It can be a very confusing and depressing world when you don't know where you are headed or even were you are suppose to be headed, what you are suppose to be learning or who you should be seeing. I think that this is one of the causes of the times of depression that I experienced as I was growing up. And there were indeed those times. I do recall when I was about 9 or 10, being in my bedroom and my father pleading with me to tell him what was wrong, that I had to talk to someone about it. What was I to say? I didn't know!
Upon graduating from college (finally) I knew that 1. I had to move to California, 2. there was someone or ones that I had to meet, and, 3. the major something was to come of this. So in January 0f 1971, with the help of my brother Bob, I drove to California with the car pack so tightly (as only my father could do it) that the space in the coffee pot was used for one of my shoes!! My big old Ford Galaxy 500 was loaded and it's a darn good thing that it had heavy duty springs and snow tires. We had a time frame because Bob was on a break from college. We drove for three days of blizzards that were so bad the snow plows weren't even out! There were times when the only way we could stay on the highway was for Bob to have the car door open a bit so that he could see the edge of the road and tell me to go more left or right to keep us parallel with it. We couldn't really stop because there were cars behind us that got close enough that I could see the headlights every once in a while. They were following us. I had enough winter that drive to last me the rest of my life! Our first night on the road was suppose to have been in Pierre SD, but we only got as far as Barnard where we were suppose to have had lunch with my Grandpa Stoddard, but didn't get there until supper time. Since the turn-out to their farm is right off the highway I half expected to have a caravan arrive with us. Wouldn't that have upset Pearle.....she being my Grandpa Stoddard's second wife and also my Great Aunt (no incest). Pearle was a terrific cook, very inventive if a trifle on the soft food side. She only put her false teeth in for company and family wasn't company.
We had car trouble in Utah. We sat there on the side of the road and it seemed to take forever and ever before someone stopped to help us. Some guy in a pick-up truck stopped and offered to take Bob to a service station. We got towed to the station. A part was needed and they had to send to Salt Lake for it. It would take overnight. This guy had a 'motel' room we could rent. It had a double bed and a single bed. He said if we used just one bed he would charge us less. Bob, bless his heart, was very puzzled by that statement. It wasn't the first time that we were not mistaken for brother and sister. We had a super time when I was student teaching and Bob was a freshman in college. I picked him up at school since the town where I was student teaching wasn't very far away. I took him to dinner at a place where a couple of other student teachers and I spent a lot of time in the bar and restaurant....more time in the bar. I gave Bob the money and told the waiter that Bob was my date and we wanted something special...champagne. Bob was underage. Dinner and a couple of bottles of champagne later I decided that we should go visit (sister) Pat and her husband, Rod. They were in the same town as the college. Bob called them, got Rod, and he said that Bob had better talk to his sister since Rod was on his way to bed. So we spent the night at Pat's, I slept on the couch and Bob slept in the recliner. Breakfast and much coffee later, I took Bob and his two empty champagne bottles back to his dorm. His friends couldn't believe he'd had a date with his sister and after he told of the event some of them wanted to know if I'd adopt them. I have a terrific brother. Anyway....back to the trip to CA. Once the car part arrived and the car was fixed and the bill paid...for two beds...we were back on our way. We arranged it so that we would arrive in CA in the wee hours of the morning so that we wouldn't have to deal with heavy freeway traffic. Good thing it was dark when we went over the mountains because if I could have seen how far down it was I'm not sure that I would have made it. When we hit the freeway of CA Bob was a bit intimidated. Me? I was terrified. He asked how one was suppose to drive. I said,"I don't know. Go like hell and pretend that you know what you're doing." We were headed for my Uncle Chet's house in San Mateo. I had spent some time there so I was somewhat familiar with the area. Three blocks from Uncle Chet's house the muffler on the car came loose or fell off. At any rate, our arrival was not unnoticed. The first of my 'had to do's' accomplished. Bob had a chance t do some touristy stuff and got to go out with a professional scuba diver (Bob didn't have his certification with him so he couldn't dive) on a dive to bring up a big old anchor from an old sunken sailing ship. When I took Bob to the airport for his flight home to MN, as we sat in the waiting area, I told Bob to look around. "You can tell who is from California going to MN and who is from Minnesota, returning." Bob looked around, got an astonished look on his face and said, "Oh my God, you can!" Keep in mind, this was in the early 1970's.
