Coping

I spent more and more time away from home, usually hanging out at my friend Jennifer's house after school.  Jennifer's family had recently purchased the mobile home community that we lived in, and her parents had bought a triple wide pre-fab home that was situated up on an isolated slope.  Jennifer was my age, and in to music and having fun.  We would stage lip synching concerts for her family during which we would dress up as Dolly Parton and sing one of her songs.  I hated going home, particularly since Joe's drinking continued to escalate.  I avoided going home at all costs, and even took to helping Jennifer with her chores.

This did not go over well at home.  Mom was irate when she learned that I was helping Jennifer to water the new seedling trees that bordered the community pool.  She made it clear that I had chores to do as well, and that I had a home of my own.  But being in that house felt like being trapped in a prison.  Typically when I came home from school, Mom was sitting in front of the TV watching her soaps, with a large bowl of potato chips in her lap.  Trapped at home with her like that, I started eating to cope with the stress of living with Joe, things like chips, ice cream, and sugary cereals.  I started to gain weight, which was distressing.  But often candy and junk food were all I had to look forward to.

One night, Mom left the sister and I with Joe while she went to attend an Al-Anon meeting.  Joe had already been drinking (and the irony of this situation had not been lost on me), but clearly he felt that he still had some fun left in him, and proposed driving us to his favorite restaurant bar across town.  I was adamant that we would not be leaving the house.  During our argument, Joe shaved and patted fresh after shave along his jaw, and the tension increased to a stand off.  Sister asked if she could try the after shave on herself, and when Joe complied, the strong alcohol based elixir burned her skin and she began to wail.  That seemed to derail his intentions, and we would not be going out that night after all.

Another evening Joe's family was in town and he went out drinking with his brother while his niece holed up on a cot in my room.  Late that night, the phone rang and we could hear voices outside my bedroom door speaking in Portuguese.  I asked the young girl staying in my room to translate, and quickly learned that Joe had been picked up for driving while intoxicated again, and was in the county jail.  This fact barely registered with me, as he had spent many evenings in jail.  However, this time was apparently different due to his record, and it looked like he might be away for a while.  I was jubilant.

That spring, as my sister and I got ready for church, we heard a loud BOOM that stopped the cereal spoon mid air on it's trajectory to my mouth.  It was typical to hear sonic booms as we lived near Larson Air Force Base and would often hear the jets taking off.  But this was the loudest boom ever.  

Following Sunday school, we congregated outside the church on the front steps to get a breath of fresh air and noticed large, pillowy white clouds drifting in against a pale blue, perfectly clear sky.  These were the strangest clouds we had ever seen, so close it seemed that I could almost touch them.  So pillowy and opaque as to seem like cotton balls floating in the sky.

Several minutes later, we were ushered out of the afternoon sermon into a completely dark landscape.  During the space of time since we had last been out doors, the street lamps had turned on and the day became dark.  Small and delicate wisps floated down from the sky, so eerily similar to snow, but warm to the touch.  The church bus was quickly loaded and we were returned home to learn that a volcano had erupted nearly 150 miles to the East.

The ash continued to fall for three days, during which Joe had gone missing.  I was ecstatic.  No school!  No Joe!   We danced around listening to the radio play Jimmy Buffett's, "Where You Gonna Go When the Volcano Blows?"  Outside was an eery world of swirling grey, dim street lamps, and a thick powdery grey which covered the entire landscape.  Earlier that year, we had seen a movie called 'The Day After' about a post apocalypic world which seemed all the more real following recent events.  If we were to ever experience a nuclear attack, perhaps this is what it would look like?

After the third day, the ash stopped falling and the skies returned to the familiar blue.  Only now everything was covered in ash.  Soon, neighbors began sweeping the ash from the rooftops, shoveling it into bags and depositing these to the pre-determined ash dumping sites.  

Clearly the anxiety of not knowing what happened to Joe and the effort at cleaning up the ash had taken a toll on Mom.  She was ready to leave Washington behind, and start over yet again.