My Heart Is Heavy

A perfect stranger, whose last name I didn't know, and whom I had met in a church room, saved my life. She was raised on a plantation in Macon, Ga. with lots of crinoline, servants and opulence. I was raised in the tenements of the Bronx with lots of sadness and bad dreams. We had nothing in common. Yet, in her southern drawl, she instructed me, day after day, on how to stay sober and become a human being. She had everything I wanted: she was an artist, had children, lived in a mansion, and owned an art gallery on Main Street. But she had something I wanted even more than the yacht in her front yard: she had peace of mind. She was in AA, not around AA, and could be counted on to be in her seat at our home group. She was sober ten years when I crawled into the rooms and would sit with the other matrons of Westchester at the meeting peacefully doing needlepoint for what seemed to me like hours and hours.