East Wind Blowing

By C. U. Leeward

East Wind Blowing is a boatload of inspiration and insight with stories to bring bravery and healing to anyone who has had the riveting grips of an alcoholic and/or addict in their life. A modern day odyssey.

Be prepared for a journey... a journey that will illuminate your life and shine choices down on you. The power of choice is yours - it is your God-given value of your soul.

Although the journey is challenging it becomes conquerable when someone else has also walked the road...like me.

This book will put a spark in your survival instincts after an alcoholic/addict has tried to dampen it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468505689

C. U. Leeward

C.U. Leeward was born and raised on the California coast. She later moved to HawaI'I where she raised her four children. She worked in Water Safety as a lifeguard and taught swimming and water safety classes. She worked on boats to eventually become a Maritime Captain.

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Prologue

Dear Reader,

I have intentionally not used the names of the main characters involved in this story. I have also declined the use of ‘made-up’ names not only because this is a work of non-fiction but mainly for the reason of you my trusted readers. By doing this it will allow you to place your own faces and names along the way without interference.

With Utmost Respect,

C.U. Leeward

1

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The largest commercial building in the world is a massive one million square miles, and sits in Amsterdam, Holland. It is the Aalsmeer flower auction house, the Wall Street of flower trade with a daily turnover of 6.6 million Euros with about 60,000 clock transactions every morning by 7:00 AM.

This gives enough time for the flowers to reach buyers all over the world, while they are still fresh since cut flowers have a short life span. Aalsmeer boasts a state-of-the-art logistics—The Aalsmeer Shuttle. A unique and efficient electrically operated suspended rail system that transports the equivalent of one hundred and twenty freight trucks every hour. The various buyers then deliver the flowers to their end customers be it a supermarket in Honolulu or a small corner flower shop in London.

*     *     *

Oh what a beautiful day! In fact most days in California are like this. Blue skies like a robin’s egg, and hills that look like suede coats dotted with brooch’s of Oak trees go on and on like a roller coaster. And that water, that Pacific Ocean all sixty-four million square miles of it, yes it is really something to behold. Not a day goes by that I don’t relish in the thoughts of how lucky I am to be born and raised on this coast.

Today, the fourth day in January and I’m sitting on a bench up on a cliff looking down at the sea and those hills beyond, for you see I’m looking across bay, the Monterey Bay and it’s warm enough to be in summer clothes. As I looked down at the sand below me I see the Sandpipers scurrying along the water’s edge with the Marbled Godwits behind all running with pomp. First they chase the water as it recedes, and with beaks as long as there skinny legs they stab at the sand to find a Mole Crab or a Sand Dab to eat. Soon the role is reversed and the water chases them, up-and-down, back-and-forth, and this goes on and on. I wonder If those stick-like legs get cold? Why us humans with lots of fat on our legs have to wear wetsuits to get in this 52 degree water. A few feet away bobbing on the water like black dots the Surf Scooters, commonly called Sea Ducks sit randomly, seemingly doing nothing. As the waves come in, just a quick duck dive under and they disappear momentarily only to pop pop pop back up to the surface unruffled and calm one at a time as the waves roll over them. They do this over and over. Some of them paddle out a little farther, pass the waves, or the impact zone as the surfers call it, I think they need a break from getting dunked. The feathers must be really well made to keep them so warm, so insulated. Maybe next time I surf I should tape feathers on me instead of donning a wetsuit which is such an effort to get on and off particularly when it’s wet it’s like push comes to shove for about five minutes. It is always funny the thoughts you come up with when you’re sitting in one spot for while and watching the world.

My gaze turns to a surfer now who has just entered on a wave. Swish, turn this way and that, arms working loosely. Soon the wave swallows him up and he disappears into the whitewater as he gets pummeled and tossed, and just like the sea ducks the surfer and his surfboard pop up to the surface and together they paddle out for more. He looks sleek and agile in his black slick wetsuit to keep him warm. I guess the feathers is a very silly idea.

I lift my head and look across the bay at the distant coal colored outline of the coastal town. I look for Gray whales for is their time to be migrating past our waters.

Every year in November they leave their feeding grounds of the Bering Sea and the Chuckiki Sea and head down to the tip of Baja to a place called San Ignacio Bay to mate and give birth from last year’s rendezvous. This is a long journey of over five thousand miles one-way and they do not eat once they leave the cold waters of Alaska where they feed on tons of Krill. They prepare for this journey and stock up on blubber before they leave and head out for they know they will lose up to a third of their body weight by the time they get home six months later to gorge themselves once again on the abundant krill.

