Winnie #2
When I got out, I lived in La Jolla for a little while, and I went to all the funerals with Bernard. I stayed with him when he was too sad to be alone, just like he’d done for me. I felt useful. I felt loved, and I loved in return.
In recovery circles, we have a deep belief in serendipity. We say that people show up to help you with your journey right when you need them.
Bernard was one of those people.
Because in addition to everything else he’d done for me, he was also the one to suggest the final thing—the silver bullet of my sobriety.
“You’re always going to be at risk until you can let it all go,” he said.
“Let what go?”
“Your anger. Your sadness. Lincoln. Dawn. Miranda.”
“How do I do that? I’ve shared at meetings. I’ve done the steps three times. Tell me how, and I’ll do it.”
Bernard was quiet for a minute, then said, “Have you tried writing about it? All my screenwriter friends say that writing is a release for them, and even I find that once something is on paper, it’s out of me.
Out. Not inside killing me, eating me alive.
And you are a writer. Seems like it would work even better for you. ”
“Maybe,” I said dubiously, though I recalled what Julia had said when she encouraged me to share my feelings about Dawn in meetings. Get it out so that you don’t have to drink it away.
“You’ve got nothing to lose by trying, right?” he prodded.
“I guess not,” I agreed.
I had started writing the first Vineland book, but I set it aside, and in a fresh new journal I began writing this story, starting with the concert and running into Lincoln in 1967.
It was pure intuition that led me to write Miranda’s part in addition to mine. I just thought, I wonder what she was thinking and feeling? It felt right to explore her part of the story, and make it equal to mine.
Intertwining our stories, indulging my own pain while also seeking to understand hers, helped me see how much we were both hurting.
I anesthetized my pain with Lincoln and drugs and alcohol.
She coped with the enormity of her pain by soldiering on, losing herself in the winemaking, and never—ever—overindulging in the elixir I couldn’t help but drown myself in.
I used to find her self-control annoying, even disturbing, and now I understand that holding so tightly to the reins of her life had cost her plenty: Tom, me, the family she was constantly trying to create but never could.
Yes, she got Dawn.
And I’m very glad she did. Dawn had a far better life with Miranda than she ever would have had with me—a life of love and support, softness and ease.
My sister had tried to give me that life, too. She’d tried so hard.
And all I’d done was throw it back in her face.
Miranda’s last words to me, that final apology that mirrored mine and augmented it, was such a gift. It acknowledged everything.
I’m so sorry, Miranda. I’m sorry I couldn’t see all of this until now.
May you be well. May you be happy. May you be at peace.
I love you. Thank you for being the sister and mother I never could be.
I am not a religious woman, and when I came back to the steps one final time, I struggled as many atheists do to find a higher power to believe in—my own conscience had proved too fallible.
An answer came at my first meeting after getting out of the BFC, from a woman who read that famous line from Corinthians: “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
She was another serendipitous person, her reading another light on my path.
It struck me then that love could be my higher power.
Love was something I could give myself over to.
Not the grasping love I had for Lincoln, or even the love I wished I’d had from Mom and Dad.
I’m talking about a bigger love, the kind of love that encompasses faith and hope and trust, and is all of those things and more.
It’s poetry and music, and blades of grass shining with dew, and the view from Spring Mountain; it’s tuning in to KFRC for the first time in twenty years and hearing “Light My Fire” and remembering how you sang it with your sister decades ago; it’s the peace that comes from a first sip of coffee on a sunny morning in July sans hangover.
It’s all I feel when I think of Dawn and Miranda, separately and together.
Mostly together. I love that they have each other.
And finally—finally—it’s been through loving them, especially Miranda, here in these pages, that I’ve come to love myself.
July 2015
Dear Miranda,
The day after I wrote those last lines in 2000 or so, I turned back to Vineland, and the story poured out of me. Book after book, sober year after sober year.
The words in this journal healed me. Released me. And made all the rest possible.
Sister, I hope you will forgive all my musings and guesses about how you might have been thinking and feeling.
If it would be helpful for Dawn to read this, by all means, send it to her.
Of course, I hope that this journal might be a bridge for the three of us to a new beginning, but if all it can be is an apology, then its true work is done.
All my love,
Winnie
My dearest Dawn,
I know this is a lot to take in. I want to assure you that Winnie’s “musings and guesses” about my feelings and thoughts in these pages are remarkably accurate. Which is really no surprise, since once upon a time, we used to share everything with each other just as you and I have shared everything.
Except this story at the center of everything.
I am so deeply sorry I have not shared it with you until now.
I’ve sensed recently that you have been sad, and not entirely yourself.
I can’t remember the last time I heard you laugh, and this goes back to before things ended with Clark.
I wonder if perhaps the truth in these pages might help you as it has helped Winnie, and now helped me.
I never knew how much Winnie understood, and now I see she understands everything.
And she’s helped me understand a great deal as well.
Take your time.
I love you.
—M