Just an Old Table

           I was going to continue with Val’s story - we’re on the second part of chapter 15. But honestly, it’s a very sad story, and I have other memories closer to the front of my heart right now.

          When I was a kid, for as long as I can remember, an antique wooden table sat in my parents’ basement. It was solid, with five chunky legs and a ledge on its underside, perfect for hiding things. My sister Pat and I spent hours at that table, coloring, drawing, or plotting our next adventure. Sometimes friends would come over, and we’d all cluster around the table for snacks or games.

The table really is there under the table cloth and all that stuff. This is the only picture I have it from back then. 

          After Dad died and Mom sold the house, she had no room for the table in her new mobile home, so we brought it to my basement and tucked it in a corner. For a long time, we fed our cats on it and otherwise stored junk on it. Our basement flooded a few times, and those chunky wooden feet cracked; a few of them eventually fell apart.

          When Val bought her second house seven years ago, she finally had a dining room and wanted a cheap table. My parents’ old wooden table, that no longer had much of a finish and only two solid feet, would do just fine. Val and her husband at the time stripped it, stained it, glued the feet back together, and turned it into the beauty it once was. - which was before my time.

          A couple of weeks ago, the table came back home to live with me again. This time, in my dining room, where I plan to love it all over again, for even more reasons than before. 

Into the RIver - Val's Story, Chap 12, part 2

In between the drama, though, we still had good times. 

          In the spring of 2018, we took a vacation to the Ozarks in Missouri—Hubby and me, both our kids, and our son-in-law. 

          Our accommodations included two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a large kitchen. We even had a balcony in our bedroom with a view of the river. In the evenings, Val’s husband fished off the dock below, while the rest of us played shuffleboard.

          During the day, we explored local state parks, crossed some rickety historic bridges, shopped at various tourist traps, and toured Jacob’s Cave, which Val’s husband thought was so fascinating; he’d never been in a real cave before. When we first arrived in the town, we bought bags of groceries, but then went out to eat more than we should have.

          One night, I even went down to the hot tub with the kids.

We had a great time, and even though all three of the kids had alcoholic drinks with dinner, no one overindulged. It wasn’t a problem until one of the last days we were there, when we went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant and, even though it advertised alcohol, we were told their liquor license had been suspended. Val wanted to leave and go somewhere else. We settled her down and managed to enjoy our meal.

They did have to leave for home two days before us. I loved having them around, but it was so much quieter when they were gone.

          Two years later, in the fall, Val and I rented a cabin up north near Lake Superior for a long weekend. We all went again, including the kids’ three black dogs – Wesley, Buddy, and Bleu. COVID-19 still roamed the world unleashed, so indoor activities at public places were limited. But we had an entire three-bedroom house to ourselves.

          We had another good vacation. Shared a lot of laughs, climbed some small mountains, discovered new waterfalls, and even took the dogs swimming. Unfortunately, Jim had to leave on Sunday for work the next day. But I stayed behind with Nick, Val, her husband, and the dogs for another two days. The weather was beautiful those days, and the trees exploded in yellows, reds, and vibrant oranges.

          On Monday morning, when we arrived at Foster Falls, we came across a small campground along the river. At one of the sites, two large angry dogs stood guard. We didn’t want to risk walking past them to get to the falls, so we knew we’d have to cross the Potato River to access the waterfalls.

          Our Michigan Gazetteer showed that the road we had taken there actually went right through the river. We studied the spot where the road vanished into the water and shook our heads no.

          We turned around, heading back up the road to drive several miles out of our way to approach from the other side. As we started driving, I looked back and saw a pickup with a small camper coming up behind us. I couldn’t tell where it had come from and mentioned it to the kids.

          It instantly dawned on them. “Mom, I bet they just crossed the river,” my son Nick announced. 

          Oh no, I thought. Why did I open my big mouth?

          The two young men looked at each other, and I could see the gears turning – if that guy traversed the river in his truck, we should be able to in ours.

