1978

First let me say that this is getting really incongruous. I am writing about some really dark years, just as we are going into a really festive season. Thursday is Thanksgiving in the United States of America - and this is a holiday that is just a natural for a happily sober alcoholic. I will post a Thanksgiving post tomorrow night. I had a teensy bit of a spiritual experience yesterday morning and I would like to write about it. It will likely be of the nature of a "Doh!" awakening like I witnessed when I was newly sober.... it went like this... a man ran up the stairs to the meeting room, out of breath. He interrupted everyone sitting in the room to tell them something. He used a profanity which I will paraphrase "HOLY COW!!!! It is the Rocky Mountains Out There!" Everyone looked at him and said - "um, yeah. There they are." He was incredulous that he had taken them for granted his entire life - and he had lived in this area his entire life. He wanted to share this wonderful news with everyone!!! But I had one of these experiences in the bathtub on Monday that made me earthshatteringly grateful and I would like to write about that - instead of this - for a brief interlude.

OK, so back to 1978. Things were mysteriously not going well with my marriage. I honestly can tell you that I have no idea why. I have spent years wondering what the hell happened. If I think about it for long enough, I can start crying right now, so I think I will skip that. We had a son. He wanted more children. I wanted a daughter. We decided to try to get pregnant again.

In the meantime, he took a business trip to Germany. I found out that I was pregnant while he was gone. I thought that was a good enough reason to make an international phone call. He was angry with me for calling him to tell him something so personal when he was unable to have privacy there... I don't know how I was supposed to know that.

Once again I was pregnant and unable to drink. This time I was pretty unhappy with this husband who suddenly didn't like anything about me. And for the first time I didn't much like HIS drinking. I remember talking to my obstetrician about his drinking - which is pretty funny considering I had to know that I was simply on a 9 month reprieve from my own active alcoholism.

Our landlady saw that I was pregnant and told us that we would need to find another place to live. She loved us, but two kids in this little house with lace curtains and other fancy doo-dads was probably not a good idea. We started looking for another place to live and ended up building a house. I was so excited about that house. I was only 26 years old when I moved into it.

And if I thought I was sick in my previous pregnancies? I didn't know what sick was. I had chalked it up to being a couple of years older. But as the months passed, my belly was growing at an alarming rate. (at one point I measured it at 50 inches around - and I don't think I was even close to being done) My doc suggested I was due a month or two earlier, but I wasn't buying it. I insisted on an ultrasound - which in 1978 was a new and amazing technology - so that we could see what was really going on. We drove from our small town in New Mexico to Pueblo, Colorado for the nearest ultrasound. My husband sat in the waiting room while I watched the tech outline one baby and then amazingly another! I was shocked and happy and shocked and frightened and shocked and shocked some more.

When my procedure was done I met my husband in the waiting room and told him the news. We were having twins!!! He looked at me with a stoney face and said "how did you do THAT?" I really should forget this, but I think that was the meanest thing anyone has ever said to me. That was on my 27th birthday, December 15, 1978.

Things went downhill from there for our relationship, but I was two months away from giving birth to two of my favorite people on earth.