One day in the middle of the 195O's, I found my mother In our kitchen. She was staring out the window like suspended animation. My father was lying on the floor outside of the bedroom on his back. If he was breathing, it didn't show. He didn't seem alive. I ran to get my mother and pointed to my Dad. She didn't look up and in an angry, chilling voice told me to take my little brother outside and not come back in. My brother and I put on our coats and went outside to swing.

It was very, very cold. It was the kind of day children usually do not go outside to swing. I cautioned my brother not to put his tongue on the swing set about half a dozen times. Being an obsessive child, he kept his mouth shut, and so did I.

After a long time had passed and we were nearly frozen, I heard my mother talking to my Dad. She sounded jubilant. I had seldom heard her so happy. She was laughing and crying at the same time. We went in and had supper. The atmosphere was warm and happy and friendly.

About ten years later, my mother told us that she had poured a bottle of elixir of Phenobarbital into my Dad's scotch. She thought that he would take a drink and go to sleep. She could go out on her errand and feel safe that he wasn't out driving under the influence of alcohol. My mother didn't know that my Dad drank scotch a quart at a time. When she got home, the bottle was empty.

Back in the 195O's, alcoholism had not yet been labeled a disease by the American Medical Association. If my mother had any other options, they were not common knowledge. Drunkenness was a joke and drunk drivers were brought home by the police. My mother had no one to turn to for help.

To make an extremely long story short, one evening last year a woman on television said, "No family is perfect." My youngest daughter said, "She's wrong...our family is." We aren't perfect. I think the thing we try to be is conscious. I wouldn't even tell that story about my parents except that they've told it themselves about a thousand times.

Our life would have been very different had both my parents not awaken to the fabulous, loving, creative "Higher Power" that we can all access through working the twelve steps.

I think the way we get our kids to join our journey is through our amends. We mend them in one incident at a time. I never sent my nephew a birthday box because it was "simpler never to get that started." I sent him one when he was 24.

My Mom bought me a Ginny doll from a flea market when I was a grown woman with three daughters of my own. It looked just like the one I lost when we moved.
Love is retroactive.

Don't be afraid to bring up the past. Chance are it isn't even past.