Laura LeBeau

There's that.

So when you say, are you a tomboy? Here's the things that I was a tomboy about. Explosives. Explosives. By the way, we'll get to that. But I thought it was just so boring and awful and nasty that they expected girls to take shorthand and typing. It was like. I don't like this. I'm never going to be a secretary.

And please, for anybody out there listening, I've had administrative assistants that worked for me that were far, far better at spelling, typing, and everything. And I depended on them. And they are awesome people. But for me, it sounded like going to the guillotine. And I just was not going to do that. So I had gone to my counselors. This is at Whitman Junior High.

And I had gone to my counselor several times and said, I I got to get out of this typing class. I hate this typing class. I hate it. I don't want to type. And they would say, you know, well, you know, it's middle semester or whatever. They give me some excuse. So finally, I had this boyfriend, Steve Stanley, who, by the way, had a 61 Chevy Biscayne

Oh, and he had painted the wheel wells white and put little lights in and put little spacers so it was raised a little. Oh, this is a great car. But anyway, that's neither here nor there, except for the fact that that was the vehicle we used to go down to Toledo when I skipped school the day before and we had bought a bunch of cherry bombs.

Right, right. So here I am 14 years old and I have a boyfriend with a car. And so we go down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we skip school and we go down and get these cherry bombs. So the next day, of course, I have a few in my purse who wouldn't carry them. And I went in, it was in between classes and I went in, Mr. Stoner was the typing teacher. And I went in and I was alone in the classroom and I took out a cherry bomb and I lit it. I put it in between the keys and it actually bent.

This is an old fashioned typewriter. It actually bent the keys and blew the mic off the desk. And as you know, cherry bombs are great for sound effect. They really give a lot of boom for that. Yeah. Yep. So everybody in the school heard it and everybody came running down. And I could have pretended that I just ran into the room and I was the first one there.

Mr. Stoner came in and said, you know, he was crazy. You know, who did it? Who did it? And I said, well, I did, of course. Oh, really? Oh, because I wanted to get out of that car. Oh, okay. It was deliberate. Oh, interesting. I wanted to be thrown out.

Did it work? Did you get kicked out? I did get kicked out. And I actually got kicked out of school that day, which this is hilarious because I came home from school. I walked home and it's like noon and I come in the back door of our house. My mother's in the kitchen and my mother turns and gives me that hated look. And she and of course, I was nervous about it. I got kicked out of school.

I started laughing. That didn't go over well. And she looked at me and she said, if anybody asks you your name, it is not Laura LeBeau. Oh, she disowned you. And she said, go sit on the couch and wait till your father gets home. So I went into the living room, sat on the couch.

Heck yeah.

I couldn't even go to the bathroom. I mean, it was, I was, I was stapled to the couch. So when my dad came in and this is, I know we all have different memories of my dad and him and I were co-conspirators on many things. He had a great sense of humor and he.

Oh, absolutely.

And he came in and he sat in the chair opposite me. And he put his hand on his knee and his hand on his chin like his elbow on his knee. And he looked at me and he said, you blew up a typewriter? And I said, yeah. And he just started to laugh. And I laughed with him. Oh, boy.

I could feel her from the dining room staring at us with the daggers. And he just laughed hysterically. And ever after that, he would come home from work and we had a thing in our family, like he'd sit at the dinner table and my dad would say, you know, Tom, what'd you do today? Larry, what'd you do today? You know, did you make the world a better place?

And he said, he would always say to me, Laura, did you blow up anything today? So it was great.

Well, he had a great personality. I first noticed him on the bus. I don't know if you know all these stories, but I first noticed him on the bus. We rode the same bus. He was around the block from me.

And he was, like you say, he was a large guy. He was a 6'1 or 6'2, and he was a big guy. And he was very, very friendly to everybody, always. And so he would always sit up front and talk to Barb, the bus driver. And so whenever Barb needed, the door didn't close well on the bus, she would say, Dave, and Dave would get up and he would close.

Yep. Fix the door for her. Anyway, so I knew him from the bus. And so one day, this girl, Cindy, I can't think of her last name, but anyway, she sits next to me and she says, Dave Shepard has a little crush on you. And I said, who's Dave Shepard? And she says, you know, the big guy on the bus that always helps bar.

And, um, and I, like I said, I knew him from school. He was on the football team and stuff. You know, I knew who he was. And I said, really, he's got, and I was new. We had just moved in. And I said, really? And she says, yeah, he wants, what grade is his 10th, 10th grade. His, her name was Cindy Mitchell. And he says, she said, um, he wants to ask you out. And I said, Oh really?

So a couple of days go by. Um, And I'm sitting on the bus and he sits down next to me on the bus on the way home. And he says to me, would you like to go to a grasser? And a grasser in those days, you went to Edward Hines Park and you laid on the grass and you drank. And it was usually happened on curriculum day where you got out early. And I'd never been to one, but I'd heard about them.

And he said, would you like to go to a grasser? And I said, oh, I don't know. I've never been to one. And he said, oh, I'm not asking you. I'm just telling you where there is one.

So I was kind of. All right. So then you think, OK, I got hit on the nose with the newspaper. I learned. But no. So spring comes and the prom. We didn't have a senior class that year. We had a junior class and he was part of it. And so he comes and sits down next to me and he says, do you have a date for the prom? And I said, no, thank you. This is the setup question. Sure. And he says, oh, I do.

Oh, wow. He's playing a real game. Anybody in their right mind would have said, this guy's a jerk. So a little more time goes by, and I was serving detention for skipping a semester of gym. Again, Cindy Mitchell comes up to me and she peeks her head into the principal's office.

Oh, I think your dad was. leaning on her okay so anyways um he uh he she sticks her head in the principal's office and says you know hey do you need a ride home well i did need a ride home i lived far and and this was not in the days where moms picked you up So I said, sure. She said, there's a blue 61 or 62 Chevy Impala. Meet me out there. She says, meet me out there in the Impala.

And I said, OK. So I go out there and the windows are rolled down and nobody's in the car. But I get in the passenger seat and I think it's Cindy Mitchell's car. Well, a couple minutes later, your dad walks out and gets in the driver's seat and starts the car. And I said, where's Cindy? And he says, oh, she doesn't need a ride. I just had her go in there to ask you. So I got a ride home from him.

And then to follow up that, he had asked Cindy for my phone number, but he forgot my name. So he called my house and my dad answered the phone and he said, is your daughter home?

I'm going to say they're real 15, 16 year old courtship.

At that time, he was driving that your grandma's car. Okay. But shortly after that, he bought a 396 Chevelle 1968. And it was with the fastback. It was just.

No, no, no. White on white on white. Oh, white on white on white. Because of Bill Grumpy Jenkins. That was the drag racer then that always drove white Chevys. So it had, it had Krieger mags and it had, you know, dual exhaust.

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Oh, my God. It was like a love machine. He put in a little Sergio Mendez, you know.

It was very unconventional. I mean, most people were listening to the who and I would get in and it was eight track tape decks and he would literally like stick in a tape deck and it's like girl from Ipanema or the fool on the hill. And it's like, what the heck is he playing? But I liked it.

I was attracted to many things about him. He was. Oh. He was extremely kind to me. And he was, if I even like hinted that there was something I liked or so-and-so had this, I mean, he always worked. He would go out and buy it for me. And I don't mean like, oh, he bought me things. I don't mean like that. No, it was more tender. It was more like he wanted to please me, wanted to make me happy.

