Living in my own apartment felt like being released from prison. I had all my own personal stuff, much of it donated by family who was thrilled that I was no longer a raging alcoholic.
From Larry’s I took my boombox and my clothes, which was all I really needed.
Larry also gave me the Camaro. “You earned it, Baby,” he’d said, handing me the keys. The “title transfer” concept never crossed anyone’s mind.
From my parents’ house, I grabbed my stereo and my albums, which made my life complete for the first time since high school. I no longer had to survive on Larry’s collection of ancient country crooners; I could listen to Prefab Sprout and Led Zeppelin and REM and The Cure and … and … and ….
I could listen to anything I wanted. I could do anything I wanted. I could go anywhere I wanted. I could be whoever I wanted to be, and I didn’t have to kowtow to Larry’s vision of a “chick.” Biker life was behind me; I could be smart again.
I was poor, but I had a job and my own money. I was independent. I had my own pots and pans, and I learned that I could boil water, cook my own pasta, and pour sauce from a jar on top. I called that “dinner.” Sometimes dinner was cereal with milk. Lunch was almost always peanut butter and jelly.
Gregg introduced me to peanut butter and banana sandwiches, so that expanded my horizons.
Unlike Larry, Gregg didn’t require me to become like him. Gregg didn’t take over my world. He was simply there while I created a new life for myself.
Gregg was 26; I was 23. He’d lived in Swissvale his whole life; he knew the whole town. And even though I went to high school a mile away, Swissvale felt like an alien planet. I was happy to have his connections, too, since I trusted Gregg to supply the marijuana for my new life.
What I discovered, whilst living without alcohol, is that I was a fiend for organization. Even though I smoked cigarettes which ruined everything in my tiny abode, I dusted religiously. I picked up all the errant dirt from the middle of the floor in my one room.
And I organized my albums as though I would be giving tours to my fans. I organized alphabetically, then chronologically based on acquisition, then by color, then bands versus solo artists, eventually landing on an “I’ll just reorganize these every week” plan. I loved organizing my albums.
I also loved having my own personal pet. I cleaned out Kitty’s litter box every day; I never wanted my house to smell like cat poop. I made sure Kitty always had clean water and enough canned Friskies for a feline army, and I washed out her bowls after every meal. It was a small apartment, so sometimes Kitty and I sat on our porch. She wandered away sometimes but always came running back when I went inside.
In the evening, while I smoked cigarettes and stared at the ceiling, sometimes Kitty would climb onto my lap, kneading my belly to make a bed. She purred.
As a drunk, I’d never heard her purr.
Life in my new place was better than I could have ever dreamed. I was so grateful to be not drinking.
But I smoked pot every work day with my colleagues, and every night with Gregg, and never thought a single thing about it.
I moved 15 minutes away from Pitcairn to a town called Swissvale, with brick streets and old houses.
I had my own space for the first time in my life: no parents, no roommate, no Larry. I was finally free.
My apartment was part of an old house, renovated into three apartments: one next door, one upstairs. Mine had one room with a tiny kitchen offshoot. I’d acquired my grandmother’s sofabed which, when open, filled the apartment. If I stood on the arm of the couch, I could reach my tiny closet.
I had my own entrance in the back of the house. Another door opened into the front hallway, which led to the other apartment.
After I’d moved in my meager possessions and my parents were gone, Jeff the landlord – who lived in the apartment upstairs – came to check that I was okay.
I hadn’t smoked pot for two days and I hadn’t been drinking. I felt great.
“Cool,” Jeff said. “There’s a party tonight if you wanna come.” Jeff was maybe 30.
“A party?” Without drinking? This sounded terrifying.
“Yeah, next door. Barry and Kim do something every Saturday,” he said. “Just c’mon over. You don’t even have to knock.”
That night when the music started blasting, I knew I’d been invited.
But I sat in my own little apartment, listening to my own albums, turned way up so I could hear my songs over the booming stereo next door. I sat on my couch – bed put away for “daytime” use – and sang along, happy to be on my own.
Finally. My own place.
This lasted 90 minutes.
Eventually I thought, I was always alone when I was with Larry. I need to meet new people.
So I brazenly turned off my stereo and carefully put away my album. I walked over to meet Barry and Kim, whose front door was wide open. I ran smack into Jeff, who was headed upstairs.
“Come in! Come in!” Jeff welcomed as he walked out.
So I went in. There were four guys and a girl inside, some standing, some sitting. They were young adults, like me. Young. I was thrilled.