But this does not mean that they cannot stop along the way for little tidbit to sustain them on the way down to Mexico and again later on their way back home to Alaska, and the Monterey Bay is the perfect place to offer such a meal. With a canyon on the seafloor of over 1 mile deep updwellings of such food as amphipods and other invertebrates are on the menu, and being that gray whales are baleen, meaning no teeth this pit-stop is perfect for them.

It’s an extreme migration, in fact the longest of any migrational mammal. Bless their hearts.

Scanning the surface of the ocean I look for a large splash, a spout from their blowhole, or a breach up into the air as they break the surface to take a peek. After a few minutes I see no signs of whales I see only small splashes and that would be the Brown Pelican, dear sweet wonderful pelicans which made a huge comeback after DDT practically annihilated their species in the late 1960’s. We seem to learn lessons the hard way.

A sailing schooner has come into the picture from around the cliff. There is a small boat harbor just a ways down the coast. I watch the boats hull bob and move forward slowly. It is not as natural in its movements as the sea ducks but it is giving its best effort.

Yes, it is some fine day on this bench, and another year has come and gone. My thoughts turned to the beautiful bouquet of flowers my oldest son gave me for Christmas a few days ago. A bouquet of mixed colors, shapes and precise patterns. I can even smell their natural perfume when I close my eyes. Flowers are the ultimate expression of love, admiration and warm approval, one hand passing nature’s gift to another. It doesn’t get any better, it’s a gesture.

One rarely forgets that corsage from the first prom arriving at the front door with a boy in a tux awkwardly handing it over to you or that first Carnation being gracelessly pinned on his lapel by your hands.

I had my tonsils removed my senior year of high school. I was in a bad way until my boyfriend showed up at the hospital with a dozen roses in my favorite color, yellow.

That was over 40 years ago and I smile still when I think of it.

Sitting here on this bench in the sun drenched breeze, my heart is warm from thinking of the note on the flowers I just received from my son, it read: You are the best mother in the world, I’m lucky to have you.

No wonder cut flowers demand the largest commercial building in the world.

2

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I sit in this room, my room, well not really my room. The furniture was here, the bed, the nightstand, the dresser and lamp. All painted in the seventies technique of multi-colored streaked. This was the first of the faux paint technique for home decorating. This set is red and black.

This is the home of my sister-in-law’s mother. Built in the late fifties and hasn’t changed since. The home is located on a private Street that dead ends into the ocean and that is the one thing it has going for it.

I moved in seven months ago, if my plan works I will stay another five or so months. Can I make it? Will I last? I have to. I do not live here alone, the woman of the house still lives here and has for over 50 years, and like I said nothing has changed. Old, rundown and dirty is the order here. I clean but it does not really make a difference. I like clean, order, style, design and rooms that everywhere you look it is pleasing, that is how I grew up and that is how I kept my homes, all of them, until now.

How did I get here? That is what I asked myself on a regular basis these days. The truth is I put myself here, yes it is the plan. I just didn’t know what I was in for. Thank goodness that my clothes are in the closet of my little room and I can still look good. But even looking good is harder as the years catapult forward. I look in the mirror and I’m continually surprised at what I see, the once high cheekbones now lost in aging skin, skin that is blotchy with sun damage, age spots, and wrinkles that are so deep I can’t even discuss them with myself. But all in all I still look pretty good for my age. I think we are way too hard on ourselves, that seems to be the plight of beauty these days. My favorite part of my face when I look in the mirror is my eyes, they are hazel green and an adventurous story lies behind them.

The phone rings, it is my brother.

Good morning sister! I’m in Port Mau’i.

How’s my sailor brother?

Oh man, the trades are really blowing here. We almost had to skip Mau’i and go to the Big Island. The ship could hardly navigate into the channel as the trades were coming in from the northwest at 55 knots and blowing on her beam, trying to turn us all nilly-willy. Just when the captain was about to turn the vessel and head out to sea the winds eased up long enough for us to slide in. What are you up to? He asks.

Well, today being Saturday, I have off. My only day to do nothing except what I want to do, so I think I will go sit at the beach and read for a while. Even though it is the middle of January still the gorgeous weather continues. Say, did you see the full moon last night? I say excitedly.

Yes he answers It was so big and bright. I was on deck all night as I still have the midnight to noon shift.

I say, According to NASA it will be the biggest full moon of the year to come because the moon is in a low orbit with the earth now so it was 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter last night.

My brother quickly interjects. I wish I had dad’s telescope.

I do too. I reply as my thoughts shoot to the best father that God could’ve made.

In smiling flashes I think of the many star gazing evenings that dad would sit on the side yard, as we called it, with his telescope aligned with whatever phenomena that the galaxy was whipping up that night.

Growing up I would look out my bedroom window before going to bed and see him sitting there all alone, so quiet, so still with an occasional glow from his cigarette going up and down the only light visible.

