chilly sunday

This morning Jeff and I had a quiet leisurely breakfast and Jeff told me stories about his sons when they were 10 and 11. Baseball, little league stories. I love these. He was such a good father and Lois must have been a great mother. The boys are amazing men today. But back then I love it when Jeff tells about each one. He says Robbie was the most beautiful baseball player in the world. He was perfection. Eric too in his own way. Perhaps more powerful, less graceful. But this is not about them right now. It is something random. Jeff was telling in the telling of the boys and baseball about a camp they went to for the summer. Jeff taught tennis there. Anyway one of the heads at the camp he tells me was an alcoholic. He woke up groggy and slowly because he had been drinking the entire night before. And he was slow and out of it the next day. I wasnt like that. I only remember having the whirllies once. And only once do I remember passing out. Towards the end of my drinking career I was at a shower for my daughter-in-law and they kept filling my glass. With snowflakes. (Those are cosmopolitans only made with clear cranberry juice instead of red. ) Anyway when we got back to the house I went upstairs to the bathroom and apparently laid down on the tile floor and passed out. No one knew I was drunk, I was apparently making total sense, and just laid down. When Wiley realized I was upstairs and had not come down he woke me up and I got into bed shoes and all. This does not mean I am not an alcoholic just that our common perception of what an alcoholic does is off. To be sure there are zillions of alcoholics who get drunk and behave badly. And I did now that I think of it get very very drunk--two bottles of champagne--and drove drunk and got a dui that was lowered to reckless driving. I almost never drove with alcohol in me after that. I never thought I was an alcoholic then either. I went to a probation officer and reported in once a month for six months. She talked to me about her compulsion: buying clothes. She said she had closets full of clothes with their price tags still on bunches of them. I listened like the good little people pleaser I am, trying to make sure that she liked me and never really talked about myself. My take away from all of that was that it was ok to drink just not to drive if I had anything to drink.