Their place was very small, but my efficiency apartment was one-third the size of this place.
The girl jumped up when she saw me. “I’m Kim!” she yelled over the music, spilling her Rolling Rock a little. “Come to the kitchen! I’ll get you a beer!”
“No thanks,” I yelled back. “I don’t drink.”
Saying this felt good! But I felt awkward.
Kim just nodded and sat down.
Fortunately Jeff walked back into the room moments later.
“Do you toke?” my new landlord asked, waving a little baggie and rolling papers. POT!
“Sure,” I said too quickly.
I stood by the wall next to a guy with a bird-beak nose and glasses. He was sipping his beer and looked as awkward as I felt.
But as soon as Jeff started passing the joint, everything got better.
One hit, and I introduced myself to Glasses Guy.
“Gregg,” he said.
As the joint went around, we talked more comfortably. Gregg was tall with sandy blond hair and a dimple in one cheek. It was easy to just talk to one person, instead of trying to mingle with neighbors.
“Wanna see my new place?” I eventually asked Gregg.
“Sure.”
We walked the ten feet to my door.
Gregg had pot, so he stayed the night. Then he stayed another night, and much of the following week.
Larry spent an inordinate amount of time telling me how easy it was to go without drinking.
“I drank a fuckin’ six-pack every day for 20 fuckin’ years!” he would say, grinning that joyous grin. “I think my jeans are gettin’ loose!” He’d pull out his waistband to show me.
The man was almost 40 years old. He actually cared about how his jeans fit.
For me, every day was a struggle.
I hadn’t realized it was possible to smoke more tobacco, but I was doing it. When I wasn’t smoking pot, I was irritable beyond irritability. Every day involved me sleeping as long as was physically possible, then rolling over and looking for a roach in the many ashtrays scattered around the house.
(A “roach” is a tiny piece of a joint that sometimes contains a small amount of marijuana. While we had cockroaches in every other apartment, we thankfully did not have live roaches in this one.)
If I couldn’t find any pot, I would blame Larry for smoking it. And sometimes he had. Then I would start whining about when we were going to get pot again. We had to deal with so many factors: waiting for our weekly pay, finding time outside of work to get it, and making sure the drug dealer was available – i.e., not imprisoned.
None of this allowed me to live the all-day inebriation and instant-gratification lifestyle I preferred.
In other words, I had gone from being a raging alcoholic to being 100% focused on pot, even though I did not enjoy the sensations it provided.
Some might wonder what happened to all the cocaine I had done previously. Oddly, no one ever approached me with offers of cocaine when I wasn’t drunk. Smoking pot somehow made me less attractive to the coke-heads. So sometimes I had to go hours without drugs.
And Ronnie, bless his heart, decided that it was better for me if he didn’t share his cocaine anymore. In fact, Ronnie found me rather boring when I wasn’t drinking, and stayed away.
Meanwhile, I found Larry rather boring. He went from being a superstar country singer on the stages in my alcoholic hazes to being a complete buffoon. While Larry took himself very seriously and believed everything he said, suddenly I found myself living with an imbecile who, I finally realized, was supposed to be my caretaker.
I didn’t have one iota of respect for the man. And without alcohol, I didn’t need a caretaker.
“I can’t live with you anymore,” I said one day, rather out of the blue.
Larry laughed. I’d given him no indication that I couldn’t stand him.
But I didn’t laugh. “I can’t drink,” I said. “And I can’t be with you when I’m not drinking.”
He gave me a big hug. “It’s okay, Baby. We’re gonna be okay.”
I nodded into his chest, then squirmed away. “No,” I said. “I’ve got to get my own place.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I said. Suddenly it was the most brilliant idea on the planet, getting my own place. I could taste the freedom that would provide.
“If that’s what you want to do,” Larry said casually.
“It is,” I said.
It was March, and my parents were recently back from Europe.
When I told my mom I was leaving Larry she hesitantly asked: “Are you drinking?”
“No!” I replied honestly. Since she didn’t ask, I didn’t mention the marijuana.
“Well, this sounds like a step in the right direction,” she said.
A couple weeks later, they helped me move into my own place.
My plan was brilliant: I would give up alcohol and just smoke pot. Alcohol was my problem. This had been confirmed by God Himself. The plan was to never drink again.
But I needed something to help me mentally escape from the horrors of the life I was living.
With solidarity Larry declared, “I’m not gonna drink beer either.” And Larry, the non-alcoholic, quit drinking alcohol without hesitation.