Very much so. Yeah. But your father was very, very in touch with his feminine side. This is a man that could have a conversation on the phone for hours and hours.

Both you. Both you and your brother.

Uh, well, kind of, kind of not. Okay. I would say that, um, I eventually wanted to marry your dad, but your dad was when I was in 12th grade, he was in the Navy and I had applied to Western and I'd gotten accepted and I had big dreams of being a flight attendant. And, um, so I wanted to travel. You love traveling. Love to travel. I, yeah. Yeah.

That's not stopped. You have wanderlust. Yes, I think I'm part gypsy. So I had intentions of going to college and being a flight attendant and doing all these things and then getting married and having kids. Well, he came home from boot camp and... to say that it was unintentional is sort of true and sort of not because, Oh, I was also supposed to go to Europe that summer.

I had worked at Sears saving money to go to Europe on this, um, student exchange program. And so I definitely did not want to get pregnant, but at the same time at the moment, you know, I knew I would get pregnant and I made the conscious decision of, well, so then we'll get married, you know, like, so can't say it was unintentional, but it was, Unplanned. Unthought out.

I think this is what you would call 17 year old experience and logic making a good decision. Yeah. When I graduated, I was four months and no one knew I was pregnant.

Is it more? I don't know what the percentage was, but in my, it was common though. Yeah. And it was common for both males and females. I mean, I, there were probably six or seven of us in my senior class that were married at graduation.

Yeah, it was a different time. It was, you know, I can remember in my senior year, maybe in the fall or not positive, but in my senior year, I can remember there was a girl in school that was his name, Dan. Anyway, it doesn't matter his name, but he was killed in action and she was engaged to him. And so it's. Here she is engaged in senior year, which is not uncommon.

A lot of girls in my class were engaged to guys from the upper class that had gone to Vietnam. And I just remember being so sad for her that she had lost him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kind of. He went to his regular Thursday night meeting and your dad was quite a salesman. And he went up and bold face lied, told the commanding officer that he loved the Navy, wanted to be a lifer. And he just really just was really concerned about me that I might lose the baby and stuff. I was never sick a day the whole time I was pregnant.

And the guy said, well, listen, Dave, I'll tell you what. And he gave him the paperwork and he said, have everybody in your family over 21 sign the papers that they will not support her. And the baby, if something happens to you, we'll get you an honorable hardship discharge. When she has the baby, come on back. I'll make sure you get all your time. Yeah. And he was like, you know, are you sure?

You know, he really, you know, played it up really good. And he had a deferment. And within days of getting that deferment, they stopped giving hardship deferment. Oh, really? So he just got in under the wire.

Yeah.

Well, actually, we had a little house.

Oh, that was a few years later, but yes. Oh, it was. Okay. Yeah, we lived in a... So you started in a house. Yeah, it was a little two-bedroom house at Ford Road and Middle Belt in Garden City. It was... And you were happy? Oh, so happy.

I loved being a mom. I loved being a good wife to your dad. Like, I mean, I remember like, you know, I would get up in the morning while he was getting dressed and I would pack him a lunch and make him breakfast. And I would walk him out to the car and he would back the car up and I'd close the gate behind him.

And when he would come home, I would have bathwater waiting for him and I would have dinner ready. And it was, I don't know, it was like playing house, I guess.

It kind of happened in increments. As years went by, he became very successful selling cars. He was really, really good at it. And he made very good money and we bought a bigger house and all that thing. And we had friends that traveled and went places and did things. And... How do I say this? We got distracted. We got distracted by running fast, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And it was just.

Yeah.

It was very fun, but we lost track of things. And alcohol became a more ever present thing because in the early years, I mean, we were 17 and 18 when we got married. We weren't legally able to drink. And so we didn't do anything like that. And, you know, pot became a bigger thing. And we even grew our own pot out there.

I did, but I was a social pot smoker. And so it went from being like, oh, we would have people over, you pass a joint around, to then it was a good escape. It was real easy if he was high that I could get on the other couch and zone out and listen to music. And then I feel like... you know, in between I had started going to college, you know, your grandma had really encouraged me to go to college.

And it was like, wow, there's more out there. There's more out there. And I, I feel like I was lonely for him. I was lonely for the communication that we used to have. I was lonely for.

He worked far away and he worked a zillion hours. I mean, there came a point where I remember, you know, saying to him, you know, I don't, I don't care about the money. I, you know, I just want you to be home with me. I just want to have that. And, you know, it's, it's hard, you know, once you've,

All the things that you would think.

Symbol of success.

And again, providing for me.

Yes.

Oh, the first, uh, the first, um, four or five months with you was treacherous because there was a, you almost killed me, right?

Yes. Well, let's back up here. Okay. We had been living in Deer Creek, that apartment, and I got pregnant with you. And your dad came home from work one day and he had sold a car to a guy named Kenny. And he managed a mobile home park out in Highland. And he said...

which by the way is the country compared to where you guys were living island was the country very much the country yeah and um he came home and said you know kenny says he's got this uh repossessed mobile home that we can get into for dirt cheap and i really wanted a house and uh he said you know we can get into this really dirt cheap and at that time there was a lot of stuff on the news about mobile homes burning down really quickly yeah or they were always blowing away in a

You name it. I mean, they've come a long way. But anyway, so at that time, I was very terrified of that. So he said, you know, on this Sunday afternoon, he says, come on, let's go out there and take a look at this mobile home. And so we get out of the car and I walk in the front door. I walk through the mobile home. I walk out the back door and I go sit in the car. And he says...

He gets back in the car and he says, I don't think you're being very open minded about this. I said, I'm not living in a tin can. That's going to catch fire. You know, that's just not going to do that. And he said, well, if you can afford the rent on the apartment, you're welcome to stay because I'm moving here. Wow. He bought it without me.

They were out in the parking lot. He said, look out the window. Your presents out there. And I looked out. There is two motorcycles. I said, I didn't want motorcycles. And he said, oh, it's going to be great fun. And he was right. It was great fun.

Oh, God, I loved it. Yeah.

Right. There was a recession that the guessing that was Christmas where you weren't allowed to have Christmas lights and stuff. And the oil embargo. And yes, yes, yes. So here.

Yeah. So your dad's not selling any cars. So we only have his company car. So I'm literally in a mobile home with a kid that's got colic, colic that you screamed night and day. It never ended. And you could just and I didn't know the tricks that you have put the babies on reset.

I wasn't aware of that stuff. And I would just walk with you and I would pat your back and I would rock you. And I would.

She said, you're you're too high strung. You're too active. You're you won't have enough milk for them.

And I so I believed her and I didn't breastfeed, which maybe had I breastfed, you wouldn't have had all the stomach issues, but you were in dire straits. And so they tried you soy milk. They tried, you know, this, this, this, all these different kinds of formulas. And finally, what we ended up settling on the first few months you were alive was caro syrup and water.

Oh, my gosh. Isn't that wild? That's all his stomach could tolerate. I mean, he just was in misery.

And you were just.

You were a screamer. And so there were times that I would get so frustrated that I just couldn't that I would. It's January. I would put on my coat and sit on the step of the motorhome mobile home outside because I was afraid I would hurt you. The crying was just more than I could deal with. Yeah. I finally went.

