The Ball Breaker

Every year, my little darling’s ballet class dutifully performs “The Nutcracker” for an audience of adoring families and friends. Every year, but this year.

This year, her dance teacher, who we lovingly refer to as the Ball Breaker, canceled Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker due to bad weather. This decision, we parents all agreed, was rash. Beyond rash. Some of us muttered how we would pull our children from the school in protest. It was cruel to the children who had practiced so hard for months to be ready for this hallmark of Christmas in our coastal village. It was insensitive to the grandparents and aunts and uncles who were arriving in droves to see their little darlings perform in their precious pink tutus and crisp red soldier suits.

Canceling the Nutcracker was like canceling Christmas. This being a quote from one of the performers. He announced to his parents that Christmas was ruined and they spent the whole weekend doing backflips, trying to bring the Yuletide glow back into his sullen cheeks.

The Ball Breaker is an alcohlic.  This is not just a town rumor, this is a fact. She drinks too much and everyone knows it. Even her students. Because of it, many of her students have left her program, even though she is a gifted teacher who knows her stuff and can make her students soar. She has an alcoholic’s personality. Unpredictable. Mood swings. Control freak. Life is a moving target.

Canceling the Nutcracker because snow was forecast in a place where we rarely get snow was the decision of an alcoholic. We parents called each other and used words like rash and ridiculous. I blamed her alcoholic personality. When I called her to find out why she would make such a decision, she answered the phone gleefully and told me how happy she was, oblivious to the heartbreak she had inflicted upon her students. I assumed she was drunk. Seniors who finally had their chance to be the Snow Queen and the Sugar Plum Fairy had the wind sucked from their sails. Poof, gone. Can’t redo this year. The Ball Breaker said they would do an abreviated version during the spring show.  This woud give them more time to perfect their variations on point. So not the same.

My little darling has been dancing with the Ball Breaker since she was five-years-old. Yes, I have sat through seven Nutcrackers, in most cases all three performances of seven Nutcrackers. No regrets.

We have contemplated removing our little darling from the school, particularly the time when the Ball Breaker actually came to class intoxicated. The kids all knew it and the oldest student made the decision to cancel class and ushered the younger ones home. (She happens to be my sponsor’s daughter.) But my little darling loves ballet, loves to perform, and loves the Ball Breaker. And so she stays.

This morning, I had coffee with an old friend, someone I haven’t seen for a while. She has lived in this town for 30-plus years and has history that I lack. We reminisced and I told her that my little darling was still dancing but that we were all aghast by the Ball Breaker’s bad decision. The forecasted snow never even came.

My friend told me that years ago, before my time, a little girl was killed in a car crash trying to make it to a Nutcracker rehearsal in a snow storm. What?

I remembered what the Ball Breaker said to me when I asked her why she canceled. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt trying to make it to the Performing Arts Center. We have too many students who live outside of town.” I thought she was being dramatic. But now I know that she was being cautious, putting the safety of our children ahead of the show.  That she was making a sound and informed decision. That she was determined not to let history repeat itself. No wonder she was so gleeful when I called.  She had conquered death.

If anyone can pull off the Nutcracker in the spring, it’s the Ball Breaker.

Happy Birthday to Me

Today is my birthday. I’m eight. They say that when you start drinking alcoholically, you stop growing emotionally. Since I started at 13, I guess I now have the emotional intelligence of a 21-year-old. (Hey, I’m finally an adult.) 

I quit drinking right before the holidays — the masochist in me. I went to meetings, called my sponsor, read the Big Book, prayed, and remembered that I didn’t want my child to grow up with an alcoholic mother. That’s how I did it. I remember making it through that first year and thinking I was home-free. The first year of anything is telling. A new marriage, a new job. You go through all of the holidays and birthdays and ups and downs of daily life. Once you have a year under your belt, you can look back and say, “I can do this; I did it last year.” But four years into my sobriety, my 20-year-old nephew was killed. He crashed his car into a semi-truck after drinking all day. All I wanted to do was drink. I went to an AA meeting and it was someone’s first birthday. She talked about how good it felt to get that first year behind her. When it was my turn to talk, I broke the celebratory mood with my grief and, through my sobs, I said, “Don’t get comfortable.” Never pretend that the party is over.

Recently, I was having a bad day and I told my Little Darling, “I think I’m just going to smoke and get drunk.” (Joking, of course.) She said, “I can’t even imagine you doing that. It would be as out of character as a kitten weilding a machine gun.” At that moment, I realized that I had succeeded. I wanted her to have a stable, loving, nurturing, sober mother and that is how she sees me. Wow. It’s amazing when life works out the way you want it to — so far.