          So, they both got out of Nick’s SUV and went to talk to the camper's driver, comparing that vehicle to ours. The other driver assured them that we wouldn’t have a problem crossing. 

          Nick spun around his Toyota SUV and headed to the end of the road, where it disappears into the Potato River. 

          I do wish I had videoed it instead of just shooting pictures. That first splash into the river, when the water flew up all the way over the windshield and our lives all flashed before our eyes, as Val and I screamed, and the boys hooted. Crazy. Absolutely crazy! You’d think we were all 22 years old and driving a beat-up Chevy pickup, instead of Nick’s two-year-old four-wheel drive. (Oh, and by the way, they made me sit in the front seat!)

          We made it to the other bank, and Nick gunned it for a few hundred feet up the gravel road. After the short walk to the waterfall and back, I looked at the front of his vehicle and asked when he lost his license plate.

          He looked around. “I guess when I drove into the river.”

The Hole - Val's Story, Chap 15, part 1

Val had a deep, dark hole to climb out of, but with her usual stubborn spirit, she threw herself into recovery. She attended several AA meetings a week and even joined a few virtual meetings. She read everything she could get her hands on that talked about alcoholism and addiction. She found a sponsor and began plowing through the twelve steps.

          She started going to the gym and taking off weight. I continued going to her house nearly once a week, and we started making plans for family trips, looking up Airbnbs on the water that took dogs. We walked her dogs when the weather was nice and went shopping when it was cold or rainy out.

          There was so much laughter in our lives at that point. But I kept praying.

          I started going to Al-Anon again. I’d felt like I was walking on eggshells around Val for so long, and I wanted to make sure I was doing everything I could to keep her on the wagon. Anyone who has been to any Al-Anon meetings knows that those groups are not for the alcoholic, though; the program works to keep friends and family of alcoholics sane. 

          I’d attended meetings years before, so I knew the drill. But that knowledge didn’t always make it easy. I knew that alcoholism was a disease, just like diabetes or cancer. But if my loved one wasn’t going to take care of themselves no matter what disease they had, I was going to be angry with them.

          I had gotten so tired of alcohol being involved in everything that Val did. And I no longer wanted to be around her or anyone else when they were drinking.

          One time, before she found sobriety, I had stopped at her house around noon and told her I’d take her out for lunch. She was game and started getting ready. For some reason, the bitch in me came out, and I told her that I didn’t want her to order a drink with her meal.

          She blew up, thinking that was the dumbest thing ever. She couldn’t fathom why I would set such a condition.

          I told her, fine, it was her decision, and if she couldn’t respect my wishes, I didn’t want to go out with her. She put away her coat, and I left.

          That’s how things had been during those years of drinking. But now, here she was, happy and healthy, heading down the right path.

          Since a major tenet of the AA program is belief in a Higher Power, I asked her if she had renewed her relationship with God. She didn’t really answer me, but she did agree that she needed to turn her problems over to a Higher Power.

          Yet on the edge of the horizon, there was always that hole, waiting to snatch her from her sobriety.

God Does Answer Prayer - Val's story, Chap 14

I had been praying for Val for years. Praying that she quit drinking, that she quit doing drugs, that she quit letting losers move in with her.

I thought of all the good she had done in her short life. The mission trips to Mexico and Kenya. The nonprofit she spent hours and hours building only to watch it fail. The dogs she rescued. The two different houses she had bought and worked so hard to renovate.

          But through it all, she kept drinking. And driving while intoxicated. Even though she got two OWIs within a few years, she somehow never had an accident.

And I kept praying. Praying that her guardian angel wouldn’t give up on her. I believed that because she was such a caring person deep inside and she wanted so much to help others, the devil felt threatened by her. He made sure that bad things kept happening to her – the failed nonprofit, the OWIs, even all the illnesses and injuries from her childhood – as a way of trying to knock her down.

And I kept praying. Praying that Jesus would hold her in His hands, even though at times she denied Him.