Well, I had smoked pot at that point, but I was not. Obviously, you weren't caring. Yeah. And I wasn't self-medicating to get away from it, which made me wind up in a good idea. But anyway, but I remember going to the doctor, to the pediatrician and saying, cause I took you a thousand times, like something is wrong with him. He's screaming bloody murder, you know?

And I finally said to the doctor, I said, I need you to give him something to make him stop crying. If you can't give him something, I need you to give me something. I'm afraid I'm going to hurt him. And I was dead serious. I mean, I was just at the end of my rope. And so he finally begrudgingly gave me, I think it was called. Paragoric.

Yeah. It was these little blue drops and I would put one or two. He said, use this very sparingly. He said it was for me. And he said, yeah. And he said, if you because I couldn't even get a babysitter, I told him I can't even get a babysitter. Nobody will sit with him. Nobody.

I mean, it was, it was, and if I would like go to the grocery store, I would say to his dad, I need to go to the grocery store. I need to get out of the house. I need to get groceries. He would say, well, take that kid with you. Don't leave that kid. So I take you to the grocery store up and down the aisles, screaming, bloody murder.

And you were, I couldn't do it. Can I just throw in the part about you not being a really pretty baby?

yeah you you were carried with me i have a lot of incongruity in my face you are a beautiful person but you were um you had a carl malden nose and you look like somebody you look like a tomato that somebody had thrown down on the ground one side was small it's not an exaggeration to say one side of my head and face was um at least 60 bigger than the other side right you were a little rough looking yeah um as your dad said when you were born he's ugly but he's ours

But I would take you to the grocery store or places. I'm not exaggerating, Monica. People would like lift up the blanket and take a peek at his head and they would go, oh, he's a big one. And it got to be where it was funny to me because I knew they were not going to say, oh, what a cutie they would say. Is it a boy? I mean, they would.

They would search for words that weren't. But you could see their faces. Is it a plantain? Is it a rhubarb? But then by the time he was like four months, he was the cutest little. Oh, he was so adorable.

And your head straightened out.

To our house.

Yeah. Well, in fact, even now in my current home, when I ride my tractor to cut my grass, I often say a secret prayer to myself and say, don't be an idiot. Don't blow this this time. This is your happiest. Because I remember on Middle Road being so happy riding the tractor, cutting the grass.

Two little boys, we had a dump cart on the tractor and I'd put the boys in the dump cart and I would take them out in the woods and we would find wild pear trees and pick pears. And it was just like heaven. It was like everything I ever wanted. It was just, I was so incredibly happy. It was perfect.

I would have left sooner had I not been afraid. I was very afraid of how I was going to support you and David. I was well aware that it costs money to rent an apartment, to buy groceries, to do things. And I had been a housewife. And although I had two years of college, I did not have a degree. I did not have a skill set other than waitressing. And I really didn't know how I would support you.

And I started sending resumes once a month to the GM Proving Grounds. And every 30 days I'd send a new one in. And I got this call and it was in July. And they said, we have a position, a per diem position as a janitor. And I thought, wow. Jesus, I got two years of college. Do I want to be a janitor? And I said, how much does it pay? And they said 50, 75 a day.

That was gigantic. It was like winning the lotto. Well, in my world. Anyway, I said, yeah, I'll come down for the interview. And I got the job. Your dad called me. He called that afternoon. He said, how'd your interview go? And I go, really, really good. I got the job. And he said, so you're leaving, aren't you?

Yeah. And I said, yes, I am. And he said, OK.

An ADC special. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even remember. I don't remember.

He had worked hard. He deserved everything. I walked away.

I took maybe guilt motivated. Maybe. Maybe guilt. I mean, yeah, possibly it could have been guilt because you deserved.

I didn't feel that. I felt like he had worked really, really hard. I knew how hard he worked.

Yeah.

I didn't ask for anything.

Yeah. Maybe it was different times. I don't know. Maybe I raised you better. Not that his parents didn't raise him better.

They were your Papa Bob was very angry with him because they loved you.

It was pretty bad.

Yeah, drove a car up on the grass, chasing him with a car.

Yeah. It was a rough go.

So it's a boyhood boyhood. Is that what it is? The boyhood.

Yeah. When I saw that movie, I cried my eyes out. I thought, oh, my God, I'm not the only one that lived this life. And she wasn't bad. She just kept making bad decisions.

But I had been listening here and there, but I had a real good binge on the drive up. You're busy.

God, that movie just to me watching the professor come up to her then professor, but later husband. Yeah. Come up to her and just be so kind to her and tell her how he thinks the boy is just a wonderful person. And, oh, all boys do this and stuff like that.

And just baiting her and then seeing her out in the garage and him just talking so horrible about her children and just being slapping her and stuff. It's like, oh, my God, this is my life. This is my life. I fell for it every time.

It was a great movie.

No, I started on day shift and I worked six weeks as a janitor and there was a posting for an opportunity to go into material control. So I applied for that and they had never had women in material control. And what material control is, is not only do you unload trucks and you put parts away, but they send you to school and you learn how to build a car top to bottom and

And so when you're in an environment that they're using current model cars and that are a mix of future model cars, you're always trying to figure out parts when they're. Yeah.

So you have to realize. Yeah. And so anyway, so I went through that training. So I went from day shift to afternoon shift to midnight shift. And then after the training was done, then I was on afternoon shift for a couple of years. And then I was on midnight shift and midnight shift. Then I went to fleet operations and I started working with computers and

I think to say that I'm not your number one fan would be an outright lie. Okay.

When you were three, you went to my little cottage in Milford and David went to school and David went to school. So that was day shift. And when I went to afternoon shift, that's when I ended up with the babysitter cycle.

When I think of moms today that work, your job is not the hard part. Keeping the house up is not your hard part. The hard part is solving daycare. Yeah. It's a constant solving daycare.

They don't show up, you know. Yeah. It's just... And, you know, you're constantly at first you start out with these. I'm not leaving my kids with anybody that's not, you know, I interview and make sure they're really good.

If you find a stranger on the street that'll sit there with them, because you've got to be at work because you now you're on probation because you've missed days because of babysitters.

Oh, quite a few. I listened for two days straight and I drove... Wow. That's a lot. Yeah, I got through a lot of them and I really, really enjoy. The thing I like most about your podcast is that I learn about these people in a much different way than their public persona. Like I get to hear their vulnerabilities and the things they've overcome and their fears.

It's horrible.

I hear this for the babysitter was Robin Wakeford. And she says, I need to put Dax on the phone. And I said, what's happened? And she says, I'm going to let him tell you. And she was clearly upset. And I hear this little voice come on. And you're like three and a half, four years old. And I... Delta's age, yeah. And I hear this little voice. I said, Dax, did you do something bad?

I threw a fucking rock through the auto parts window. And I... Now, I want you to know, I did not condone him using this language, and I did not encourage this language. And so I said, wait a minute, and I pressed speaker, and I let my coworkers hear this.

Suffice to say that I just was in Florida the other day and my brother Tom was telling me stories about you. And when I wasn't around, when you would visit grandma for the summer and suffice to say, everybody that knows you and David would say things behind my back that I'm now learning about how awful you guys were.

They were terrorists. They were a tag team.

It said, pick your own apples. And so I encouraged the kids. We sprayed over the word apples and we wrote the word nose.

And we.

Well, and how about when we took the sign and put it on Ray Barnes store that said hard salami? Because I knew he was courting that girl. And we wrote that. And I painted the water tower. Happy birthday, David.

So it was in your blood.

