UPS & DOWNS, March 1999

WAYFARERS' HOUSE NEWS

WELCOME to Nancy, Jong and Dennis; Robin; Bertha and Sebastian. Farewell and good wishes to Angelina; Sherry; Susan; Nicole, Jordan and Amauri; Cleo, Dexter and Dai'Jon.

Congratulations to Schaunel Steinnagel, Program Coordinator of Meeting Ground, on her recent ordination as a Presbyterian minister and her call to minister at Meeting Ground. More congratulations: to Denise, Mandy, and Tray'Von on getting the apartment they will be moving to this week; to Shonie, on her return to work after surgery and the settlement of her divorce; to Dennis and Sebastian, on starting kindergarten (they ride the bus together each school day); to Sharon on the purchase of her car.

WELCOME to new volunteer Renie Newman, who comes to the House on Tuesdays. It's good to have volunteers Lynn Rodden and Erik Schaumann back from their vacations, too.

WISH LIST

Coffee, sugar, creamer
Laundry soap, cleanser, bleach, dish washing soap
Paper products, especially paper napkins and toilet tissue
Trash bags

SHONIE'S LIFE  as told to Ups&Downs

In my childhood my parents fought a lot. Not just arguments, really abusive fights with knives and guns. It has made me a nervous wreck my whole life. (These words are spoken quietly by a woman who looks outwardly serene. Ed.) I still hate to hear people argue, and when my parents finally got a divorce, I was glad.

My brother and I moved to New Jersey with our mother after the divorce. Mother soon got into a bad relationship and started drinking. I had to go to bars to bring her home. The drinking didn't stop for many years.

During my teen years she kept telling me not to see my father. Mother didn't like his new wife. For a time I accepted her opinions of them as my own, but when I was 16 I came to Maryland to visit my father. His wife took me right in as if I were her own child. I found them very different from what Mother had led me to expect. I visited my dad for the summer.

I finished high school and at 17 wanted to marry. My father signed the permission for me to do so, since my age required that. My husband was a mechanic, and after we married we both got jobs in a New Jersey glass factory.

When I was 19, we had a son. Eventually my husband began running with the wrong crowd and was drinking and drugging, things that led to my getting a divorce. After the divorce, I went back to Maryland and moved in with my dad and stepmother, who watched my son while I worked. I paid a modest fee for board while we lived there.

I went with a guy there for a year and then married him. We were together for five years, but it just didn't work. We were always arguing.

Then I met the guy I'm now married to. We lived together for four years and in 1988 got married. It was very nice at first. We had a trust not many people had. Either one of us could go away for a week alone. We trusted each other, though he did drink.

My son, when he was 17, got a girl pregnant. I really begged them to get an abortion. She had finished high school, but he had not. They chose not to have the abortion.

My son had had a father who was never around. He did not want HIS child togrow up without a father. He worked on a horse farm before school and after school until dark. My son's girl friend needed a place to live. My husband said to me, "You have to do what you have to do," and my son's girl friend moved in with us.

My husband had four kids, and I think he became jealous because my son was doing so well, going to school and working. His own children weren't doing that well.

If my son was man enough to support his girl friend and their baby girl, I would stand behind him. He graduated from high school, in his senior year going to school in the morning and holding down a job at a car agency from three to eleven-thirty p.m.

My husband's children had not done so well. He bailed out one son who had been imprisoned for non-support of offspring. But when my husband found some of his tools missing, tools he had himself misplaced, he blamed my son.

I would work eight hours a day and come home to my husband's dirty dishes in the kitchen. I contributed heavily to our family funds, bought him a truck and one for me. Although he's in management in a corporation in the vicinity, he accused me of stealing his money. In reality he blew his money on many things.

He was 14 years older than I. When we had finished his truck payments, I took over some of the bills he had been paying. I grew tired of his accusations of my taking his money. I opened my own checking account and moved into my own apartment in June, 1996. He then threatened not to make the house payments. At first my son stayed with my husband.

I found a place In Northeast and fixed it up. My husband begged me to come back. We dated again for awhile. Although my husband was always generous with money, gave me gifts, jewelry and such, still, he continued to abuse me verbally, and he always blamed my son. I did go back to him. For two months it was just my husband and me. My son, his girl friend and their daughter lived in my place. By now both our trucks were paid for, he had a boat, we had a three-car garage, a house and two jobs. What more could we ask? But his verbal abuse continued.

I went to the domestic violence center which offered marriage counseling, but my husband refused it. I left him in 1997 and moved in with my son and his family.

In March I went back to my husband for a third try. It was OK for awhile, but I noticed he was not eating at home. We worked different shifts. He had a night job, but he appeared not to be home at the expected hours. I hired a private detective and confronted him with the evidence of the discovered unfaithfulness, stored my belongings and eventually moved in with my son and his family.

My mother had died in 1996, my father in 1997. Now in 1998, I was still working and, for four months, was with my son and his family. That culminated in my having my four-year-old granddaughter waking me to come help; her Daddy and Mother were fighting. When I was confronted with their quarrel and the black eye my son had given his partner, I ended by telling them -- for the first time -- about my own childhood. They were stunned. My son had loved my father, considered him more a father than a grandfather. I told them I would not allow my granddaughter to endure what I had. Our words were heated. I moved out.

I spent three nights in a motel, a night with a girl friend and finally became a resident at Wayfarers' House. Though my son invited me to return to their apartment, and my stepmother said I could come there, I have chosen not to do either. I continue with my job and living at Wayfarers'. I expect soon to get an apartment with another resident whom I have become friends with here at the house.

Although I had a heart attack at 29 and am currently recovering from major surgery, I have plans eventually to leave my current job in a local delicatessen for one that will permit me to do office work. With that in mind, I have taken courses in bookkeeping (I, II, III), payroll accounting, introduction to personal computers and Windows"95. After I feel calmed down enough from the divorce proceedings to concentrate, I hope to study insurance billing, insurance coding and insurance billing on the computer. I want nothing ever to separate me from my grandchild.