Providence Chapter 5

We were living in a run down apartment building in Daytona Beach, Florida.  And when I say run down, that is perhaps an understatement.
I was living there with my mate, and I was pregnant.  Not my ideal place to have a baby, living there for me wasn't unpleasant, except when my other half drank hard liquor...some people just can not drink whiskey.  They become quite mean and nasty.  I wonder sometimes if he ever really thought about the things that he did to me when he was drunk out of his mind, especially before I was pregnant.                                        
Back to being pregnant. We arrived in Florida this time with an Austin Healey Sprite Mark 9, cute little car except we had to push it to start it. Oh the joys of being a rebel, I say that with tongue in check.  Well we arrived and were able to find a very "cheap" apartment and we had no more money.  So I was able to get rehired at a restaurant where I had previously worked as a hostess.  I didn't mind working at all, in fact I rather enjoyed it. At this point I was seven months along and thank God, I was in very good health.
If you have ever been poor you may be able to identify with some of this.
We were living in a tiny little apartment, that desperately needed a coat of paint and layers upon layers of dirt removed...which we did....and as we worked I couldn't help but think about where was this baby going to sleep.  How were we going to feed her and take care of her.  And oh yes we knew we were having a girl.  I was thrilled by this prospect, but also scared out of my mind.
I knew how life had been before I was pregnant...being dragged down the street by my hair...that wasn't fun at all.  I can remember making a deal with God. Just let him fall asleep, or pass out.  Please God, I'll quit smoking. (I wasn't pregnant yet.)  What was I thinking making a deal with God?  But he did pass out and we did sleep.  Thank you Jesus and I mean that completely.  I may not have understood all I was doing, but God did.  He had his hand on me.  As the time came closer and closer for me to deliver, we had gotten somethings taken care of, number one being where the baby was going to sleep.  I had an old, antique ring that I traded for a trunk, a flat topped trunk....something like this.

And when this was placed right up along the wall with the lid up and a nice piece of foam covered in a nice snugly fabric, it made the perfect little bed for a new born, And of course I had the lid fixed so it couldn't close and all her little bottles of lotion and bath soaps and ointments and powders, that I thought I needed where all lined up and ready to go...I had picked out a name sometime back...I think it was on a previous trip to sunny Florida we had lived in the very close proximity of a young woman named Johnnie, and I was adamant that should I ever have a daughter I would name her such a name that her nickname was Johnnie.

So my Michael and I spent time trying to conjure up a name, sounds like we were witches, we weren't, that would work...we went thru many ideas and we finally settled on Jonquil.  I thought that this was a name that we had made up, however, I later found out that it was an actual name...but more on that later.
Well March 17th, St Patrick's day arrived as did Jonquil Heather.  What a fuzzy creature she was...and she was beautiful.  I didn't know that babies sometimes arrive with a lot of hair that they usually rub off as the days go by.  Once this occurred her real beauty shone forth.
Now I am not 100% sure what the difficulties may have been in her little system, but we had developed a routine of sorts. For at least a month, Johnnie would eat, throw up, eat, sleep a few hours, poop, and I mean poop, as in projectile poop, and when she eat sometimes we had projectile vomiting,  the pediatricians knew not what to recommend.  Johnnie was gaining weight and we were basically told to keep up what we were doing and maybe watch what I was eating a little more closely.
Okay I was 22, I was with a man seven years my senior, who loved Johnnie completely and I think he loved me as well, although at times I really had a hard time seeing it....like when we sold our little car and he bought silver wire to weave silver rings..The sale of these rings was to pay the rent and buy food...however it went for buying weed...which he was going to bag up and sell, but he ended up smoking most of it himself along with his buddies...not a great picture....

Are you hungry for more of this saga?  Well come on back for the next chapter...

Providence 1975 Chapter 4

Well the road trip hasn't started and I already feel as if I have traveled miles.  Now you may be wondering what I am talking about...so I will tell you.  But first I must ask. Do you believe in providence? Do you know what this word means?  Providence means the following: divine guidance or care, God,  providing for the future.  The part of the definition that I would like to deal with is the first.  I frankly feel that everything in my life that happens, happens because of the hand of God that is on my life.  And because of His guidance, His care and especially His love of me.

