually at a loss for words, said a good one. I don't know what he said, but he got through real fast. And it was my turn. And I said, oh Lord, bless those in this house. Bless those little ones who are having trouble upstairs, bedroom, bless those of us who are sick. Some of us hurt others, but they don't mean to, and pointing to him. I was like, Lord needed me to point my finger at the director.
And I went on and got it all said, amen. And we went to bed and we prayed the next night about the same thing. Now on the third night we started our prayers. I never would go first. I wanted to have time to think and see if he said something. I wanted to see what he was going to say. So I'd have rebuttal. This night he said his and got through and I started my sermon and you know, I hadn't gotten started good before I heard this.
I wasn't praying to God. I was praying at Billy. And I had to learn God. I think I learned best about God through a great big, tough, hurly-burly AA guy that I heard this talk about God, like he was his friend. And I got a little girl from Texas who wanted me to be her sponsor. And I didn't want to be her sponsor. You know, Texans kind of know it all. And she was, she was a great one to sponsor because she would do just what I said, but she kept wanting to talk about the spiritual side. And I just didn't, I thought I'm too far along for Virginia. She wouldn't understand my in-depth spiritual life. I was reading extra books, you know, she's not ready for what I've got to lay on her. I just don't want to fool with her about this spiritual stuff. We'd go downtown and she'd find a good place to park. And she'd say, thank you, Lord. And I thought, oh, Virginia, you know, how can you talk to the Almighty in this manner? Well, through John John and the children of God and several other things that piled in on us one after another, I had a huge, terrific Al-Anon slip. And some of the things happened in our life that I thought would never happen. And I felt wounded. I know now I shouldn't have been. But always taking me first, you know, I thought this is against me. This is a hurt to me when it wasn't at all. But I took it that way. And I never let myself be destroyed. And the marvelous thing about Al-Anon, the people that you have sponsored will come back and sponsor you.
Who knows you better than somebody you have sponsored? Who can know you better than someone you have lived with and loved and sponsored? And these people that I had helped came to my aid. And they helped me through. And I learned that I'm no more and no less than you. I am a that I'm no more and no less than you. I am a child of God and he loves me as he loves you. I thought when I came to Ocean City, Maryland and saw all these people,
[01:00:05]
it would be terribly impersonal that I wouldn't be able to tell my life to somebody that I didn't. That seems so big and way out there, but you have been so warm and so gracious and so loving and so many people have come up and said, I prayed for you and I knew they weren't just saying it. You know, sometimes in church, I might have thought, oh, you hypocrite, you didn't pray for me. But here I knew you did and I knew it without you telling me, but because you told me, it made it even better.
And because of your love and concern that you showed Bill last night, and the very warm feeling that I have coming back at me from across this vast group, it makes me feel like I'm at my own home group and can open my heart and my soul and not be afraid to reveal what's in because you love me whether I show the bad side or the good side. It's all, the bad and the good, is part of me. And it's all part of you.
And through the help of our programs, the good side, I hope is growing, little by little, one day at a time. Thanks so much.