My Daughter, My Friend

I woke up in the Hospital in Tucson, Arizona at 3:00 P. M. I lay there a while grabbing at my stomachs to be sure the baby was really gone, and that I didn’t have some weird dream. I was flat, so the nightmare of labor really was over. I came to the hospital the night before at eight. I remembered that much and after an easy 10 hours of labor, I remembered the nurse telling me I had a 5 ¼ pound girl. I was thrilled that this baby was a girl, as I had a son six years old. Since the baby was 8 hours old, why wasn’t her father here to help me celebrate the good news? I was so hot and sore, I was lonesome and miserable laying there, so far from friends and family. I was also furious at lying there alone. I had been alone all during the ordeal, now I could lay there and hear all the other patients receiving their friends and family in a happy holiday atmosphere. When John finally came, hours later he said he was tied up with an insurance salesman, named Jim Leary, who was a drinking buddy of his. l guess a little light went on in my head that made it plain, that something that I could never face before was that I had two beautiful children and they would be my life from now on. I was trapped in a place that I hated, that John was so self-centered that I could never depend on him. The nurse told me that I could not see my new child until I took her home 10 days away. I had Contagious Bronchitis and would be a risk to a delicate infant.

A girl named Leonia Turk had the bed next to mine. We had a lot in common. She, too, had a son waiting for her at home, her new child was a girl, and most of all she was an Irish girl from the East Coast married to a second generation European man. We became fast friends and we stood up for each other’s children in the Catholic Church.

When I finally took Cheri home, I christened her Sharon to be acceptable to the church, but I always thought of her as Cheri, the French word for “dear”, which I considered her real name. She was so frail and delicate, that I would watch her sleeping, and tears would roll down my cheeks. I was afraid for her very life. Her pale gray skin was accentuated by a bright cerise birth mark on her neck that pulsated with every breath. Then I had a stroke of luck. I was given a Pediatrician at the hospital and he turned out to be a life savior. His name was Hugh Thomptson, he was a Yale grad, and he literally saved her life. Within three months Cheri was a happy, healthy baby. When her birthmark became infected, he used a new powder called Sulfa (this was 1946) an antibiotic which worked so well that new skin grew over the redness and became hardly discernible. She was now such a happy child that she danced to the radio in her playpen before she could walk. She always loved music and when she went to school she would buy penny whistles and pipes of Pan made out of wax. I would hear her coming home from school playing a tune on whatever she bought that day at the candy store. There were no children around that desolate place to play with, so Cheri learned to play alone. She loved dolls and set up housekeeping by the barbeque in the back. She would play “Annie Oakley” (a television show by that name was her inspiration) for hours and would ride her broomstick horse all over the sand in the back of the house. She had a cowgirl outfit complete with boots and was a joy to watch.

Finally the great day came when we left the ugly desert (after a 9 year sentence) and moved to California and Civilization. We settled in Chula Vista and Cheri went to “F” Street School. The population of the town in 1955 was 45,000 so at last the children had freedom to live as they should at that age. We sold the place in Tucson at a great loss, so had to rent an apartment. We had always had a home of our own, but I was so glad to leave that Hellhole in the desert that I didn’t care. To be where there were trees and people and swimming pools and stores within walking distance was a joy. Money meant nothing by comparison with this.

Cheri took full advantage of her new life. She made friends easily, joined The Camp Fire Girls, and even carried her sociability to trying new churches when her girlfriends asked her to. She ended up trying them all; Methodist, Lutheran, Seven Day Adventist. This was fine with me because I had broken with the Catholics a long time before. Now she was free to get up early on weekends and explore the town on her bicycle. She always left a note telling me where she was and then she would check in every hour so I would not worry. We lived on the second floor and she would come to the side walk and call up her whereabouts and when she would check in again. She was very unique in protecting me this way.

We finally recovered our financial losses enough to buy a house. It took 5 years, now Cheri goes to Hilltop High School. At 16 she passes the driver’s test the first time she tries. This is much to the surprise of her father who did not want her to drive at all. He was sure she wouldn’t pass because he took her out only once for a token lesson. The secret of her success was that her best girlfriend, Marylyn Thrower, had been giving her lessons secretly after school. She loved to drive and to this day she is the best driver I ever rode with. She had a Ford hardtop sports car and we went all over town. I finally had some freedom too. Cheri said when she got her license, “Stick with me, kid, and you will go places”, and this turned out to be true. Not only then, but all my life, I saw all kinds of sights, from Disneyland to British Columbia when we went on periodic trips. There would be the three of us as soon as Heather (Cheri’s daughter much later) was old enough to travel. We had a wonderful time because of Cheri’s adventurousness and love of new places.

