Daily Excerpt: 57 Steps to Paradise (Lorenz) - Sam, First Husband
Excerpt from 57 Steps to Paradise by Patricia Lorenz-- Sam, First Husband
I’m
writing this book for women in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s who are single,
divorced, or widowed and who are interested in finding a good man with whom to
share the rest of their lives. In order to do that I must first unzip my soul
and expose my foibles. Think about it. Nobody wants to read about the perfect
woman in the perfect house wearing the perfect designer outfit with the perfect
man at her side. We women want the real belly-in-the-muck-of-life story. We
want to read about the tough parts, the sad, anguishing parts of a real woman’s
life, and hopefully learn how she wiggled out of the mud and muck into the
light with a pretty good man’s arms available for a great bear hug every so
often. So, that’s what I’m going to give you. The truth.
I’ve
made many mistakes when it comes to men, but I don’t think I’m that much
differently from many women. After all, the divorce rate is inching toward 60%
in this country and perhaps the world. The “until death do us part” section of
the marriage vows doesn’t seem to hold any water these days because our
containers all have holes in them.
That
said, permit me to share my earlier, more youthful experiences with the men in
my life. I was 22 years old when I married my first husband. Way, way, way too
young. I know this now. But then? My excuse is that nobody is wise at 22. Back
then, birth control methods weren’t nearly as sophisticated or as accurate. If
I’d had the wisdom at that young age that I have now, I wouldn’t be writing
this book, and I wouldn’t have had such an interesting life filled with so many
struggles, relationship experiences, and adventures. I count all my struggles
as blessings, by the way. That’s what happens when you get older. I’m older and
have a lot to look back on.
So,
let’s take a step back to 1968 when I was fresh out of college and had just
moved to Denver, Colorado by myself to start my first big adventure. I chose
Denver because my college boyfriend Sam offered to let me live in his Denver
apartment rent-free for three months. He was being sent to Houston for classes
for during that time for the company that had just hired him.
When
the three months ended and Sam returned, we celebrated a little too much. When
the urine test came back positive, my only hope for salvation was not telling
my parents who lived in Illinois. In high school, three of my first cousins got
pregnant out of wedlock in one year’s time, and my father was furious. I
remember distinctly when he said “If you ever get pregnant before marriage,
don’t think for a minute that you can come running home and we’ll take care of
everything. You sleep in the bed you make.” So, when the unthinkable happened,
I knew I had to solve the dilemma myself with the help of my boyfriend Sam, the
guy whose thesis I’d typed when he was working on his master’s degree in
geology at Southern Illinois University where I was finishing up my bachelor’s
degree.
Sam
had moved to Denver a few months before I did, and when my pregnancy test came
back positive Sam was more than willing to get married since he’d had that in
mind all along. I was still worried about his daily drinking habits, and the
thought of marrying him was pretty far down on the list for me. Being pregnant,
though, scared me to death. Being an unwed mother back in the 60s was a much
bigger deal than it is today; that’s for sure.
I
knew Sam had marriage to me in mind before we left college when one night as I
was perched on the single step leading into the mobile home I shared with three
other coeds, he looked into my eyes and out of the blue said, “Will you nurse
our babies when we have them?” Since my ta-tas were practically at his eye
level (remember, I was standing on a step) he must have been distracted enough
to pop such a question. At the time, I didn’t find it particularly amusing. I
hadn’t even considered getting married, much less to him.
But
there I was a year later, pregnant, determined not to tell my folks, and scared
to go back home to Illinois. I was at the mercy of the father of my child. Neither
Sam nor I were big on lavish weddings, so we planned an atrocity of a wedding
in about 15 minutes.
Both
of us were hard at work at our first real better-than-minimum-wage jobs. Neither
of us had vacation time coming. Neither of us had any relatives in the state of
Colorado. We certainly didn't have the money to spend on a big wedding.
So,
a few days later in June 1968, a day I remember being filled with anguish,
fear, and embarrassment, mostly on my part, we both simply said, "Let's do
it." And we did. There were 13 of us in the tiny chapel. Later, we all went
out to our favorite hang-out, drank margaritas, and ate popcorn to celebrate
our nuptials. When I look back on it, I think the wedding and the reception afterward
may have had something to do with the state of the honeymoon. The state of the
honeymoon may have had a lot to do with the demise of the marriage a few years
later.
Ah,
yes…the honeymoon! We both managed to get Monday off, and since the wedding was
on Friday night, we had three days. The groom, being a geologist, a man who
loved rocks and strange natural formations and earthly occurrences, announced after
the wedding that we were going to drive to Yellowstone National Park, over 400
miles away. That man loved to drive, but I wasn't very sure about spending the
bulk of my three-day honeymoon cooped up in a car. Getting there and back would
take two full days which only left us a day to enjoy Yellowstone, but this was
back in the 60s when men still got their way about almost everything.
