If my life had depended on it, I couldn’t have told you what
I expected from my first meeting.
Being chronically afraid of arriving late, I’d driven the
route to the old church the night before to be sure I wouldn’t lose my way and
on the actual meeting day, I invented a migraine and left work a half hour
earlier than necessary. It seemed
foolish to care so much about punctuality - surely being late wouldn’t keep you
out, I told myself - but we are what we are and I was determined to be on
time. I pulled into the church parking
lot with thirty-five minutes to spare, more than enough time to change my mind,
not quite enough to find the courage to actually do it.
It was early October, cool to the point of chilly, well dark
by six-thirty and the church, sitting high on a hill overlooking the grimy
city, was caught in a crossfire of wind.
It whistled around me, crooning it almost seemed, reminding me of the
loons that used to call to each other after sundown when I was a child spending
summers on my grandmother’s farm. A
school-sized milk carton skittered roughly across the pavement, a glossy
newspaper page flew directly in front of the windshield. Winter would be here any day, I thought, in a
month it would be cold enough to snow. I
badly wanted to turn the ignition key and head the old Volvo wagon to the empty
apartment on Dead Horse Hill. Telling
myself it wasn’t a fit night to be out - I was hungry and headachy, had
forgotten my gloves and was wearing only a light jacket that offered next to no
protection from the wind - I gave the key a hard twist and the engine roared to
life. Home and safety was twenty minutes
away. The door to the church was only a
few steps across the parking lot.
“God, give me strength, “ I said outloud, turned off the
engine and headed into the wind.
The meeting room, as plain vanilla as the church was
gingerbread, was tucked away at the end of a long, fluorescent lit, maze-like
collection of corridors in the church basement. Hand lettered signs and arrows were tacked at
each intersection and turn of the carefully, neutral, non-threatening
walls. The carpet (threadbare in places)
was beige, the ceiling (in need of paint) was beige. There were beige bulletin boards hung on
beige walls, push bars instead of doorknobs, and no windows. I followed the signs and arrows, faintly
distracted by the possibility that I if I were to drown, I might disappear in a
veritable sea of beige. And then without
warning, I was at the last set of beige double doors.
“Al Anon”, the hand printed sign read. And underneath, “ AA” with a smudgy arrow
pointing back the way I’d come.
I hated new things, unfamiliar places, first times. I hated doing things I’d never done before or
feared I couldn’t do well. I had no gift
for small talk with friends let alone strangers. I’d forgotten what a genuine smile even felt
like. I was afraid of crowds. All things considered, I thought, it was some
mild form of insanity to think that some old, sorry, clichéd self- help group
would be of any use. I had my pride, my
privacy, three cats depending on me and a husband locked up in a sterile and
unfriendly alcoholism treatment center.
I wasn’t about to admit or advertise my troubles to a bunch of losers or
religious do-gooders. I was thinking
I’d go home to the little apartment on Dead Horse Hill, forget all this
nonsense and crawl into bed until tomorrow when the door suddenly swung inward
and open.
“Welcome to Al Anon,” a pretty, young, well dressed blonde
carrying a tray full of coffee mugs said to me, ”I’m Alma. You can sit anywhere.”
And for no good or comprehensible reason, standing there in
that lonely, windowless hall with its harsh lights, the smell of coffee, and
this sweet-faced stranger, I began to cry.
“Please,” she said gently, “You’ve come this far. It’s only a few more steps.” She balanced the tray with one hand - it
trembled slightly and on sheer reflex I reached out a hand to help her steady
it - she took a step back and leaned toward me with a confidential smile. “Besides,” she stage whispered, “We have
cookies.”
“Oh, well,” I somehow
managed a shaky smile, “If there are cookies…..”
The room was as colorlessly beige as the hall with a wide
circle of what my grandmother would have called card table chairs lining the
walls. A table just inside the double
doors offered an array of books, pamphlets, t shirts. Another was neatly laid out with a Styrofoam
cups, paper napkins and plastic spoons and a chirping coffee pot. Two paper plates held an assortment of
cookies, chocolate chip, oatmeal, raisin.
Hung above the tables were brightly colored if tattered posters held in
place with scotch tape, the Serenity Prayer crookedly centered between The
Twelve Steps and The Twelve Traditions.
Above them, a 20x30 sheet of poster board proudly proclaimed the name of
the group, its meeting times and in heavy black script an invitation to Take what you need and leave the rest.
“Your first time?” a voice at my elbow asked quietly.
A woman, about my age, holding a chocolate chip cookie in
one hand and a small blue book in the other, smiling at me. She had kind eyes.
“I’m Denise,” she said matter-of-factly, “ I know the first
time is the hardest. You’re welcome to
sit next to me.”
I hesitated, not at all sure I could handle this much
kindness. She smiled again, nodded to
the round clock on the wall.
“I’m sitting right under the clock,” she told me then added,
“It gets better, hon, it really does.”
I don’t remember most of what was said or who said it. I do remember that there were very few empty
chairs, that it was mostly women in them, that there were horror stories I’d
never imagined a person could live with, and that somewhere along the way, the
knots in my belly untangled and I began to chip away at the walls I’d built for
myself.
Hope is a funny thing, sometimes elusive and hard to hold
onto, sometimes hiding in plain sight, sometimes just around the next
corner. I’d hoped to learn how to make
my husband stop drinking and instead was taught about detachment, patience,
boundaries, self-esteem and faith.
Hope had blindsided me.
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