Over the years as my family grew, my mother only offered to babysit for Jodi, not the others. At Xmas she would get Jodi more than the others too. There was only room in her life for one daughter, my sister, and one grandchild at that time, and it was Jodi. She didn't share well at all.

When I was going through my first divorce and was so painfully broke, I asked her for $100 for a lawyer. She was running The Canteen, a hang out and burger/beer joint at the Mt. Washington Hotel where the employees would go on their time off. I worked for her there. She said she didn't have the money to lend me. Interestingly enough, the very next day I was sitting at the counter talking to an old drunk, PJ, who went on to tell me what a wonderful woman my mother was because she just gave him $100 to buy a car.

Alberta flashbacks over the years include her trashing the Xmas tree in 1964 in one of her drunken tantrums and throwing it into the front yard.

Coming on to my boyfriends and even Gary after we were married usually when she was half in the bag, sobbing, looking for someone to love her. Funny, no matter how much someone loved her, it wasn't enough whether it was one of her kids or one of her husbands. It just was never enough. She was never happy, satisfied, content, peaceful in her whole life, ever and she blamed it all on everyone but herself.

When my grandmother died, she had a $10K insurance policy in my grandfather's name that was to go to me. We had discussed this and my grandfather knew all about it. There was other insurance too. I never saw the money. My grandfather went to live with my mother immediately when my grandmother died. He was not an educated man and never handled money at all. My mother told me there was no insurance policy when I finally confronted her about it a year or so after the fact. Was I supposed to believe that?

My 2nd stepfather, Danny Taylor, had bought me a horse for Xmas in 1962 as a way to get back in my mother's good graces. The horse went to a pasture when we came back to NH to say until the next trip south. Amazingly, someone stole the horse! Bullshit. She sold it can kept the money I found out.

My grandmother bought me a horse in 1963 and I had him until I got married. He stayed at my mother's house because she had a barn but he wasn't a beginners horse. My sister kept asking to ride him and I kept telling her no. So, while I was in the hospital having Jodi, they let my sister take him for a ride at which time she promptly got thrown off into a telephone pole. After that, they couldn't afford to keep him any longer, sold him, and kept the money.

They bought my sister a horse who was never healthy. They spent thousands of dollars on a horse she couldn't ride but would never have it put to sleep or get rid of it because it was hers.

My grandmother was always buying me a dog. She bought me a wire haired Fox Terrier once. He ate the lining out of my mother's cashmere coat. Shortly thereafter he got hit by a car because she let him out without hooking him. Same thing happened with my Boston Terrier. My grandmother bought two, one for me and my sister. The male was mine. She let him out and he got hit by a car. My sister's died of old age.

Pay attention folks. I don't have to make this stuff up.

From the time we lived in the big house in Whitefield, a local girl, Marilea Jordan, babysat for my kids and lived with us fulltime for years. I don't know what I would have done without her or more importantly, what my kids would have done without her during this time.She had dated a good friend of mine who ended up being gay. Then Gary introduced her to Jack Spangler, a crazy Viet Nam Vet with strawberry blonde hair. He was outrageous and fun. They fell in love.

After a couple of years they decided to move to Alaska. Marilea was so happy and so excited. Her own family put the "fun" in disfunctional but she was/is wonderful with children.

However, unknown to me, Gary had raped Marilea and repeatedly had sex with her until she left. I don't know how I could have missed that but I did. Actually my kids caught him in bed with her once and promptly told me. He passed it off as bad judgement and SHE apologized. She was so afraid of losing my friendship and the kids that she never said a word of what really happened or what was going on.

Unfortunately for Marilea, the day before they were ready to leave for Alaska, Gary felt it was necessary to tell Jack that he had had sex with Marilea all along. Of course she hadn't told Jack. They got as far as Manchester, NH and he told her what Gary had said. He left her in Manchester and went on to Alaska alone where he still lives today.

You remember that "defining moment" for me, well, this was Marilea's. She went from one bad relationship to another. She ended up having 5 children by 3 different men, one committed suicide, others just left her. Imagine what her life might have been like if #1 Gary had left her alone and/or #2 he had never said anything to Jack.

It wasn't until 2004 all of this came to light. Marilea moved back to the area and I ran into her at the grocery store. She spilled out this entire story in the produce aisle and I was in tears because still, I had no idea. I called a "family meeting" with all my children because Gary and I were divorced for the last time by now. The truth came out that he had not only raped Marilea but had molested my youngest daughter, Amanda, on more than one occasion and masturbated in from of my oldest daughter when she was 13. I nearly had a stroke. I lived with a man off and on for over 34 years and didn't know him at all. It made me sick.

