All in the Family

When I was younger my definition of an alcoholic was my grandfather.

Back in the day, Papo, as we grandkids knew him, looked a little like Frank Sinatra, with piercing blue eyes and a cigarette between his long fingers. He could have been a movie star except he was from Oklahoma. Sadly, I never knew that version of him except for the photo I keep on the shelf as you walk in my home.

My version of Papo was one of an older, slightly slumped, quiet guy whose clothes were always a bit stained and a size too big. He also had what I called the "bionic" arm  (being a child of the 70s, I was fascinated by "The Six Million Dollar Man"). On visits to his nursing home as a kid I remember being afraid to hold his "fake" hand in case he got me in a vice grip of some kind. Looking back I don't think he could even bend the fingers.  My Mom always called him "Daddy" and brought him a box of chocolate-covered cherries. In return he always had a peacock feather for me and my sister which he said he plucked from the random peacocks who stroll around the nursing home grounds. Later I wised up and realized he just collected shed feathers. 

I'm not sure when I learned Papo was an alcoholic but I knew that's why he and my grandmother were no longer married and why he was not able to live on his own. Still, I don't remember seeing my grandfather ever drunk. By the time I was born he had already lost his job, his marriage and his health. As I got older I heard stories of him being dumped on the lawn of his home at night after someone brought him home from the bar. I'm sure this was humiliating for my mom and her family because they lived in a small town where everyone knew everybody and everything that went on with each other. One time my Mom told me a story of how she and my uncle went to work with their Dad and made a game of counting up how many bottles he had hidden around his office. When people talk about him now though, it's usually just really good memories, with tales of his bountiful garden, wild Irish Setters, wicked sense of humor, or brilliance in the courtroom. 

I wish I could talk to him now and ask him about his life and his drinking. The latter particularly because at age 48 I realized I had inherited the alcoholic gene. Like my grandpa in the early days of his drinking, you probably wouldn't look at me on the outside and think "Now there's an alcoholic!" Far from it. I held a high level job in a school district, I volunteered, had a solid marriage and two beautiful children. People who knew me might think of me as "someone who can't hold her liquor." At social functions I always made a beeline for the bar -- especially if it was an open "all you can drink" bar. Weddings were the worst. One time my husband literally had to find me because I had snuck off while we were leaving to get "one more drink." My binge drinking days had started in high school and got worse in college at fraternity parties. I was in an emotionally toxic relationship, got pregnant, had an abortion, and drank to escape and cloak my insecurities. I thought about killing myself a couple times. It was during this period, however, that I met my future husband during a summer internship. A golden California boy who played guitar, biked around campus and studied chemistry, he liked me just as I was which back then was chubby, insecure and frankly a hot mess of a girl on the rebound. He instead saw me as smart, driven, pretty and silly. His faith and love for me tempered my drinking for awhile and we got married right after I graduated.

I come from the belief that alcoholics are born not made. I don't blame my family history or genetics but it helps me explain why I could never really stop at one drink; why I drank a lot at social functions to feel like I could fit in; why a security guard had to drive me home after a work party as I stumbled down the hall; why I drove my car into a fence one time less than a mile from my home; why I threw up all over my friends bathroom during a girls reunion; why after my kids both left for college, I started sneaking more drinks at the end of the day when my husband was out of the room; why I justified that drinking nearly a bottle of wine each night after work was "normal" because I had a stressful life after all; and finally why, after blacking out in my own basement when my husband was out of town I finally said, "Enough!" and called a friend who had recently started going to Alcoholics Anonymous. As they say in the First Step, "I was powerless over alcohol." It had become the thing I most thought about and looked forward to at the end of the day. And I was finally done.

Luckily, I stopped before I went to jail or had to go to rehab. Unlike my grandpa, I didn't lose my marriage, my job or my home. I am happier, healthier and more honest about how I live my life now. My friendships are fewer but richer. And I've become better at letting go of things. Sure there are still some days -- usually the stressful ones -- where a chilled glass of Chardonnay sounds good, but less so every day I am sober. Because of the family history with alcohol, I do worry more about my kids and maybe knowing what I went through they will be more aware of their substance use and drinking. I can't control that.

I wonder when it got of control with my grandpa? Or how old he was when he had his first drink? Was he ever socially awkward?  Did he ever try to quit? I guess I will never know. And I'm okay with that. He was my grandpa with the peacock feathers, and we shared a disease called alcoholism.