One night, we had a pizza and Larry said, “This is the only fuckin’ time I miss beer. I like beer with my pizza.” But he didn’t drink one.
He made sure to always have marijuana on hand – which was not easy, since it was illegal.
I hated the way pot made me feel. I felt stupid. My life screeched to a halt whenever I smoked it. I couldn’t function. I couldn’t drive. I could barely speak. I was just a lump, sitting, being high.
Without alcohol, I swore I would be a better person. I never, ever got into arguments – let alone fist fights – when I was high. I never got into any trouble, never had sex with the wrong person, never even vomited. And think of the money I would save! I could remember stuff when I wasn’t drinking, although smoking pot guaranteed that there was never much to remember.
I was too high to feel any passion.
Otherwise, my life returned immediately to what it was before Europe: I smoked cigarettes incessantly. On weekends I went to the bars and drank Diet Coke, stepping outside every hour or so to smoke a joint. I went to work three nights a week, and got high with my friends at lunchtime. When work was over, I got high again, then passed out on the floor. I didn’t bother listening to music and wailing along with the boom box. I was too stoned to care.
This went on for weeks.
On Valentine’s Day, Larry informed me that he was going out with another girl – someone named Apryl (“with a ‘Y'”). I asked him if he was going to have sex with her. Larry said, “Nah, I just told her I’d take her out on Valentine’s Day.”
I couldn’t have cared any less if Larry had said he was going to screw a donkey. Or make a sandwich.
Thanks to pot, I didn’t care about anything.
Still, when Larry didn’t come home after the bars closed, I freaked out a little. High and bored, I went to bed, then stayed wide awake. Waiting. I didn’t care about the girl. I just wanted to feel safe.
Finally, Larry stomped up the stairs. I rolled over without a word and went right to sleep.
For the first time since high school, I had three weeks sober.
I felt good. I felt like life had meaning again, purpose, like there was some reason that I’d been saved from both my suicide attempt and my more recent stupidity on New Year’s Eve. I had God – a real, tangible God – who was on my side, who confirmed that it was in my best interest to stop drinking alcohol.
I flew home from London without my family; I needed to get back to work after taking an entire year’s worth of vacation. I rode on a huge jet where they offered me – legal at 23 – many options for alcoholic drinks.
But I didn’t feel compelled to drink. I could smoke on the plane and, without any parents around, I smoked a lot. I also slept a little. But mostly I sat anxiously awaiting my re-arrival in the United States.
Finally I got off the plane, purple duffel in tow, and there was Larry. He was standing right at the gate, waving wildly in front of the waiting crowd, grinning that crooked-toothed smile that I’d grown to love.
Except suddenly I didn’t love that smile anymore. Suddenly I was super-conscious of the crookedness of his teeth. His hair was so stringy; when had it gotten all stringy like that?
Larry was obviously going bald, and he was older than I remembered. When did he get so old? He looked older than my father – like somebody’s grandfather. How had he aged so much in three weeks?
Was I really dating this man?
“Hey Baby!” Larry said in that beautiful, gravelly voice. He lifted me and my duffel and swung us around wildly, right in the heart of all those people, grinning right into my face and whacking some very unhappy lady in the face with my bag.
He didn’t even notice; he kissed me like we were in a movie, like we were being reunited after a war.
And while I kissed him I thought, Who is this guy? When did Larry turn into this socially inappropriate old man?
He grabbed my duffel in one hand and put his arm around me with the other, reeking of dirt, oil, and obnoxious exuberance.
“I fuckin’ missed you, Baby!” he yelled. “I’m so glad you’re fuckin’ home!”
I hadn’t sworn in three weeks. Larry’s repetitive use of the f-bomb felt unusually uncomfortable.
In fact, everything was uncomfortable. Larry felt uncomfortable, unfamiliar, like a caricature of himself.
At the airport, I didn’t realize that I’d never seen him through sober eyes before. I didn’t know that it was me who had changed. I’d reconnected with a part of myself I thought I’d lost forever; I was still getting to know the real me.
And now I was reconnecting with Larry, who seemed absurdly flamboyant. I didn’t like this new Larry, the guy he’d always been. He was boisterous, loud, unkempt and unclean, and absolutely ancient.
Suddenly I felt out of place in the world, like Larry was pulling me away from a place I actually belonged. As we walked through the airport, I could feel the angry tug away from myself.
Larry’s boots were loud. He squeezed me too hard. I didn’t want to be with him. But I truly had nowhere else to go.
