Soul Mosaic

I call this next set of pieces “The Warrior Years.” It was the main part of adulthood and child-rearing, the years when so many things were operating at once.

It was a complicated, stressful set of years: A time I felt vulnerable, uncertain, emotionally scared, and scarred. Yet I was also physically and ethically strong and determined to break the patterns and cycles of my father’s “Family System Rules.”

I wanted our son to be free of that past and its influences to give him a better, healthier life. While it wasn’t always done smoothly, it was always done with great care and love.

To write these well, I need to reflect on the main themes of this period. These will be the pieces for this phase, defining the challenges, the efforts, and the insights:

• Marriage – We were soulmates, but how do we stay married when neither of us has the tools?
• My therapy – Continue to learn the life lessons I missed, and identify and heal the pain from the past, all while managing current life responsibilities.
• Parenthood – Breaking cycles for our son’s sake, and meeting his challenges
• Jobs – The dance of job demands, bills, and change
• Friendship – Do I even dare trust?
• God – So, where do we go from here?
• And…My Parents – Confusing messages and keeping him in line while giving our son “some” extended family.

Stay tuned…

The crucible of transformation

With the arrival of my son, a whole new phase of my life was ushered in – The Warrior Years. I will talk about those in upcoming pieces. But first, there was the “minor thing” of giving birth, and “finding my footing” as a new mother.

However easy the pregnancy was, that next year or two was the “Baptism of Fire,” the crucible that would initiate me into motherhood. It would transform me from a young woman managing my own life, needs, and work to heal, to the nurturer and guardian of a whole other life. And even as I would need to keep working on myself, my son and his care would, rightly so, take precedence over my needs for a good many years.

Birth

The birth was difficult – I had to be induced. Hours and hours of transition-level labor. The biggest concern came late in the process, when the baby seemed to be trying to exit out of my hip and was starting to show drops in oxygen levels. The doctor decided we’d give it one last try, and if it didn’t work, then it was a C-section.

My son’s foot was stuck up in my stomach, so while the doctor literally grabbed my abdomen and turned the baby’s direction from the hip, I grabbed the foot and pushed mightily. Finally, he headed on out! We joke to this day about trusting our son’s sense of direction. Anyway, given his stressful journey, they put him right on oxygen, which seemed to help after a few minutes.

The time in the hospital was equally turbulent, especially the first couple of days. Between the exhausting delivery and a snoring roommate, I got no sleep that first night. The next day, I started feeling terrible – shivering, pain, hot then cold, which turned out to be my milk coming in. I had no idea that would happen, or that it was going to mean aching breasts, constant leaking, and the utter sense that my body was not my own. No one explained any of that to me, so it added to the stress and my sense of feeling inept.

Since our son needed to stay an extra day or two for his bloodwork, I was relieved to have some time to try to rest. Frankly, I was glad to have the nurses’ help in his care and was actually afraid to go home. I felt so unprepared. This is one of the places where a lack of mothering really shows up. And for part of that time, I was alone. Ed took a day to rest after the whole delivery. He had been a tremendous birth coach, but I think he was a bit shell-shocked, too. And he had no “paternity leave.” For that matter, he had no time off at all. So we were both struggling to adapt to having a baby to care for.

One of the nurses that I knew from working with her came by and was very kind and calming. She talked about her difficulties at first as a new mom and reassured me that she was sure I would get the hang of things. I will be forever grateful to her.

I did manage to calm down after some rest. And the visits with the baby helped me feel like maybe I could do this after all. While I was in the hospital, my mother came to visit. She did not bring Dad. I had made it clear I didn’t want to see him.

That was a mixed emotional moment for me. I was feeling tired and vulnerable. And so, no matter how old you are, when you feel vulnerable, you want “Mommy” there to help. Even as I knew that was not going to be the case for me.

I did appreciate that she came by, especially since the last time I saw her was that night in the therapist’s office. But at the same time, it was bittersweet. There was no way I was going to have her, and especially not Dad, be around my newborn. She had not been there for me all those years through childhood. What could she give me now? I both needed and wanted her help — what new mother doesn’t? But at the same time, I didn’t want her there.

And it was awkward. I had blown open her shell of denial, made it starkly clear what her husband was. If she lived in silent denial all her life, there was no denying it now. Which left her in the spot of having to choose: Stay with a husband like that or leave, given what he was?

Of course, no matter how upset she was, she would never leave him. He was her security. And on some level, I knew that. She stayed with him all those years, through his abuse of her. Through all the blatant signs that he was abusing me. It pained me to see her be that “stuck.” So yes, it was an awkward, painful, bittersweet visit, filled with longing and need, but resignation that the past would continue unchanged. Unless, of course, he actually got help?

What does the book say???!!!

Going home with a new baby was both an exciting and a terribly scary time. With the birth stuff over with, I was finally looking forward to getting home. But I remember that when we arrived with our “sound-asleep progeny,” and placed him carefully in the downstairs cradle, we stepped back, looked at each other, and said, “Now what do we do?” And we meant it. But if there was any uncertainty of what new life with an infant would require, we were going to find out very soon.

One unsettling thing was introducing the dogs to our new addition. While Jess, the younger female poodle, was more “bouncy curiosity” as she sniffed at the cradle, Charlie, the territorial and jealousy-prone male, seemed unhappy. Yet another harbinger of things to come. I shrugged it off as his hip giving him trouble. And it was. But I never felt he would have adjusted to the baby, no matter what.

But the afternoon went quietly, as did the evening. I began to feel like this would be okay. Until about 11:00 p.m. That’s when he started wailing with a pitch that rattled our spinal cords. This went on for several hours. We tried everything. Rocked him. Fed him. Changed him. Sang to him. Rocked him again. All to no avail.

The nurses at the hospital had told me that he had been calm and slept well for them, so I called them, worried maybe something was wrong. They just laughed and said he probably slept well for them because he was tired from the birth, and now he was starting to be himself. So there was no help there.

Ed and I were not used to being around babies. And I hadn’t done much babysitting either. We knew books. So that was my next resort – Dr. Spock. Literally. As I rapidly paged through it, Ed rocked our son and frantically asked me, “What does the book say??!!”

That was our introduction to life with a colicky baby who resisted any kind of schedule for sleeping and eating, and who screamed constantly.

Certainly, a situation can feed on itself. And no doubt, as the screaming infant made us scared, inept, and frantic, he too must have felt our fear and screamed more.

