Illuminated Manuscripts and Two Gears Back From Houston

In 1977 our family took our one (and only) family vacation. We went to Norfolk, Virginia and then southward to Florida. The second moment on the trip was when we pulled up to a Fort Lauderdale motel and my mother cried out, "you've been here before! You have a girl friend!" My father was angry, not because she had started an argument with us kids in the car, but because she was right. It took about 3 or 4 years later before that truth became more evident. They say that the chances are about 90% that a second marriage will also end in divorce if it began as adultery. Well not my father and step-mothers, but their misery is undeniable. My father: "Divorcing your mother was the biggest mistake I ever made". I told him that years ago back before he even got a lawyer, but who's gonna listen to a 15 year old, right? He was destroying a family system. My mother did not want a divorce.

The divorce left a terrible mark on my psyche. I think of all the hard times in my life and how much harder they are without a family system that can see me through whatever crisis.

And I still remember that argument in the car, in the parking lot of Happy Holidays motel in Fort Lauderdale. It was sweltering heat and I wanted out and into the wonderfully air conditioned rooms, the fat fluffed-up pillows, the freshly cleaned sheets and blankets, and beds so nicely made, and all the neat toiletries wrapped in plastic thoughtfully placed, like gifts.

A few days later we'd cross Alligator Alley at night. It seemed fraught of danger driving through all that blackness and the roar of insects and night creatures. If the car broke down, what would we do? Would an alligator eat us??

At the end of Alligator Alley is the wealthy town of Naples. We drove up the coast to Silver Springs. My father's girlfriend had a condo just outside Naples and her mother's home (where he now lives) just outside of Silver Springs. So he was scoping out his new life and scheming.

I can't imagine what my mother went through, spending her mother's inheritance to buy the family vacation at my father's urging, only to discover he had an secret agenda. I don't think she was on to his whole scheme then, but thank God for that. Really.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I was just looking at an old book I purchased at a miserable job I had in Houston (1991). It's a book on Illuminated Manuscripts. I was fired from that job and drove all the way back to Chicago in a car that only had two gears: 2nd and 4th. 1st, 3rd, 5th and Reverse did not work. Incredible as it seems, I made it back, although somehow I knew I would. I was determined and I was careful. I keep the book not because it's interesting but because it's physical evidence the whole nightmare of those 6 months were real and me, and my car, had survived it.