I need a drink, I thought immediately. Then: But I’m not going to drink.
I really didn’t want to drink. I’d seen a shooting star.
But as we reached the car, another thought slowly crept into my brain, a brilliant idea.
If I had been drinking, I would have missed England. Instead, I was fully present.
We shopped and strolled the streets of London and saw a handful of punk rockers who, with their rock-hard hair and nose rings, were so cool it made my stomach flip.
We actually rode on a double decker bus.
We visited church after church after church where the ceilings were so high, looking up felt like studying a decorated sky. We saw Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, where I marveled at the names: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bronte, Dickens – and my favorite, Dylan Thomas, who drank himself to death in his thirties. (I liked him because he was Bob Dylan’s namesake; I didn’t know he was a drunk and I am no poetry scholar.)
We went to restaurants where they served us the world’s greatest fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, grease dripping as we carried it outside. We ate a dozen different kinds of potato chips from the market and called them “crisps” as we tried to perfect the elusive English accent. We went to a place where I ordered something called “prawns” which the server said was “shrimp” but the little dead things came with their heads on, and I could not eat them in spite of the prawns’ ultimate sacrifice.
We rode the London Underground, which had nothing to do with slavery like I’d originally thought. My dad read the maps and we all stood behind him, waiting for him to figure out which train we were supposed to ride to get to where we wanted to go. Sometimes we had to hop off at the next stop and go the other direction, but we actually laughed when this happened.
I laughed with my family.
We toured Oxford where I stood awestruck in the library and never wanted to leave. We toured Cambridge and The Open University, where we saw my dad’s personal parking spot near his Open University office. We saw the heart-wrenchingly beautiful Les Miserables at the Palace Theatre, where I wept aloud.
As I started to feel things again, I felt proud of my dad for getting the Fulbright. I started to like my family again; I felt close to my sisters. We quipped and shared inside jokes.
I started to feel interested in the things around me; the grayness lifted and I could see some light. I felt lighter, happier, more comfortable in my own skin. I wasn’t healthy by any stretch, but I was getting better.
I could feel it. Every day, I could feel it. I felt better.
And then, at the end of three weeks, it was time for me – just me – to go home: sober, clear-headed, brain fog lifted for the first time since high school. I was finally able to be myself, free from the chains that had shackled me for so long.
But I knew what was coming: I was going back to Larry, to biker life, to Pitcairn.
I did not want to go.
So I dragged out my departure. Before arriving at the airport, I forced my long-suffering father to take me to the London Harley-Davidson shop so I could buy myself a Harley-Davidson t-shirt, transitioning my brain by buying a British t-shirt from a distinctly American motorcycle store. I was more than a little insistent that we buy that shirt, in spite of the distinct threat that I might miss my plane.
No one was happy with my behavior, but somehow we made it to Heathrow on time.
I waved goodbye to my family, and headed back to the States.
After the amazingly timed shooting star and my realization that I would never find happiness in alcohol, I quit drinking and never looked back. I suddenly had the foresight to see where my life had been heading, and knew that I didn’t want to go there. I awoke with a completely new attitude. I knew what I wanted, so I instantly created an entirely new life for myself. I became truly enlightened, turned myself around, and never forgot from whence I’d come.
Oh, how I want that to be my story.
I want it so badly, I can taste it still, three decades after the fact.
I knew that 1987 was the worst year of my life. To this day, I maintain that there was never a worse year.
I’d spent night after night after night wailing along to my boom box in a filthy kitchen as I drank beer and chain-smoked, lonely beyond any concept of loneliness I could have ever imagined. I’d been brutally attacked and raped and my “boyfriend” – an old man (39) I didn’t even like – had doubted the truth of my story. My favorite bar was ruined by a night I’d stayed too long. I’d gone to two Bike Weeks and what I remembered best was being humiliated into begging half-naked for a t-shirt and sleeping in mud puddles next to the world’s worst port-o-johns.
To get out of the mess I’d made of my life, I’d even tried to kill myself – but I was still alive.
My very best night I had in 1987 was one I don’t even remember. But for one brief, glorious moment the next morning, I’d believed I’d finally gotten away from the hellhole I’d created.
So in 1988, after a Sure Sign from God had blazed across the sky just for my benefit, I had no idea what to do next, except to not-drink for as long as possible. I thought, “I will never drink again!” And I meant it.
I had no idea it might be hard. I had God on my side, after all. I literally had God listening to me, watching me, and sending shooting stars across the sky for me. How can anyone argue with that?
