ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife
Book One, Part Two, Chapter 147: Al-Anon Speaks
I’m at my first Al-Anon meeting.
I’m the third one to arrive, and Lisa — tonight’s leader — gives me a newcomer’s packet containing pamphlets on the disease of alcoholism and information on other Al-Anon meetings around town.
Eventually, twelve of us sit in a loose circle in this brightly lit room of a church hall. Lisa opens the meeting with the Serenity Prayer followed by the pledge of anonymity, which states: Whom you see here, What you hear here, When you leave here, Let it stay here.
Lisa reads a passage from an Al-Anon book on setting healthy boundaries. People respond, each given as much time as he or she wants, with no one interrupting.
These people may not know each other’s last name or what each does for a living or where each lives, but tonight they open their minds and hearts to each other. They share their true thoughts and feelings. They give each other slices of their life. They talk about growth, change, progress. They talk of old hurts. These people talk to each other in a way I don’t even talk to Joshua. They turn themselves inside-out with each other.
I’ve never heard of this concept before — a boundary. By listening to the sharing, I gather that it’s a healthy way one person separates himself from another. It’s letting another person know what’s acceptable to him and what isn’t, or what he’s capable of at that moment and what he’s not. It’s knowing our individual needs and wants and not letting another person trespass on those.
It’s basically knowing who we are and not letting another person take us over. It keeps us from feeling overwhelmed, taken advantage of, violated. It’s a way to differentiate ourselves from others. In setting healthy boundaries, we express ourselves. By respecting the boundaries of others, we allow them to express themselves.
This is an awakening.
Ernie and Joshua and I didn’t know about setting healthy boundaries, did we? If Ernie went to the track, he expected Joshua to go along, and Joshua went along. If Ernie needed help on his writing, I helped him. If Joshua needed Ernie’s advice or help on a screenplay or with Christy, he expected his daddy to come through, and Ernie did. If I needed Ernie to help me with anything, even choosing clothes, he was always there.
Isn’t this how families work? Even if we’re hungry or tired or sick or angry or feeling overwhelmed or unhappy or torn in two, we fall in. Is there any other way? We three were family. It was the three of us against the world. Where would we be without each other?
In trouble, and that was the trouble. We were enmeshed and didn’t know it.
At meeting’s end, everyone stands to join hands and recite the Serenity Prayer once again. I don’t know the words. Ernie framed a copy of the prayer. I remember its hanging on a wall in one of our homes. What happened to it?
Our hands hold even as the Serenity Prayer is over.
“Keep coming back,” the others in the circle say in unison. “It works if you work it, and you’re worth it. Keep coming back.”
I guess I will.