In addition to her day job working from home, she started bartending a few nights a week. She said that she needed the money and also needed to get out of the house to socialize. In reality, it gave her a couple of nights to get drunk for free.

Until Thursday, January 26, 2023.

Years and years before, both my kids set me up on Google Maps so that I could see their location – or at least the location of their phones. They knew that I spied on them, but they never turned off the notification. Once, when my husband and I were on vacation, we were riding on a ferry across a canal in Virginia when Val texted me.

“Where are you?” she wrote.

It immediately dawned on me that she had been spying on me and saw that my location was in the middle of a body of water! So this worked both ways.

That Thursday night in January, like many nights before, I checked her location when I went to bed. She was at the bar.

          I had a bad feeling and started praying.

I woke up at two a.m. and checked her location again. Still at the bar. It was “bar time,” which probably meant that she was closing up and then driving clear across town to get home.

I lay awake praying for her through the night.

God, please watch over my baby girl. Please get her home safely. Please let her figure out that she needs help and that she needs to quit drinking. I am so sorry, Lord, that I failed her, that I didn’t shelter her more or come down on her harder when she messed up. If her drinking in any way is my fault, punish me, but please save her.

Or something like that.

          Early the next morning, as I dragged myself out of bed, I checked her location and saw she'd at least made it home. As I was groggily getting ready for work, one of her friends called me.

“Momma,” she said, “Val hit rock bottom last night; she wants to quit drinking and needs our help.”

Oh, dear God, heavenly Father. How can I ever thank You enough.         

~~~

I was scheduled to work all day, but I found a co-worker to cover for me in the afternoon. I texted Val as I was leaving the clinic around noon and asked what she was up to, totally playing dumb.

She texted me right back and asked me to call her.

She told me that she was done drinking, that she had finally realized how it was ruining her life, that she had so many things she wanted to do, but that with her drinking, she would never be able to do them. She said one of her friends was with her then, and another was coming over after work, and asked if I could come down too.

“Of course, Baby Girl,” I answered through tears.

I got home, told her step-dad what was going on, packed a bag, and drove the 45 miles to her house.

Her friends and I spent the weekend watching over her, keeping her hydrated and rested. We all knew that detoxing on your own could have serious consequences, even death, but she refused to go to the ER.

We cleaned her house from top to bottom, played with her dogs, and watched sappy movies. She looked up AA meetings in the area and called around to rehab centers. She made lists of things she wanted to do and things she needed to do to get sober and stay that way.

By Monday morning, she was still tired, but her headache and stomachache were gone. She finally felt like eating a little bit. She had found a women’s AA group and was excited to go to her first meeting.

God always answers prayer, and sometimes He even answers in the exact way we hoped. 

On the Final Trip to Kenya - Val's Story, Chap 13, part 2

All our previous trips to Kenya involved at least some volunteer work. We ambitiously built a chicken coop, taught about the life cycle of chickens and rabbits at one of the schools, or cleaned storage rooms at the volunteer house. Other times, we talked with our partners in Nairobi about how to proceed with current and future projects to help various schools, orphanages, or villages. With Val’s nonprofit no longer viable, we told our Kenyan friends this trip would be just our vacation.

Our flights into Nairobi always arrive late at night, usually around midnight. Again, just like on all the other trips, we got to our accommodation in the wee hours of the morning, slept for a couple of hours, got up by noon, and started our day. We spent the first day shopping for supplies (mostly snacks) and visiting with our friends who run their own nonprofit there.

          Early the next morning, we piled into the safari van for the long ride out to the Maasai Mara. We weren’t going on safari this time; we’d all done that enough times. We just wanted to be out on the African plains, relaxing at the safari camp and enjoying the views. And for Val, drinking Tusker, the Kenyan beer.

          One night we sat outside watching the beautiful sunset, the crepuscular rays of light reaching to heaven. Val told us that when she was a little kid and saw those glowing yellow-orange rays in the sky, she thought they were people’s souls in Manila envelopes ascending to heaven.    

          At the time, we laughed, thinking it was pretty silly. But three years later, I would never look at a sunset the same way.