Somewhere around 3 or 4 in the morning that first night, I think he stopped screaming for a couple of hours, at which point Ed and I grabbed some nervous sleep.

Always running

After that, it was more of the same. Not only did our son have no particular schedule, neither did I. I could barely find time to go to the bathroom, much less take a shower. The baby slept fitfully, then would wake up screaming. And I would drop everything and run to comfort him.

Meanwhile, Jess, our younger female poodle, dug herself behind the backboard of our bed, where she would remain in hiding off and on for the next few months. And as to Charlie, the older, more jealous male? In fact, he would not be with us much longer. Just about the same time I was trying to bond with a newborn, his leg became a real problem. It started separating from the hip joint, requiring me to drop everything to reinsert it. So when I wasn’t running for the baby, I was running for the dog. It was hell.

Add to these problems the fact that any attempts at nursing were a disaster. He wouldn’t nurse well. So he would cry. I couldn’t relax. My breasts ached. Leaked. I tried going to a nursing support group, but let’s just say when I saw one woman’s 4-year-old son walk up to her while she was talking, lift her shirt, take a tug, then walk away, I was like, “Nope! This isn’t for me.”

I finally said to my husband that I just wanted my body back. I was leaking, aching, still bleeding from the delivery, and my nipples were chewed up. I had had enough. So the pediatrician we had chosen told me to start our son on formula and told me what kind to get. But within a few days, our son was refusing to take the bottle, was spitting up formula, and was having diarrhea.

And an aside here – two things. First, to people who tell new mothers to sleep when the baby sleeps, I have a suggestion for what you can do with that advice. Our son barely slept longer than thirty minutes at a time. Then screamed. About the time I finished cleaning and prepping bottles and lay down on the couch, he was awake again. And second, thank GOD someone finally made baby swings battery-operated or electric. They were hand-crank ones when my son was a baby. About the time he just started to fall asleep, the crank cycle would run out. So I’d have to crank it again, he would wake up, and start screaming. Who EVER seriously thought a hand-crank was a good idea???

The dog

Meanwhile, Charlie’s leg was absolutely not staying in the hip joint at all. So I had to send him for surgery. The vet told me that I would need to be nursing him around the clock, which meant that I had to pick him up, carry him everywhere…and keep putting his leg back into the hip joint if it came out.

The surgery recovery went badly right from the start. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get him comfortable, and his leg separated from the joint more and more. I called the vet and said I needed to have the dog cared for at the vet’s office because I had a newborn who wasn’t eating, we weren’t sleeping, and I couldn’t give the dog the care he needed. The vet grudgingly agreed to take him back, but he was not happy.

Within a few days, things went from bad to worse…at which point, we finally had to put the dog down. I feel sorrow and guilt to this day. But I had nothing left to give. I was stressed out, not sleeping, and frantic about my son’s refusal to eat. And, I still feel that Charlie might not have been safe around the baby. So perhaps fate stepped in there.

The nervous mother

This is what having little to no support system is like. And why I think there should be insurance provisions for doulas. Someone to help a new mother adjust, rest, and get up to speed would have been a blessing. I had no support, and one friend who, on the couple of occasions she babysat so Ed and I could get out, let me know that SHE had no problem with him, the implication being, it was my fault and ineptness.

It didn’t help that the pediatrician was no help with our son’s feeding problems. He just laughed and said I was a nervous mother. After several rounds of this, I made my husband take the day off from work to come with me to the next doctor’s appointment. I told my husband that if the doctor called me a nervous mother one more time, Ed would have to come bail me out from jail because I would deck the doctor. Ed was stressed as his job was terrible, and he was nervous about taking the time off, but he came with me. Frankly, by the time we walked out of the office, Ed was ready to deck the doctor.

A friend’s mother suggested the baby’s upset might be gas, and to boil onions and give him the liquid. Another person told me about a bottle of baby simethicone drops. I did both, even though the 0.5 ml bottle of drops cost $21. I would have paid anything for relief. Neither worked.

I quit

In the middle of all of these weeks of chaos, I was starting to get depressed and have anxiety attacks. So I tried to set up a home daycare situation for a day or two a week to give me a break. I tried out a woman who had been recommended to me.

She quit at the end of the first day. She said to me, “I can’t do this! He’s too much work. I don’t know how you do it…you must be exhausted.”

I just started crying when I got home and told my husband what she said. And even when I tried a few other daycares, no one would take him because he wasn’t “on a schedule.”

Meanwhile, the baby wasn’t eating well. And still screaming a lot. The female dog was living behind the bed’s backboard. I wasn’t sleeping. And my husband was trying to keep up with a job that demanded he be on call 24/7 and didn’t care about his family’s needs.

I dreaded when the phone rang at 5 p.m. because it meant the computer systems he was in charge of had a problem, and he would be late leaving. And even when he did leave, his commute would take an hour because of how far away we lived from his job.

One day, he got home, and I was upstairs bathing our son, who was screaming as usual. I was sort of getting used to it. Ed said he opened the basement door and heard the cries, and for a moment, thought about quietly backing out and going for a ride for a few minutes. We both laughed, and I told him that I knew the sound of his car engine coming down the road. So I knew when he was home. If he had done that, I would have known and hunted him down.

Moments of sanity

I will be eternally grateful to Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Cher, Olympia Dukakis, and Dean Martin for saving my sanity during these days. They provided me with the tools to keep going in the form of three movies that I watched again and again and again and again: Diane Keaton in “Baby Boom,” Goldie Hawn in “Overboard,” and Cher and Olympia Dukakis in “Moonstruck.” To this day, I can recite most of the dialogue from Moonstruck. Ed would come in from work and note that one of the three was playing on the VCR that day, but never complained.

Dean Martin sang the theme song for Moonstruck — “That’s Amore.” And when he would sing, I would pick up my son, sing along, and we would swing around the room and dance. However grumpy my son was, he would always laugh when we did that. So we did that A LOT! We now joke that if our son gets married, the mother-son dance has to be “That’s Amore” by Dean Martin. That is the only TRUE version for both of us!

And over time, I even found comfort in Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers, though Barney was a stretch. Also, Ed and I would have an occasional night out when a friend babysat our son. While we were totally unaware of anything in life at that point regarding culture, music, or the latest fads, we saw the movie “Naked Gun” in the theater and laughed our hearts out. We so needed that. Silly movie, yes. But just what we needed.

Ed and I did manage to get away for an overnight on our anniversary weekend. Forget mad passion. We had a nice meal at the restaurant where we were married. Then we sat by the indoor pool at the hotel, shell-shocked, and counting down the minutes of quiet time before we had to go back. We were just doing the best we could to hang on.