In 1975, Gary was floundering from one job to another, never paying bills. Even the $60 a month rent was a hardship. It became clear that sleeping with the landlord was easier than trying to come up with the rent. So I did. Thankfully he suffered from premature ejaculation so I paid the rent in about 5 minutes. Gary would babysit while I went to meet him.

Gary was running a garage in Whitefield and asked me to co-sign a bank loan for $500 so he could buy equipment for the garage. I had good credit at the time. He had none. Reluctantly, I signed. The money was for a friend of his to get out of town after a drug bust. He had been dealing speed out of the garage all the time and I never knew it.

So, I kicked him out. He moved into the Styles Farm, the local commune inhabited by several hippies and many others just passing through. We were divorced in 1976. I had 4 kids and a part-time job. In those days when you were approved for food stamps, you had to go to the bank to get them, stand in line, and suffer the embarrassment while the teller counted them out loud to you. It sucked. Gary told me no one would want me with 4 kids and he was right, or at least I thought so.

With all the pressure of no money, living in a slum, no help, I finally freaked out and left. I went to CA for 2 months and left him with the kids. During that time, he got into cocaine and was hospitalized. I received frantic calls that his death was emminent so I came back home in February, '77. He was also dealing drugs in the area right out of the house.

I had gall bladder surgery in 1978 and Gary took care of me and the kids. He, for all intents and purposes, had changed. He was working. He was contributing. He was helpful. He asked me to marry him again and I accepted. We were married for the second time on May 20th, 1978.
I didn't want to be like my mother. I didn't want my kids to have different last names. I didn't want anyone else telling them what to do. I wanted my family.

We went from being "normal" people to hippies almost over night. We moved out of a nice apartment into a trailer, hung out at the local college, partied at all the time and dragged the kids with us whenever possible. From the time I got married, I always worked. Even when I was finishing school, I worked part-time, summers, I had to but I partied right along with everyone else and never missed a day.

In the early 70s we moved into a trailer in Whitefield on a lot "given" to us my my stepfather which was 6/10th of an acre which he owned a deeded 60' wide right-of-way through. This meant he could drive through the living room if he chose to. It was also in their front yard basically. It was during this time that Gary went to farrier school in OK with the plan that he would work for himself as a blacksmith in the area. That only lasted a couple of years as he began to not show up for appointments or leave horses have shod and never go back. In his day he was the best around, but you just couldn't get him to work.

At some point during those early 70s, I got pregnant and had Amanda on November 14, 1971. We had been trying to adopt actually. It was a time when acquiring children seemed like a good idea no matter how ill prepared financially or emotionally you were.

Gary was working for a contractor at the time and we sold the trailer and moved to a small house in Twin Mtn under the assumption that it was a lease/purchase agreement. At least that's what Gary thought but he never did get anything in writing. In January of 1973, I had a hysterectomy and we adopted Andrew in February of the same year.

We were all sitting around watching TV one night when the front door opened without a knock and the contractor Gary worked for had a man with him. He was showing him our house to buy!!! What the fuck!!!

I started scrambling and went to FHA where we got approved for a big house in Whitefield with 4 bedrooms. So, we moved in. Gary's pot usage was increasing and his ambition decreasing. I was still working fulltime. I kicked him out in the summer of '75 but he was back after a couple of months. The house proved to be more than we bargained for so we moved into a 30' trailer with a 12' x 20' addition built on it for $60 a month rent. I loved the place. It was at the end of a dead end road with nothing but fields all around and the river. The septic tank was a 55 gal. drum and the bathroom was so small you had to step in sideways, but it was heaven for 6 years. This is when we started heating with wood exclusively and did so until 2002. We rented the house for a while, but ended up letting it go back to FHA. That was the first house.

Our daughter, Jodi, was born on October 9th, 1965. A beautiful, perfect baby who never cried, was potty trained and without a bottle by a year old. I went back to school thanks to a guidance counselor who went to the mat for me. Willis Reed fought to get me back in and for that I will always be grateful. I graduated in June, 1967 and got pregnant with my son, Todd, at the same time. He was born on March 2nd, 1968.

Gary had numerous jobs and we moved several times in the first 5 years we were married. Then he was working at a garage where he really seemed to "click".

1968 was probably the worst year of my life. My grandmother died suddenly after a routine surgery at the age of 57 in June of that year. I could not imagine my life without her and set about trying to kill the pain. Although I never got into smoking pot, I did every psychedelic drug known to mankind. At my insistence, Gary started smoking pot in the summer of 1968 and little did I know that would be the beginning of the end.