Of course, eight years of sobriety have taught me that you are not home-free once you make it through the first year. That’s why AAers are always saying, “One day at a time.” That’s the key. If you try to imagine that you will be sober for the rest of your life, it seems daunting (and unfair). So you just say, I will not drink today and that is good enough. I don’t have to think about whether or not I will drink tomorrow or November 4, 2009 or ten years from now. What matters is today. That’s enough.

Recently, I had a health screening through my place of employment. You fill out a questionnaire and they take your blood, weight, blood pressure, and so forth. The questionnaire had all sorts of questions about alcohol and tobacco consumption. I proudly answered zero when asked how many alcoholic drinks I ingest or how much tobacco I consume. When I received my results, I was low risk in every category (except I am six pounds overweight — all those sweets). Other than advising me to eat a little less and move a little more, the report said to just keep doing what I’m doing. It didn’t say, you are healthy, so go ahead and start drinking and smoking again. It said, keep doing what you’re doing. In other words, “Don’t get comfortable.” I won’t. Someone pass the cake, please.

A Sobering Vacation

Travel advice. Don’t go to Dublin, Ireland, on vacation, unless you want to be reminded that you would love nothing more than to get drunk. Mr. Supportive identifies with his Irish ancestry, as does our 13-year-old daughter, who will from now on be known as ”Little Darling.” I haven’t a drop of Irish blood, but when they both said that they really wanted to go to Dublin on vacation, I went along. This was an insane decision, even if I wasn’t an alcoholic, considering the state of the US dollar compared with the Euro, but I have to let that go. What’s done is done.

All I can say is that I should’ve gone to Dublin when I was 22 instead. Actually, when I was 22, my sister and I were traveling in Italy (heeding our ancestral yearnings) and Spain (before the dawn of the Euro and when you could get a room for the equivalent of $10 a night). We planned to go to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day but got too drunk the night before we were supposed to head out and slept all day instead. Sounds about right. So we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in Torremolinos, Spain, on the Costa del Sol. Didn’t really matter where we got drunk, now, did it?

Pubs really are a big deal in Dublin and people cram into them every night, spilling the smokers out onto the sidewalk, where they swill beer and drag cigarettes until 4 or 5 a.m. I know how late they stay up because our hotel was adjacent to Grafton Street, the place for partiers to party. They don’t tell you this on the hotel website. They also don’t tell you that there is a bar connected to the hotel where they play Abba music until 3:30 a.m. The bar’s patio happened to be just beneath our open window, where the drinkers were drinking and the smokers were smoking. Although the night was warm, we had to keep the window closed because of the noise and smoke. My Little Darling said, “It’s not that they’re keeping me awake that bothers me. It’s that I want to be down there with them.” Ditto for mum.

When we left Ireland, we stayed with friends in England. One of these friend was my old drinking buddy. She still drinks and asked me why I couldn’t have just one sip of her beer? “What will happen? Will you explode?” No. I’ll just finish half of yours and then order my own and keep ordering until we leave and then have something to drink when we get back to the cottage and then go to sleep and wake up feeling like a stuffed cabbage and hating myself for wanting to do it again.

The problem with alcoholism is that it doesn’t go away when you stop drinking. So it’s best not to put yourself in positions where you will be tempted. Truth be told, if my Little Darling was not with us, I would have gotten drunk in Dublin (and then, of course, in England as well, and my friend would’ve been happy). There is no doubt in my mind. The thing about this method of sobriety is that my Little Darling is not always going to be with me. If all goes according to plan, she will grow up, move out, and create a life of her own. She will no longer want to go on vacation with her parents (not that she wants to now, but she has no choice). She will no longer be my excuse for staying sober. I can no longer say, I need to be sober for my daughter because she won’t need me in the same way. Of course, if she has children, I can use them as my excuse. But alas, at some point, I have to decide that I want to be sober for me. That I want to be clear headed and healthy. That I want to feel good about the decisions I make knowing that they are the best I am capable of making. I have to decide that I never want to lay in bed at 2 a.m. again hating myself for getting drunk, feeling swelled up like a sausage with my head about to pop off and stomach churning.

And so where did I go wrong? First off, it’s best to travel with people who do not imbibe. This is difficult, when your spouse drinks, even if he is not an alcoholic. But he wanted to go to the pubs and hear music, as did I. I would’ve been better off letting him go to the pubs alone and finding a theater where I could enjoy Irish entertainment without waiters asking me what I would like to drink. This permeates life. You need friends and acquaintences who do not drink. I find that people who drink really don’t want to be friends once they find out that I’m in recovery anyway. It’s no fun for them. I do have friends who don’t drink at all and those are the people with whom I share my time, celebrate my holidays, and go on my girls-only weekends. Otherwise, it is just too much of a struggle.