After graduation from high school, Cheri entered Southern Western College, where she joins an Archeology club. There she meets Sam Soderberg. He is a tall handsome, blond Swede and they fall in love. Sam had an open top Jeep and they were a beautiful sight, two tall blonds in black matching berets, made heads turn when they drove by. Sam got drafted, the Viet Nam war was still going strong, so he asked Cheri to marry him and go to Fort Knox, Kentucky with him. I was very much against this plan, because I wanted her to continue with her education. This was a very bad time for me as I was in the midst of a divorce, after 27 years of marriage. I probably did not fight this as hard as I might have in normal times. She was 18 so there was no stopping them anyway. They got married in the City Hall in National City; no one was in a very festive mood because of the war and the turmoil of the divorce. Cheri was a beautiful bride none the less; she wore a white Italian Knit dress, with turquoise shoes, wide brimmed hat, coat and bag of the same color. After a Honeymoon in San Francisco, Sam is sent to Kentucky, and Cheri follows him a month later. She goes across country on a bus, finds a furnished apartment, and a job all in the first month. She does all this while living one week on the Army Base, and one week at the Y.W.C.A. as there only one week stays allowed at the base. Even under these difficult circumstances she managed to establish a home. Sam is forced, by the Army to live on the base while he is in training, and Cheri is very lonely as a stranger in a new place. Then she has a stroke of luck, she meets a woman, Lillian Holland at work, when she changes jobs to an architect’s office. Lillian and her husband, Spencer, are very good to Cheri. They are a lot older and have no children. They treat her like a daughter and make life much better for Cheri.

When Sam’s time in training is up, they decide to return to California and they ask me if I would like to go with them. I have been working in an Art school for the last year and a half, in Connecticut, and I jump at the chance to go home. So us three cross the country in a Volkswagen Bug, with a Mother cat and 6 baby kittens in the well in the back seat. Cheri could not bring herself to abandon the kittens and leave them to die alone.

Sam is sent to Germany. I am living in an apartment in the college area in an apartment that Johnny found near him, so Cheri moves in with me for a month. She is three months pregnant and, undaunted as usual, she flies off to Germany to be with her husband. She again sets up a home in a strange environment. This time it is harder because of the language barrier. She manages to do this against all odds.

When Cheri returns from Germany with the most beautiful baby girl I ever saw, her name was Heather. The two girls stay with me, as Sam is not back from Europe yet. When he comes back they rent an apartment across the street from me on Madeline St. and Sam drives me to work in downtown San Diego. Sam has a job working for his father, who after a year sells the business to a San Francisco firm that gives Sam a Job, so the kids are off again, this time to live in Sunnyvale, a suburb of San Francisco, 10 miles outside the city. This time Cheri has to worry about a baby as she sets up a new household. The job does not work out for Sam and in a year they return to Chula Vista and buy a house. Heather goes to Kindergarten at a school a half block away from home. She still is a beautiful, bright child who Cheri dresses like a doll.

Sam has trouble finding work and Cheri goes to Dental Tech classes. I am living in the center of San Diego, at a residential hotel. I am not working, so while Cheri is in school all day I take care of Heather at the Hotel. She soon becomes the darling of the place. She is brought to me every day at 7:00 A.M., complete with books and toys, everything that will keep a 6 year old, on vacation from school, happy until she is picked up again at 4:30. Things are still tight financially, so they rent their house, and take a cheaper place in Lemon Grove. Cheri is now working 15 hours a day to keep the family together. Sam gets a job with a pipe company selling pipe and valves to building firms, and the kids move back to their own home.

A year later they get a divorce and sell the house, so Cheri rents a town house, and asks me to move in and help with expenses, and watch Heather while she is working. Cheri is working for the Sheriff’s department now and has weird hours. She is also studying Police science at Mira Mass College, where she meets Tom Barker. They get married and move to Escondido and I am very happy to return to city life again. This marriage proves to be a disaster and after three months Tom leaves by request. Cheri asks for the manager’s job in the apartment she lives in and gets it. Now she can live rent free and take care of Heather at the same time.