A friend of mine from college had graduated a semester ahead of me and we had agreed to move to California and share an apartment. Uncle Chet helped me move to San Jose. I moved into the adult apartment complex where Linda L. had an apartment with two bedrooms in anticipation of my arrival. Children were only allowed on week-ends and in the pool only on Saturdays. God I was homesick. Our apartment was on the second floor with outside stairs. In the building across the was was a three story building. On the third floor was a couple who had a piano and the guy, in the early night, would play Bach two part inventions which just happened to be my sister Susan's current favorite on the piano. I would sit out on the stairs, in the dark, listening to him play and cry and cry. The apartment complex was a pretty swinging place. Saturday nights were always party night in the club house and Sundays it was party time around the pool. Once a month there was a Sunday morning Champagne Breakfast. It was at a Saturday night club house party where I fulfilled the second do's.
Now I stood 4'10 3/4" at my best time of life. Vic stood 6'1". He was in the club house busy ogling some blond chicky wearing a g-string and two postage stamps while walking along with a drink in one hand. I was going in the other direction and looking to join a friend so wasn't paying particular attention to who was in my direct path. Vic literally fell over me. The following November 20th we were married, by a judge, at the courthouse.
When my sister Pat was married, at the party at the house after the reception, my mother got just a touch tipsy, the first time I'd ever seen her that way. My Aunt Eileen went up to my mother and said, "Well, Delores, I guess the next wedding will be Claudia's." My mother took a sip of whatever, and said, "Who the hell would ever want to marry Her!?" I vowed then and there that if I ever did get married, she wouldn't be there to see it and she wasn't. Just Vic and I and our respective roommates at the time.
Vic was divorced and had four daughters. I thought, and wanted, that when we were married that he could get custody of the girls. I'd always wanted a large family and hey....instant large family. Didn't work that way. We had the girls weekends, holidays, summer vacations, sometimes one, sometimes two sometimes all four in our little 850 square foot house. After about four years their mother got remarried and they all moved to Las Vagas. I wanted a baby.....I was suppose to have a baby. We were already paying child support and medical and eyeglasses for the first four. Vic wasn't in favor of another child. But I persisted, and I felt very certain that I would have a boy. OK So I got pregnant.
When first I got to CA I worked for an answering service and physicians exchange - no cell phones, just pagers. Try working alone at night with 150 doctors plus all the rest when there is a full moon! It wasn't a problem choosing a doctor. Actually he was also doing some teaching and I learned later that he used my case as an extremely difficult pregnancy. I won't say that it was an easy pregnancy. That kid kicked so much I had bruises on the outside! The doctor accused Vic of beating me. Since I had to have a C-section, a date was set. I told the doctor (can you believe, I don't recall his name?) that I wouldn't go that long, that he should set the date forward. He said that if he did that the birth would be considered a technical premature delivery and I'd have to go to a different hospital that had a neonatal unit,with a
different doctor, so we left the date. On June 15th, a very hot day as I recall, we had company over in the evening. They left around 11:00PM. As we sat there in the quiet, all of a sudden Vic asked, "How long have you been having those contractions?" I shrugged and said, "I'm not sure, most of the day." "OH MY GOD!" and Vic went running to the phone. He got the answering service, of course. And, the answering service did as she was taught to do, 'doctor on call...has her water broken...no I can't call the doctor at home...how...what's the big hurry?" Vic, about to have apoplexy ordered her in his best military voice...."Check the doctor's god damned card of instructions and you will see that he has left instructions that if there is a call from Claudia Winebrenner at any time of day or night he is to be called directly immediately!!!!" Ding Bat finally got the message and then fell all over herself to get the doctor. He told Vic that he would meet us at the hospital. Man did my old Ford fly! The police intercept engine that the detective forgot to have removed before selling me the car surely did come in handy that night! The doctor was ready to go when we got there. Of course the admitting nurse, doing as she was trained, was wondering what the big deal was since the water hadn't broken and all of that.....at which point the doctor said get all the info from her husband. See that contraction and the strength of it? Every time she had a contraction the baby's head is being rammed into her hip bone because there isn't room for it to get out!!! On the way into the surgery room (I had to have general anesthesia because there was not a doctor in the world who would presume to try a spinal on my crazy spine) doc was sort of complaining about being dragged out in the middle of the night. "Hey," I told him,"I told you I wasn't going to go to the day you scheduled." And so Elizabeth came into the world a few minutes before midnight on June 15, 1976. For anyone who has studied Numerology, that makes her an 8 life path, and of course a Gemini. When I was told that I had a beautiful little girl I asked, "Are you sure?" And so the third do was accomplished.....or let's say begun, because raising Elizabeth was one of the strangest experiences of my life.
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