The Lady's Chamber

If you came here, you are probably wondering "who is Smoochie"? Well, my first name is Laura. I am a single, 32 year old female from Massachusetts, USA who is wandering this Earth in search of....hmmmmmm...not sure yet! I love learning new things. Here is a picture of me. It is an older one but its the best I have...LOL.

Right now, this story is a long one. Eventually I plan to have it broken out into seperate pages so it is not so much to read at one sitting. Please bear with me. Putting the story of my life here is a way to help me deal with the personal demons of my past. It is not a way to point fingers. It is just how I experienced my life. The music on this page reminds me of my dad. He used to always sing this song to me.

I am the oldest in a family of four kids. One of my sisters, Christine, died of a brain tumor when I was 2 years old...she was 10 months. How my parents made it through that time I will never know. They were so young themselves. Mom was 22 and Dad was 24. Mom was also 7 1/2 months pregnant with my brother Billy. After several operations, they had to make the decision about whether to keep her on life support & have a life as a vegetable...or let her try to live on her own. Well, Mom & Dad decided that if she couldn't live on her own, then she would go live with God so her pain would go away. I don't know how they made that decision. Mom has told me that she prayed a lot and she asked Our Blessed Mother for guidance. Mom said that was the only way she could let go and let things happen the way they were meant to. I don't know how my dad handled it. He never really talks about it. I can only imagine how hard it was for them. My Aunt Eileen tells me that I was very confused...that I was too young to understand what was happening.

I don't remember anything about Chris and I only have pictures to show me what she was like and how we were together. People used to stop my mom and ask her if she was babysitting me! See, my mom had jet black hair when she was younger and so did Chris. I had platinum blonde hair as a baby and big blue eyes. Chris & I looked nothing alike.

I feel very special to be the only one of us surviving kids to actually have been here when she was. Strange as it may seem, I miss her very much and I used to get very angry with God about taking her home to Him. I didn't have a sister who was my age that I could fight with, borrow clothes from & hang around with. That made me very mad! And also very sad. I always felt someone was missing from every family function. Mom always cried alot around her birthday and the anniversary of her death. I still call her on those days to make sure she is doing OK.

Billy was born six weeks after Chris's death. I just know that I latched onto him and vowed that God wasn't going to take this one away from me too! Needless to say, we are very close. I love him dearly.

Erin came along when I was 9. It was the perfect age for me to have a new baby sister! It was like having a living doll to play with. I would dress her up and take her out to play with my friends. I vividly remember the day Erin was born. She came to us on Friday the 13th during a lunar eclipse. I remember being at recess and actually tried to look at it. When I got home that day, Dad & Nana were home...Mom wasn't. I knew Mom had had the baby and I couldn't wait to find out if I had a new brother or sister! I did a dance of joy when I found out it was a girl! I remember looking around after that and realized that Billy was nowhere to be found. When I asked Dad where he was, he told me this...."He is upstairs crying. He wanted a brother." That statement pretty much cemented my brother & sisters relationship for life...LOL!

Billy definitely did NOT want a new sister...he already had one of those! He used to tell Erin that she was adopted...or anything else that would make her cry. Maybe that sounds cruel, but I have to tell you....through the thick of it...if anyone dared to be mean to her....Billy stuck up for his little sister. It was, and is, like...don't you dare hurt her....only I can! I think there are probably a lot of siblings out there who are exactly the same way!

Life as a child was basically uneventful. We went to school and did the usual "kid" things. I was a Girl Scout, I sang in our church's choir, was on the school's bowling team, had a paper route & was an Irish Step Dancer.

When I was six, I remember my dad coming to me and asking me if I would like to take dancing lessons. I was so excited cause lots of the other girls in my class were taking jazz and ballet lessons. I so wanted to be a ballerina...they are so graceful and beautiful. Well, Dad said..."I was thinking more of Irish Step Dancing." I wasn't very happy about this turn of events so he suggested that I try it for one year and if I didn't like it, I could try ballet lessons. Irish Step Dancing quickly became my life! I would dance anywhere I could...at the bus stop mostly. There was an elderly woman who lived across the street from us. She told my mom one day that I was dancing while waiting for the school bus to pick me up. I went to Catholic school and couldn't wear pants so it was my way to stay warm during the winter months. Anyway, my mom said she would tell me to stop and this woman said...No...I really enjoy watching her! I get up early every morning just to see her!

I took lessons every Thursday with my cousin Mona. We would learn our steps and at the end of the year, we performed them in our recital. We also would compete in a feis (pronounced "fesh") or two every year. "Feis" is the Gaelic word for competition. For some reason, my teacher didn't seem to encourage my ability as much as some of the other students, so my parents decided to enroll me in a different dancing school. I started to shine at the Greene School! At the end of my first year, I had competed in two feis's and won my first medal. I will never forget that feeling of elation! It was like I had wings as I ran across the field to tell my parents! I had placed 2nd for my hard shoe jig! Yippee!!!!

