Mr. Dependable (Part Two) - Okie in the City

By now, you must be wondering, how did we go from happy simple life to earth shattering loss of life in one post and we're still not done? These things take time to unfold Grasshopper.

Three days after the Murrah building disaster, I was on my way to the Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City. I had driven to the airport in and amongst the largest funeral procession I had ever seen. Everyone in the city was driving slowly, with their headlights on during the day. Arriving at the airport gate, I sat across from Charles Gibson and others who had been there for the national coverage. I wasn't excited to see them; in fact, I barely looked up but I could feel them staring at me. I had picked up a newspaper with the photo of the fireman holding the baby. It was the first time I had seen it and I was crying.

I was heading to New York City for a week-long class. The class had been scheduled months prior. It was the last class I needed to finish up an important credential in my field. I sat in my window seat, gripping the newspaper, unable to take my eyes off that photo and still hearing the cries of those anguished parents in my head.

New York City is my city. I have had a mad crush on it from the first moment I arrived at the age of 17. This extraordinary city has always loved me and taken care of me in a way that makes me certain it is or once was my home. How else could you explain a group of high school students roaming the streets all day and night, with no supervision, during a decade when the city was dirty, seedy, full of potential harm. Yet, there we were, innocent and naive, happily skipping our way through the city, left to our own devices by the young chaperon teacher who wanted to be rid of us. We drank, we danced, we saw our first porn movie (if you can call 'Deep Throat' porn) and we were safe.

During subsequent visits to the big apple, I noticed I had developed an uncanny ability to know exactly where I was within the city grid. I never needed a map, I knew the city intrinsically. This is the same girl who could get turned around inside an office building or lost in my own neighborhood. I could hoof myself uptown, downtown, midtown and back again. I mastered the subways and knew how to aggressively flag down a familiar yellow cab. The little Okie girl was no more.....

.......or so I thought.

Arriving there in April of 1995, I quickly realized I wasn't going to escape the devastation back home. New York was mourning with me. It was everywhere, the flags solemnly waiving from their half-poled postures, crowds gathered around TV's to see the latest developments and the people in my class, warmly embracing me, allowing me to labor through my tears. I worked in a case study group, consisting of six, mostly locals, one other girl from LA and me. From the moment our group took shape, I sensed him. On more than one occasion, I found him gazing sympathetically at me with small tears in the corners of his big, brown eyes.

Mr. Big has already been spoken for so I shall refer to my new friend as Mr. Plentiful. By day two, LA Girl, Mr. Plentiful and I had formed an alliance against the other three whine bag, idiots in our group. We spent every evening together exploring the culinary world through the most amazing restaurants. They introduced me to food and wine I had never experienced. Occasionally, I would transcend into the present moment with them and find myself smiling or even laughing. It delighted them to cheer me up. I felt they had devised a happy plan and I was their happy target.

By mid week, I realized I had been captivated by this devastatingly charming, successful man. He shared the details of his life with me, beautiful country home on top of a hill in South Salem, two young daughters, a wife of 15 years, a beach house in the Hamptons. He spoke of his garden with three kinds of swiss chard, eggplant, serrano peppers, arugula, beans and squash. Grass so lush and baby leaves on the trees so soft and tender they were edible. The forsythia was beginning to fade but the dogwoods were in full bloom and the raspberries and blueberries were popping out buds near the evergreens he had dug up in Vermont.

There were paths he had cleared for his girls to run through the woods, chasing butterflies while delightfully bumping into each other. He picked morel mushrooms along the wooded path, thought they were hard to see through the dappled sunlight. He had a watercress plant as large as a queen size bed. I wasn't sure what a watercress was. At the time we met, his tulip garden had just started to open, casting the first shades of spring throughout this idyllic country setting complete with goats, horses and sheep. I was mesmerized, imagining a life so unlike my own. He must be the happiest person I had ever met. He had it all.

But he wanted more.

Walking me back to my room after one of our evenings out with LA Girl, he asked if he could come in and hold me, telling me he had been yearning to scoop me up in his arms all week. He promised me there would be nothing else. He sensed my need to have someone wrap themselves around me and let me grieve. I opened my door for him. He took my hand, led me to a comfy chair in the corner, pulled me into his lap and held me, gently rocking me and stroking my hair until I fell asleep.

The little Okie girl was still very much present, ripe for the pickin' and in way over her head.

To be continued......

Strike Two - Meet Mr. Dependable (Part One)

It had been six years since I last stood at this plate, aka altar. I am nervous but confident, feeling lucky. The pitch is a fastball, straight as an arrow. I swing and connect, right in the sweet spot. That ball is going, going, going.....holy shit, the winds have suddenly and without warning, shifted direction, carrying my sure fire home run hit into foul territory. I am devastated. This time I was certain I had it right.

I had gravitated to the soft place I found in this man with a pure and true heart after my experience with Mr. Personality. Like an overzealous pendulum, swinging wildly from one extreme to the other, there seemed to be no stopping in the middle for me. The hard lesson learned as I walked away nearly ten years later is there ain't a damn thing you can do to control the wind.

This is the story of Mr. Dependable.

