Meeting my Family

After Christmas we flew back to Bob's apartment in Kansas with the future looking so exciting. We would drive to Wisconsin so Bob could finally meet my family and from there it was on to Colorado to find a new city to live. After seeing his daughter before we left the other mission he was on was to retrieve my engagement ring which I didn't know that he had given to his cousin to safeguard for him. I guess deep down in his soul, he had known that we would be together some day and he didn't want it around or he may have sold it. I was deeply moved by that.

We weren't sure where we would end up we just thought maybe a quiet ski town would suit us just fine.

Kansas in January was surprisingly free from snow, but it was cold out. We decided to go to the local mall and hang out, there wasn't really much to do there in Topeka. We were literally two of five people at the Macy's store that night. The place was eerily empty.

We wandered around and bought Bob a new jacket because he was really freezing without a warm coat. After we grabbed a bit to eat at the food court we decided it was time to go back to his apartment and get ready to leave on our road trip.

We walked outside to where we thought we parked his "Jeep", it wasn't there. Now Bob did have short term memory issues and I wasn't paying attention to where we parked. We could not find the car. How could you not see a bright orange Jeep in an almost empty parking lot. It was surreal. The car vanished.

Here we were in the middle of nowhere and his car got "jacked" unbelievable. We called the police and alerted the security from the mall, The car was gone without a trace. Until today there has never been any information on that car.

We later found out from the police that there was a very active car jacking ring in the area and the take them and send them off to a chop shop before you can bat an eye.

Knock on wood, I have lived in Los Angeles and have had radios stolen but that's it. Imagine being out in the "Heartland" and this happens.

We both looked at it as a sign that we were not supposed to drive to Colorado or live there as a matter of fact. So the old saying goes "We make plans and God laughs". We had to come up with a plan B. We still went to have Bob meet my family but we flew instead. We arranged for all Bob's things to be shipped to my apartment and we mad plans to leave Kansas for good. I had called my oldest brother and he told me that we could stay at his house. We flew into Milwaukee and he picked us up. His three kids no longer lived at home and they had plenty of room. Or so I thought.

When he picked us up at the airport everyone was really happy to see me and meet Bob, or so I thought. My brother took us from the airport to my mother's one bedroom apartment. I thought he was taking us there so she could meet Bob. I was wrong. When he arrived he took the luggage out of the trunk and brought it into her apartment. He never explained why he changed his mind about us staying there. Not one word was said about it. I think it was because Bob was a Jew.
The only reason we even were invited to his house during our stay there was so that I could give his wife a perm. They didn't invite us for dinner or anything. I will never forget the rudeness of that.

My other brother Richard on the other hand, opened his home to us so graciously. He loaned us a car, and had us come over for a really special dinner which he went out of his way to make Bob feel at home. It was so funny because Bob's father was from Poland and there is a really large Polish population in Milwaukee, where I'm from and he had prepared some special Polish Sausage for us. Bob had never tasted Polish sausage before in his life. It was so funny but Bob never told that to Richard or his wife until after dinner. Actually it was really good.

The kindness that Richard and his wife showed us during our stay bonded them together for life. They remained close from that day forward. Bob did not get to meet my third brother, they were living out of town someplace else at that time.

While we were there we ended up having a really nice time with my Mom. She was getting pretty forgetful and would call Bob
Ernie, his real name is Bernard anyway she really liked him a lot. He had that effect on everyone.

We were really keeping up our AA meetings and everything. I will never forget going to one down by the LakeFront. I never knew there was AA so active and alive in my home town. I shouldn't have been surprised, after all the local pastime is drinking. There is a beer bar on every corner. It's one of the reasons that in the beginning Bob's telling me he was an Alcoholic didn't scare me. Hell everyone in that town seemed like they were one once I started going out as a teenager. We had beer bars we could drink in at 18 back then. It didn't seem unusual.

I just happened to be blessed, even when I was sneaking into the bars before I was 18, I was only there to dance and drink Cokes. That was my passion, still is as a matter of fact.

After Five days we headed back to my apartment in L.A. Now Bob no longer had a car to his name, but we knew we would manage, we always did land on our feet when we had to. We just shared my car, it wasn't even a problem. I had quit my job, thinking that I was moving away, so we were pretty much on the same schedule. Bob started taking acting classes at the Lee Strasbourg Institute and I started doing my clients that were left back home as they had been doing before I left. There wasn't any glitches everything was running smooth or so it seemed.

I was still hanging out with all my former AA friends who had really been there for me during all the chaos. It was a good environment for Bob also, all my friends were sober in the program. No temptation. He immediately started being the secretary of a small meeting right across the street from our apartment so he wasn't really stranded too much without a car if I had someplace to go, he could just walk.

One night I went out to dinner with one of my female friends from the program and things seemed really strained between us that night. I couldn't figure out why she was so distant and acting weird. I finally got it. She was really happy for me when my life was falling apart and I was miserable. Now that I was happy, she wasn't happy for me. It was like a light going off in my head, I just got it. So I told her what I was feeling. She actually didn't deny it, and I never hung out with her again.

It's funny but some people only like you when your down lower than they are. I learned that the hard way. All in all it didn't matter to me, I didn't care what anyone thought about me getting married to Bob. It didn't matter that we had just been through five years in and out of rehabs and hell. I loved him, he loved me, and we made a commitment to make it work.

I knew we would have bumps in the road but who doesn't. Our love had passed the test of time, now all we needed was to clock the days, months and hopefully years of sobriety, together.