So,
we drove. And drove. We'd jump out of the car, eat a fast meal, and get right
back in the car. I oohed and aahed at the incredible scenery that whizzed by at
75, sometimes 80, miles per hour. When we reached snow drifts that were eight
feet tall in northern Wyoming, he paused for five minutes to take my picture
next to them. I stood there in my sleeveless blouse and summer-weight slacks in
early June and made a snowball to throw at my groom.
Back
in the car we drove for hours, winding our way through mountainous roads toward
Yellowstone. We arrived at dark and spent the night in a primitive, cold cabin.
I stayed awake much of the night, worrying about bears. By noon Sunday, after a
huge brunch loaded with mountain man eggs, sausage, and pancakes the size of
plates, I began to feel awful. I thought back to the week before the wedding
and realized I'd been constipated for an entire week. The quickness of the
wedding, worrying about taking a day off work from my new job, irregular meals,
perhaps a little morning sickness, and spending eleven hours in the car the day
before had blocked me up completely.
By
the time we finally arrived at the peak look-out-point of the entire honeymoon,
the Old Faithful geyser, I was one miserable 22-year-old bride. As I sat on a
long wooden bench with a couple dozen other "Old Faithful" watchers
waiting for the spectacle, I felt as if I was carrying the weight of the world
in my gut. Misery was my middle name as I watched my new husband pacing back
and forth, waiting anxiously for his geological wonder to blow.
This is my honeymoon, for heaven’s
sake! I can’t let this go on,
I thought to myself.
Holding
my stomach in pain, I swallowed my shyness and gathered my courage. "Sam,
I need some prune juice. Would you mind going in to the camp store to see if
they have any?"
My
groom, who wasn't too crazy about the possibility of missing the start of Old
Faithful's show, dashed into the store and returned in record time, handing me
a quart of room temperature prune juice. “Here. You’ll have to drink it from
the bottle,” he snorted.
As
we sat there waiting for the explosion of one of the world's greatest natural
wonders, I drank my juice. We waited, and I drank. Suddenly, the geyser put on
its show, spewing hot steam hundreds of feet into the air. I watched and drank
my prune juice, wishing my innards could spew like that geyser.
After
the show, we climbed back into the car for a driving tour of the enormous
national park. When a bear cub ambled across the road and climbed up to the
window of the car in front of us, I snapped a quick photo, finished off my
quart of prune juice, and wished I was back home in a nice tub of hot water,
easing my intestinal pains.
As
we neared the park exit later that afternoon after a long, long drive through
Yellowstone's immensity, Mother Nature and the prune juice grabbed hold of my stopped-up
digestive system and started the rumblings of a geyser in my gut that felt as
if it would rival that of Old Faithful.
"Sam! You have to find a bathroom! I have
to go! Now! Please, get to a bathroom! Hurry!"
My
groom sped up for half-a-mile, then slammed on the brakes. "It's up
there." He pointed to a thick, dense forested area.
"Up
where?" I started to panic. I didn't see anything but a huge hill and
thousands of trees.
"Right
there, off to the right. See that building? It's an outhouse."
I
shot my husband a look that could have caused flowers to wilt and slammed the
car door as I bolted out. I stumbled up the steep hill and dashed toward the
outhouse, noting that it was much darker up there in the forest. The sun was
starting to go down, and the shadows were ominous.
"There
better be lights in this place," I mumbled to myself.
It
was a two-seater outhouse. No lights. No toilet paper. No nothing, except two
smelly holes and spider webs all over the place. But at that moment as Mother
Nature's grip on my intestines catapulted my mind back to reality, I plopped my
quickly exposed bare fanny on hole number one. One explosion after another
punctuated the silence in the woods as I prayed that my new husband had the car
windows rolled up so he couldn't hear what I was up to up there in the woodland
privy. I sat there in that smelly pit, terrorized that a bear or a snake would
amble in while I was going about my business.
An
hour later, after having lost approximately ten pounds, I staggered out the
door, holding my slacks in front of me. "Sam," I hollered weakly,
"Could you bring some tissues up here?" At that moment, I could have
killed for a roll of toilet paper.
All
he could find were a couple paper napkins from the last fast-food restaurant
we'd visited. I used every square inch of those napkins and then prayed that
we'd get to our hotel quickly.
That
night the prune juice continued its onslaught, having realized it had to do a
week's worth of work in just a day. Inside our hotel room, I quickly made a
dash for the bathroom. My husband plopped down on the bed after adjusting the
TV set that was hooked to the wall up near the ceiling. After an hour of
percussion noises that radiated from the bathroom, he peeked in the door and
said, "Hey, darlin’, I know you don't feel too good, but how would it be
if I adjust this TV so you can see it from in here? If you leave the door open,
you can watch from in the bathroom and I can watch it from the bed. At least,
you won't be so lonely." After that, he poured himself another big glass
of Kessler’s whiskey, his nightly drink of choice, then proceeded to watch some
godawfulboring fishing show.