Oh, there were many, many scotch taping the placemats and the napkins.

Unattended.

We sat on the curb and watched.

And I don't know, it just seems like so much more interesting, like they're real people.

And I used metallic paint and I painted it on the wall opposite of the street light outside. So at night the light would come in and it had silver. It was pretty darn good. That's cool.

You were a human scab in that place because you were learning to ride a two wheeler.

Yeah.

And he has zero jobs.

Must feel awesome. Exactly.

Yeah. Boy, I think what goes through is I had kids again. I'm thinking about one of the things that was an issue with him was he was unable to tell the truth and he was a drug addict.

And so I had gone from being self-supporting with you and David to marrying him and taking on a ton of debt because he was constantly charging things at a gas station that the guy would give him cash so he could put it up his nose and things like that. So... By the time I was aware that this was not a good situation, I need to leave. I need to get my kids out of this.

I need to get me out of this. It was like I was so in debt. What am I going to do? How am I going to support this? How am I going to move on? That was one issue. And that was a big issue because, again, you know, I'm pretty logical.

Yeah. Right. But the emotional issue is I was brought up super duper Catholic. And I being divorced from your dad was to say sinful and a disappointment to my parents would be an extreme understatement. And I felt a lot of shame about that. And so now here I am married less than a year. It's a very bad situation. I've been kicked around the kitchen, bounced off the floor. Humans do bounce.

And I need to get away. And yet I cannot admit defeat.

The failure thing was so, I was so ashamed. So, so ashamed. And it was just beyond me to, you know, like, I'll just try harder. I'll just try harder. I'll figure this out. Yeah. And it was just a very bad situation.

The first time I was physically abused, I kicked him out and I stayed in the house this time. I was getting smarter. I kicked him out and his mom called me and really pleaded his case and how sorry he was. And he would go to counseling. So, OK, I took him back. And we went to counseling. I'm going to say maximum two times. And that was the end of the counseling. He was not up for that.

And so then the behavior was repeated again. Sure. Counseling didn't work. Talking about it didn't work. And then it happened again. And when it happened again, I didn't know it, but I was pregnant with Carly. And I right away the next day, a friend of mine came over now. Yeah. And he. Yep. He changed all the locks on my door and he bandaged me up. He was so nice.

And I went to the lawyer and I was sitting in the lawyer's office and they said, are there any children from this marriage? And I said, no. And then I started thinking, oh, my God.

It occurred to me. When was my last period? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. If I'm late, I'm pregnant. I'm never not pregnant. Oh, my God. And I just had this real like, oh, and I didn't say anything to the lawyer. I went down in the lobby. I called your dad from a pay phone and I said. Oh my God, I think I'm pregnant. I just, you know, I just filed for divorce and I think I'm pregnant.

Well, I would have thought you would have hired someone to take me to Michael's yesterday to head that off at the pass. Okay, yeah.

And your dad said to me, tell them it's mine. I won't deny it and I'll take care of it. Just go ahead and divorce them. And, um, and he said, unless you want to have an abortion and if you do, I'll drive you and you know, I'll be supportive. So I said, I can't afford three kids. I just can't. This is no way I can do this alone. Right. So I scheduled, I went to the doctor, scheduled an abortion.

And when I went for the abortion, my doctor said, let's just see if we can get a heartbeat, see how far you are. And he put it on speaker. And I heard the heartbeat and I believe very much in abortion. I think it's a necessary option for people that need an option. But for me, I could not do it. Right. And so I decided to have her. So then I was single and pregnant with two children.

kids and it was just like I would I remember riding my bike in Oxford Acres and I would ride past people's houses and I would see their lights on and think that they were all having dinner together as a family and I would cry on my bike and say why can't I have this why why am I I'm so not good at this I just can't figure this out mm-hmm It was awful. Yeah, it was a bad time in my life.

that you... No, no.

And financially, I was just so because I had to provide him a car. I had to pay him half the house.

He came back for a short period of time again.

Yeah.

The worst one was, well, he kept the car. So he had a car. So he would drop me off at work. I work afternoons and he's supposed to pick me up at midnight. And on several occasions, he would get hammered and not show up. And there was a time I walked from the proving grounds at midnight back to Axford Acres.

Yeah. And there were times that Nels would be suspicious and Nels would come back and give me a ride. Nels was my gay friend. He was just the most wonderful buddy. Anyway, this one particular time he did not show up, did not show up. And Nels and this other girl, my little buddies, they were suspicious and they came back to the proving grounds like at one o'clock in the morning.

Yes.

And I'm still sitting there waiting for Greg to pick me up. and they came and got me, and they drove me home, and they said, you know, we'll come in the house with you because, again, Nels was very suspicious of what would be the situation. We opened the front door.

To throw himself in that situation. No, he was such a good friend. And we opened the door, and smoke is billowing out the front door. The smoke alarms are going off. The stove is on fire. Flames shooting out of the fire. And my children are asleep. All three of them are asleep in the house. And he is passed out drunk on the family room floor. And the house is on fire.

The steaks are on fire in the stove. Oh, my God. And it was like, okay. So, you know, Nels is putting out the fire. Diane's helping me get the kids out of bed and out on the front lawn to breathe. You know, I just it was like that's that's very chaotic. It was very chaotic. So shortly after that, there was the breakfast departure, which we all know the story of the breakfast departure.

Yes.

One time I had been beat up pretty bad, badly, and I was really in bad shape. And I was up in the bedroom, locked in the bedroom, and he eventually passed out on the couch in the family room. And I got up because it was quiet. And I came down into the kitchen and I had a cast iron skillet that Grandma Yoles had given me. And I

took the skillet and I went to the couch and I stood over him and I was so black and blue all over. I mean, my logic was I'm going to take the cast iron skillet and I'm going to hit him on the head and I'm going to smash his brains out. And when the police get here, they will see how physically beat up I am and it will be self-defense and it'll be okay. And I stood for a very long time.

And then two thoughts ran through. The first one, which was not the most overpowering, which was if I don't kill him in the first swing, he'll get up and use the pan on me. Yeah. The second thought, which is the one that won, was if you kill him and if you don't get off on self-defense, the kids will be alone. I cannot lose my kids. I went back upstairs and locked the door and I did not do it.

But that's how desperate I was. I was very mean.

Yeah, that's it. Because I knew because at that time your dad was using very heavily and my family lived far away. Yeah. And it was like I was literally all that you guys had.

infatuated with them.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I knew that this was. Yeah, I could not.

Oh, my God. They were so who wouldn't have been. They were so good to me.

There was so much I was so far in debt and it was such my self-esteem was so smashed. It was so it was such a horrible, horrible time that looking back on it, I'm amazed. That was my life.

Well, I mean, I could tell you a thousand stories, not just the ones where they use me as a goalie in the basement when they played hockey and I had a zillion pads on and stuff and they just kept shooting pucks at me. But the better stories are, you know, my brothers both had paper routes, which was common for boys in the 50s.

It really does. Yeah, it really because, you know. Well, even I would say even at 17, you know, being pregnant and my father was very disappointed in me and made some very hurtful remarks to me. And I would say to anybody that is in that situation, any bad decisions that you've made that you got yourself there, that was that decision. And tomorrow is another day and you can choose again. Right.

Dust your knees off. You can choose again.

Yep.

You're saying to yourself, Monica, that, oh, my God, I've met this lady a lot of times. I would never think she'd be that stupid to be in a situation like that.