We need to live somewhere else

Aside from anxiety, post-partum depression that I didn’t know about yet, stress, no sleep, and struggles to feed my son, it was February. That meant snow, sub-zero temperatures, and constantly dark skies.

One particular day, Ed came home from work to find I had the sliding glass doors open to the outside air, even though it was -10 degrees F. out there. When he asked why, I said, “Because I need to hear people!”

Then I looked at him and said, “We need to move. We need to live somewhere else.”

My husband looked surprised but thought this was a good idea. “We can move closer to my job.”

Well, no, we couldn’t because we couldn’t afford a house on the southern coast of Connecticut. But also, I said, “No. We need to move somewhere else entirely. Someplace warmer and sunnier!”

I had lived in Torrington my whole life, and until that moment, I had not intended to move anywhere else. But in that moment, I was done living in Torrington. Or the Northeast. That was the beginning of our efforts to get Ed a new job and to move to a warmer and sunnier place. But more on that later.

“Pick a nipple”

About this time, I was at my wits’ end. This situation was not working right, and it was up to me to fix it somehow. So I did the only thing I could think of — go back to what I knew best – science.

If I were going to help my son, I needed to figure out why he wouldn’t eat. The doctor was useless. But I was a scientist. I knew that to find answers to problems, you try things, make observations, analyze what you find, then try something else until you get a solution.

So I did the “great-bottle-and-nipple experiments.” I got a small notebook, and as I started testing out different things, I would record the results. Then, after a few days, I would look to see if anything changed for the better. If not, I would try the next thing.

The first thing I tested was the baby bottles I was using. I tried different kinds, glass, plastic, regular ones, and ones with liners. The bottles didn’t seem to make a difference.

So then I tried changing the nipples. I tried regular latex ones with one hole, two holes, and three holes. Cross-cuts. I tried orthodontically shaped ones, silicone ones. I would record the nipple used, how much he ate, what his stools were like, everything I could notice.

But the nipples made no difference. One morning, with our son screaming, I stood “frozen” before the counter full of nipples that I’d already tried. None of them worked. My husband, in his infinite wisdom, came up behind me, put his hands on my shoulders, and said, “Dear, you’ve got $40 worth of nipples on the counter. Our son is screaming and needs to eat. Pick one, and use it.”

To this day, whenever any of us is overwhelmed by choices and isn’t sure what to do next, we go back to the family maxim: Pick a nipple.

The lab manual and help from the experts

While the nipple and bottle tests failed, the information in my “lab manual” saved us. In looking over my notes, I began to see a pattern of diarrhea related to his eating schedule. From my lab background, which included doing stool analyses, I knew something was wrong in his gut. If something was wrong in his gut, he would be unhappy, cry, and not eat.

I needed help. But the pediatrician was useless. Also, my anxiety and depression were not getting better, and now even if our son slept at night, I couldn’t relax enough to sleep. My regular doctor, a father of three himself, spotted what was going on and prescribed just a muscle relaxer for me. Just enough to relax me to fall asleep, but nothing strong or addictive. He explained about post-partum hormonal changes and that my husband needed to start switching off nights with me, even if we were both exhausted.

At the same time, Ed’s job was just hell for him. Finally, one morning, I said to him, We need help. I need help. We need to go back to the therapist.” His silence for a moment may have just been exhaustion or uncertainty. He was equally fried.

But noting his hesitancy, I just put it all on the line. I told him that whatever he chose, I was going. Because I needed support and help to find answers. And he could come or not. In fact, I remember telling him that if he couldn’t cope with this, he was free to leave. I was no rock around his neck and would raise our son myself if he couldn’t stay.

It sounds terribly harsh now. But I also know now that it was my defense mechanism against rejection. As I said it, I was praying to God that he wouldn’t leave. But I also recall feeling that I wanted someone who wanted to be there with me. If he didn’t want to be there, I couldn’t put up with that.

To his credit, of course, he wanted to stay. He was just equally wiped out. He joined me in therapy even as he had to drive halfway across Connecticut from his job on the coast to West Hartford, where the doctor was. But it was the best thing we ever did.

Finally, some answers

For one, the therapist listened to Ed about the job issues. He suggested that we look at this place — North Carolina – Research Triangle Park — as a possible good new location. RTP was an area with a large technology presence, which meant lots of computer jobs. The therapist had gone to school there and thought the pace of life and climate would help us. Though it would take another year, that advice would eventually land us in that very area. And I think in the long run, that saved all of us.

The other thing the therapist did was arrange for us to meet with his wife, also a doctor, who specialized in CHILD DEVELOPMENT. She examined our son, tested him, and told us that, while he was a difficult baby, he was healthy and doing just fine. She assured us that we weren’t doing anything wrong, but that we needed a better pediatrician. She referred us to a doctor who, while not in Torrington, was a godsend. He looked at my feeding notes and immediately said that the formula was wrong and causing intestinal distress — something I’d been trying to tell the other pediatrician, who was ignoring me. He also assured me that yes, our son was not an easy baby, but he was healthy, it was just his temperament, and we were doing fine.

He even told me that when the baby was crying, after I did everything to give him care — change him, feed him, rock him — to put him in his crib and shut off the monitor for just ten minutes. That would be ten minutes for me to calm myself, and for that ten minutes, the baby would be fine.

It made all the difference in the world. And with the change of formula, our son suddenly settled down, started eating well, and crying less. The dog came out from behind the bed. And I started learning to trust my own gut as a mother. My confidence started to grow. And I even managed to fit in showers on a regular basis.

Last, I had originally planned on being a stay-at-home mother. But that wasn’t working. I needed adult company and support. Lacking it anywhere else in my life, I decided that if I could go back to work even a day or two a week, that would give me adult company and my son, the company of children. That might be good for both of us.

My old boss at the lab was indeed needing people to fill in for people out sick. She was happy to have me back a couple of days a week, and being a new mother herself, she understood the need for adult company. Also, since my son was settling in more, perhaps I could find a daycare that would take him. My boss told me that the hospital had just set up a connection with one, so I went to see the woman.

Again, drawing from my newfound confidence, I met with the woman, and the first thing I said to her was, “*My son is not on a set schedule. He’s had a lot of upset, and so I feed him as he needs it. If that is a problem, this conversation is over, and I am leaving.”*

She laughed and immediately put me at ease when she told me how her son had been the same way. She ran her daycare like it was someone’s home, and they would give him whatever schedule he needed.

