I slept at Mom\u2019s house and then went over to Darby\u2019s the next day. By the time I got out of the car I was already questioning the purpose of my visit. Darby and I had never had the kind of conversation I was planning to have with her.<\/p>\n
Often I\u2019ve felt guilty for moving so far away from Darby; it\u2019s hard to be much support to her, or much of an aunt to Cody from three-thousand miles away. For someone like me, who is married and can afford a nanny, being a mother is hard enough. I can only imagine how hard it must be for her as a single parent.<\/p>\n
We sat in the kitchen, drinking tea. I tried to talk her out of some of the herbal medicines she consumes as casual beverages, but stopped when I found myself lecturing to her. I tried to segue to the subject on my mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t you think,\u201d I asked her, \u201cthat some of the trouble you and I had finding husbands has to do with the whole group marriage?\u201d It was meant to be an opening. I thought she would ask what I meant by \u201cyou and I\u201d and then I\u2019d tell her what was happening with Charlie.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere’s what I know about relationships,” she said. “You try to be present for the other person, you pay attention to each other, and then you have to trust god, or the powers that be.\u201d<\/p>\n
“How were we supposed to get into healthy relationships when we had such a weird model to follow?<\/p>\n
But she was thinking about Mitchell, the ex-boyfriend who hit her. \u201cHow can you get into a healthy relationship if you\u2019re too drunk to tie your shoes?\u201d she asked. \u201cThat was my problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Darby, isn\u2019t that why you started drinking? Because of what was going on in our family?\u201d<\/p>\n
She shook her head, with a flash of that tolerant big-sister smile she used to wear when we were kids. Though in many ways our relationships is the reverse of what it should be \u2013 I\u2019ve taken care of her more than she has of me over the years \u2013 I sometimes think she finds me unbearably ingenuous. \u201cI was drinking a long time before we got involved with the Wrightsons. I was ten years old, Adrienne. Ten years old when I had my first drink. It just took everybody else a few years to realize what I was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a minute, I didn\u2019t know what to say. Casting my mind backwards, I couldn\u2019t ever remember her drinking until she was at least twelve. Not until our parents were well into the midst of their calamitous experiment. Is my memory that distorted?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I slept at Mom\u2019s house and then went over to Darby\u2019s the next day. By the time I got out of the car I was already questioning the purpose of my visit. Darby and I had never had the kind of conversation I was planning to have with her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[16,17,18,14,15,10,19],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrienne","tag-alcohol","tag-alcoholism","tag-drinking","tag-group-marriage","tag-husbands","tag-polyamory","tag-relationships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":629,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions\/629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}