Is There a Twelve-Step Program for Non-Drinkers?

Hi, I’m Abbie Taylor, and I’m a non-alcoholic. You won’t hear that at an AA meeting, but it’s my story. Like any kid, I wanted to drink and loved being in bars when the opportunity arose. 

In 1971 when I was ten years old, while traveling from our home in Tucson, Arizona, to Sheridan, Wyoming, to visit my grandmother, Dad and I did some bar hopping in Durango, Colorado. Although I couldn’t drink anything stronger than Coke, I enjoyed the atmosphere of the saloons we visited and anticipated the day when I could chug-a-lug a beer along with the rest of them. This experience inspired the poem, “A Memorable Stop in Colorado,” which appears in my collection, How to Build a Better Mousetrap: Recollections and Reflections of a Family Caregiver. When we got to Wyoming, I was disappointed to learn that children weren’t allowed in bars, but that didn’t deter me from wanting to drink. A few years later after my family moved to Sheridan, one of my favorite country songs was Tom T Hall’s “I Like Beer.”

On my nineteenth birthday when I finally came of age, my parents took me and my younger brother Andy out to dinner, and for the first time ever, I was allowed glass of wine. To my utter dismay, it tasted awful. “You’re supposed to sip it, not chug-a-lug it,” said Andy. Where he got that knowledge, I’ll never know, but even with just a small portion in my mouth, it still wasn’t very tasty. Dad ordered me a wine cooler with 7-up, but that was worse. During the next few days, I tried beer and other drinks, but they were no better. I couldn’t understand why people loved such foul-tasting beverages. I finally resigned myself to the fact that I’m  a non-alcoholic which is better than being addicted to strong drink.

One summer when I was single and living on my own, I invited Dad to come with me to the park for a concert. I packed a picnic lunch including sandwiches, a can of Dr. Pepper for me, and a bottle of beer for Dad. However, I packed the wrong kind of bottle opener. You don’t have to be a mathematician to know that Dad plus a bottle of beer and no way to open it equals disaster. To make things worse, the concert never happened. Dad was a good sport, though. Afterward, he took the bottle home where he had the right opener. For more pleasant memories of spirits consumption, check out the Icing and Ink blog. Happy drinking!

 

 

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome and How to Build a Better Mousetrap: Recollections and Reflections of a Family Caregiver

Look at That!

Thanks to Bruce Atchison for inspiring this post. On his blog a couple of weeks ago, he wrote about his favorite novelty songs and included links to videos containing these songs. I thought of my favorite novelty song and the memories associated with it.

The year was 1974. I was twelve years old, and my brother Andy was five. Every morning, we heard on the radio’s police report about men being arrested for running around town naked late at night. We found this intriguing and did some streaking of our own in the house.

Andy ran around nude in the yard, but I didn’t want to go that far. At that time, Ray Stevens “The Streak” was popular. I don’t know if the fad inspired the song or vise versa, but we often yelled, “Don’t look, Ethel!” as we tore through the living room, showing off our physiques.

            At about the same time, Andy developed an interest in law enforcement as a career. One night, a policeman appeared at our door, much to Andy’s delight. Mother was teaching English at the college, and the cop was one of her students. Believe it or not, his name was William Henry Harrison. He missed her class that day because of work and stopped by to find out what the assignment was for the next class. After his first visit, he came by frequently.

            One night when he came, I was in my room, getting ready to take a bath. For some reason, I didn’t have a bathrobe. To get to the bathroom, I had to cross the living room where Officer Harrison sat in uniform with gun and handcuffs ready. In the bathroom, warm water was filling the tub. If it overflowed, so be it. I wasn’t about to be mentioned on the radio as having been arrested for indecent exposure.

            Fortunately, he didn’t stay long. Before he left, he gave Andy a fake badge. The minute the policeman was out the door, I dashed across the living room in the buff. “Freeze!” yelled Andy, eager to make his first arrest now that he had an official badge. Luckily, Mother intervened, and I made it to the bathroom without ending up in the slammer.

