My mother and I shared many things, not the least of which was our love of reading and all things word-related. We both loved her ancient typewriter: she for writing letters, I for the clackety-clack of its keys—the lullaby of my early childhood. And we both loved Scrabble, spending hours at the beloved cottage board in fierce competition. Until dementia stole her, she was the most likely victor. Both our birthdays were celebrated in August, at the cottage—although she was a Virgo and I am a Leo. There was always fresh corn from the farm down the road and her signature chocolate cake with bittersweet icing. Like her own mother, she was a very good cook, a memorable storyteller and a tender, nurturing person. On hot summer days, she would prepare small foil packets of sandwiches for our day-long adventures with our cousins. At night, there was peace in the cottage as she read and we slept, resting our sunburned bodies under single sheets. Life was good. And then the mother of my early childhood disappeared. In retrospect, it is not so difficult to see how sorrow and grief unmoored her: the repeated nine-month absences of my geophysicist father, the early deaths of both her parents. First, there was the prescription for Valium—so common for women in the 1960s--and then came alcohol, nightly and then during the day. By the time I was a teenager, the mother of my childhood played a different lullaby: 2 a.m. rants outside our bedrooms, her fury and sarcasm fuelled by hard liquor. Many days were spent in bed. For more than 40 years, she was lost to the bottle. And as I write of her decline, eight years after her death, I still feel the deeply bruised place in my heart. I always will. Given my mother’s example, I –like my sister —decided to follow in our father’s footsteps, making our careers a priority: she in vet medicine, mine in news journalism. We both worked hard. We both excelled. As well, we were both devoted mothers and watched our four sons play at the same cottage where we had summered so long ago. Life was good.
And then it wasn’t. In my 50s, just as I took on the biggest challenge of my career, I realized I was using alcohol to numb, to escape, to excess. For months—maybe years—I had told myself that I couldn’t have an alcohol problem. My life looked nothing like my mother’s. I didn’t drink in the day. I never missed work. In fact, I won awards at work. I didn’t rant at 2 a.m. But the truth was: for years, I had been reading Caroline Knapp’s Drinking: A Love Story, doing the 26-question quiz. Was I an alcoholic? Such a tough word, with so much resonant shame. In 2006, when I was visiting my mother at the cottage, she took me aside. “Darling, don’t do what I did,” she said tenderly. “Please do something.” Eighteen months later, I headed to rehab; today, I am more than 5,000 days sober. This feels good, essential. Two years before she died, my mother toned down her own drinking, measuring two four-ounce glasses each night. But with the late onset of dementia, she would forget and double the number of glasses. “One day, dear, maybe you will be able to drink like I do,” she would say cheerfully, over a rambling game of Scrabble. I would just bite my tongue. Most profoundly, when she was still fully compos mentis, my mother gave me permission to tell her own story in my book Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol—a brave decision. I thanked her for her courage and love at the front of my book. On the night of the book launch, she appeared with a broad smile, dressed in her trademark pearls and a smart navy suit. “If it helps one woman avoid the hell I went through, it will be worth it,” she told me. Together, we entered the room, and faced the crowd.
Ann Dowsett Johnston is the Toronto-based author of the bestselling Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol. She is a psychotherapist and leader of the Writing Your Recovery memoir-writing course. Click HERE
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