Becoming “Mom”

That became the beginning of finding my way into motherhood. It didn’t change everything overnight, and some things never.

Our son was still a difficult baby at times, I mean, he actually cried when I fed him applesauce! Who hates baby applesauce?! Another time, when I worked on a Sunday, I came home to find my son was hoarse from yelling, my husband was wearing ear protectors as he rocked him, and the dog was throwing up in the kitchen. Never a dull moment!

But overall, those moments were diminishing, and I was also growing to understand him and what he needed. He was very sensitive to change, and things being “too” anything – loud, quiet, hot, cold, different. That was just who he was, and I was learning how to deal with it.

For example, we both started sleeping better when I discovered that wave machines were a gift. His machine was set to constant white noise, and he started sleeping regularly. Mine was set to waves, so I could hear if he was crying, in between the waves. And we adapted to the fact that the only time our son truly napped was if he was getting sick. So forget trying for naps.

The point is, I was finally developing the bond with my son that I’d wanted, and to find joy in him, even as I still feared being inadequate at times. But it was a start, and a good one. And no matter the challenges of parenthood, our son has been a total joy for over 30 years now, and worth every bit of the early struggle. And my husband jokes that being a parent helped in his role at work later as a supervisor. Managing people can sometimes be no different than colicky babies!

And all of that progress was just in time…because, as usual, just as things settled now, new big changes were coming. As were battles that would need to be fought.

A “rules” reminder

Just a reminder. As I noted at the beginning of this memoir series, I will not speak about my siblings. Only my parents, myself, and Ed.

The drumming of the minutes

The doctor was late for the appointment. Our meeting was being held after regular hours, so the office was locked. We stood crowded into a side waiting room, Ed and I at one end, my family across from us.

My father stood silent and clutching his bible. Ed remembers that Dad’s hands were shaking. I don’t. I was eight months pregnant and in full “battle mode,” totally focused on what I was about to do. There was no turning back now. Lives beyond my own depended on this.

Why my father actually came to this appointment, I am not sure. He had to know what I was about to do. But maybe it was still a control thing. Even if his secret was about to be ripped open, maybe he figured he could control the fallout? I don’t know. And, I don’t care.

The second hand on the wall clock was as loud as a drum, and the minutes ticked by like hours. But finally, a car raced into the parking lot. The doctor burst through the back door, offering rushed greetings and apologies for being late.

The reveal

The doctor had already arranged chairs in a side area of his office. We sat in a circle, with the doctor just slightly behind Ed and me. From there, the doctor could observe and manage the conversation if needed.

I don’t remember my exact words, only that I got right to the point, “This is about incest. About Dad sexually abusing me all through my life.”

The admission that shocked me

The only reaction was from my mother. And Ed. His was exasperation at the lack of outrage. Or of anything useful from my father. My mother was busy denying knowing anything about it as she whipped her head from me to my father. Then she started crying.

I was emphatic that he had to be held accountable. That our kids were at risk. Since he’d never done any therapy, he was not safe, and that was not acceptable.

My father, weirdly, was very calm. He almost seemed “relieved,” and he didn’t deny anything. Just kept gripping his bible, which was strategically placed right over his groin.

He even actually admitted to getting great “joy” from giving me a bath as a infant. The doctor pressed him to define “joy,” by which he really meant, “getting turned on.”

That admission he offered freely. We had not even been talking about baths when he came out with that. And for a moment or two, it actually shocked me into silence. Even I wasn’t expecting that. My earliest memory of abuse was when I was with him in the car as a three-year-old. So in that moment, I just sat there and tried to take in that he had ALWAYS sexually abused me. Right from the beginning. So I was in shock. In fact, it has taken me years to fully absorb that one.

But as an aside, every therapist I’ve worked with over the years has affirmed the reality that I was NEVER SAFE. And my trauma specialist now has pointed to some of my trauma responses as being body memories of things done “very, very early in life,” during a preverbal time period…i.e., infancy.

In any event, as to the rest of our discussion that night, it wasn’t a long meeting. My mother cried through the rest of it. I demanded, for the second time in 4 years, that Dad get help. The doctor agreed and provided some resources to my father. He agreed to do this.

The warrior

Totally drained, Ed and I left.

I wasn’t sure what would happen next…except for two things: Delivering my child, and…being a warrior for our kids for however long I would need to be. This was no longer just about me.

P.S.

I need to note a few things here. When I look back at all of this, the question comes up — shouldn’t there have been some kind of followup? Legal actions?

I can only assume a few things. First, for the things done to me, I believe the statute of limitations had long since run out. Why there is even a statute of limitations to press charges in situations of child abuse, I don’t know. That is ridiculous. The perpetrator gets to be free after a certain period of time. The victim deals with the wreckage for life. It is just wrong. But that is how it was.

And that is the second thing. In 1988, things were very different. Laws, followup, whose responsibility things were…any of that was much different than how it would be now. Even my own awareness of what needed to happen was very limited. I was still dealing with the effects of my own trauma. So I was doing the best I could

And lastly, I expect, since there was no new crime, there was no legal recourse that could happen…

But it all seems so “flat” a response for almost three decades of abuse to me.

So…the battle would continue…

It was a relaxing time on the cruise…at least until our return. Ed switched jobs not long after our return in the hopes that the stress level would drop. But given his career as a computer systems administrator, all you could say was that the job stress “changed.” It didn’t drop.

And three months into our marriage, it would really ramp up.

OMG!

I hadn’t been feeling quite right after a one-day surgery, and my period was delayed. Not unusual, given that my cycles were always a mess. But since I was working that weekend, I ran a pregnancy test. Before the allotted test time was even up, there it was: a very clear and bright “plus” sign.

I remember thinking, “What have we done?!” But then calmed down and invited Ed to have lunch. Given that we NEVER had lunch together when I worked weekends because the schedule was usually too busy, he guessed immediately why I wanted him to come over. As he told it later, all the way over to the hospital, he just kept repeating, “Oh my God!”

We weren’t averse to having kids, which, at least for me, was a major change. Up until my relationship with Ed, I never intended to get married or have kids. I didn’t want to end up like my mother. WITH Ed, I had slowly grown to want to have children with him. We just hadn’t quite planned on it so soon.

I imagine any parent, even one who planned the pregnancy, has moments of “*Am I really ready for this?”* And for sure, we both felt that. But aside from a normal level of that sense of impending responsibility, we were doing okay.

