A Life Unscripted

By Mary Inez Ramirez

This is the life story of a remarkable woman who has not only learned life's difficult lessons, but understands that life is sweeter because of them. Whereas others may harbor despair over life's challenges, Mary Inez writes about these difficulties in a way that inspires the reader and leaves powerful feelings about life. She honestly shares life's crises and shows how, through faith, any circumstance in life can be worthwhile.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 3, 2004
• ISBN: 9780595777563

Mary Inez Ramirez

Mary Inez Ramirez was born in Austin, Texas, and developed an interest in writing her memoirs while in crisis. She is a mother of five grown children, and enjoys traveling. She retired from State employment and is a Red Cross volunteer.

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Copyright © 2004 by Mary Inez Ramirez

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Contents

Dedication To:

Acknowledgements To:

Preface

1 The Sosa Household

2 Self-Awareness

3 First-Year Madness

4 Essence of the Unexplained

5 Kilbourne Kaserne

6 Cooking à La Mess

7 Basket of Fruit

8 Life Is An Adventure

9 European Out

10 Homeward Bound

11 Second Time Around

12 Embrace the Children

13 Article of Faith

14 Vacation U.S.A.

15 Ostrich Syndrome

16 Mr. X

17 Arthur

18 Suicidal Wave

19 The Rosary

20 Myself Renewed

Dedication To:

The loving memory of my parents,

Ben and Hilda Sosa

Both played a major part in shaping my life

And

Joe Ramirez,

For being an important part of my life

Acknowledgements To:

Monica Ramirez, my daughter

Who helped with many hours of research and print

And

Mindy Reed, authors’ assistant

That through her editing I learned and my confidence built

Preface

This story is an expression of how life really is unscripted for all of us; it is not about degrading anyone’s dignity or humiliating the living. I’ve tried to portray a vivid account of my life from being a naive young girl, who at nineteen became a young wife and woman, to a planned suicide.

The flashbacks incorporated in the story are a means of bringing to life several unforgettable traumas experienced with incest and rape, and how perseverance through faith and courage I overcame many of life’s crises.

For eighteen years, I taught Religion Education classes, and had been an instructor of various other classes in the Catholic Church. It was the teachings from the classes that sustained me through life’s circumstances. I was a mother of five grown children when I divorced after twenty-nine years of marriage from a man whom I had truly loved. After many incidents of arguing, breaking up, and getting back together, I broke the Yo-Yo Syndrome.

Through the years, I’ve worn many hats: Joe’s wife, the kids’ mother, and the religion class teacher. But, the hat that best fits is woman of faith. Religion became a focal point of my life at an early age, and I lived reverently by the only means I knew how—faith.

The incidents in my life’s story, both humorous and sad, also include disastrous kitchen events, family vacations, and innocent blunders, which add a touch of reality to everyday living.

1

The Sosa Household

The week I was born, President Truman was nominated for another term and The Babe Ruth Story premiered. I was born July 29, 1948, in a cold delivery room in Breckenridge Hospital of Austin, Texas. I arrived one month premature, and weighed less than five pounds, including my massive head of dark brown hair. I lived my first few days on earth in an incubator until I tipped the scales on the other side of five pounds.

My parents, Ben and Hilda Sosa, were beside themselves, and showered me with immense affection from the minute I first wiggled my toes. Their affection was gratitude in disguise because, after five births in eight years, they now had a baby girl. My brothers before me were Ben (Junior), Albert, Arthur, and Eugene.

The families of my father and mother had known each other from years of picking cotton, as migrant laborers, in the fields northeast of Austin. My father was nineteen years old when he married my mother, who was then sixteen. By the time I entered the world, as a baby boomer, Dad had become a gifted bricklayer who worked hard from dawn to dusk when there was work. When inclement weather did not permit him to work outside, he utilized his time with indoor repairs.

We lived in a small wooden three-bedroom house with a fenced-in backyard where a couple of collies joyfully played. My mother was a talented housewife who took care of the children and the house with the energy of the Energizer Bunny. She was a mother of her times, and was resourceful in the many ways she made the dollar stretch. She made her own soaps, and sewed our clothes. The craftworks she created from seashells, she sold around the neighborhood.