            As we grew older, we lost interest in streaking until my senior year in high school. One of Mother’s duties at the college was to call out the names of each graduate, as diplomas were distributed. That year, a group of students dashed across the stage during the ceremony, wearing nothing but sacks over their heads. Although Andy and I weren’t there, our interest in this activity was piqued. I considered organizing a similar activity during my graduation, but when I heard the students were arrested, I thought better of it. Andy and I did the next best thing.

            By that time, we’d moved into a two-story house, and the bathroom was down the hall from my room with no living room in between. One night, Andy cut holes in two sacks so we could see, and we re-enacted the event at the college, much to the delight of our parents who were watching television in the living room. Afterward, Andy ran out the front door, but I hurried back upstairs.

            After that, I refrained from exhibitionism but not Andy. A year later, Mother received an anonymous letter from one of our neighbors, claiming it wasn’t safe to raise little girls with my brother running around in the buff. When he was in high school, during a speech meet, he mooned out of a bus and was suspended.

Now, he has kids of his own. A couple of years ago as a birthday present, he sent me a recording of David Sedaris reading his essay collection, Naked. In the title piece, the author talks about his experience at a nudist colony. That might be a fun place to go. Who knows? Maybe Andy will accompany me sometime.

 

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome and how to Build a Better Mousetrap: Recollections and Reflections of a Family Caregiver

Dating Game

No, I’m not in the market for another husband. I wasn’t when Bill came along. It just happened. If another one comes along, so be it, but in the meantime, although I miss Bill, I’m content with my single life. 

I just finished reading Dating Game by Danielle Steel. This book is about another woman who lost her husband but not to death. For twenty-four years, Paris had everything she could ever want: a husband, kids, friends, a nice house, has been content to be a stay at home wife and  mother, and has done nothing else. Then all of a sudden, her husband drops a bomb. He tells her he’s leaving her for another woman about fifteen years younger.

For the next eight or nine months, Paris is devastated. Numb with shock, she manages to get through her son’s high school graduation and the summer months and get him settled at college. A friend recommends a therapist, and the frequent sessions give her the strength to get through the fall. In January, after her husband has married the other woman and another friend invites her to a dinner party in order to set her up with another  man, she decides to make a new start.

With the encouragement of her therapist, she moves from her home in Connecticut to San Francisco to be closer to her son, a student at UCLA Berkeley, and her daughter, a production assistant in L.A. In San Francisco, Paris becomes employed for the first time when she accidentally finds a job with a firm that plans weddings, dinner parties, and other events. Over the course of a year and a half, after three relationships that don’t work out, she surprises everyone by doing something totally unexpected, and the book ends happily.

A book like this helps me put my life in perspective. Bill is gone, but he didn’t leave me for another woman. Unlike Paris, I’ll never see my husband at family gatherings with a second wife. When Bill complained about the way I did something, I said, “Find yourself another woman.”

He always said, “I’m looking.” I doubt he meant it, especially after his strokes left him unable to do much for himself. Even if he could have tried to find another woman, I don’t think he would have, no matter how dissatisfied he was with me at times.

On the other hand, Paris was a perfect wife, she thought. Her husband never had a reason to want another woman because all she did was take care of him, the  house, and the kids. He was never dissatisfied with her, and yet, he found another woman he liked better. Go figure.

Last year, I reviewed Danielle Steel’s book, Rogue, and you can read that here. You’ll also find more information about her and her books on her Website. For those of you who are visually impaired or otherwise unable to read print material, Dating Game is available on the National Library Service’s Braille and audio download site. I’m sure it’s also available in print and eBook formats from your local bookstore or many online retailers. If you like a humorous, heartwarming story of how tragedy leads to blessing and hope for the future, I recommend reading this book, even if you haven’t lost a man.