Oh, how I wish I’d turned my life around in January of 1988.
But I am an alcoholic. And there is nothing about my brain that isn’t affected by the insanity of my addiction. So no matter what my resolve, no matter what I’d wanted with every ounce of my sober soul, my 23-year-old self had no idea how to make it happen.
This is how Alcoholics Anonymous saves lives. People who have lived through alcoholism and addiction who want to stop but don’t know how – they can learn how to stop inside AA. There’s a whole Big Book about it. There are not a few but hundreds of thousands of people who have gotten sober by following a path that two guys laid out for hopeless drunks starting with a meeting of two drunks back in 1935.
But I didn’t know about AA. I just knew I no longer wanted to drink.
(It wasn’t enough.)
But while I was in England, I fell into a space where I was the same person I’d been before I ever picked up a drink: the child of two loving parents, the sister of two loving sisters, a member of a family who happened to be traveling in the extraordinarily beautiful United Kingdom.
With the shooting star fresh in my mind, I decided I’d just go ahead and enjoy that.
I’ve heard a lot of miraculous stories during my 30+ years of sobriety, but I am the only one I know who, upon realizing that alcohol was my problem, got a literal shooting star.
I believe, to the innermost core of my being, that God sent that star. The timing wasn’t “interesting;” it was perfect. I had the revelation, and there was the star.
Suddenly I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt: alcohol was my problem. Years of denial were broken in that moment, and any doubt I ever had about the existence of God disappeared in that moment, too.
I had three days sober.
I would like to say that I literally dropped to my knees and worshipped the Good Lord Almighty like I have never worshipped before, but that’s not exactly what happened.
I stood there with my mouth hanging open, a cigarette dangling by my side, and stared at the dark space where that spectacular star had briefly lit the night sky.
And then I started to smile.
Then I started to cry.
The tears rolled down my face faster than I could feel them, but I kept staring at the space where the star had been. Somehow I expected another one to fly by.
I said it aloud again: “You can’t find happiness at the bottom of the bottle.” Nothing happened in the sky the second time, or the third, or the fourth.
I stabbed my cigarette into my makeshift ashtray and joyously cried, “You can’t find happiness in a cigarette, either!” I watched to see if that was also a shooting-star-worthy sentiment, but it was not.
I kept hoping that there was a fireworks-style showing of stars taking place just for me, somewhere in England at 3:00 in the morning, but a second star did not come.
I stared at the sky anyway, willing it to happen, doubting my own eyes even as I could never doubt again.
I stood for a long time staring, crying, laughing, crying, laughing. I stared at the sky until my neck hurt and I could no longer stare.
I’d just uncovered the key to the universe, and my discovery had been verified by the universe itself.
I had no idea what to do with myself.
So I walked into our little house in Bletchley, sat down, and cried some more. I cried blubbery sad tears interrupted by fits of giggly, choking laughter, feeling both incredibly small and incredibly special.
I finally knew the answer: I would stop drinking, and find happiness another way.
Since it was 8 a.m. in America and none of us had adjusted to European time yet, my mom randomly awoke. She wandered through the dark living room and found me giggle-sobbing on the couch.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I looked up, my face drenched with tears. “I’ve never been more okay in my life,” I said.
I told my mother what had happened, how it happened: the whole story. I told her about my revelation about alcohol, about happiness, about God.
Mom didn’t doubt my miracle for a second.
“Oh, Kirsten,” she said, and held out her arms. We held each other in that room for a long, long time, both of us crying.
In Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s said that every alcoholic needs to hit bottom before it’s possible to get sober. That “bottom” is a point in an alcoholic’s drinking where we believe we can’t go any lower – hence the term.
On January 4, 1988, I had reached my bottom. I didn’t realize it then, but while everyone else was sleeping, I was reflecting on my life after three days without alcohol.
I ruined the Eiffel Tower, I thought. I completely ruined my trip to Paris. I spent my whole time either sleeping or bitching about everything.
I fell over in customs. I thought I was going to die. It really, really felt like I was going to die.
The plane ride resurfaced in my mind: Throwing up on the plane wasn’t pleasant either.
I puked all the time at home, I thought.
I’d often drink so much that I vomited, which made more room in my stomach for alcohol. I’d considered this a win-win situation – staying drunk and vomiting up excess calories.
But puking on the plane was bad. Vomiting in front of my family was bad.
As I reminisced about my Paris trip, I wandered out onto the back porch in Bletchley. It was the middle of the night, pitch black outside, and dead silent.