Again I move in to share expenses. This is a two bedroom apartment and Cheri insists that I take the Master bedroom; she gives Heather the other bedroom and sleeps on the floor of the living room. She works very hard. She not only manages 28 apartments, she cleans and paints empty ones for extra money. We live in this apartment for a year and then when the manager’s duplex becomes vacant we move there. It is much bigger with 3 bedrooms and an office. Cheri is always there for Heather, when she is ready for Junior High, she drives ten miles twice a day to take her to a better school, in a better neighborhood to avoid the gangs in a tough school nearby. She is a Girl Scout leader and Heather has every advantage from music lessons to a trip to Mexico, taken by her class at school.

Cheri meets John Hokanson a tenant that is getting a divorce. They met when Cheri was moving her furniture from the apartment to the manager’s house. She did this with a little red, child’s wagon she had borrowed. John being a kind and caring man could not sit in his front room and watch her move all that heavy stuff alone. They became good friends and they both made extra money painting apartments. The result of this was they fell in love. John’s wife moved in with her parents and John and she filed for divorce; she took the two children with her. She later moved back to Washington State and John, being deserted, moved in with us and slept in the office on a roll away bed. I was ready to move back downtown but Cheri asked me to stay and at least try the new arrangements for a while, since we were all very compatible the new system worked out very well.

We all moved to a three bed room house in San Marcos. John Steven Hokanson was born in this house, we lived there 6 years. All the time Cheri was in the apartment she was going to Palomar College studying to be a Montessori Method teacher. Her professor asked her to join the staff at a school she owned a Santa Fay. John Steven was 3 at this time, so he was enrolled in the preschool where Cheri taught. Heather was in High school.

Linda, John’s ex-wife died, so John and Cheri went to Washington and returned with the two children, Eric 14 and Lisa 8. There was a big terrible problem that no one expected. When the kids enrolled in Cheri’s school, Eric proved to be practically illiterate and he could never catch up in any school to his grade level. So Cheri started another career, it was obvious that Eric would never get a high school diploma from public school and tutoring was out of the question financially, so she began a home school for the three children. This system is under the Escondido school system, therefore is fully accredited as the Independent Studies Programs. Eric obviously was not normal and showed repeated signs of psychosis. He resented being forced to learn even under the ideal circumstances of private teaching; a high school diploma was of no importance to him. One night, in the presence of his father, he attacked Cheri in a blind rage, throwing her to the floor he tried to scratch her eyes out. It was only the intervention of his father that kept her from very serious injury; his father had all he could do to restrain him, as he seemed to have maniacal strength. The end of this horrible show of ingratitude was that, when the grand parents in Washington refused to take him back, he was made a word of the State court, with a three year restraining order against him.

These are just the high lights of one women’s life, as I see it. I may have some of the time frames wrong, but this is the bare bones of the story of a courageous, adventurous girl who dared to take chances. At the time of this writing she will be 44 years old, and I am sure, knowing her, there is plenty of adventure ahead. I know she will meet all challenges that come with honesty and wisdom.

From the point of view of her mother (me) Cheri never considered me her enemy, as is so common in this parent bashing society. We have always been friends who understood each other. She has made a place for me in her home; the children love and respect me because this is what their parents do. I never have the feeling that I am a bother. At 77 I can do less and less for myself, so I know it is not easy for others. When I discovered I was pregnant with her I was horrified. We had just sold the house in Connecticut and were on our way to Arizona. Now I know that the only really good piece of luck I ever had was Cheri. She has made my old age bearable, and that is my reward for loving her so much. When I first saw her and she was so white and delicate I vowed that if she would live I would give both my children all my love. This has come back to me a hundredfold.

“Everyone has a story” the saying goes and people like Cheri make their own story because they are not afraid to take chances and live life to the fullest. She was never afraid, never in a rut, never boring or predictable. She was strong, honest, funny, and a wonderful Mother. I am sure when she looks back on her life she will have very few regrets. Since I wrote so much about the people who influenced my life I could not skip the one person who had the most at the end of my life when I really needed it. Thank you my Dear.

Cheri Ami (this is French for dear friend) I hope you won’t think this was presumptuous of me. I meant it only as a tribute, if you don’t like it please tear it up, or better yet, add your own version. Since I wrote about so many interesting people, how could I skip you, the most interesting of all? You have truly been a cheri ami, thank you again.