I can think back to a time in my life when I was approximately 20.  Great age you might say, but for me it was filled with mystery.  And not always mysteries that I wanted to be a part of.  But at that time anything was better than going home, or so I thought.

It is really sad when our children feel this way.  I had already put my parents thru a wringer you might say. And now I was stepping out even further.  In our last chapter I had told you all about moving from Rehobeth Beach to Lewes.  What an awesome apartment I had and the price was great.

Just before I had moved up to Lewes I had meet a young man.  To me he looked like an Indian, a native american Indian, and to some degree he is.  He is part Seminole. And have you ever looked at a family and thought gees, how did this one or that one get to look the way that they do?  It was as if all the Indian traits of the family landed in this one person.  Well that would be the case.  He had long straight beautiful black hair, very dark eyes and now looking back a somewhat dark spirit as well. But the hand of God was upon me and for that I am forever grateful.  He moved with me from Rehobeth Beach to Lewes as well as his friend.

Now you all need to understand I was a person to experiment, with certain things.  It was a time in our culture where a lot of teenagers and young adults did these things, and I wasn't to be left out.
So yes I experimented, although I didn't get to far gone into the drug scene and I am glad of this.
For me I was mostly a pot head, and that was pretty much it.  However that was not the case with others in my life.

I was still working and supplying the rent money, the food money, the party money, and whatever else money was used for.  We finally decided it was time to move to someplace warmer.  So I sold most everything I owned, except about 80 pounds of various items I had to keep, packed into a back pack, and we walked out of the state of Delaware.
I say walked because back in 1975-6 the state police didn't like people hitch hiking in their glorious state...so we walked.  A very nice young couple, very similar to us, driving a yellow VW bug saw us walking along the road and stopped and asked us if we would like a ride.  We had a ride all the way to Jacksonville, Florida.  Well it took just a bit longer and we made it to Daytona Beach.
This was our first time to Daytona.
We had a room in a not very nice section of Daytona and we were on the mainland.  I had, with a prayer to God answered, gotten a job.  I am not sure that God wanted me to be a bartender, but I was a bartender at the Plaza Hotel...not on the mainland, a good three mile walk to work and then home at the end of the night, around three o'clock AM.  Well it's a good thing I was working so hard because, no matter how bad the room was, I slept.  It wasn't to long into our stay when we were able to get another rental...a bit nicer...Thank you Jesus.

Again it wasn't long and I was finding out that my mate began to display some dispositions that I was having a hard time coping with, but God, protected me.  And I stayed on.

As time went on we decided it was time to move up to Virginia.  This was where Michael's family was from and so we went to visit...all of his family was very kind and I think they liked me...so we stayed for a bit and then we even got an apartment in Manasas'.  A little basement apartment, right next to a little grocery store, not as small as the convenience stores we now have, but not a full size grocery store.  And we where right across from the Manassas Train station.  I just loved the sounds of the trains, still do. Well we stayed there until it started to get cold and of course we had to go back to Daytona.

This time however we didn't have to hitch hick.  Michael had a friend that had a car and we drove south.  This time we were able to get a small top of the garage  apartment on the main land.  And oh the setting was beautiful, I really loved this apartment, try to imagine with me...if you came in the front door of the house and walked thru to the back door, down a few steps and across the yard.  The garage was separate from the house. And actually the whole property spanned the block, so while the front of the house faced one street the back of the property and where you drove into the garage was the street behind the house.  Does this make sense? I can see it in my minds eye. our bedroom was a completely window encased porch, sometimes refered to as a Florida room. And it was up on the second floor, sorta like a tree house.  Can you imagine...

Well I had a job at the Function Junction a "fun" evening spot for those who enjoyed the spirits, the liquid kind.  Michael enjoyed the monies I earned however any opportunity that appeared for him to considerthat I might be being unfaithful was quickly an exploding situation.  But please understand, God had his hand on me...something for which I will and always am thankful.  One night on our way home after my working and Michael drinking whiskey, not a good thing, Michael decided that I was being unfaithfull and decided to start a fight with me as we walked home.  If you are a young women that doesn't mind being dragged down the street by you hair, then this would have been the guy for you.  However that wasn't me.  And I decided right then and there I was going to find a way to leave.

And that my friends is the next chapter.