I would be stronger. People that are like that, in my opinion, are such top drawer bamboozlers. Yeah. I mean, there's been books that have been written called Smart Women, Foolish Choices. And it's like, I know really smart women that... Incredible.

I worked with a lady that she was like my role model and she was really a great person and sent herself to school to become an engineer, then got a master's in business and just did all sorts of things. And I know two different times that she was in relationships that.

She just like would come home from a business trip and her husband was in bed with another woman or met this guy and he promised her the moon and all he did was ring up her charge cards and stuff and not work and left her in complete debt. Like, yeah, it happens because we want to believe we want.

maybe I don't know if anybody else can relate to this, but maybe it's only the time or the era that I grew up in, but being prom queen or being the head cheerleader are all those things that we, when we're very young and impressionable and, you know, we haven't got things figured out. Those things kind of cement, like, I don't want to say maybe values or criteria to judge yourself by. Yeah.

And so I think that we become, for me, Somebody telling you you're pretty and that they want you to be desired. And those butterflies that you feel in a relationship become very addictive there. Absolutely. I mean, it's a it's a high for sure. It's a drug. Yeah.

And so like any other drug, it's like I feel like when I would get in that situation and what would happen was the cycle was that I would get out of a very bad relationship. And so then I would be alone because I'm not going to be bamboozled again. And I just need to protect my kids and be with my kids.

And you get so lonely that the first person that comes along that suspects that feeds into that and supplies you that drug again. Yes. And so there you are down that path again.

Oh, yeah, this is all in Michigan. Livonia, Michigan. Livonia, Michigan. 29583 McIntyre. And in the wintertime, my brother Larry would put me on the sled with all his papers, and he would pull me the whole neighborhood. I'm talking this neighborhood was probably... I'm going to guess a thousand little after the war, three bedroom brick houses. Bungalows. Yeah, little bungalows.

And while I take responsibility for my own actions, I think that... A lot of our society really sets females up for that. I mean, every advertisement is you look hot and then a guy, you know what I mean? You get that validation.

Yeah, it's rough. So when I finally met Dave Barton... By then I was so jaded.

That when a nice guy came along, I mean, like I remember we went a couple of years where he had an engagement ring for me that I just would not accept because every time he would say, I would say, I'm not good at this.

yeah I'm not good at this yeah the pattern shows one thing so how could I'm a failure at this I'm I I can't I can't I don't know how to be married yeah but then you did it I finally did it and it's surprising that I did do it because even if Dak can tell you the day of my wedding David begged me not to do it he said I can't pick you up again mom wow yeah

I'd never figured out on my own.

Honestly, if I had to figure it out on my own, I still believe that. Like, if I should ever date again, which right at this moment I have no intention of, I would not date without, like, Dax picking up the person or something. You know, like somebody I trust. That's how I feel.

Oh, my. It's my favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite memory in my whole. If you know how if you could time travel. Yes. The moment I would go back to would be those weekends where we would start in the morning. We would have breakfast in my bed and Carly was little and she would crawl around on us. And David was reading David Copperfield in school required reading.

And I would read chapters of David Copperfield and we would all be snuggled under the covers and we would spend the whole day. It would be like lunchtime. Oh, I'd go down to the kitchen and bring more food back up. And we would just. It was just so, so happy. It was the best.

And he would pull me on the sled and deliver all his papers. And then there was a guy, rain or shine, even in the winter would come around with his truck that sold cotton candy and caramel corn and stuff. And he would always say to me when the truck would be approaching, do you want some cotton candy?

I just remember like when I was on midnights that I would try to stay awake during the day with Carly. And that was why I took midnight so I could still be with Carly. And then I would leave at, you know, eleven forty five to get to work. But after dinner and Carly was in bed, I would lay on the floor with you and David because I wanted to have time with you and be with you.

So we'd put the pillows on the floor by the TV and you guys would watch a TV show and I'd have one of you on each side of me with my arm around you. They were such terrorists. I would be so tired and I'd be asleep and I would hear them. They would like clap their hands really louder. They'd say or I'd hear them say, mom, mom. And I'm half asleep. I'm so tired.

And they would say, we're taking the car. We're going up to Kroger. Can we have money? All right. And I'd say, see my purse.

You wanted my attention.

Very candidly, I will tell you that we had a visit from my in-laws and they were sitting in the family room and they started openly talking about how good my two stepchildren were and how awful my three biological children were because we had custody of all five.

And they started talking about it and I said to them, I'm very uncomfortable with you speaking badly about my children and I need to ask you to stop. And they kept going and I asked them again. And when they kept going a third time, which I actually think it was choreographed by my ex-husband, and I just stood up and yelled down to your bedroom, Dax, pack your

shit we're out of here and i went in the kitchen and got a garbage bag and i went to carly's bedroom and started throwing her shit in and my shit in and and we dax came running up from the lower level with his bag and david ran out of his bedroom with his bag and we got in the car But what had happened just prior to this happening was all in one weekend while they were visiting.

caramel corn and he would reach in his pocket and buy me a caramel corn and I would sit on the sled and he would pull me and then my brother Tom also had a paper route and he would put me on the think about this my brother Tom even though he's four years older than me people in the neighborhood thought we were twins because I was the same size as him and

And I was going to school at night.

And I did not have a problem with his kids. I actually loved his kids very much. And I felt very much like in that movie. I felt bad when we separated that I had to cut off that relationship.

It's so hard. I don't know how people do it. Honestly, I admire anybody that can do it successfully. And I gave it my all. In fact, I remember seeing a therapist at the time and saying, I just can't bake enough cupcakes to make this right. It just was the hardest.

You're dealing with kids that have a lot of baggage because they've been a battleground for their parents to fight their property in a divorce. And they're damaged. And you're trying to blend them with your kids. And you have a partner that has his baggage and your kids that have their baggage. And it's everybody living in one house. And it's just... Yeah, it was horrid.

Or maybe I just thought that. And we were even reminded, no, she even made comments about how bad our English was. Uh-huh. our manners and our grammar mine as well and what she even said when we got engaged she said to me she said well of course congratulations i want rick to be happy and she said um uh of course we would be happy for rick to remarry if he if he should find a nice girl

And I heard that pretty loud and clear. Yeah.

And then his father actually told me one time that I was the worst thing that ever happened to their family. Oh, really? Yeah. And then the fact that we went at Christmas and we watched them open presents and everybody got presents except my children. And Carly was like three years old. And Carly kept waiting very patiently for her turn to open a present. Oh, wow. It just ripped my heart out. Yeah.

It was just.

Very hard on my self-esteem.

I looked up to him.

And he was, he looked like the Marlboro man. He was, he was everything a girl would want in a husband. I mean, when you were shopping, you would think, oh my God, this guy is a deal.

Yeah. He was, he was excellent. And then it became very apparent to me very quickly in the relationship that he was very, very, to dump out the silverware drawer on the floor and say that I was a pig because I didn't stack the forks in the drawer. Or the meat wasn't filed in the freezer as in beef all goes with beef and pork all goes with pork and chicken all goes with chicken.

He was a very small boy. He had a lot of health issues when he was a little kid. Right. And so anyway, I would sit on the front handlebars of his bicycle, which he also had the paper bag with all the papers on this handlebars. And he would pedal me all over his route. And when he would take me to the paper station, he would stop at this little, I don't know, like a beer and wine store.

