Looking up my past

 I had a great connection with a woman upstairs in my building.  She had a young daughter between my two kids, and they began seeing each other frequently.  Wendy’s daughter was named Rafael, and we were both at home too much, Wendy because she was newly married to her husband Ray, and because he was just finishing a law degree and we spent many hours together and took the children out frequently.  In the end, however, we both did something stupid and let the kids go downstairs by themselves. Riyad accidently slammed the door on Rafael’s finger.  We ran down and I took Rafael and her parents to Herrick, not realizing the best choice would have been children’s hospital in Oakland nearby.  They did not keep the finger joint in Ice, and by the time they got to the Oakland office, It was too late.  She lost that part of her finger, her ring finger.  They left soon after, and all the great times we had were lost in the shuffle.

I also had decided to meet with several friends from my group  at The YWCA.  One friend was Anne, a graduate student at Berkeley. One was Joyce, a social worker at children’s hospital in Oakland, and another was Joyce, alone with two kids and sleeping with everyone she could.  I stayed friends with the first two for many years.  I discovered that Anne a strange past, and Joyce was a bit overinvolved with men in Mexico.  She had been raped one time and was in a strange relationship with Frank, who was a drug dealer.  Obviously, I was not really like either of them and I soon realized my problem.  Joyce kept saying I could sleep with Frank, but I didn’t want to do so.

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