 

 

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome and How to Build a Better Mousetrap: Recollections and Reflections of a Family  Caregiver

Mothers and Daughters

Last week, I talked about my own  mother. This week, with Mother’s Day coming this Sunday, I would like to share two books I recently read: Carrie and Me by Carol Burnett and Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou. Both are memoirs about mother and daughter relationships. A year ago, I reviewed Carol Burnett’s book This Time Together, and you can read that here.

Carrie and Me is divided into two parts. In the first section, Carol Burnett shares her memories of her daughter, Carrie Hamilton, from her birth in New York City on January 5^th, 1963, to her drug addiction and rehabilitation as a teen-ager, to her death in Los Angeles on January 20^th, 2002 after a struggle with lung cancer. She describes a road trip Carrie took from California to Memphis to visit Graceland while writing her short story, “Sunrise in Memphis,” about a young woman who finds herself on a similar road trip with a cowboy she doesn’t remember meeting. This part also features e-mail and fax messages plus letters Carol exchanged with Carrie and others during the trip and her daughter’s illness.

I downloaded the book from Audible, but it’s also available at your local bookstore and from online retailers. The audible edition is narrated by Carol herself, and it features a recording of Carrie singing a song she wrote for her mother during her illness. Apparently, the song was never published or produced commercially so if you want to hear it, you’ll have to purchase the Audible edition.

The second part of the book is devoted entirely to Carrie’s short story, “Sunrise in Memphis.” Carrie asked her mother to finish the story after she died, but Carol didn’t think she could do it. She claims it’s half finished, but frankly, I can’t imagine what more could be added to it. Carrie did a lot of screen writing so the story, told from the third person omniscient point of view, reads like a screen play with a lot of vivid descriptions. I’m not going to say anything more because I don’t want to spoil it for anybody.

Maya Angelou’s book, Mom & Me & Mom is about her relationship with her mother. According to a Wikipedia article, Maya Angelou was born on April 4^th, 1928 in St. Louis. She published seven autobiographies, five books of essays, and several books of poetry and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows in the past fifty years. She received dozens of awards and over thirty honorary doctoral degrees. She’s best known for her autobiographies which focus on her childhood and early adulthood experiences. Her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, brought her early recognition in the 1960’s.

Besides being a poet, she worked as an actress and writer, director, and producer of movies, plays, and public television programs. Since 1982, she has taught at WakeForestUniversity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she holds the first lifetime Reynolds professorship of American studies. She worked with both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in the civil rights movement. Since the 1990’s, she has made about eight appearances as a lecturer. In 1993, she recited her poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,” during President Clinton’s inauguration. She was the first poet to give such a recitation since Robert Frost during President Kennedy’s inauguration. She is respected as a spokesman for women and black people, and her writing is considered a defense of black culture. 

In Mom and Me and Mom, Maya Angelou talks about how her mother, Vivian Bacster, influenced her throughout her life. When Maya was three, her parents were separated, and she and her older brother were sent to live with her paternal grandparents in Arkansas. Her parents eventually divorced, and when she was thirteen, her mother, living in California, sent for her and her older brother, and they went to live with her. Because Maya felt she and her brother were abandoned when they were sent to live with their grandparents, her relationship with her mother was awkward at first. Eventually, as it blossomed and flourished, she went from calling her “Lady,” to “Mother,” and finally “Mom.”

When Maya first moved to California, Vivian was working at a pool hall, but she eventually became wealthy enough to own several pool halls, hotels, and other businesses in the United States and other parts of the world. As a senior in high school, Maya became pregnant. The boy wanted nothing to do with her and the baby. She managed to graduate and then gave birth to a son with the love and support of her mother.

When her son was a month old, she moved into a room, again with the support of her  mother. She refused to take money from Vivian, I think, because she wanted to prove to herself, to her mother, and to the world that she could make it on her own. Maya worked at a succession of jobs and was married and divorced, and all the while her mother was there for her.