Life seems great

In fact, physically and emotionally, aside from some early nausea, I felt great. It was the best I’d ever felt in my life. I think whatever mix of pregnancy hormones flooding my body at that point was overcoming the hormone deficiencies my body had been living with for all those years of trauma.

I ate well, found books on how to have a healthy pregnancy, and even at six months, I was moving furniture around as I got the nursery ready. I continued working full-time on evening shifts and would continue to do that almost up to my due date.

And of course, there was that whole “nesting” instinct. Aside from gathering supplies, I was making food to stock in the freezer. This even included the 15 or 20 apple and blueberry pies I made and froze, including making the crusts from scratch – something I never did before, or since. Pregnancy hormones are a strange, powerful cocktail of chemicals for sure!

That summer, we did a trip to Colonial Williamsburg, a place Ed and I both loved to visit. One afternoon there, as we strolled the streets, we watched as a family tried to manage their son who was screaming, “I hate dumb ol’ history!!!!” We looked at each other in horror. We both loved history and historical sites. What if our child ended up hating it?! Side note – he loves the place too!

Then there were the cravings I was experiencing – baked stuffed lobster. Neither of us was sure that we could fit that into our budget, and we hoped it wouldn’t come up often. But boy, when it did, there was no denying it!

There was the excitement of friends and family, and especially my early therapist, who had helped me through those rough first months. I hadn’t seen him in a while as I’d been doing well. But when we crossed paths one day at the hospital, and he saw I was pregnant, he was so ecstatic. He just burst out with, “You know, when you first started therapy, I didn’t think there was any hope for a recovery, between all the abuse and the strict religious rules. But this is WONDERFUL!” I understood that ordinarily, he’d probably never have said that, but it indicated just how bad things were when I first started therapy.

So all in all, for those first several months, I felt like life had really landed in a good place. For the first time in my life, things seemed “normal.”

The screaming message

But then, an “instinct” started sounding alarms within me. It was a very deep and primal one, a fire that roared quickly and was unrelenting. And its message was VERY clear:

YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT DAD.

Call it maternal protective instinct or whatever, because this was way beyond the normal level of self-protection I’d been using to deal with Dad. It was 5 years from leaving my parents’ home until this moment. Those years were full of destabilizing realizations, suicidal struggles, and a messy journey into full adulthood. I’d finally started to land on even ground. I figured I could keep Dad in line for my own safety. But now, carrying a new life within me, a VULNERABLE life that I would be responsible for, the message screamed within me:

DAD WASN’T SAFE.

There were a couple of small children in the family. And I was about to have one. He had refused to see a therapist when I tried to get him to do that early in my own work. If he had never gotten help, why would I think he had changed?

About this time, Ed and I were working with a new therapist in West Hartford. Part of it was about continuing my own healing and learning tools for living an effective life as a wife, working professional, and now, a mother. And another part of it was the realization that Ed’s job was still a problem, and we weren’t sure what to do.

But NOW we had a third, even bigger issue:

We HAD to confront Dad, in front of the whole family, so everyone knew what he had done to me…so our kids would be safe…so we could demand that he get therapy.

That secret I’d held all those years…it had to be ripped open if our kids were to be safe. It was time to “reveal” and demand…

Since my parents’ return from Texas to Connecticut, I had slowly tried to work out a way to maintain boundaries, but still have some kind of connection with them. There was always a careful dance between us, but we were trying to see if there was, to use the Buddhist term, a “Middle” path.

While I did all the work to set up the wedding by myself, my father gave me the same amount of money to use toward our wedding expenses that he had used for each of my siblings’ weddings. And my mother did throw me a bridal shower.

A day of joy

In spite of that, our wedding day was filled with moments of pure bliss and celebration. Photos with Ed, my father-in-law, and my grandmother all reflect the pure joy.

Yet the undercurrents of my family system were also there.

I never noticed it in earlier years, but to look back at the photos now is to understand how much more a photo captures than just what was posed.

About that “walk down the aisle”

We kept it traditional, and he walked me down the aisle. But he had his mask on. And I had my guard up. At least it was a very short aisle…

And the photo with the parents. Mom and I were at odds more often than not. Including during that time period. But she knew how to smile like everything was fine. And Dad…was Dad.

In case one would think it was just one photo that didn’t do him justice:

The smile never quite reaches the eyes

To me, there is no warmth. Just eyes always scanning, assessing. When out with others, his facade was always in place, but I knew who he was behind closed doors. And always, no matter where he was, the expressions were always the same.

In looking at my father-in-law versus my father, side-by-side, they were two totally different men. My father-in-law was not a perfect man, but he was truly happy that day.

If ever a photo could predict the future….

If I were to choose the images from that day that would predict where our future would take us, it would be these. Because our battles were only just beginning.

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Why Waste Time?

One thing Ed and I are compatible about is that when we have decided to do something, we just get to it. No point in taking our time. So we were engaged in November 1987, and we got married in February 1988. Not a lot of time to plan a wedding, but then, we were both quiet and private people. It would be a small wedding – about 25 people. Very close family, and a couple of friends.

I got to work with the arrangements. Unlike all of my family, who were married by my uncle, a priest, we were to be married by the local Congregational minister, in a French restaurant named “Apricots,” which overlooked the river in Farmington. The vows would be said upstairs in the bar room, and the dinner would be in the large dining room right across the hall.

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The man at Apricots was efficient. I wanted a string quartet to play chamber music, especially Mozart. He arranged for that through the University of Hartford music school. I wanted a small cake, with the top layer being carrot cake – Ed’s favorite. Done. He arranged for the flowers. We picked out the meal. He had a photographer. I arranged for a picture with my grandmother the day of the wedding. She was living in a convalescent home near me, so Ed and I would stop there first, before the wedding, on our way to the restaurant.

Other than carrot cake, Ed’s one request was that the printed invitations be “engraved.” That is the method of printing raised-letter invitations using custom-made metal plates. That seemed like a beautiful idea so I found a printer to do that for us.

We splurged on our honeymoon and arranged for a 10-day Caribbean cruise, something extremely exotic for both of us. I took care of getting all the paperwork for the licenses, camera equipment we would take, and made sure we both had our passports ready.

The dress

Given the situation with my family, I shopped for my dress alone. That had some sad feelings. It is usually a big thing with mothers and daughters, bridesmaids, and friends. But that was not to be.

