Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [63]
“Lola. Her name was Lola. It means ‘sorrow.’”
Another AA meeting. Another group session. Another AA meeting. Days like bumper-to-bumper traffic. Inches of time passed. Ever so often, a spurt of movement. Then, a minute later, nothing.
I decided since there was no way out of the jam, I might as well pay more attention to people on the road with me, and I started attaching faces and names at AA meetings. Hung around the coffee pot. Gushed AA mottos like “first things first,” and “easy does it,” and “live and let live” without looking over my shoulder to see if anyone heard me. Clapped when my fellow wounded walked to the front of the room to claim chips that marked their sobriety. One month. Two months. Six months.
At the end of one meeting, I grabbed Theresa's hand and asked her if she’d walk with me to pick up my Desire Chip. The important one. The chip bought with humility, with the strength of admitting weakness, and with the promise of one day at a time. On the Theresa shock scale, my request registered a saucer-eyed O-shaped mouth and a high-five. Later, she hugged me, a warm, round squeeze, just Goldilocks right.
When Carl, Molly, and Devin visited the next day, I wanted them to understand what this chip meant to me. I wanted them to know that as frightening as the thought of staying sober was for me, it was the most important goal in my life. I wanted them, most of all, to see my baby step of faith in the Program, in myself, in God.
28
Less than ten minutes until visiting time.
I drummed my fingers on one of the game tables in the rec room. The vibrations sent the plastic red and black checkers scooting out of their squares. Annie and her stack of O magazines paused by the table on their way out of the room. “You know, you’re messing up Benny and Vince's game with all that rattling. If I were you, I’d try to remember where those things were before they get back from lunch.” She strolled out before my sarcasm pistol could fire off one of the five or so answers I had in mind.
My chip was on the table, Serenity Prayer up. Another slice of humble pie. Okay, God, I’m a work-in-progress and old habits are hard to break. “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Maybe I needed to bite the chip, not people, when I felt impatient and annoyed.
“If AA clubs had their own carnival groups, they could throw these as doubloons.” Carl flipped my coin over before he passed it to Devin.
I was impatient for this? Once again, I’d written a script nobody bothered to read before rehearsal. I allowed myself one mental snapshot of Carl biting into the chip, set the Serenity Prayer on replay loop in my brain, and told God the rest was up to Him. Instead of answering Carl, I, well, tittered, which in itself was humiliating. My hand itched.
“Dude—” Devin elbowed Carl “—I don’t think that's what Leah wanted to hear.” He reached across the table to pat my arm. His fingers were thin, like bamboo stalks, and his hand almost as long as my forearm. “I’m proud of you. Big step you’ve taken, kiddo.” He looked back at Carl as if to say, “See, that's what you need to do.”
“Thanks, Devin. That means a lot to me,” I said as he handed me the chip. “And thanks for coming to visit. Not exactly where we’re used to meeting, but the ice cream's free.”
Carl leaned back in his chair, surveyed the room, then stared at me and said, “Technically, not free. Right?”
Wisdom to know the difference. Wisdom to know the difference. Wisdom to know the difference. “Absolutely. Everything comes with a price. Right?” I said and hoped my saccharine smile would substitute for the real thing.
The deafening silence of Carl's ego deflating filled the space between us. He fiddled with the top button on his black Polo shirt.
Molly, ever the diplomat, pounced on the awkwardness and wrestled it into submission. “Devin, hand me Leah's chip.” She read the Serenity Prayer aloud, and turned the chip