Embarrassment,
disgust, and misery punctuated the rest of my evening and continued well into
the night as I sat there on the Motel 6 toilet, watching bad TV, as my husband
spent the night alone in the bed on the other side of the bathroom wall. Welcome to the real world of marriage, I
thought to myself as the sounds and smells radiating from my body began to cool
down. As I gently fondled the huge, soft roll of toilet paper before me, I
actually said prayers of thanksgiving to the Almighty for that little bit of
paradise—that nice, shiny white bathroom where I spent the third and final
night of my honeymoon.
Life
with Sam was not one big giant trip to a national park, believe me. I quickly
learned that he liked booze better than me. That man seemed to live on vodka
and whiskey. I remember the day I figured out he was spending more than 10% of
our monthly income on booze. The man was tithing alcohol, and I felt cheated,
compromised, and foolish as his wife. I haven’t even gotten to the part about
the physical abuse yet.
In
1970, nearly a year after our first child was born, Sam and I had been looking
for a house to buy so we could move from the small apartment we’d rented in
Denver. One day he came home from work early.
"Pat,
I have to tell you something," he said with his usual southern Illinois
twang.
"Wait,
I have great news!” I interrupted him. “I just talked to the realtor. Our loan
was approved. We got the house! The closing's in two weeks, and we can move in
the next day!"
"Pat,
there isn't going to be any house. I just got laid off at work. We're going to
be leaving Denver."
I
couldn't speak. Our dream house, the red brick bungalow with the built-in
bookcases on each side of the fireplace and built-in buffet in the dining room,
was everything I had always wanted in a home. My husband and I had spent months
looking for this, our first house. Jeanne, our baby, was just a year old. The
house was two blocks from a beautiful park with a lake and flower-lined
meandering paths, perfect for a mom pushing a stroller.
In
spite of my frantic prayers for a quick solution to this disaster, we had to
leave our beloved Colorado mountains to start over in Missouri, where my
husband secured a teaching job at a junior college.
Two
weeks after arriving in Kirkwood, Missouri, I discovered that I was expecting
another child. Meanwhile, I unpacked in our new apartment while my husband
settled into his new teaching position. This apartment had two huge bedrooms,
central air, and even a pool and play area out back. I rekindled a close
friendship with one of my favorite cousins who lived in the area, and before
long, starting over didn't seem so bad after all.
In
January 1971, Julia bounced into the world. Seventeen months later, in May
1972, after buying our first home, a tiny brick bungalow with a huge back yard,
we welcomed Michael into the world. Both conceptions had involved heavy
drinking on Sam’s part and, more often than not, physical coercion on his part
even to get me into the same bed with him. Fertility should have been my middle
name.
With
three children less than four years old and a husband who drank 3/4 of a quart bottle
of booze every night of his life, our lives fell apart completely. Extreme
unhappiness, frequent abuse, and a sense of fear forced me to seek advice from
my pastor who suggested that divorce might be the only answer. I did everything
I could to hold things together, but friends, family, neighbors, counselors,
and even my pastor advised me to end the marriage and start over.
On
November 13, 1975, after driving from northern Illinois to St. Louis, Missouri,
then spending most of the day in divorce court with me, my mother and father
helped load the moving truck. That evening my folks, my three children—ages
three, four and six—and I left Missouri, crossed the Mississippi River, and
drove up through the state of Illinois to my hometown of Rock Falls, Illinois.
I'll
never forget the first piece of mail I received at our new home, a 98-year-old
rented frame house. I quickly tore open the envelope.
November 17, 1975
My dearest Patricia,
This little communiqué hopefully will
be the first one arriving at your new home. Welcome home!
For a little while Thursday evening
while I was wheeling that big U-Haul eastward over the Mississippi, I felt like
Moses leading his flock out of bondage.
A great burden has been lifted from
our minds now knowing you are free from further abuse. We felt almost helpless
to do anything before. Thank God, that is all past now.
Lovingly,
Dad
Thus
began my life as a single parent and the end of my first real relationship with
a man. The number one thing I learned from that entire 8-year experience (from
meeting Sam in college to divorcing him in 1975) is that alcohol is a killer. Alcohol
kills love, relationships, happiness, parenting skills, and any hope for a
normal life. I pray that you will reread that last sentence many, many times. Write
it down. Alcohol kills love,
relationships, happiness, parenting skills, and any hope for a normal life.
For more posts about Patricia and her book, click HERE.
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