~~~

 The entire time we were in Africa, Val continued to drink every chance she got. Whether we were going out for dinner or stopping for a snack at a place with Wi-Fi we could use, she ordered a drink or two. A few times she was out until late at night with our friends.

          After a few days in Nairobi, we took the short plane flight to the coastal city of Mombasa, where Val had rented us an Airbnb for a few days. The view of the Indian Ocean outside of our door was breathtaking. Unfortunately, we couldn’t leave that door open as the neighborhood monkeys would run inside to scavenge any food we had laid out. We thought they were cute at first, but their boldness soon got on our nerves.

          Our first afternoon there, we walked to a beachside bar for drinks, then on to a store for groceries. Val bought a liter bottle of gin and a bottle of wine. Denise may have had a drink or two, while I only had sips, but all of the alcohol was gone within two days.

          It seemed like such a waste to me. We had such a good time – walking along the beach, meeting a group of boys who showed us starfish, sea anemones, and other sea creatures, taking a glass-bottomed boat ride out to a sand bar. So much to take in and enjoy. Why did Val feel she needed to be drunk the entire time?

          She told me that this was her vacation and she wanted to enjoy herself. When I looked at her disheveled hair and puffy face every morning, I couldn’t believe that this was what fun meant to her.    

         On our last night at the beach, we went out to eat at a nice restaurant and had a delicious meal. Denise and I each had a glass of wine, while Val powered through an entire arsenal of whatever she was drinking.

When we got back to the rental, it was already late, but Val insisted on walking to the bar a block away. Even though I had already gotten ready for bed, I threw my clothes back on and went with her, much to her wrath.

I sat quietly at the bar, nursing a glass of pineapple juice, while she shot pool and did shots with the three young men there. They were respectful, even when Val practically threw herself at them. They would look my way, understanding that Momma Bear was on duty.

When it was time for the bar to shut down, someone offered to get us a taxi. I told him we were staying only a block away and would make it just fine. I managed to trip on the sill of the doorway as we were leaving, while somehow Val walked just fine. That is, until we were halfway to the cottage, and she looked up to gaze at the carpet of stars in the black sky above us.

          She laughed as she lost her balance, and I caught her.

          We flew back to Nairobi the next day and back home two days later. I was so thankful my friend Denise had come on the trip for support, and I'd never been happier to get my feet back on American soil. At least once a day while we were in Kenya, a horrible question ran through my brain. How would we get my daughter’s body home if she dies of alcohol poisoning while halfway around the world?

Before the Final Trip to Kenya-Val's Story, Chap 13, part 1

In early 2020, the COVID pandemic hit us all like a ton of bricks. At the time, Val was employed in the accounting department of a local business, so working on her laptop from home was doable. Her husband’s job as a chef in a local restaurant, however, didn’t allow for such a smooth transition. His employer offered customers meals to-go, but the pandemic still tore into business, as it did for many places.

          He worked when he could, but with Val working from home, the stress piled up. And their answer for coping was to drink more. She found she could now drink all day, plugging away on the computer, assuming no one would know. Somehow, she managed, and her mistakes were either overlooked or swept under the rug.

          In January 2021, she and her husband filed for divorce, and it was finalized July 15.           

          A year later, she started to get the itch to return to Kenya. My friend Denise, who had gone on several trips with us, and I were also ready to return. Of all the trips we had taken to Africa, this one would always stand out.