And I'm a very neat person. Yeah, I'd say so. I keep a very clean house. Tidy. I was often told I was a pig. Controlling. He was super controlling.

And it beat me up because I started really believing it. I started really. That you were trash. I did believe I was really trash and low rent and that. How long were you married to him? Two years.

Very physically fit. He believed in exercise running marathons.

I got to the point living with him and we were in therapy, you know, almost our whole marriage. And I just got to the point where I just realized this is not going to get better. And there's nothing I can do to make it better. And then subsequently, the next thought in my head was. And I cannot go home to my parents and tell them I'm getting divorced again.

I cannot tell people at work I'm going to get divorced again. I cannot drag my kids through another divorce. I cannot do that. The only option is to die. And so I had a friend at work that had given me a key to her house and I told me she I never confided in her, never told her anything that was going on in my house. But she had an antenna and we were not close girlfriends.

We were just work friends. And she walked into my office one day and said. Here's the key to my house. She was single. Here's the key to my house. If you ever need a place for you and your kids to come, you are always welcome. And your children are welcome as well.

Yeah. Well, she ended up being a therapist, a alcohol and substance abuse therapist. Yeah. But anyway, she walked out and I thought, why would she do that? Nobody knows what's going on. She knew. I mean, it was so obvious. She was an angel. She was an angel. And I'm so forever grateful for her. I mean, there's so much she gave me. Yeah.

And he would buy me a... RC Cola and a moon pie. And I would sit there and watch him fold papers and load his paper bag. And I never asked for anything. My brothers just always, they just.

And so anyway, I was having just a horrific day one day and I went to her house. She wasn't home. I opened her garage and I pulled my car in to I was going to run the exhaust and kill myself. And I went in and I knelt down on the floor to, I forget what I was doing now, kneeling down on the floor to get something or, oh, to suck the tailpipe.

Yeah. This is brutal. It is brutal. And I had on white pants. And all of a sudden I realized, Jesus, her crotch falls. My pants are getting dirty. And the absurdity of that, that I was going to kill myself, but I was concerned about my pants getting dirty. I went into a hysterical laughing thing, opened the garage drawer, drove the car out and said, no, I got to fix this.

You can't just run away from everything. You have to fix this.

Which is a good supervisor over three departments.

And and the Longley Press show. Yeah. That they had out there. Yeah.

I started as an account executive in what they call that product information. And by the time I left two years later, I was vice president in motorsports, merchandising and marketing. Yeah. And you loved that job, right? Loved it. Loved it. But the only drawback was that to be in that job, you really should be a single person. You really needed to put in a lot of hours.

And it was very, very hard for me with three kids.

Always wanted to.

Since I read Henry David Thoreau in high school and he said that it's as fitting and proper to build your own house as a bird builds a nest. And I said to myself, I'm going to do that someday.

I don't think so. I think they genuinely, I mean, maybe I'm delusional, but I honestly think they just really liked me. Like they were just good to me.

I actually paid cash for the property because your brother David had given me a stock tip. He was in high school and he was taking a class in school and was watching stocks and he told me to buy Consumer's Power. Oh, really? And it went, it like, I forget, he'll tell you, but it tripled or quadrupled or something. Oh, no kidding.

So I had the cash and I paid cash for the lot off of Herb and Margaret Hoover. And then I went out and thought, because I didn't think there was going to be any issue with building my own house, being my own contractor. And I went to the banks and as a single woman. With zero building experience? I'm not going to say they laughed at me outright. I'm just going to say there was some snickering.

So when I had bought the property, Herb said, if you need a building loan, I would be happy to loan it to you. But I thought, I'll go to a bank. I'm not going to do that. So I went back to Herb and said, are you still interested in giving me a building loan? And he said, absolutely. And the guy had met me just two times. Wow. But he just believed in me. And so I took that loan in.

Yes, yes. He didn't just paint. He roughed it in. He did a lot of things in his voice. Yeah.

Yeah, we were real close. We often did things together. Like we had a shopping center that was two blocks from our house and it was 57 stores all under one roof. Wonderland Shopping Center, which was really a big deal in the 50s. And they would walk up there with me and we just, you know, look in all the stores together and stuff. I mean, we did things regularly together.

It was a turning point in my life because I found out that when you build a house, like anything in life, that you dig the hole one day. You don't build the whole house. You just dig the hole. And then, you know, you can get a book on it, which now you would go online. But I had bought a book.

And the next thing after building the house, you need to, you know, pour the basement walls and then you have to, you know, put the cap on the floor and then you build the walls and then you do the rough plumb and you do the rough. And I learned that everything was just one step at a time and that you didn't have to conquer the whole thing. And then pretty soon you actually have a house.

And it was like this huge victory to me. It was this look, I could do it. If I could do this, I could do anything now.

But I'd never internalized that concept prior to this. It was really a big, big moment.

And I want to give credit where credit is due. I want you to know that while I was doing this, I worked for Brent Morgan and Brent Morgan. I probably could have done it without him. However, thank God for Brent Morgan because Brent Morgan would give me so many little tips like any new guys and stuff. Oh, he would recommend people and he would tell me, you know, like, did you.

Did you go prop those basement walls? You know, you got to walk out basement. You really need to brace those walls before they do this. Cause you know, you could have trouble with it. And it was like, how do I brace the walls? And he would tell me and I'd say, okay.

And I'd go out there and do it, you know, but like, what a great person to be in my, I've had so many really awesome people in my life.

Oh, I'm so grateful.

When I hired in at Campbell Ewald, one of the things I said in the interview was that I was starting a business and that I would need time off for that business from time to time. And they agreed to it. And I was on salary with them.

Yeah, I had a great interview and it was a real good thing. But what it was was Brent Morgan called me and said, hey, listen, there's a new person at Chevy PR doing long lead. And I bet if you called her, she could really use some help putting it together. And so I called Janet Eckhoff and I said, hey, you know, I understand you're doing long lead.

I've done it before and I would be happy to contract. And she went in to talk to Ralph Kramer, who knew me. And that afternoon they called me back. And that afternoon I went in and I had a purchase order. And that was the start of the business.

Two years, and it was very scary. When I finally did make the release, it was tough financially. The first year of shows and shoots, I think I made $31,000 gross. Oh, boy. And so I had to pay payroll out of that and expenses and feed you guys. It was a little sketchy. Yeah, yeah. But we did it. Right. But we did it. And then we doubled the next year and we doubled the year after that.

And pretty soon it was a real full fledged business.

Yeah, my theory has always been, I think because I was a waitress when I was young, is if I have to bet on me, if it's a 50-50 chance of I'm going to make it or I'm not going to make it, if I'm the variable, I bet on me any day of the week. Yeah. And that's how I felt like, okay, I'm going to start this business. And yeah, I read a lot of businesses fail.

But if I've got a 50-50 chance, I'm going to tip the scale. I'm going to do that. Right.

She kicked that boy in the face.

Yeah. When I tell people in Hood River that know me now as a retired 66 year old woman that I own my own business and I worked one hundred hours a week, you know, that sometimes more than one hundred. They look at me and I think they think.

With her little Vans tennis shoes.

You're not working 100 hours a week. Right. That's an exaggeration. But you did.

I loved them. I loved every one of them.

being around that many young people for that period of time was like energizing or did it change your life it was lifeblood when i would be with my shows and shoots crew i just would be so happy it was just so fun it was hard work but we we always joked and we always had stories and it was just they were all so beautiful every one of them were so beautiful and they were so invested to do a good job and i don't know it was just it was like magic

I never asked anybody to do something I wouldn't do.

