This is the first of a 2-part retrieval of memory written during a Friend’s  General Conference in 1985 as part of an assignment during a workshop:

Our family pediatrician, Dr. Adams, studied the rash around my waist for several seconds, then told me to get dressed. Speaking both to my mother and me, he asked about possible stresses in our lives. We looked at each other. “No.”

He carefully folded his stethoscope  and put it in his pocket before he spoke again, to me. “Is your father still drinking?”

My face must have burst into sunshine as I spoke: “Oh no. he’s quit drinking. He hasn’t had a drink in ten days!”

It wasn’t the smell of the alcohol I minded so much as what it did to Daddy. He was frightened of people, really, so he only drank at home.  When drinking he never walked through a room, he staggered as though the house was riding the stormy seas.  Our worst fears were never realized, though: he never fell on us.

I probably learned my listening skills ministering to him. I had to always b e ready to tell him where he had left off on some story, when he returned from the toilet.  He also helped me to accept the bizarre; whenever Daddy pointed to the dirty woodwork behind me and asked if I didn’t see those people, and described what they were doing, I assumed that he spoke figuratively, or metaphorically.  I now know that he was describing what he saw, during dt’s.

Whenever Daddy started drinking, he wouldn’t stop until he passed out.  By high school I had learned to peek inside the house first, then if necessary I’d “go for a walk” until he passed out. There were a lot of long walks during high school.  When it was safe I walked back to the house quietly, falling into my bed, still dressed.

Before high school I hadn’t learned the walking trick, and it seems I had to deal with him a lot. I remember especially one summer night in 1947, when he invited me to take a ride with him to Berryhill High School, where he would show me how to improve my forehand in tennis, hitting balls against the walls.  I was eleven, and he knew I hoped to improve my tennis game, while he had won the 1940 men’s singles tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina. [I think he had avoided the draft due to flat feet].

Mother was starting supper, we wouldn’t be gone long.  And then, surreptitiously, he brought out the brown paper bag containing a jug of cheap wine.

My face fell. I looked to mother to intervene. Her expression didn’t change.  She nodded to me.  “Go ahead, it’ll be all right.”  Didn’t she know it wouldn’t be?…

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