I didn’t want the expensive, fancy wedding gown. Remembering how my grandmother’s wedding picture showed her in a tea-length dress, I opted for that approach. While “fashion” was not my strong suit, I went to the nicest shop in town and eventually found an ivory, tea-length dress – understated elegance in my opinion. And as for attendants’ dresses, I wanted to keep it inexpensive. So I told them to wear a nice dress of their own.

The day arrives

Ed’s job, which was demanding, kept him at work late. He didn’t get home until 2:00 a.m. the morning of our wedding. As we dressed, I asked him if this one time, he would iron his shirt…never a thing he cared about. I promised I would never ask again and would even bury him in a wrinkled shirt. He laughed and complied.

It had snowed the day before, so wearing my wedding dress and dark boots, we headed to my grandmother’s convalescent home. She was ready and waiting, along with the photographer, and was all smiles. The people there even made sure to do her hair for the picture.

While the plan was to have the ceremony, then open the bar, I took one look around all the tense faces and told the host, “Open the bar.”

He looked at me, shocked, and said, “Before the wedding?!”

With no hesitation, I told him, “Open the bar. Give everyone a drink, and then we’ll get married.” It was the best decision. Suddenly, everyone seemed to relax and started chatting and smiling like they were sitting in a friend’s living room instead of a restaurant. In fact, one of my relatives, after the ceremony, joked that if church was more like this, he’d go more often!

In spite of our history, my father walked me up to the minister. I had been attending the local Congregational church in Torrington, and he was very happy to officiate at our wedding.

Pina coladas in the sunshine

Even though another snowstorm was due, we managed to make our early Sunday morning flight out of Connecticut before it hit. We landed in Miami and were transported to the pier by the cruise line representative. Everything for the next ten days would be taken care of for us. No logistics. Only choices: what drinks did we want, what food would we choose, what port tours would we take.

Waiting for the ship to depart, we sat out on deck, soaking up warm sunshine — such a switch from the gray snow-covered landscape we left a few hours ago.

It was absolutely perfect. Warm. Calm. With my best friend. Sipping pina coladas. Honeymoons are funny in that they are both a celebration of where you’ve come to in life, as well as the “calm before the storm” of life. And there are even moments that remind you this is a temporary bit of paradise. One morning, a few days later, I looked over at Ed and suddenly thought, “I just committed the rest of my life to him!” It wasn’t regret. Just the full impact and importance of what I’d just done. And the morning in the shower, when Ed’s brand-new wedding band, still with a sharp edge, cut his nose as he washed his face. He had that same moment of, “So…is this marriage?”

But at that moment, sitting there with the drink in my hand, I was totally relaxed. I leaned my head back to feel the sun on my face while soft music played in the background, and I recall the sudden thought that flashed in my mind, “How long will life let us be this peaceful before something disturbs it?”

The answer was, Not long. The period of peaceful fun was about to switch gears.

Meanwhile, in the rest of my life…

If my life from 1983 through the summer of 1986 had been a non-stop Nor’easter of a storm, the next two years, by comparison, were more like the calm of a tropical Caribbean paradise.

Regarding work, while I continued my efforts to sell articles and read more books on how to write effectively, my switch to the evening shift and working in the other lab departments was a major improvement. While still a struggle at times, the change offered different co-workers, more variety as every week I worked a different department of the lab, and growing confidence. By getting back out into all the other lab departments, I had a chance to reinforce my knowledge and thus, feel much more skilled at my work.

Hobby-wise, I continued to paint as well as explore other mediums, such as pen-and-ink, charcoal, and watercolor washes. And business-wise, I took the opportunity to refinance my condo mortgage when a better interest-rate was available.

For the moment, my parents were still away, living in Texas, where my father’s job had taken him. That was a relief for me. I could explore my feelings about them in therapy, as well as slowly learn about boundaries and effective ways to live, without the pressure of having them nearby. I will also confess, I didn’t know what I felt about them. A few friends were losing parents, some way too young. And parents whom they loved deeply and had good relationships with. They struggled with why their parents had been taken away. I was struggling with why did I have mine, who had been nothing but pain. Why were mine healthy and alive when I wished to be free of them, and others, who still wanted their parents with them, lost them?

And God? I was still pretty angry at God. For sure, I had no use for any form of organized religion, and I kept God at arm’s length. But…there was a longing for some kind of spirituality. I wasn’t quite ready to delve deeply. But it was there, gnawing at the back of my brain. I just sort of kept the whole area “on ice.”

That said, I was finding a way to be more comfortable with “leaving religion” as an open question to be explored “later.” And now and then, I would open a bit to God. But if there was a relationship wall up at that point, it was with God.

And About Ed…

Here, life was good. Once we got back together, we stayed together. Weekend visits, trips camping in Vermont. Visits to museums and Boston. It was great. He even started accompanying me on Sunday morning breakfast visits to see my great aunt. She was the aunt who had lived on the third floor of my grandfather’s house. She was now living in a senior apartment building. And I had continued to bring her the Sunday paper, and she would make breakfast. I sensed her growing approval of Ed.

One Sunday when he wasn’t with me, she gently asked questions.

“Is he older than you?”

Even though Ed was almost 4 years younger than me, since he was mostly bald, I knew that was why she asked that. So I told her that no, he was actually younger. She seemed pleased,

“Has he been married before?”

I could see growing interest and approval when I answered, “No.”

So, she went for one more:

“Is he Catholic?”

I wasn’t sure how my 84-year-old, Slovak, Catholic aunt would respond to this one, but I said, “No.”

She seemed to consider this for a moment, but then must have decided that “2 out of 3” was good enough. So she always set a place for him at breakfast after that.

Another time, he and I spent a spring Sunday morning exploring a local greenhouse. I checked out the herb plants while describing the herb bed I’d had at home, which I missed. And then there were the concrete bird baths. I had indulged in bird feeders at my condo, and was learning to identify all the different breeds.

Later that week, I came home to a message from him that told me to look on my back deck. There, waiting for me, was the unique leaf-shaped bird bath I’d been admiring that day at the greenhouse. Apparently, after finishing up a job with a software client, he drove across the state to that greenhouse, bought the bird bath, and set it up on my deck – a surprise for me.

He treated me like gold and told me I was “precious.” Every time he would say that, though, I would recoil. I found it impossible to take in that level of honoring. I wasn’t ready yet…and wouldn’t be able to hear that word about me for decades. In fact, only now. But still he kept saying it, and has always meant it.