He's just the most wonderful human being.

But I didn't know it at the start.

He didn't. He didn't have a fast come online. He didn't. He wasn't the fast dancer with the hottest moves and, you know, clothes that he couldn't afford and charged. He just wasn't that person.

Ninety. I think that's right, because it would be 28 years this November. So 90.

Very much.

Yeah.

No, I never thought it would work. I totally went into it feeling that I'm not good at this. Never going to be good at this and just enjoy this moment and not even looking to where it's going to go.

I did, but he asked many times.

And I resisted because I was sure I would end up in divorce. Right. And I just, you know, it was a whole different thing. And he taught me so much.

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I liked about him. And when you say this quiet confidence, one of the things was no matter how busy I was with my business, no matter how many things I did, he was never that person like previous partners I had had. He would always say, oh, my God, that sounds so perfect for you. Go do it. Go do it.

You know, he was always encouraging and wasn't threatened by. He wasn't threatened at all. And all the times I was in the road and anybody who's worked for GM or probably any industry, when you are on the road a lot with a lot of the same people all the time, there is much.

That's right. It's much fooling around. And I never, ever did because I would never want to have seen his face had he found out something like that. But the thing is, He never, ever, ever even remarked like, do people fool around or would you ever consider? Yeah. He was so confident with himself.

Oh, my God. So it made me even more so I would never think of.

Oh, I regret that. You were gone so much, right? I regret that now. I feel like I'm lucky I didn't lose him. I mean, he was a married man that didn't have a wife often.

And by contrast, Barton was the one and he never, ever balked about it. He stayed with Carly and he didn't just babysit her or, you know, cohabitate with her. He taught her things and he was gentle with her and he was patient with her. I mean, she tested him. I mean, you think about a stepchild.

She'd throw a pencil at his eyeball and tell him she couldn't do the math. And he would just very calmly, that's not going to be, you know, that's not going to work and you need to take a breath. We're going to try this again.

Oh, God, he was fantastic. Fantastic. When Carly was in Outward Bound at Cranbrook in her 10th grade year.

Yeah, it's like you go for a couple weeks out in the woods with a compass and a sleeping bag. Yeah, it's a real deal. It's a real deal. And they do it in March. And the previous year there had been an incident with the Cranbrook crew.

They got stranded and somebody got frostbite. It was bad. Yeah, it was real bad. Yeah. when Carly went here, we are watching the news back in Michigan and we see that there's snow storms in the mountains. And I think about my little five foot two Carly and she's so little. And I say to Dave, you know, Dave, they're having snow storms. I'm so worried about her. She's going to get hypothermia.

And Dave says, She's not going to get hypothermia. She's going to be fine. And I said, Dave, you know, I'm not like that. I need to know why she's going to be okay. Give me something logical. And he says very calmly, she's not going to get hypothermia because her clothes are going to be dry. And I know her clothes are dry because I unpacked her bag before she left.

And I put everything in individual Ziploc bags so that everything is dry in her backpack. And I thought.

And to me, it was like.

I loved my brothers and I genuinely did things on my own that I loved and enjoyed with them. But when I started to get into like junior high and high school and my friends were doing things after school and I wanted to do it with them, I did not have the option of going with them. I was to report back home because. my mom needed help. And, um, that I was a little resentful of that. Yeah.

Exactly. But to me, it was like, this is what real dads do. Right. This is what real dads that really love their children do.

No. Yeah. He just totally or even when you're smart enough to go, oh, this is fucking nice.

But even the day that your brother got married, that day your father called on the phone and said, hey, when they do the dance where the bride and groom dance and then the parents dance also, I want to dance with you. I don't want you to dance with Dave. I want you to dance with me because he's our son and he's our baby that we're giving up.

And I said to, he said, I said, well, let me talk to Dave about it. And I said to Dave, how do you feel about this? And he said, I I don't have a problem with going ahead. He was so secure.

Never, ever got in that testosterone. Yeah.

Went on all our family vacations. Went on our family vacations. I even bought his tickets.

Thank you. To me, it was like you kids didn't get divorced. We did.

I didn't ever want you to have to choose.

I retired twice.

The first time I think was in 2002, maybe.

I definitely had depression. Right. During that time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Really, really bad.

Yes. And just like you're saying about your dad, it's like I never really thought of it that I had depression until I had a really, really serious episode. The long and short of it is I had someone say something to me that really triggered from my past being sexually abused as a child. Uh-huh. And I went into a real severe, severe depression.

I honestly went to work in my pajamas for a couple of weeks and did not bathe. When you own your own business, you can get away with that. Right. And then I and Dave was taking care of his mother at the time in Florida. I was alone at the house and I just got to. I mean, I don't know how explicit you want me to be on that.

And then the last baby she had Rob, my mom, I'm, I'm going to guess, I think my mom was 38 or 40 when she had Rob. Oh, wow. And she did not recover as quickly. I don't think she wanted to recover. I think she was really enjoying the hired hand and,

I tried, but a real serious attempt. This was not, I mean, other times I thought at the time it was serious. This one was, I did the double whammy. I mean, I heat duct taped all the vacuum cleaner hoses to the car to make sure I would get asphyxiated. And I took every single pill in the medicine cabinet to make sure that I would die.

David has children.

Right.

Oh, so many. Yeah, absolutely.

In that moment, the only way I can describe it is it's like if someone took you and put you in a black garbage bag and cinched the top and you are in a garbage bag suffocating and you're so hot and so miserable and it's so black and so that the only thing you can think of is... I have to die because I can't keep going like this. Right.

And again, like you say, I had all the indicators that my life was successful, but I wasn't able to feel it. I was only able to feel that I was suffocating and that I just could not take another step. I was so tired. Right. I just could not take another step.

I did. They wanted to put me inpatient and I did not want to. I did not want to be away from Barton. And so I did an outpatient program, which that would make sense then. But for me, it was like here's when the lights really went on is, first of all, as soon as Dave Barton came home and he was this wonderful self.

He wrapped his arms around me and I asked him to take, I surrendered for the first time in my life. I surrendered and I said, I need you to take care of me. And he said, I've been waiting for you to ask. And so he immediately drove me right from there to our family doctor. We had no appointment. Went to the nurse, explained it.

The doctor came out, told us of a psychiatrist that he wanted us to go to. We left there and went to this office and we sat down. And the guy's first words were, you've had a suicide attempt. I assume you were sexually abused as a child. Really? And to me, that was, I was so pissed off at him. Like, that's to me like, oh, and you hate your mother. I mean, it was like, are you kidding me?

What a cheap shot. And I was sitting there just steaming. And I answered his questions very curtly and short. And he wanted to put me in treatment. And I agreed to go to the outpatient. We walked out the door. I got in the car. I said, I'm never seeing that guy again. And Dave said, what's the matter? And I go, are you kidding me? Ask me if I was sexually abused. What a.

crappy thing that's just crappy it feels lazy right or oh yeah yeah it was like you can't take the easy road yeah and like you're not paying attention of what's going on in my life right because you're pretty convinced in those moments that it's all the things around you right now right now yeah yeah And then the lights went on and I connected in the car in that same moment.