He would announce earlier at the dinner table that when the event was to occur he would come get us all up to observe. These special occurrences were important and not to be missed. It never entered his gentle moral compass that most folks could care less. So what ever the time was, it didn’t matter we were all gently nudged to rise and head outside. Mom, my sister, my brother and myself. We trotted out in our nightclothes almost marching behind dad in quiet succession. Okay now he would say, kids your mother goes first. Stand here and look through here—don’t touch anything—don’t kick the stand, he would mutter softly.

He always used my mother’s first and middle name during these instructions, this meant it was a serious matter. My mother would generally say, I don’t see a thing. Then dad would adjust this thing and then that thing and reply Do you see it now? Meanwhile we all stood awaiting our turn, shivering a bit in the night chill all going through the same adjustments until dad would say Wasn’t that great!

Yes dad, uh-huh, and yeah and so forth until we were all released from our post to go back to our warm wonderful comfort of bed.

My attention snaps back to my brother on the phone We can get one, a telescope! And we can build a platform on the property, and maybe even hold stargazing events and when the sky was ready for a show we could really hold an event. We could charge a fee and have a lecture, and I could serve my cookies and baked goods and have espresso and tea and hot chocolate to serve. I’m worked up at this point. My mind could see it all right now, wouldn’t dad be proud, why I bet he’s up in heaven right at this very moment just as excited.

Yeah. My brother replied. But in that one word I could hear his dreaming also.

Oh, I’ve got to go. I only have a small window to go ashore and I have to see the doctor about a rash on my hand. He quickly said.

Okay bye, aloha, take care and be safe.

Be Safe—I knew that line well from my own personal years of working on boats and ships. Above all, those words prevailed.

Part of the plan, that I mentioned earlier and why I’m in that room of my sister-in-law’s mother’s home, involves my brother also. For you see I’m a bit homeless at the moment. Oh not in the sense of being out on the street with no money and food, but I do not have my own home for I have recently just sold it.

It was a decision that was not easy. But I really had no choice as my income was not what it was when I bought the condo three years earlier. I had a good profession in fact a rather exciting one, but I had to change courses and with that course my money dwindled. But I will get into all that later, for I have a story to tell you, and I will tell it in order.

But let’s get back to my brother. You probably have gathered he works on a ship in the Hawaiian waters. He is a deckhand on a cruise ship that visits the main islands all within a week. He is an excellent sailor and is very knowledgeable of boats and water. Always has been. In fact when he was a little boy he was a Sea Explorer.

I remember as a little girl my father trying to teach my brother Morse code at the kitchen table by a device that he made. I sat there silently and watched them tap tap tap out secret messages.

Back to the plan—my brother and I are looking for a plot of land to build a family compound on. We feel about five acres would do just fine. We will build it ourselves as that is what we used to do, build homes. But this will not be your conventional home, no it will be something very rustic most likely and constructed out of recycled materials. I say this because our funds are limited and that is how we will have to build.

I’ve had a rough road over the last few years, two decades really, and my brother is willing to help me and the home is part of the plan.

But for all that has happened I thank the Lord for the wonderful family I grew up with and my beautiful children, all four of them. And now I can add two precious grandchildren to that list. My friends, yes them too. What can I not say about them. Most of them go way back but all of them are the most up-standing, proud, there-for-you, gorgeous bunch of people one could muster up.

For all the glorious memories I have, I still, and will always have the painful memories that flood over me like waves one after another. It gets better as time goes on but they will never go away, that is just how it goes. My aunt told me once when she learned of what I had gone through, Things like that you never forget. I believe she is right.

3

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Being Married to an alcoholic for nearly 20 years was a life altering, slow, state of torture.

Alcoholics mind you come in all degrees. Some are sweet when they have had ‘one too many’ or even just one drink. Some are quiet and you don’t even know they are around. Some just sit and smile. Others get excited and adventurous, a far cry from their usual boring inhibited world. And then we have the class clowns who can actually be funny, at first. We have the ones that cry in their beer, or whiskey—or vodka—or whatever their choice of devil-water happens to be at that particular time. But then we have the destructive ones. If you’re lucky it will be the self-destructive kind, but if it’s not, watch out.

If this is the case they are fueled by anger deep in their being. Generally from something early on in their childhood, like being around alcoholic parents, abusive parents, listening to language that is not fit for young years, let alone any ears really, and to top it all off hearing and seeing this on a regular basis. It becomes normal by the time they enter their young adulthood and now as they near the pushing out of the nest chapter of their fragmented, disruptive, deeply confused and wounded mind and soul they carry it with them out into the world. They know no better. Can you blame them?

Of course to survive all this they learn a great number of tricks for survival. They accumulate an arsenal of magic to perform on victims, and most people that enter their world become victims. This is necessary for them to protect their stained and fragile selves at any cost. And like any performer, the more practice, the better one gets.