Who can explain why we are attracted to people at different times in our lives? Anyone? Bueller?

Even now, this one is troublesome for me to process. It's no sweat to explain why you left a sociopathic deviant. But how does one explain leaving a man who is, by all quantifiable measurements, the salt of the earth?

He looked exactly like this. Well, maybe not exactly like this but he was adorable in a fun, green, true to his colors kinda way.

Mr. Dependable grew up in Kansas. I'm fairly certain Kermit was from Kansas as well. I'm talking white picket fence, sports playing, church goin', drug free, hard working, simple life, Kansas. Yes, when I met him I questioned how I could possibly fit into this Norman Rockwell painting and yes, I painted myself into it anyway; as usual, with vivid detail and very large brush strokes. After all, I now had a son to think of.

*********Side Note**************

This is my first mention of #1 Son. I realize you're wondering where he came from. Rest easy, he is not the devil spawn of Mr. Personality. More to follow on the origin of #1 Son in later posts.

**********End Side Note*********

The first five years of our marriage was replete with building a house, buying a dog and spending most of our weekends covered in the red dirt of Oklahoma while working in the yard or watching #1 Son play baseball. Mr. Dependable, staying true to his steadfast moniker, even coached the team. He was a baseball player in college, a darn good one. He loved the game and he passed that love on to me. My life was wholesome, sweet and simple, much like me. (don't laugh - I really was back then.)

We went to church every time the church doors opened, we taught Sunday school, served on committees and volunteered for vacation bible school. I sang in the choir. Eventually, I became the Director of Sunday School, as a do-gooder, not as a paid-staffer. Each and every Sunday after church, we would head straight to his parents house for a lovingly prepared meal with homemade rolls and chocolate cake for dessert. This was followed by a ritualistic nap (me) while grandma entertained #1 son, grandpa read the paper and Mr. Dependable disappeared into the telly, as only he could.

We rarely deviated from this schedule, there were no vacations or nights on the town and I didn't care. I had everything I desired; until that is, the winds shifted.

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah federal office building in the heart of downtown Oklahoma City. On that day I was eight miles away on the 10th floor of an office building, I stood helplessly watching from my window as the cloud of dirty, black smoke billowed like a dark angel, engulfing the city. I knew the surface between my feet had shifted. I had no idea my life and everything I knew to be true about myself, the very essence of me, was about to shift as well.

It seemed as if the news choppers were there within minutes. Gathered around the conference table, in deaf-like silence, we watched with trepidation as the camera swung around to the front of the building. It was gone, the entire front of that building was gone. The steel frame was exposed and shredded, suspended in air where the pancaked rubble of the other half of the building now lay in front of it. Paperwork that had just been sitting on a desk, waiting for someone to file, was now swirling in and around fragments of office chairs, cubicles, concrete and the bodies that once held the life, dreams and hope of 168 men, women and children.

It was the children we couldn't bare. We knew there was a daycare in that building. When a child dies, you mourn for the child but you agonize for the people left behind. They were there - these people - pleading and praying, begging and bartering, shoving themselves into the police who stood firm to protect them, screaming for the babies they had dropped off only moments before. I will never forget the sound of those guttural, dissonant wails. By this time I was there, within a few blocks of the building and I heard it. The disharmony assaulted me. Unrelenting, deep and inarticulate; yet, you instinctively knew what the sound meant. My heart, the heart of a mother, wanted to implode at the sound of those screams. All I could think of was #1 Son.

The Mommy Word

Night had fallen, the kids were assuredly in bed and exhaustion had leeched on to me like one of those bloodsucking, flesh eating worms used for bloodletting, except instead of sucking out my blood, it was draining me of energy so deeply, even my hair was tired. Yet, there was one more load of laundry left to do. I felt like I was crawling across the Mojave desert in an effort to find sustenance ......must.......do........laundry.

The kids had been particularly needy that day, it was mommy this, mommy that, mommy, mommy, mommy all day.

One of the girls had clambered out of bed and now stood in the kitchen, looking for me. I was just down the hall in my bedroom when I heard the utterance of that vile and offensive mommy word.

"Honey, mommy is off the clock now and YOU, dear little fruition of my loins, have exceeded your maximum allotment of mommy words for the day. No more mommys, okay sweetie, just go back to bed."

To which her reply was, "mommy"?

So I did what all half-crazed, exhausted mommys do. Borrowing an expression from my Australian girlfriend, I went right round the twist. "Oh no, you jus di-unt say mommy again, did you? I said no more mommys. I do not want to hear that word one more time, in fact if I do hear that word one more time, I think I'm going to have to come in there and give you a beat down to Chinatown (not really a beating, just a euphemism meaning: Bitch is serious). Did you hear me that time, do you understand now, no more mommys or I'm going to scream or cry or possibly scream and cry AND throw things. I am tired and I need to get this laundry done and I can't take it honey, I am so very, very tired sweetie - please don't say mommy again, okay?"

Now standing halfway between the kitchen and my bedroom door in the slightest, most timid almost whisper of a voice she said....

Angela?

Cue: hugs, tears, laughter. I love this life.