After her marriage broke up, she started singing and dancing in night clubs and was eventually cast in a touring production of Porgie and Bess. She continued acting, writing, and directing. She and her son lived in New York for a while, and she also spent time in Europe and Africa. All the while, she  kept in close contact with her mother who was also doing a lot of traveling. At one point when Maya was having difficulty with a film she was writing in Sweden, her mother dropped everything and flew to Stockholm to be with her.

Maya eventually settled in Winston Salem, North Carolina, where she started teaching at WakeForestUniversity. A few years later, her mother became ill, and Maya moved her to North Carolina so she could care for her. Diagnosed with lung cancer, her mother died a few months later. I also downloaded this book from Audible, and like Carrie and Me, it is narrated by the author, who does an excellent job.

Carol Burnett and Maya Angelou are two different people, but they both understand the importance of a mother’s love, something I no longer have. My mother passed away in 1999, before I was married, before Bill’s strokes and the trials and tribulations of being a caregiver. As I said in last week’s post, my mother was always there for me. I would like to think that she would have supported my decision to marry Bill, even though he was nineteen years older than me. She would have stood by me while Bill recovered from his strokes and done what she could to help me care for him at home. When Bill died, she would have let me cry on her shoulder. Carrie Hamilton and Maya Angelou were also lucky to have such wonderful mothers.

 

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome and How to Build a Better Mousetrap: Recollections and Reflections of a Family Caregiver

Portrait of Mother

My mother was an actress, or at least she wanted to be. She and my father moved to New York City in 1960 after they were married so they could perform on Broadway. When Mother became pregnant with me, reality set in.  

I was born in New York City on June 1^st, 1961. After living in Boulder, Colorado, and Tucson, Arizona, my family settled in Sheridan, Wyoming, in 1973. Although my mother never performed on Broadway, she and my father were involved in community theater wherever we lived.

Mother also did a lot of acting at home. My earliest memories were of her and Dad arguing over money. When they argued, after having seen them in plays, I thought the fight was just another theatrical production. I’d stop what I was doing, sneak into the room as if into a theater after a play had started, and quietly find a seat. At the end of the play, the actors simply walked off stage with no applause, curtain call, or light change.

Fight about the Money became a nightly performance and sometimes ran during the day. As I grew older, the need to fight about money became scarce, but plenty of other home theatrical productions took place. Since Mother hated it when Dad invited people for dinner without checking with her, Fight about the Guests was occasionally performed. Mother didn’t think the dog should be allowed to lounge on the couch, although the cats were encouraged to do so. Fight about the Animals was another performance to be anticipated.

One day in Tucson, we returned home to find that our electricity had been shut off because a payment had not been made. At the time, Mother was going for her Master’s degree in education from the local university, and Dad was teaching at the university in Tempe and wouldn’t be home that night.  For the benefit of the power company, a production of Poor Me was staged, and we got our lights turned back on.

When I moved into an apartment as an adult, Mother drove me to K-Mart to shop for furniture and other accessories. We found a bookcase I liked, but it had to be taken home in a box and assembled. Since Dad spent the previous day swearing and grunting, as he put together a dining room table, we didn’t  think he wanted to do that again. Because there were two assembled bookcases on display, the sales staff in the furniture department was treated to another performance of Poor Me, and we got to take home one that was already put together.

Mother wasn’t just an actress. She was also a rock, instrumental in getting me out of the ArizonaStateSchool for the Deaf and Blind after a teacher threatened to put me in a special class for the  mentally retarded. Once I was in public school, she read materials to me that weren’t in accessible formats and helped me with homework, even though she was busy with teaching, theater, and other obligations. When I was on the high school speech team, she coached me in dramatic interpretation. When I was sick, she was always there with chicken soup and Coke, telling me to eat and drink slowly and if it tasted good, it would stay down.

 Through all my life’s trials and tribulations: school, college, work, she was there with a shoulder to cry on, a hug, and a listening ear. She died in 1999 of cancer. She will always be remembered as someone who could act and love.