All of a sudden the light went on and it occurred to me that the comment that the Me Too moment I'd had with a GM executive and that sexual abuse as a kid, the powerlessness of. being a kid and it was my dad's boss and I could not tell anyone because I didn't want my dad to lose his job. And so here I am with a GM executive and he did it. And it's like, I can't tell any exact situation.

Yeah, they had a good romance.

I can't lose my, my purchase order. I can't tell anyone.

And it was so the dots connected and it was like, Oh my God.

And so then I went very open-mindedly.

Yeah. So when I was in, I've got to think if I was eighth grade or ninth grade. You know, Rob was in my room in his crib and we shared a room. And so when he came home from the hospital, he was born in August and he was a preemie. So in September, when school started, he was still on a real every three or four hour bottle schedule.

And it doesn't matter how smart and how cunning you are.

That you can't see it.

To me, it's a real confusing squirrel cage. When I said that to Barton that I need you to take care of me, the longer version of that is when I said that to him, I said, whatever everybody else has learned in life, I was absent that day. I can't tell the difference of who to trust and who not to trust.

I need you to be that person that tells me who's untrustworthy because I don't have that skill set.

And that's how I've gotten myself in the jam of all these marriages and everything else, because I don't have that skill set. And, and so when you say like that feeling is like, so not only is it vulnerable, it's like, you just want to keep looking in the backpack for the tool and everyone else has got the tool. Why don't I have the tool? And maybe it's down here somewhere. No, it's not down here.

I don't have it. And it's so, it's confusing to me and it's baffling and it's,

Flawed, yet you're not capable.

Why can't you take care of yourself?

No, I have a very hard time sleeping.

Or in a program, it's not just medication is that, you know, you do need to get outside and get vitamin D. You do need to be walking or exercising so that you can get rid of the lousy chemicals you're producing and bring in good ones. You know, right.

And my mother will tell you to this day, she thinks she was very clever, which I suppose she was that. Yeah. When she would hear him cry, she would pretend to be sleeping and wait for me because I'm not going to let him cry. So I would go downstairs. And back those days, there was not a microwave. So you heated a bottle on the stove.

Yes.

And I think I did make plans. I think I was really looking ahead. And it wasn't like I was planning Barton's death or looking forward to his death. It was when he dies, what is my game plan? How am I going to get through this? And I know that it's going to require a lot of faking it until I make it. And so how am I going to do that?

Absolutely.

I have rules and rules that I didn't have before he died. Like when he was actively dying, we had a lot of sleepless nights because of the pain he was in and stuff. So it was on. It was not uncommon for us to take a nap during the day together because we had been up all night. Yeah. And right now it's napping and sleeping are. They're no no's. I'm not allowed. Yeah.

I can't allow myself because that's the sliding.

I'm not allowed to stay under the covers.

Absolutely.

I did that ahead of time.

If I won't get myself out of bed to exercise, that's one thing. But I will never. I mean, you know, with you kids, no matter how depressed I was when we were going through all that, when you were growing up, I would get up and go to work to feed you guys. I would get up for you guys. I might not have gotten up for me, but I would get up for you guys. Yeah.

Absolutely. It's my specialty.

I could find if you buried one addict in Cobo Hall with a couple million men that were all healthy. I will find the guy and I will take him home and try to fix him.

Maybe. But usually if you're with an addict, they have the same, they like the same drugs you do. Most addicts love the butterfly feeling, that drug that you get in a relationship. They love a good codependent relationship. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do. It's singing a lot of my song when I...

Glass bottle. You put it in a pan of water and you heat it up.

experienced it yeah one of the things i'm very very grateful to barton for is um we made a pact uh we consciously talked about it and we repeated it often we would talk about it and reiterate what our pact was and that was that we would be 100 honest even if we didn't want to during the process and that we would experience it together because i i said to him

i can be by your side and i can be supportive and i will you make all the calls to all the shot you know you call the shots on this on what your treatments are and how you do this and i will be there and be with you but i need you to be honest all the way with me and i need you to share it with me and this is a man he's an engineer you know not necessarily foaming at the mouth with with discussion he's not over shares like you and i

Right. And so it was probably the very best, other than that first few months when the butterflies are crazy in the beginning, but probably the best part of our marriage because we talked regularly, openly, and really shared the experience. And just like sharing an experience like a pregnancy and a birthing of a child, the bond that we were able to have You know, forged from that experience.

Yes. And my brother Rob was he had quite a few bouts with a thing they called Rosie. Oh, I think Rose Rose.

It was extremely intimate. Yeah. Very, very close and very intimate. And I'm actually grateful. I feel really grateful for that experience with him, even though it was living hell. Yeah. I'm grateful for it.

Somebody passed out cigars for that baby. Yeah. You know, that was somebody's little boy. That was somebody's son. And he was loved and celebrated. What happened? What went wrong?

I forget it was something that you said something, Oh, my mom's married a lot of times. And because I'm so ashamed of that, you know, I, you know, it was, it was hard for me that, Oh geez, that's the dirty laundry. You know, do we have to air that? Yeah. You know?

It is. But then again, at the same time, it's like, you know what? You went through that too. I didn't go through it on my own. You kids, I, I, I drug you through it and I, it's one of my regrets, but it is what it is. And we got where we got because of it. And yeah, it's yesterday.

hearing all these things about myself do you know what though um just you know not to keep beating it to death but and i haven't talked about that movie in years but that movie um that we were referring to when people do art and when people do come out and talk about things like that since that movie yeah i'm still ashamed of how many times i've been married and all the things i went through however

That made me realize that I'm not an idiot. I just made some bad choices. And a lot of other people made those bad choices, too. And guess what? They're not idiots. They're nice people. And so I feel like if you have your story and you share your story and something comes of it that someone else hears it, it's like, gosh, that would be great.

And so much wonderful from him.

Thank you.

That's so nice.

Crazy rash. Yeah. Real rosy cheeks like. Yeah.

Rob used to get it frequently. I look back on it, maybe he had it a couple times, but in my memory, it's frequently. And he would run these ridiculously high fevers. And back in those days, the theory was that you give them ice baths. So you would take a pan with water and ice in it and put bath towels in it.

You'd lay one bath towel on the floor and put the baby on top and another ice towel on top of him while he screamed his lungs out. Oh, jeez. That sounds medieval. Yeah. It was medieval and it was the cruelest thing. And he would just scream. He's just a little baby. And so my mom and I would do that during the night.

And then I'd go to school the next morning, you know, after torturing the little baby or giving him bottles during the night. So, again, yeah, I feel like.

Well, and I, you know, looking back on that, I mean, I really didn't have any options at the time, as you remember. You and David were my support system. However, looking back on it and knowing what I know now, I feel really sad for you guys because I feel like I put you in the same position that I hated being in.

Do you remember how great you guys were? I worked midnights at the GM Proving Grounds and I would come home. I'd get off at eight and I would fly home. I'd be home by like 8.15 and I would come in and little Carly would always be

dressed in a dress with pat mother's shoes and tights with ruffles on the butt and i'm talking she was very little and i would say um why didn't you put her in her little jammies and it was like she's a girl mom but if she would wake up, you know, before I got home, they would take her in. They inevitably babies always fill their drawers during the night.

And so in order not to deal with it, like I'd walk in the bedroom and there would be the changing table with her jammies from the night before and a poopy diaper. And there would be like, 6,000 wipes all just packed on top of it like they just touched it once and they would take her in the bathtub and just dunk her lower half of her body in the water to get her clean and then dress her.

I mean that, come on, how loving is that?