Perfect for reflection.
I lit a cigarette and stared at the sky.
My family was inside, asleep.
I thought back to the time in high school when I’d come home from a party and vomited into the toilet. My mom held my hair back for me, like she’d done when I had the flu when I was little.
My parents don’t deserve this, I thought. I am breaking their hearts and they don’t deserve this.
Standing on that porch I considered suicide, but then I remembered: it’s only been nine months since I dove out of that window and landed on my head. I remembered screaming, “What do you want from me now, God?!”
Standing on that British porch I thought: God isn’t finished with me yet.
But why would God keep making me suffer? I wondered. Not only did I jump out that window, but I was raped, too! I put a guy in jail!
And what about Larry? Why am I still living with Larry?!I hate living in Pitcairn, that dark apartment, motorcycle rides where we never go anywhere.And it’s cold in Pitcairn!
Suddenly my whole life was flashing through my brain.
I wanted to marry a rock star! Or a writer! I visualized my dream man who looked nothing like Larry, and imagined a dream life that looked nothing like mine. And why do I keep sleeping with idiot guys? And this is the first time I’ve ever traveled! My life at home sucks. I don’t like anything – nothing – about my life.
I just want to be happy, I thought. Why can’t I ever be happy?!
And then I had a thought that had never crossed my mind before – a thought so obvious and necessary, it could only be expressed in the form of a platitude.
I had the thought right there on that back porch.
It was so profound that I declared it out loud to the sky: “Well you can’t find happiness at the bottom of a bottle, Kirsten,” I said.
And just as the words came out of my mouth – at that very instant – a shooting star streaked across the British night sky.
It was the first and only shooting star I’d ever seen.
Someone was splashing water on my face when I regained consciousness. I opened my eyes.
A woman I’d never seen was standing over me, smiling, speaking some sort of jibberish.
Not jibberish, I realized. She’s speaking French.
I heard my mother’s voice behind her – or had it been my mother speaking all along? I couldn’t be sure.
I tried to speak. “Where am I?”
“We’re in Paris,” my mother said. “Are you all right?”
She didn’t mention that we were in a restroom in Paris, but I could see that as I looked around. More specifically, I was lying on the floor in a restroom in Paris. The sinks from which the splashed water came were high above me.
“I’m fine,” I said. As if I were fine.
“She’s okay,” my mom said to my sisters, as if I were okay. My mom nodded, relieved, and one of my sisters bolted out the door to tell my dad I was alive.
“What happened?”
“We think you fainted,” my mom said. Some French women helped lift me to my feet. One of them had a medical box under her arm.
I felt woozy. I wasn’t sure I could stay up.
Apparently, fainting felt exactly like dropping dead. I remembered with vivid clarity thinking: I’m going to die. Then I shoved the memory to the back of my brain and moved forward with my day.
My family eventually got through customs. We got to the home where we were staying in France. Everyone suggested I eat, but I couldn’t.
I suggested I go to bed. I slept for the rest of the day and well into the next morning.
I did not drink in Paris.
On Day Two of our Paris excursion, my family headed for the Louvre.
“That’s just a museum!” I wailed. “I don’t want to go to a museum! I’m going shopping for t-shirts.”
“But we’re going to look at the palace! And the gardens!” my mom said.
“I don’t want to look at a dumb garden.”
“You’ll miss the Mona Lisa!”
“I’ve seen the Mona Lisa in books,” I grumbled.
So while they saw the world’s most famous city their way, I shopped at street vendors seeking a t-shirt for Ronnie. “Bring me a shirt that says something French,” he’d said.
After a full day of street vendors, I learned only that Paris street vendors didn’t like me. The shirt I eventually found never fit Ronnie, and I have no idea what it said because no one would translate for me. It had a kitten on it.
On Day Three of Paris, we all went to the Eiffel Tower. This was the grand finale of our French trip, and my family was excited to see the gorgeous city of Paris from a thousand feet in the air.
At the top of the tower, though, as everyone around us admired the view, I tore into my dad with a venom that should be allocated only to snakes.
“My whole life!” I spat at him. “You moved me for my whole life! How could you think taking me to this stupid city could ever make up for what you’ve done to me! I don’t need to look out at the stupid city! I don’t care that we’re in Paris! I hate this place!”
I made our trip to the Eiffel Tower memorable indeed.
We had an uneventful flight back to London and to our little house in Bletchley, where my parents would stay for three months.