Metal gas cans, control issues, and “tough trees”

One of the things about crafting a life after being so controlled and abused is that I never wanted to be controlled like that again. So the pendulum swings to the other side for a while. Frankly, even now that pendulum is still moderating. So I have my forceful “declarations” about things and my quirks. Ed will just nod and accept it without interfering. One of the things that has always been a gift is his ability to let me work it out my way, no matter how hard-headed I am about something.

He one time observed that, “When you decide to do something a certain way, there is no deterring you. You will insist on going directly through a brick wall and will pound your head against it until your head is a bloody pulp, before you will finally decide to take the easier way, get up, and walk around it.”

And…he is right. I have mellowed over the years, but I am still struggling. Another time, he noted that when Olivia Newton-John did her song, “Have You Never Been Mellow,” she did a special version for me entitled: “You Have NEVER Been Mellow!”

It is one of my scars, one I keep trying to ease. But he has never tried to control me, and gives me a lot of rope. That said, he does have his line in the sand, and I know where it is and respect it. When he has had enough about something, I don’t push him.

Regarding “outbursts,” I decided one day I needed to get a gas can for my car. Remembering my escapade in Litchfield when I purposely ran out of gas, I’d been meaning to pick one up. I knew exactly the kind I wanted — one of those heavy-duty, solid metal gas cans. The REAL type of gas can. Metal. But all I could find were plastic ones. I came home in a rage, venting about the demise of a society that no longer offered decent, real, METAL gas cans. That is now a joke between us, and even with my friends. They all know that when I am serious about getting the “proper, well-made” type of item, whatever it is, it has to be a “metal-gas-cans” quality object! And yes, years later, I finally found one…and it leaked! But I did eventually find another one that is solid and doesn’t leak.

Ed’s sense of humor extended to the “control issues,” such as leftovers in the refrigerator or other things I didn’t want to deal with. I would just ignore them until the item rotted, or whatever it was, no longer needed my attention. One day, he left a note on a very old “something” in the refrigerator: “Is this a control issue?”

And he never said anything about the Christmas tree I destroyed by leaving it in the cold garage for a week without water. When he came over and saw it, he asked carefully, “Shouldn’t it be in water?”

I dismissed the question with a cursory, “It’s cold out here. It’s tough. It can take it!” A completely idiotic response, yes. Just because it was cold, that didn’t negate its need for water to stay fresh. And of course, when I did pick up the tree to bring it into the condo, all the needles dropped to the ground like an extreme “Charlie-Brown” tree. He just smiled and then came with me to get a new one. My “It’s-tough-it can take it” comment is another family joke to this day.

He also never said anything about my bumper sticker then, which said, “If you don’t like the way I drive, stay off the sidewalk.” Nor did he lecture me about the speeding tickets, though I still think it was a dirty trick that the state was using snow plows and confiscated Corvettes as the “speed traps.” But all joking aside, yes, there was that sense of rebellion at anything “thwarting” my wishes. Not an attitude I recommend, and one I’ve spent a lifetime trying to heal. I’ll speak more about that later in terms of what I understand now.

My dogs – two small poodles – seemed to accept him. Well, one accepted him. The other battled him for the “alpha male” role.

My mother and the “pissing contest”

By the summer of 1987, Ed moved in with me. We had decided to give things a try at the “next level.” We were still pretty independent in our activities at times. In fact, the weekend he moved in with me, I was away with friends. Looking back, I know that while we had come a long way in bonding, I still needed “space.” But he was fine with that. And where intimacy was concerned, he accepted my boundaries and didn’t “push” if I needed space there, too.

My male dog, on the other hand, was not pleased that Ed moved in. In fact, one night, he resorted to a literal “pissing contest.” Ed was reading in the living room and heard “water running.” He looked up to see my male dog staring him down while he marked his territory right on the living room rug. Needless to say, it was the first of more than one tense moment where Ed had to get down at eye level and let my dog know who was the “top dog.” The other dog was a happy-go-lucky female who just reveled in running around and playing. She didn’t care who was there.

And then there was my mother. My parents returned to Connecticut in late 1986 or 87. Though they never lived in Torrington again, they were in an apartment in Farmington. When she heard that Ed had moved in with me, aside from telling my sister that she hoped Ed and I weren’t sleeping together, she asked me if I did that “on purpose.”

What she meant was that my missionary uncle was visiting for a month right at that time, and she considered my timing to have Ed move in to be an affront to them both. Frankly, it had never even occurred to me. But, at least she didn’t have to be “shamed” by my living in sin too long.

“Happy Birthday”

By the fall of 1987, we were moving toward making our arrangement “permanent.” We even looked at a few rings. One November weekend, right around my birthday, Ed approached me with a small box and, on bended knee, asked me to be his wife.

The ring was beautiful. He had gone to the diamond district in Boston, where he worked with a man to select the stone and a setting. That was so him. Unique. Special. Full of heart and thought.

With no hesitation, and full of love and certainty, I said, “Yes.”

It may have taken me a long time to commit. But once I committed, it would be for good. And that was going to be necessary for the challenges and blessings we would face in the next many years.

Looking like crap

I remember being very uptight waiting for Ed to arrive at my condo that Saturday morning. For sure, I had no idea how he would react to what I was going to share. I kept rehearsing things in my head for different ways to tell my story. But in the end, there was only one way — just put it out there…and hope he wouldn’t leave.

If that wasn’t bad enough, there was how I looked. I had spent the previous day at the shore and had a bad sunburn. Not just on my skin, but my lips. So on this, the very day I wanted to look my best as I delivered the hardest news, instead, I now had fever blisters all over my lips.

I just remember looking in the mirror and thinking, Oh great! The hardest conversation of my life, and I look like crap. So on top of what I have to tell him, now he’ll also think I’m diseased and ugly! How can this possibly go well?

When he got there, I immediately explained what had happened and how frustrated I felt. That whole “we finally get together after months, and I look like crap.”

True to that good heart of his, he laughed and acknowledged the irony of it all. He wasn’t disturbed by my poor sunburned lips. In fact, I remember him saying that it was good to be back at my condo.

So about your request that morning…

A lot of that day is almost a blank in my memory. Nervous tension, I guess. I have a vague recollection of sitting across the table from him. And of reminding him of his request on our second date: “So tell me about you! I want to know who you are.”

At that point, I remember taking a deep breath, and then I just “jumped off the dock into the deep water, hoping for the best.” I laid out for him why I had been unwilling to answer him, or to let him close. And I told him all I could think of about the abuse up to that point.

