Surviving High Society
by Elizabeth Mulholland
(USA)
Surviving High Society
PROLOGUE
Life always has two sides: comedy and tragedy. And depending on your point of view any life can be viewed primarily from the side of tragedy or comedy. My life has been filled with such outrageous tragedy that the overall story has turned the corner to become comedy. My life has been such bad comedy at times, that it is pure soap opera worthy of waterfalls of tears or laughter depending on your mood.
My basic philosophy mirrors that of Josh, my step-son’s best friend. With my step-son as a passenger, Josh totally destroyed his car on a country road, but both seventeen- year old boys emerged unscathed. Josh, who now owned a twisted pile of metal, clapped his hands and immediately declared with a big grin, “Well, I guess that’s the end of that one! Damn, but we’re going to have to walk home!” Admit defeat, declare victory that you’re alive, laugh and keep on trucking!
It turned out that being born illegitimately was the least of my problems. There is little question that my natural mother, Maxie, used her pregnancy with me to try to pressure my very married father to divorce his wife and marry her. For her, the plan didn’t work. Although Maxie eventually got what she wanted (marriage to Charles), she then discovered that was not forever as Charles had gone on to another affair. Maxie was totally and absolutely outraged. I had been wasted effort and to add insult to injury she was now responsible for her second child by Charles, a boy named Jonathan an incredibly bright, handsome child who had inherited his father’s ability to think logically. He would use that logical brain to step around his mother’s emotional problems and build a satisfying life for himself. But in Maxie’s mind, the gods invented trouble after trouble for her throughout her life. In contrast, her children concluded that making lemonade out of lemons allowed them to disregard the history of their beginnings in order to become productive happy adults.
I was adopted into a wacky, moneyed blue- blooded family in Connecticut. My brother, another adopted youngster who came from the same agency I came from, arrived a year later. My world contained many rich people, some of them famous: Katharine Hepburn, Eleanor Roosevelt and Lord Louis Mountbatten. I came to learn that many of these people wore public faces, even in their private lives which hid their true personas. Quite a few sought supposed emotional security by amassing fortunes in the belief that their money would be an unassailable moat that would shield them from the unwashed and unknown.
The biggest lesson I learned in my younger years concerned the power of money. Lots of money could buy diamonds and wonderful trips abroad but in my case it also bought plans for the premature death of both my adoptive brother and me. Although Mother’s convoluted and vicious plans for our futures did not work out precisely as she had planned, they made life much more difficult for her children.
However, my spirit survived, buoyed by the unconditional love and wry humor of my adoptive father who died when I was twenty- two. After becoming a traumatic brain injury patient in 1968 due to a botched suicide attempt, my brother died in 2007. I ran from supposed insanity for twenty two years, had a doomed relationship with a cousin of Ernest Hemingway and then fell in love with a blue-eyed Irishman, originally from Chicago, whose hand was holding the hand of his red- haired ten- year-old son. The two of us nearly went bankrupt, frazzled banks and probate courts and legally sold estate Tiffany diamond jewelry which we did not own. By 2002, we had found my natural family and the last details of a medical scam that lasted for 38 years and could have killed me.
The luxury of realizing that I’ve done well is now mine. I have a loving family, a paid-up house, good health and I get to play bridge and golf with nice people at a country club. It seems the cat likes me too.
I can’t ask for anything more.
My book will be out in September, 2008. Contact me at flyank@cox.net for more info.