Secondly, I should’ve found out, in advance, where the AA meetings were being held in both England and Ireland and I should’ve planned to attend those meetings even though I was on vacation. No, especially because I was on vacation.

People in AA say, “I know I have another drunk in me. I just don’t know if I have another sobering up.” That should be reason enough for me.

Sweaty Nights

An episode of night sweats scared me into going to an AA meeting. At 40 years old, I was ignorant of the symptoms of perimenopause. In my earlier drinking days, sweaty nights meant one-night-stands and partying in fields during those hot Midwestern summers.

The first time it happened, I’d had about a fifth of vodka to ignite the flame and I thought my liver had finally given up. Can’t filter out the toxins anymore, sweetie. You’re on your own. Although it frigtened me enough to seriously consider saying goodbye to alcohol, I drank for two months after that episode. It didn’t take much to turn on the faucet. A couple of glasses of wine would do it. I started talking about this to my extended family. My sister-in-law ensured me that I was not an alcoholic, that my liver was not shutting down, and that I was simply going through perimenopause. She’d just seen a doctor on Oprah who wrote a whole book on this mystery topic. As if PMS and menopause aren’t enough, we need a bridge from one hormonal nightmare to the next. Perimenopause or premenopause can begin up to 10 years before you actually stop menstrating. With high hopes that I would not have to give up my beloved alcohol afterall, I went to my local library and found this book from Oprah. “The Wisdom of Menopause,” by Dr. Christaine Northrup.

Great book for anyone experiencing perimenopause. I discovered that our bodies will tolerate an awful lot until we reach this stage, but once we do, it takes the wheel. If you are doing something that is not in the best interest of your body, mind, and/or spirit, you will have “symptoms” as a warning. Symptoms include night sweats, insomnia, anxiety, headaches, weight gain, scattered thinking, memory loss, and hot flashes (others too, but these are mine).  And if you don’t heed the warning signs, eventually you will get terrible diseases and probably die. Great. So let me get this straight. Drinking alcohol is giving me night sweats and waking me up, which is my body’s way of saying that I need to stop drinking alcohol, or my body will put me out of my misery.

I hated those health books that told you to stop drinking because I didn’t think it was possible. They may as well have told me to stop breathing or peeing. Alcohol was part of who I was. I needed it and it needed me. Fortunately, my love for my daughter was slightly stronger than my love for vodka. I’d wanted a child for years and when I finally had her at age 36, I couldn’t be happier. To leave her without a mother and to miss out on what is the greatest joy of my life because of alcohol just was not an option. I didn’t know where to start. So I went to an AA meeting.

Ice Clinking in a Glass

Eight years ago, I stopped drinking alcohol. I didn’t want to stop but I was afraid of dying. After spending the day and evening drinking vodka before, during, and after a friend’s wedding, I woke up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. This was a new experience for me and I just knew that my liver had finally shut down. My daughter was five years old at the time and it felt unfair to orphan her for a seabreeze buzz. Besides, I didn’t want her to think of me every time she heard ice clinking in a glass. I said that to a fellow recovering alcoholic once and she said, “Wow, you were still putting it in a glass?”

That was my problem. I was “still putting it in a glass.” I was a civilized drunk, mixing vitamin C enriched juices with chilled vodka only after completing my eight-hour workday or household chores. I was a ”functional” alcoholic, whose bills were paid and child was well cared for, so I didn’t think I needed to stop. My resume proved that I didn’t need to stop. An advanced degree. A solid work history with increasing responsibilities and longevity. A pristine credit report. A mortgage. No arrests. No DUIIs. Although I did crash a car once after drinking all day and night but the cop who showed up at the scene must’ve been in a hurry because he never questioned my sobriety. It was OK, though. My insurance premiums were current.

During those years, I also thought I was a great mother. I stayed sober throughout my pregnancy and long enough to breastfeed for six months but found an excuse to ween her in time for the holidays. I couldn’t imagine celebrating one more holiday without doing shots of exotic liqueurs. My daughter’s third Christmas found me sipping White Russians all day long. By the end of the day, I had drunk an entire fifth of Kahlua and half a fifth of vodka (not to mention all that cream). Lying in bed that night, I felt my heart race, working as hard as it could to pump the poison I drank throughout my body. I was afraid, but not scared enough to stop.

But still, I knew I was a great mother. I read all the books about parenting and got down on the floor with her to build puzzles, make towers out of blocks, and show her how not to force square Playskool pegs into round holes. We went for walks, played in the park, visited friends and family, kept our “well baby” appointments, and ate healthy meals together. All to the sound of ice clinking in a glass.