The stages of drinking

My mother was talking about her grandfather, Grandpa Michinsky, who is actually not really her grandfather. Her actual one divorced her grandmother to marry another woman.....but anyhow, Grandpa Michinsky is the one she grew up with in Alma, Michigan. He was a drinker as was her father. She described the first stage as one where he was dancing and singing, dancing with her and her brothers. The second was the "great guy" stage, where he would say things like, "So and so down at the plant....he's such a great guy; just a super person...[ect]", then third was, I think, the staggering around the house stage, and finally, the fourth, where he'd be yelling (or more like slurring-yelling), "Alfreda [my great grandmother] I'm going to divorce you!'


She said he'd be at the bar with his drinking buddies and Alfreda would go after him, saying, "You get out of there!" and trying to pull him out of the bar. Later on that night he'd start saying, dragging his words, "Alfreda I can't stand it anymore."

I don't know....where am I going with this? I guess cause Alma Michigan always seemed like the middle of nowhere to me, and I'd always feel lonely and creeped out in Michigan, like we were the only people there for miles and miles. It gets really remote there and whenever I was there I really couldn't wait to leave. For me, I was hardly ever around anyone under 50 except for my mother. Occasionally my then step siblings would go with me, so at least there was someone my age. As we drove through all the small towns we saw all these people who were overweight, and my mother would talk about "all the fat people."

So going back to Evanston and the beach was welcome at times.

But then now I met D in the Lower East Side, who's from Ann Arbor.....so the world is smaller than I thought.....and there actually is someone else besides us from there.