During the year of 1948 Gandhi was assassinated, the states of Israel and West Germany were founded, apartheid was established in South Africa, the Scrabble game was offered publicly, and the first Polaroid camera was sold. President Truman was reelected toward the end of the year.

Nineteen months after my birth, Tommy was born. As he grew older, we became inseparable, and, with Eugene, we formed a threesome. I grew up a tomboy and did what they did. The taller the cottonwood tree, the higher I climbed. Playing Cowboys and Indians was how I spent most of my days.

I was often a showoff. I swung upside-down from the branches of mesquite trees, and dared my brothers to do the same.

Look at me, I shouted to Tommy and Eugene, who were throwing rocks at tin cans. Bet you can’t do it!

You’re gonna get hurt, Eugene cautioned.

I can do that with one leg, Tommy said, taking the dare. In no time at all, he was up the tree with Eugene behind him.

Tommy climbed a limb higher and was swinging from one leg when Eugene asked, Are you afraid to do that? Can you swing with one leg?

Naw, it looks boring, I said as I sat up and jumped off the tree—right into an upright mesquite thorn. The thorn went straight through my skin between the two large toes of my right foot. It hurt like the dickens, but I wasn’t going to show it.

The boys had seen what had happened and started laughing at me. With tears in my eyes, I said, It was a trick. I bet you can’t do it. I ran crying inside the house to Albert, who pulled out the thorn.

Albert was my protector. If I got scraped, I went to him for medication. If I got my feelings hurt by anyone’s unkind words, it was he who comforted me. But, he had another side to him that sent chills up my spine. He enjoyed telling me ghost stories. The stories terrified me to no end. It was a catch-22. He’d tell me a scary story, and, as I got wide-eyed afraid, he would change the mood by assuring me there was nothing in the house to be afraid of.

Instead of playing marbles on my hands and knees with the boys, I should have been in the kitchen learning to cook. Mary, I need you to boil a few eggs for a potato salad, my mother said.

Okay. How do I do that?

Just put the eggs in water, and turn on the heat.

That sounds easy, I thought as I crackled several eggs and poured them into the water in the saucepan. The eggs spread out rather quickly over the surface of the water and boiled that way. When I thought they had boiled enough, outside I went, again.

My parents condoned spare the rod and spoil the child theory, but were not necessarily unified in their discipline. I received many spankings from my mother; Dad never touched me. My rear end’s baby-smooth skin had figuratively turned to leather from a thin leather strap. Many of the spankings were due to my own mischievous behavior, and some were adopted on behalf of Eugene. In recompense, he gave me his desserts. I definitely got the shorter end of the stick.

Both of my parents were hard-working people focused on the upbringing of their family. Neither one had a high school education, but that did not prevent them from relying on their God-given talents to make a living. Daddy built a larger house on two acres, and together they planted a vegetable garden and raised chickens.

Mysteries of my father and mother existed. Secrets were abundant in our household. There was a clear distinction between adults and children. If the grown-ups gathered for coffee around the kitchen table and their conversations took a different tone of voice, I was asked to go outside and play.

Dad had a drinking problem, which he refused to admit, and it seemed to me that my brothers were taking mental notes. I witnessed many episodes of abuse and irritability with my father when he was under the influence of alcohol. Mom was an enabler who endured his abuse. Comprehension of their dilemmas was beyond my reach. How can you love someone who says one thing and means another? Their actions were also confusing; they would say one thing while doing the opposite.

Some people inherit money, jewels, and maybe cars. Dad inherited the love of cockfights from his father. He built a conditioning house in his extended backyard and spent many evenings there. I watched how he put little boxing gloves, designed specially for roosters, on their claws. It was interesting how he lifted the roosters one by one above his head and then gradually brought them down as they spread their wings out.

I witnessed how he sparred them one against the other while wearing their little boxing gloves in preparation of the real thing. Rooster fights were generally within a 100-mile radius from Austin. Popular Derbies were held in Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arizona. Because the sport was illegal, I was not allowed to talk about the rooster fights.

