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From Whiskey to Water
Sam Cowen
“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.”
– MARY OLIVER, PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING POET, FROM THE POEM ‘THE USES OF SORROW’
It took me still more years to learn that that person was myself. Thank you to all who helped me realise that and to find the light. I know who you are. I hope you know who you are too.
“I am still learning to love the parts of myself that no one claps for.”
– RUDY FRANCISCO, POET AND ACTIVIST
“I walk around like everything is fine but deep down inside my shoe, my sock is falling off.”
– UNKNOWN
Acknowledgments
This book has been a long time in the making – not in the writing of it, but in the living of it. Fourteen years is a very long time and gratitude has to be extended to all those who lived through it with me and loved me anyway.
To my family, near and far: sometimes I have dragged them, sometimes they have dragged me, through all my adventures, both anticipated and unexpected. Special mention to my lovely husband who did more diets than is humanly decent and my children whose perspective has helped reframe my own.
To my friends: those who were there before the storm and sailed through it and those who met me since and accepted it. There are no words to describe how much I love you.
To those individuals who allowed me to use their stories in this book: I have deliberately changed names and places and kept descriptions to a minimum but I hope I have done you all justice. Often it was your generosity that saved me.
To a fantastic publishing team: thank you, Melinda Ferguson, for inspiring me, for believing in this and pushing it for months. And thank you to Sean Fraser for an amazing edit. This book is better because of you. Thank you, too, to all the behind-the-scenes people who make books possible.
To all the swimmers, the people I swim with often and those on the periphery. You all inspire me over and over. You all know who you are.
Preface
My daughter is eight when my secret stops being a secret. I am driving her and a friend home for a sleepover when it occurs to me that my secret is no more.
“Bella,” says Genevieve casually, “my mom used to drink lots of wine.”
My fingers tighten on the steering wheel.
How does she know this? We’ve never told her that. We told her Mommy is allergic to alcohol. Mommy can’t have a glass of wine or a beer like other people because she gets sick and has to lie down. We have edited out how Mommy also used to throw up and make promises to host huge lunches that she would then forget or sometimes drove home on the wrong side of the road or fell asleep in car parks and had all her friends panicking for hours as to where she might have been.
“Really?” The little friend is both cheerful and curious. “How much is lots?”
My daughter is full of information.
“Lots. Like so much. Like TONNES.”
I don’t correct her on her unit of measurement. I don’t say anything at all. I just keep driving.
Genevieve continues.
“Luckily, she stopped drinking before she got pregnant with my bruvver or he would’ve been born stupid. And then I could have told him he was stupid and it would actually be true.”
I step in gingerly.
“Now, darling, we don’t call anyone stupid, because that’s not very nice, is it?”
But the eight-year-old is having none of it.
“It might not be nice, but it would be true. He would be stupid and have to go to a school for stupid children.”
Clearly she has a working knowledge of foetal alcohol syndrome.
I don’t remember much more about the journey home. I do know that my alcoholism is now classroom conversation. And that perhaps that merits a further conversation at home.
So, at home, I tackle my 11-year-old. Christopher is playing DragonVale on his iPad. This is both time- and attention-consuming.
“Chris, how much have you told your sister about Mommy’s drinking?”
Chris knows more than Genevieve. He knows I haven’t had a drink in over 13 years and he knows a little about why. He knows I would lose both memory and time, long stretches I could not account for. He knows it was very bad for me and made me sick. He knows it upset Daddy. But, as far as I know up to this point, that’s all he knows. I need to know if there is more.
Silence.
“Chris, I’m talking to you.”
“I’ve got a new dragon. It’s a Kairos.”
“I don’t care. How much have you told your sister about Mommy’s drinking?”
Silence.
“CHRIS!”
He eyes me coldly.
“This dragon is very difficult to get.”
And this conversation is very difficult to have.
“But have you told her I’m an alcoholic?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe Daddy did. Can I just finish this level?”
He does not care how his sister knows. He does not care at all. As long as he has been alive I have never had a drink. Never smelled of wine. I have never woken up and not recognised him or had to explain why I am home late or why I am still in the clothes I was wearing yesterday. He has never seen me drunk. It is not relevant to his life. Certainly not as relevant as DragonVale.
“Does it bother you?”
“No, because I’ve got it now.”
“What?”
“The dragon, I’ve got it now.”
“No, I mean does it bother you that I’m an alcoholic?”
He turns to me in irritation.
“Are you still talking about that?”
“I’m trying to be a concerned mother.”
“Well don’t. It’s weird.”
And