He sat there quietly and listened. I give him credit because he didn’t bolt. He heard me out. I think we went out for supper or something. Again, I think I was so drained from the stress of it all, I cannot remember.

Ed did tell me more recently that it did take him a bit to process what I shared. It was not a given that he would stay. But, in the end, he came back. Again. And again… for which I am eternally grateful.

Could a “normal life” yet be possible?

I was really sad that Ed had chosen to move on from our relationship. I kept wondering why he couldn’t have given me just more time. But…he wanted serious. I was terrified and just didn’t know WHAT I wanted. So, I guess I could understand. With reluctance, I returned to the dating service.

The real estate guy

Well, he was actually a high school history teacher in another town, but his real passion was real estate. He bought a house, fixed it up on his weekends, then flipped it for a profit. I don’t know if it was lucrative or not for him. If it was, he certainly didn’t spend it on dates or outings. We mostly just met up at the local diner or another fast-food type of place, ate, and argued.

I didn’t invite him over. He didn’t invite me over. Frankly, it was not that kind of relationship, at least to me. And…after the breakup with Ed, I wasn’t really in that place anyway. But, he was company.

He told me he liked me because I argued with him. I remember shaking my head at that. But we did argue. A lot of the things he said I just didn’t agree with and told him so. That apparently intrigued him. I just remember him as a decent person, hard-working, who didn’t share much about his life other than about his houses, which he was always working on. Sometimes I wondered if he had a secret family. But we would have dinner now and then, as I wondered if he would ever share more about himself.

One day, he called and said he wanted to share something special with me. We met up by the airport near Hartford, as that was central for us, then he said he would drive me to the place he wanted to show me. It was a nice afternoon, so I enjoyed the ride while we argued some more.

I expected we were going somewhere in Hartford, but after about a half an hour or so, I realized we were still going. Finally, we got to Middletown, and while I still wasn’t worried, I was now a bit more alert.

In fact, as we got off the highway, I thought of Ed. Right before we broke up, he had moved to Middletown – bought himself a condo there. As we drove into town, I thought that if I needed help, I knew I could call him, even though we weren’t together anymore. No matter what his situation was, he would help if I needed him. I knew that heart of his.

We headed down one of the main streets, past the playhouse on the Connecticut River. That’s when we turned off onto a side road, then down a quiet road with only a couple of houses on it. It was getting dark now, and I noticed that the last house on that road had its outside light on, though no one seemed home. Suddenly, I was getting uneasy. Unless we were visiting someone here, there didn’t seem to be any other destination around. My hand went to the car door handle.

Passing the last house, we turned down a dirt road on the right. I gripped the door handle and looked back to see where I could run for help. At the same time, the voice in my head was screaming: HOW could you be so stupid?! When you read about finding women dead, THIS is how it happened!

At that moment, he stopped the car, looked out toward the empty woods and the river in the distance, and said, “This is the saddest place in my life.”

The voice in my head responded with Oh great! Is this where he buries the bodies?

I was about to bolt from the car when he added:

“I had a chance to buy this piece of property, and I blew it.”

Property…real estate. I should have known it wouldn’t be about a woman.

He then drove the rest of the way down the road to the brightly lit parking lot of a marina. Apparently, he kept his boat there and wanted to show me.

It had all been truly innocent. This man, who never spoke much about himself, finally decided to open up to me and show his passion for the river, his boat, and how he longed to buy a piece of land and build himself a house on the river.

I was drained and shaking, and must have looked pale because he said to me, “Are you okay?”

When I told him what I was thinking as we drove down the dirt path, he was horrified and realized how scary this must have been for me. We laughed it off, and I calmed down. But if we looked at his boat, I can’t remember it.

We drifted apart after that. He was busy. I moved on. A little over a year later, I did get a phone call from him asking how I was and if I wanted to get together. I thanked him, but by then I was engaged — something I’ll get to shortly. He sounded truly sad. Offering congratulations, he told me that if things didn’t work out, to give him a call. I thanked him and wished him well. I do hope he found someone who was equally passionate about boats, rivers, and real estate.

The true gentleman

About the same time, a coworker fixed me up with a friend of hers. He was a really nice man, very kind. And I liked him very much. It had been a few months since my breakup with Ed, and I decided to try to be with someone again.

We went to his home, and things started gently and very nicely. But that voice in my head spoke up. It and my gut declared, This is wrong. I don’t want this.

I hadn’t expected that response in me. He was a nice man, we liked each other, and I wasn’t trying to lead him on. It’s just that in that moment I knew…I wasn’t that person anymore. I didn’t want “light and fun.”

Apologizing profusely, I told him I truly had wanted to be with him, but it just felt like this was the wrong thing to do.

To this day, I will be very grateful to that man. He was a true gentleman. You hear so often about date rape. And I certainly had put myself at risk without intending to. But he was truly gracious. I hope the Universe gave him someone who could bring him the happiness he deserved.

The dream…

The last straw after these two experiences was the dream. In it, I was about to get married. I was standing at the altar, about to say “I do,” even though I didn’t really want to be there. It seemed to be more a situation of “someone asked, and I said yes.” So I went ahead and said “I do.”

At that very moment in the dream, I looked across the room from the altar, and there stood Ed. Heartbreak and pain seared through me as my brain screamed: What have I done?! I’ve just made the biggest mistake of my life, and it’s too late!

I remember waking up still feeling that terror, and I was so relieved to know it was just a dream.

The most carefully worded card ever…

Very shortly after this, I was riding with a friend somewhere and shared these three almost simultaneous experiences. I lamented about how I wished I hadn’t been so afraid of getting serious with Ed, and how much I missed him.

She said the most useful one line in my life: “Why don’t you write to him?”

I had not considered that. I assumed he had written me off and moved on to someone else. But…what could it hurt to send a simple hello card?

Ed would later tell me that when he got the card, he read my note several times, trying so hard to glean any sense of what I was feeling. But he said it was the most carefully worded card ever, and so he just had to take it at face value and decide – should he contact me or not?

I had written it very carefully because I didn’t know if he was in a relationship, and I didn’t want to create a problem. But I held my breath, hoping desperately that, unlike my dream, I wasn’t too late.

To my greatest surprise, relief, and gratitude, he replied. I asked him to come to my condo to talk.

I had decided. My background was the real block between us. I had kept up my wall so that I would never have to share my story with anyone. But that wall had broken us apart. I was tired of running.

So. He had wanted to know who I was?

Well, maybe he would run, or maybe he would stay. But whatever his decision, it was time for me to take a risk and tell the whole story…