At least we had a good time during our long layover in Istanbul.

~~~

When I picked up Val for the drive to Denise’s house, clothes were strewn across her living room sofa, loveseat, and floor. An empty suitcase and backpack sat off to the side, and she was asleep in the middle of the mess. I roused her and asked if she was ready to go, already knowing the answer.

          “No,” she answered groggily. “I’m not even packed. Can you pack for me? All my stuff is laid out.” She gestured around the room.

          “You gotta get up. I can help, but I’m not packing for you.” I had arrived an hour earlier than needed, aware that anything was possible from my daughter. 

          She rose from the couch and pointed to her cheek. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary – just a face that was red and puffy from sleep and hangover.

          I stuffed her clothes and other necessities into her bags while she showered and poured herself into comfortable travel attire. I made her give me her passport so I knew we had it, then tossed everything else in the trunk of my car. She gave her two dogs tearful kisses goodbye, and we were on our way.

          She had been living with a guy at the time. Of all her boyfriends over the years, he was the biggest loser in my eyes, but I won’t get into that. I think she told me he was asleep in the spare bedroom when we left, but she never went in to say good-bye.

          She slept for the first hour of our drive, but when I stopped to grab us something to eat, she finally rallied and was ready to talk.

          She and the useless boyfriend had been at the bar the night before. They were both drunk and had a disagreement when it came time to leave. He pushed her into the car, smacking her cheek into the door frame. For our entire time in Africa, her face was painful and swollen, turning shades of pink, blue, green, and yellow as the days passed.

No pictures of her bruised cheek, not that I would post them anyway. 

So Much Over the Years - Val's Story, Chap 12

The years blurred together.

Val met her husband-to-be just before that trip to Kenya in 2013, I believe, and they moved in together when she got home. Two years later, she bought a house, and a year after that, she married him.

Her husband was a nice guy, but just like Val, he was a hard worker and a hard drinker.

          They legally married at the courthouse before their hillbilly-themed reception the following weekend. Val’s biological father and a friend were their witnesses, and it hurt my feelings that I wasn’t included. In the big scheme of things, though, I knew she loved her momma with all her heart and hadn’t meant to leave me out. That's just how things turned out.

          The reception was held in the yard of a resort where her fiancé occasionally worked. The weather was beautiful, warm and sunny, with feathery clouds wafting through the blue sky. On the invitations, she asked guests to dress in their finest hillbilly attire, so everyone arrived in good spirits, sporting gingham skirts, cut-off jeans, and straw hats.

          But as the day wore on, different spirits took over. Beer and every other variety of alcohol flowed down everyone’s throats. Everyone, that is, except for me, my husband, and a few others. 

          I can’t remember what time we left for the hotel, but the party was just getting started.

          The next morning, when I drove back to the resort to help clean up, Val was in a miserable mood and declared it the worst wedding ever. Not only was she massively hungover, but she had fallen at some point and blew out her knee. The cabins they had rented for anyone who wanted to crash in them had been trashed.

          I sighed and got to work cleaning. I told myself she would figure it out one day.       

~~~

Before that wedding, Val had adopted an adorable puppy, a Labrador /Rottweiler mix. Buddy was the sweetest, smartest, most chill dog I had known. He was around six months old at the wedding, but he curled up in a ball and slept or played fetch in the lake. Nick’s Lab mix Wesley was there, along with the elderly Lab belonging to one of the groomsmen, so Buddy wasn’t alone.

          A few years later, Val took in a Lab/Husky puppy. Bleu’s personality was the polar opposite of Buddy’s. He wasn’t a bad dog; he just had too much Husky in him. He got into everything, including the freezer drawer at the bottom of the refrigerator, helping himself to frozen steaks. He would climb on top of the kitchen cupboard to see what he could destroy there or tip over the garbage can.

          Poor Buddy would lie on the couch wondering what his younger brother was getting into now.

          Two years later, in 2019, Val and her husband bought a larger house with a larger yard. It needed as much work as the first house Val had bought, but they plowed into remodeling - when they weren’t at the bar drinking, that is.

          There were a lot of disagreements, which often led to all-out fights. Being the judgmental, know-it-all mother, I blamed all of their problems on their drinking. Once in a while, Val would agree with me and say that they had cut back on their drinking, but it never lasted. I had learned in Al-Anon that “cutting back” doesn’t work.