At an early age, I sensed I was different—not only because I was a girl among five brothers—but because of the things that happened to me, and not to the others. When the three-day measles invaded our household, I came down with German measles. When Eugene and Tommy were ill with the mumps, Mom had me lie between them and drink from the same glass they used so that I would catch it. It didn’t work. The mumps escaped me.

Daddy enjoyed tickling me. He often threw me in the air to catch me, and then swung me around, which made me dizzy. Eventually, that came to a stop on account of my fainting spells. After one incident, I did not quickly recover and was rushed to Breckenridge Hospital, where I was diagnosed as anemic, and given iron vitamins.

As a young girl, I picked little pieces of black rock from the pebbles in the driveway and ate them. My mother was referred to a doctor who told her that the little pieces of rocks I was eating had iron, of which my body needed more. The iron dosage was subsequently increased.

Cleaning the corner altar, one do a good deed afternoon, I tried to move the lit votive candle out of the way. I had trouble reaching the altar, which was an arm’s length higher than me, and accidentally knocked the candle over. The wax poured into my eyes, nostrils and mouth—my entire face. I prepared a scream, but the wax covered my mouth and muffled my sounds. What am I screaming about? I asked aloud. The wax felt like ice on my skin, and, in disbelief, I peeled off the cold wax and wondered why I didn’t get burned.

I wanted to know more about religion and pushed my parents into getting involved with the church. They made sure that Eugene, Tommy, and I received our First Communion rites in the Catholic Church. It was during the time when the mass was celebrated in Latin, women wore veils on their heads, and the women sat on the right side of the aisle and men on the left upon entering the church.

An emotional lesson I learned was that bad things did happen to good people. As I grew older, I experienced unpleasant and despicable acts against me. Before my thirteenth birthday, I had experienced the humiliating act of incest and the degradation of rape.

Growing into my teens I had disciplined myself to remain silent, which resulted in me becoming a shy and passive individual. But life went on, and, through it all, my faith sustained me. The nuns at the church were a great comfort to me and taught me different ways of contemplation.

I was the only sibling in my family to graduate high school. By the time I was eighteen years old, Junior and Albert were married with families of their own. Albert was enlisted in the Army and serving duty somewhere overseas. Eugene was a single man, dating as he pleased. Tommy had married at an early age. Arthur was incarcerated at Huntsville, Texas. And I, I was desperately trying to be me—whoever that was.

2

Self-Awareness

Growing up among five brothers definitely had its disadvantages. Protectiveness was misconstrued as special privileges and having a bedroom to myself was viewed as spoiled.

I had the utmost respect for my mother, who was as loving as she was over-protective during my formative years. I was never far from her watchful eyes. If she was controlling in any way, I suppose it came with being sheltered. To talk back or voice strong differences of opinion was an act of sheer disrespect—an act I avoided to all extremes because of its consequences.

I accept now that it was out of this love for me that she did what she felt compelled to do before my intended wedding day. She and my father were concerned about me getting pregnant during the honeymoon. My father agreed with my mother that I should use precaution. Therefore, against the teachings of the Catholic Church, my mother advised me to take birth control pills and scheduled an appointment for me with the family physician to have a physical examination a couple of months before the big day.

Joe Ramirez was the man for me. I met him two years earlier when I worked as a candy girl and he as the doorman at the State Theater in downtown Austin. He had eyes that expressed more in one glance than if he spoke 1,000 words. He was a kind and mild human being, and I became undoubtedly attracted to his gentleness.

Joe joined the Army and did his basic training at Ft. Polk, Louisiana. I wrote almost daily and, with each new day, I anticipated the postman’s arrival, hoping for a letter from Joe. It was wonderful to see I love you written in his handwriting. Our letters—steamy and clearly passionate—revealed the love and respect we had for each other.

After a year-and-a-half romance, Joe proposed on April Fools’ Day of 1967. I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, and we planned to have a large family. We shared with each other a special closeness, which love inspires.

I was naive and sexually inexperienced. In many ways, we both were. I knew very little about my own body and much less about his or his needs. My mother, who had tried her best to shelter me, knew that about me. She drove me to Dr. Nelson Schiller’s office without saying a word as to what the doctor was going to talk with me about.