 

Abbie  Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome and How to Build a Better Mousetrap: Recollections and Reflections of a Family Caregiver

Being a Star

When I was a freshman in high school and my brother Andy was younger, we formed our own band with me on piano and Andy on drums. Before Andy got his drum set, we improvised. Our front porch had steps that led up to it so we pretended it was a stage. Andy found an old piece of wood for me to use as a microphone, an empty paint can for him to use as a drum, and another wood chip to use as a drum stick. I stood on the edge of the porch before an imaginary roaring crowd and sang my heart out, accompanied by Andy on his pretend drum. 

When I wrote the following poem about this memory, I included lyrics to the songs I sang. However, I would have had to get permission from Olivia Newton-John, Debbie Boon, and Paul Simon in order to publish the poem with the lyrics included. For a while, I performed the poem at readings, singing the songs as I went along. When I decided to submit it for publication, I removed the lyrics and paraphrased the songs instead.

As a special treat for my readers, I’ll provide two versions: the print version without the lyrics and below that, a link to a recording of me reading the poem with lyrics included. This poem appears in the spring/summer issue of Magnets and Ladders. When I was young, I dreamed of being a singer, but that dream was never accomplished; yet, I’m happy.

 

WHEN I WAS A STAR 

 

I stood on the front porch,

a piece of wood to my lips, sang

while my brother went rat-a-tat tat

on an empty paint can. 

 

I was Olivia Newton-John,

begging some drunk in a bar

not to play that painful song on the jukebox.

The air rang with applause. 

 

As Debbie Boon, I told the love of my life

how he lit up my life.

There was more applause. 

 

I stepped into Paul Simon’s shoes,

longing to be a sparrow, not a snail.

The crowd was on its feet. 

I bowed, took my leave.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15213189/when%20i%20was%20a%20star.mp3

 

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome and How to Build a Better Mousetrap: Recollections and Reflections of a Family Caregiver

Heads in Beds

I loved hotels and motels when I was a kid. My earliest recollection was the Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee Arizona when I was about five or six. My parents and I were living in Tucson at the time, and for some reason, we took a trip and ended up at this place. I don’t remember the room where we slept, but I do recall the elevator and coffee shop, both of which fascinated me. 

In high school, I spent a lot of time in motels during speech meets, concert choir tours, and other school-sponsored events. I remember many late nights with the other girls in my room, watching television, talking, and sometimes even having pillow fights. Of course there were the occasional family trips where my parents, younger brother, and I slept in a motel room together, but those stays weren’t nearly as fun, especially since Dad snored.

As an adult, I only sleep in motels twice a year when I attend the WyoPoets annual workshop in April and the Wyoming Writers conference in June. Since I’m no longer a caregiver, I could do more traveling, sleep in more motels. Will see.

I recently finished reading Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky. This is a memoir that talks about the author’s years of experience working in luxury hotels in New Orleans and New York, first as a parking valet, then as a front desk agent. Jacob Tomsky offers tips on how to make the best of your hotel stay from getting upgraded to a better room to stealing items from hotel room mini-bars and bathrooms. He also shares how joining a union helped him keep his job when the New York hotel where he was working changed hands and how the union helped him get  his job back when he was fired after being written up for numerous  minor infractions.

According to a blog post where the author was interviewed, he started writing short stories in high school after reading a lot of classic novels. After quitting his job at the hotel in New Orleans, he moved to Paris for six months and then spent another half year in Copenhagen. During that time, he wrote several novels but never tried to publish them. Heads in Beds is his first book.

I downloaded this book from Audible. The recording features Jacob Tomsky reading it, and he does a great job. At the end, there’s a surprise you won’t find in the print edition. If you still want it in that format, there are links on the author’s Website where the book can be ordered from major online retailers. I’ll probably never be able to afford staying in a luxury hotel, but I found the book entertaining. I recommend you read this book before your next stay in a luxury hotel.

 

 

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome and How to Build a Better Mousetrap: Recollections and Reflections of a Family Caregiver