Strike One - Meet Mr. Personality

I step up to the plate for the first pitch. It's a swing and a miss. My heart was all in. It was a powerful swing filled with every bit of gumption, gusto and gutsy determination I had but it was not to be - for the ball was the nastiest curve ball you have ever seen.

At the age of 20, my first marriage was strike one. However, switching sports analogies to golf, I think it might be more appropriate to call it a mulligan.

A mulligan is when you get to pretend you didn't just hit the ball two feet in front of the tee. That shot is forever erased, it didn't happen. You pull another ball from your pocket, place it on the tee and give it another good hard whack. I have grown accustomed to saying my first marriage was a mulligan for it really shouldn't count against me. But you be the judge.

I met Mr. Personality at the age of 16. Introduced by a friend who worked with him at the local movie theater. He was the original all American boy next door. His eyes were an ashen blue, perfectly translucent. He had a smile that made all the girls blush as was evidenced by the fact that every girl in the city either knew him or knew OF him. His personality defined him, it was bigger than all of Oklahoma and Texas combined. I later came to discover that big ol' personality of his was the very definition of a Criminal Personality as a DSM-III-R Antisocial, Narcissistic, Borderline, and Histrionic Personality Disorder.

Turns out, criminals are pretty darn friendly, that's how they get away with all that shit. Who knew?

But my oh my, he did look good. Exactly like this, cowboy hat and all.

Crying my eyes out while walking down the isle should have been a clue but I was too young, too impressionable and too screwed up to know better. I lost my virginity to Mr. Personality so in my fucked up brain, it seemed like I had to marry him; plus, he was the prize and I was determined to win. I had invested too much of myself into this man to lose to one of the other girls in the legion of fans he pursued during our four years of adolescent dating bliss. The guy was teeming with teen skanks who all wanted him.

By pure happenstance, I stumbled upon one of these girls while taking a potty break at the local Godfather's Pizza. I was with four of my best buds, cruising the strip, drinking beer we bought with our fake ID's, the ushe for a Friday night in the big OKC. I was safely sequestered in a restroom stall when I heard one of my girlfriends asking a supposedly innocent, irreverent Mormon girl who she was dating. This seemed odd to me because at the time, I didn't know we had Mormons in Oklahoma.

My friend had noticed the initials dangling from this fallen, wayward Mormon girl's neck (remember drops anyone?). When she said his name, I emerged from the stall with fury in my eyes, slamming the door in perfect harmony with the infantile angst that surged through my veins. Adding insult to injury - she knew who I was yet I had no clue of her existence. Perhaps she had been locked away in the temple while I was traveling to Ms. Pac Man tournaments with him.

In short order we formed a sinister plan to drive to his place of work and confront him as a unified, pissed-off girlfriend front. We arrived at the Hertz Rent-A-Car parking lot around 11:00pm. He saw my car and came running across the lot to greet me. Just as we had planned, she jumped from the back seat, threw the drop in his face, told him she would be praying for him or some stupid shit like that while I said fuck you and the ostrich skin boots you rode in on.

Mormon girl and I were officially best friends. The next day, we both went back to him.

Two years and two failed pregnancies later, I failed to recognize two fundamental truths (me good - him bad), I married him in March of 1984. We were divorced by October of that same year.

Proving the old adage, you never really know someone until you live with them, I quickly discovered he was involved in a gambling/credit card fraud ring. Conveniently, the credit card and occasional insurance fraud supplemented the gambling losses. Inconveniently, I was smart enough to notice when a boat appeared in our driveway with no indication of a purchase.

I thought I had made it pretty clear I had no interest in the life of a prison wife but the shenanigans continued. A new bedroom set here, a lawnmower there. Plus, other aspects of the aforementioned personality disorder were starting to become painfully clear and hideously ugly. He became increasingly controlling, physically holding me down so I couldn't walk away from him, threatening to hurt me if I were to leave him. It was Sleeping with the Enemy sicko, sadistic shit.

It all culminated on my birthday in August when I got a knock at the window which had previously been slammed shut on my common sense. An embarrassing birthday celebratory dinner, credit card confiscated; he told me we had to make a run for it. I refused. He went to the bathroom and never came back. I went home to pack.

Just to be certain I would never don his door again, I was handed an extra heavy, heaping dose of wake-the-fuck-up. He came home before I had finished packing and proceeded to beat me with one of the items I had removed from the wall - a string art piece I had undoubtedly made in junior high school. It was mounted to a sturdy piece of wood with lovely beveled edges, perfect for hitting someone over the head until they almost lost consciousness.

I know it wasn't really art but at the age of 20 I was glad to have anything to hang on those stark, bare white walls of that place he called a home.

I still have that string art piece, though it is tucked away with other relics and no longer displayed in my home. I believe it saved my life. Within six months of our divorce, he went to prison for murdering his bookie. I later discovered he had secretly secured a large life insurance policy on yours truly. Apparently, I was to be the next pawn in an insurance scam.

Looking back through the eyes of the woman I have become, I can find no other words to explain the lessons better than that of John Mayer in his song, Daughters:

Fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers, who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters too

Give your daughters the privilege of knowing how truly powerful they are.