I continued to improve my dancing abilities. I earned more medals...even a few 1st place ones! In a couple of years I went from a beginner dancer to a prizewinner. This was particularly exciting because once I won my first, 1st place medal as a prizewinner, I could compete in the oireachtas (pronounced "oraktas". Oireachtas is the Gaelic word for championship. This type of competition is so exciting because you are up against the best of the best. There were two oireachtas my school participated in every year. One was the Boston Oireachtas and the other was the New England Oireachtas. If you placed in the top of your age group at the New England's, you could go to Ireland and compete in the World Championships.
VERY EXCITING!!!.

I never did place at the New England's. I just wasn't at that caliber. This is definitely not a put down of myself. My abilities simply weren't as up there as the rest. I did however, place 9th at the Boston Oireachtas in 1982! I felt like I did when I won my first medal! And the support from my peers was just wonderful at that time. My teammates (and their parents too!) knew just how hard I had worked to earn this.

If any of you have seen "Riverdance", you know just how difficult this type of dancing is. It is very hard on the legs and I have had a few ankle sprains to prove it! "Riverdance" is the new style of Step Dancing. When I learned to do it, oh so many eons ago, it was much more traditional. Not as fast and with your hands by your side at ALL times. However I do think that "Riverdance" is a great thing as it has brought the beauty of Step Dancing to everyone of all ethnic backgrounds

It was when I was in the 8th grade that I started to notice how much Dad truly drank. I can remember coming down the stairs to go to school. Every day there was a large bottle of vodka on the stove. And every day it was either half full or empty. At that age, I didn't really connect the fact that my Dad was (or was at least becoming) an alcoholic. I just remember seeing those bottles.

I also remember all the fighting my parents were doing then. I don't remember what they would fight about because I have blanked most of them out. I think though they mostly fought about little petty things that just escalated out of proportion.

I remember Mom telling me that Dad was an alcoholic. I don't remember exactly when she said this to me. I just remember that I totally resented her saying that. I am Daddy's Little Girl and no one was going to tell that he was actually human with faults of his own! I looked at him as my own super hero! I certainly didn't see him as a human being.

We had to move when I was 14. The house we rented had been sold and was going to be torn down to enlarge the parking lot that was next door. I vividly remember the day my parents told me we had to move. I was home sick with the flu and to help pass the time, I was trying to draw a design I could use on my dancing costume. This was also the same day I found out that I had been accepted into the catholic high school I had applied to. This school was not easy to get in to....there is an entrance exam I had to take and pass before my application would even be looked at. Then the school would take all those applicants and decide who made the cut. Well, I had made it and now I was moving. Talk about experiencing a wide range of emotions! My only hope was that we would stay in Massachusetts so I could go to this school and stay in my dancing class. The rest, I didn't care about!

Well, guess what? Not all of that happened. My parents found a house, not an apartment, that we could lease with an option to buy. It was not in Massachusetts but in New Hampshire. The house itself was great....it was just so far away from all that I knew. I decided that the only way I was moving (remember, I was only 14) was if I could continue dancing lessons. I had just reached the championship level and did not want to quit now! My parents were great about this! They drove me every Friday, and sometimes Tuesdays too, to my lessons which were an hour away.

The downfalls? I continued to go to my old school. I was in the 8th grade still and wanted to graduate with the people I had been going to school with since I was in Kindergarten. My parents arranged for me to live at my grandparents house a few towns over. I would take the town busses to go back and forth. This involved getting up very early to walk a mile to catch the bus, a bus ride of 45 minutes, and then a walk to the school itself. I lasted 3 weeks. April vacation came along and I spent the first full week in my new home. Being away from Mom & Dad at 14 was too hard to continue. I decided to go to my town's public middle school for the rest of the school year. It would give me some time to hopefully make some friends for the summer. I did however, get special permission to participate in the graduation ceremonies at my old school. Mom & Dad spoke with my Principal who got permission from the Cardinal.

It took me 2 years to accept living in NH. I had few friends because I was very shy and didn't think I was interesting to people. Dad's drinking escalated as did the fighting in the house. My self-esteem has never been very high.

One night in particular, the drinking & fighting was really bad. I was 15, it was Friday night and I had nothing to do but listen to it or get out of the aim of fire. I chose to take a walk to try to sort out my life.

I remember walking around the block and stopping at a driveway. It was the driveway of the new girl in school. We had met a week before on the school bus. I don't know how it happened. All of a sudden, I was on her doorstep ringing her doorbell. I truly don't remember walking down the driveway. Kerry had been out of school sick all week and for some reason, I really missed her. I don't know why since we hadn't really talked much, I just know that's how I felt.

I swear that some outside source brought us together. We talked and talked that night...and at the end of it...we were best friends. Sixteen years later, we still are. Her family became my family and vice versa. Her house was the safe haven I had when things in my home got really bad. There was always an ear that listened and a shoulder to cry on. And Mom Sullivan made the best chocolate chip cookies on the face of this planet! (She still does!)

The funny thing about Kerry & I is that we each had our own different group of friends. This is what has made our friendship so special. She is one of the few people I trust with everything that is inside me. And we were never jealous of the time our other friends took from us. It has just always been great! I realize now how rare this kind of friendship is and I treasure it with everything I have.

Then, the floor fell out from underneath me. Dad's drinking was getting out of control and Mom was just miserable. We all were. We were losing our home and had to move again. It was January of my senior year in high school. My parents were seperating. I again had to switch schools just before graduation.

MORE TO COME.....