Every day becomes a battlefield in their minds of survival versus the world. What they need to do to get through a day is not a problem, and the alcohol or drugs or both for that matter, become a great fueling station to ease the pain that still exist deep down to every cell and molecule. Substance abuse is needed to achieve the fortitude to perform the lies, the schemes, the deceit, the power, the control, the deception, and the endless games of every step taken. Carefully plotted steps to ensure that no one ever figures out their motives or discovers their weaknesses. What I’ve just described is of course the best of the worst. Some words used to describe this might be monster, madman, psychopath, or a downright lily-livered, yellow—bellied, Scally-wag.

This side of human nature has been written about for centuries, it is not new.

Look at the case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A good man, but once infected with the evil juice he created in his lab, it took over and there was no stopping that monster.

We don’t really have a cure for it like an antibiotic for strep throat, or a pill to take to curb a fever. No this illness is only cured by self-want, mind-over-matter, and years of therapy in extreme cases. This condition of addictions has created an industry all to itself. Books on the general subject of addictions, books to help a loved one of an addict, books to self-help your own addictions, books for the wife of one, for the husband of one, books for the children now growing up with one, books for the child that grew up with one and is now grown up, group classes for addicts and their addictions, one-on-one programs if that suits you better, group support programs that go on for life, hospitals just for addictions, recovery centers all over the globe, CD tapes to listen to, programs to attend made mandatory by a judge or court order, prisons that have programs for the ones who were unlucky in their magic and got caught, even the DMV gives classes.

I believe they need to find the truth before they can heal.

The Bible says, The truth shall set you free

John 8:32

Shakespeare said, Shame the devil, tell the truth!

From Henry IV, part I, act I

The Lovin’ Spoonful sang, The doctor said give ‘em jug band music, it seems to make them feel just fine. From the song, ‘Jug Band Music’

Or you could simply, put the lime in the coconut and drink it all up, A song made famous by Harry Nilsson on his album titled, ‘Nilsson Schmilsson’, but originally sung by Yale’s all-male a cappella group, the Alley Cats. A fun-loving song about a man seeking a remedy to feel better, and isn’t that the point — to feel better.

Yes, I was married to one of these, the best-of-the-worst, the cream of the crop, a mind-bending alcoholic and former drug addict.

Their abuse is on you before you know it. You tell yourself: This did not happen; That did not happen; Oh I must’ve just overreacted to the situation; Why I must of exaggerated—yes that’s it; No No… it simply didn’t happen; Besides even if it did I would not let on to my kids, or my family, or to anyone, NO NEVER; Why how could I? It would be too embarrassing, to humiliating; In fact, I’m not even going to let on to myself about it; Stop thinking mind! RIGHT NOW!; Besides it won’t happen again, he said so.

Verbal and physical abuse against someone is wrong. No if and or butts about it. I will even go out on a limb and say when it is against someone you love, maybe even wrong-er. Towards your wife, the mother of your children wrong-est yet. It is the ultimate form of disgusting behavior in a human being. I am probably saying that because I was there… for way too long.

I filled the shoes of an abused wife and mother. It was unimaginable then and even more so now. When you are immersed in it you live in fear, you walk on eggshells to avoid any and all confrontations and quite simply you are in a state of shock constantly. It is only after it ends, and God hope that it does, you realize the state of affairs your life has been in, or more correctly the nightmare.

An abusive person goes against the grain of life. All that is sacred against moral codes, commands, and decency is wiped out. It is a hostile aggression into the dark side of human behavior. Behavior that crosses borders that should never be crossed. The aspect of this becomes the excitement, that becomes the motivation. And the thrill of complete control over someone becomes a habit. It is now an addiction all its own, a necessary potion. A trespassing into the forbidden territory. It is surely a sign of a restless soul.

Keep in mind the crossing of border’s comes in other forms, other ways for the human mind to gain control over a situation, person or authority.

I just finished reading an extraordinary book of a true story of cartographic crime, The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey. Crimes involving maps—rare maps. You might think money was the motive here, but no, the thrill was gaining control of something. In this case the something was rare, so rare that the stolen map might be the only one left in existence. Just to get one’s hands on it was in some cases enough. ULTIMATE control here.

But the book went further into crossing-the-line, which all crimes are. The book talked of geographic crossing from one country to the next, in this case the Iron Curtain.

From 1967 to 1970 G. Raymond Babineau was the Chief of Psychiatry Services at the U.S. Army Hospital in Berlin, Harvey writes. Dr.Babineau had the opportunity to observe many crosses over the Curtain. He said it became an addiction, the ‘crossing-over’ became the adventure. And this sickness became once again, the thrill.

One man Babineau studied repeatedly made dangerous journeys over the Iron Curtain in