After the examination, I walked into the doctor’s office expecting instructions on the use of birth control pills. How I wished my mother had spoken more to me about the usage of the pills, but she considered the pills modern medicine and did not know enough about them to advise me, hence, the reason for the doctor’s visit.

Come in, he invited, Please sit down, Mary. I want to talk with you for just a few minutes, he said as he looked up from the paperwork he held in his hands. He removed his black-rimmed glasses from his face, and said, I understand you are to be married in a couple of months. He raised his eyebrows and smiled.

I gave a shy smile and answered, Yes. I put my trembling hands on my lap where he could not see them.

He tried to ease me by saying, You’re in good health, and all your vital statistics checked out fine. You’re in good physical condition—perhaps a little underweight. That’s putting it mildly. I weighed only 93 pounds. Married life will take care of that.

I sat there wide-eyed, nervous, and unsure of what was to happen in the process of the examination.

Your future husband is going to want to touch you and your body and in various places. He tried to prepare me, but his words confused me.

In his professional voice, he continued, Your husband will want to caress your breasts and kiss them. My eyes became even wider, and my jaw dropped. In a tone accustomed to him, he stressed, "Let him learn your body. Relax and enjoy it."

Learn my body! What did he mean by that? I sat there shocked and nervous. I saw his lips move but did not hear another sound except for the beat of my heart. Have I gone deaf? He smiled with a look of concern and asked if I had any questions. Have I gone mute? Like a zombie, I just sat there unable to utter a single sound, much less comment on anything. My heart pounded loudly that I barely heard what the doctor said to me. I tried to comprehend what his words meant and how they applied to my impending wedding night.

I stared straight at him but saw nothing. He will want to touch your private parts, he added with a look searching for a reaction from the blank expression on my face. What am I getting into?

I was administered the necessary shots required to enter certain countries. Joe and I planned to honeymoon in Mexico and then, of course, I would join him at his assigned base in Germany and eventually travel throughout Europe. From the doctor’s office, Mom took me to get my passport.

An uncomfortable feeling swept over me at the personal things the doctor talked about. I had left his office upset at my mother who had not truthfully prepared me for what she had asked the doctor to tell me. I suppose she could not talk with me about s-e-x, which was a word not mentioned in our household. She failed to mention those intimate things that meant so much. I was upset at the world that I had to endure such a low-down conversation. But later, after I calmed down, I realized how fortunate I was that my mother cared enough to ensure I received clinical advice from someone we both knew. From previous doctor visits we had put much trust in Dr. Schiller’s advice. It was no time to doubt him now.

At nineteen years old, did I really comprehend what commitment meant? I thought I did. Marriage is forever! I viewed it reverently as a God-given joy. I wanted fulfillment in all aspects of the marriage and vowed to work hard at it.

Marriage is one of the seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church, and, in the beginning, we faced the reality of two major differences: religion and alcoholic beverages.

Joe was baptized Catholic, but he was raised in the Southern Baptist faith. I was a Roman Catholic since birth. There were documents to sign regarding the children from our union. Joe readily signed the Catholic Church’s required papers and agreed that our future children would be baptized and raised in the Catholic faith.

Both sides of my family drank, and, to the extreme, his did not—at least not on the maternal side. His mother’s family, from along line of Protestants, seemed to me to believe that only members of their faith would get to see the Pearly Gates of Heaven. His mother did not want alcoholic beverages served at our wedding reception. Joe told me that, as Southern Baptists, they were teetotalers who considered liquor evil. Ignorant of the Baptist faith and wanting to please my fiance’s family, I sheepishly apologized for suggesting we have alcohol at the reception.

I had seen how alcohol rendered a person’s judgment. In my young years, I witnessed the influence of alcoholism and its power to lead individuals down a hallway of despair. I knew how abusive drunkenness could cripple one’s honor and dignity. Alcoholism is an equal opportunity destroyer; it does not discriminate according to race or creed. It is a destroyer of love and family unity. The smell of beer and liquor reminded me of sad times. So many times, I witnessed the consequences of overindulgence.

That Friday morning’s shower left the streets slippery and wet. The overcast sky hung like a heavy haze, which covered the town but made for a cool afternoon. Mother and I waited for my father to take us to the grocery store. He was to get money for grocery shopping. He left that morning to pick up his check for masonry