Near Abilene

Somewhere in Texas, sitting in a parking lot with the engine running. I really don't want to go in. Too few cars in the parking lot to slip in unnoticed.

It's a typical recovery clubhouse. There's no smoking anymore, but the walls are still stained with nicotine from alcoholics long dead. A bunch of beat-up six-foot folding tables are arranged to make a square in the middle of the large room. The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions hang on the wall, and in the front of the room is an enormous hand-made cedar podium rigged with a microphone for big Saturday night meetings. 

I pour myself a cup of coffee, and add enough creamer to mask the grey-brown tint. It looks disgusting, but it tastes okay. I take a seat at the table. There are only about ten people in the room, all of them quiet.

Whap! Without looking up from his newspaper, the old guy on my right slams down a flyswatter. I count seven plastic fly swatters evenly spaced around the table. Huh.  I think about leaving, but the chairman asks me to read the preamble so I stay. I remind myself that I'm not here for the ambiance, or the coffee. But damn.

It's like that, you know. Some meetings are weird. In my city, I have the luxury of a pristine club with gourmet coffee, and still, once in a while, even the best meetings turn strange.  

The chairman gets started with the readings and then calls for shares. The first speaker is a girl just coming back from a relapse. She's a mess, and she's crying. It's a good sign: there is power in those tears of desperation.

The second speaker is a middle-aged woman celebrating ten years of sobriety and she, too, is sobbing. Two beloved sons lost to accidents just in the past five months, and somehow she is sober.  

This. This is why I'm here, these two women. The young girl reminds me how miserable it would be to get sober again. The older woman reminds me that nothing, but nothing, is ever bad enough to make me drink or use.

Resigned but grateful, I grab a flyswatter, sip my grey coffee, and listen.