9:16am Writing Practice 70° Boise
The 45 year reunion of the Baker High Class of 1971 was ten days ago and I have yet to write one thing about it. I woke up this morning thinking about telling some of my stories to Jan Jones when she stayed the night with me and we went out to dinner. I told her about how I went to prom. I had also told part of that story at the reunion but I had left out the Big Secret part.
It occurs to me now that I could start my personal memoir right there in high school --- tell the story up to arriving at the gym in my Navy blue crepe dress with the plunging, ruffled neckline, holding the school camera, alone. And then go from there to my early years. By the time I get the story back to the gym, it will be quite apparent why I'm at the prom alone as the photographer. Then I can go home with Louis Kingman and drink a rum and coke and have my first kisses, my first stirrings of passion, on my 18th birthday.
And from there I can move the story forward with graduation and my attempt at leaving home in one piece, only to suffer my first suicide attempt instead. Then the summer of '71 where I was barely sane enough to get by and could find no help. My first sex with Louis and what a bust that was, a bus ride to Portland for two weeks and then back to Baker, the job at Fancy Dan's and finally meeting Bob Turner and Jeff Geisler and hopping in with them in their VW van with no heater and leaving for Portland again, for real, never returning to Baker to live --- at least not for 31 years. I moved there in 2002 after my second divorce and tried to make a home and a life. That lasted all of 18 months before I caved and moved to Boise. A suicide attempt precipitated that move, too, but not mine that time. Stephen tried to end his life at his dad's house in Lemoore, CA in early November 2003 and I realized that we were going to lose him if something wasn't done, just like I almost lost my life, all alone and no one to help or understand all those years ago.
Does suicide run in a family? Is it genetic? Is depression passed from one generation to the next? They say the predisposition for addiction is genetic, why not mental illness as well? I'm pretty sure my mother had it. Maybe Granny did too but she found a way to deal with it on her own, sort of like I did. Maybe her mother suffered from chronic depression. Understandable with the life she had. But that's as far back as I can go, Emma Pennington. Emma's mother, Abigail, is a mystery --- my grandmother's maternal grandmother. Rachel Riley was Granny's paternal grandmother and I know more about her but I know nothing of her family or where they came from or even what their names were. I think it's pretty cool that I know as much as I do about ancestors who were born in the mid-1800's. I would hazard a guess that any depression or mental illness issues that were handed down came through the mothers. I could be wrong but I have no way to know the fathers. Granny's first husband and the father of her children was Harlan Adams and he's really tricky to track. His baby brother, Frank, is still alive but he knows nothing except that the family arrived in the west from Independence, MO but he doesn't know when or even how. Harlan Adams died of liver cancer when I was two, I didn't know him. I knew Granny's second husband, Larry Cook, he was my Gramp.
So I can begin my story with the prom. It can begin with my telling the story at the 45 year reunion or as I'm telling the story to Jan Jones or I can begin it in 1971 on the very weekend of the prom. I had hatched my plan earlier that week when I found out that my parents were going to be out of town and they were going to leave me home alone with the family car for the weekend. What an amazing opportunity they handed me! After being squashed for my entire high school experience, I was going to have a brief window of freedom. Holy Cow!
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