After the commune, and Christian’s near-miss drowning, Chuck joined the Air Force. He was stationed in Sacramento and he and I and Christian moved back in together. We were giving it a shot. So one weekend I decided to visit my parents in Atwater. Chuck had to stay. I came home and I went into my closets, and I saw pair of strange women’s boots there. I confronted Chuck. It was a woman who was stationed at the base, and that was it. I’d had it. I was tired of his dishonesty. Everything was clear to me. I needed to move back to Atwater, with my dog and Christian, and I left everything else behind.

I moved back in with my parents. I started to collect welfare. I was paying my parents a little bit of money to live with them.

After my father was stationed at Castle Air Force Base, he retired and tried to sell life insurance for John Hancock, but it didn’t work out. So he got a job at the welfare department in the AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependant Children) section. He went around and saw how the kids were living.

He worked at the welfare department for another 25 years. He got two retirements: one from the state and one from the Air Force. He had joined the Air Force when he was 18 years old. He was the only boy in the family. He had three sisters. His mother only spoke Italian. He had a half-brother. When my grandfather died, my grandmother remarried. They had a child, but no one in the family ever accepted this child. It didn’t even have the name Giasullo.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

I Start (and Quickly End) My Second Marriage

Then Tom Reynolds came back into my life. He was a friend of my brother’s. One Christmas Tom came by to see my brother. Tom asked me out. I was weirded out because he was my brother’s friend. I was still only twenty-something years old. 22. 23.

He said that he was always attracted to me, ever since I was a little girl. I thought “this is getting weirder.”

My mother told me: “just go out with him. What have you got to lose?”

We started a relationship. He lived in Capitola, California at the time and had a jewelry store. He wooed me to come live in Aptos in 1975. Tom’s mother was Dolores Reynolds. She was my bookkeeping teacher in High School. She caught me smoking in the bathroom once.

So in the meantime, I wanted to find another job in a vet hospital. Tom talked me into moving to Aptos, California. He shared a home with Joe and Mary, his business partners in Bliss Jewelry. Tom was the jeweler.

I used to make pukka-shell necklaces. I used to string thousands and thousands of pukka-shells to make money until I got another job at a vet’s office.

One day, Mary took her cat to the vet. She went to Del Mar Pet Hospital where Dr. Jay Stone worked. I went with her. In the waiting room there was a sign up that they were looking for a vet assistant.

I applied for a job. I had a year-and-a-half experience with Dr. Northway; I had a referral letter from him.

Dr. Stone called me and told me that he had offered the job to another person.

But a few days later he called me back and said that the other person decided not to take the job. It was mine if I still wanted it. It was working in the kennel, and the perfect job. Christian was going to Capitola Elementary.

In the meantime, Tom and I got married. It was 71 or 72. Tom and I lived on 42nd avenue.

I worked as a kennel person for a year and got promoted to assistant, working for Dr. Stone and Dr. Smith. But my marriage to Tom was a rocky road. I was never really in love with Tom. All my life I’d done exactly the opposite of what my parents wanted me to do.

Tom was good to me. He was good to Christian. It was everything my parents said that I should have. But after about four years it wasn’t working out. We ended up separating. In the meantime, I started a relationship with Dr. Stone at the vet hospital.

A few years ago I read in the paper that Tom’s father had died. It did say that Tom lived in Nevada. I’ve never talked with him again; I’m not in contact with him.

I did stay in contact with Christian’s father. He tried to have a relationship with Christian but it was too late. He was young, I was young. By the time he wanted to have a relationship with Christian it was too late.

They are not in touch today. I know that Christian asked me if I knew his phone number or e-mail address. He tried to contact Christian. Christian wouldn’t respond to his letters or the mails.

Now Christian is starting to get in touch with his inner self. He’s into meditation. He’s into the Deepak Chopra. Family ties are starting to become more important to him. I’m not in contact with his father either. I don’t hold any grudges against him. It was just the time in our lives when we were both very young.

My Mother Always Told Me I Should Marry a Veterinarian

I had married Tom and was living here in Capitola. I was working at the vet hospital, and I was working my way up the ladder. Then Jay and my relationship changed from a professional relationship into a personal romantic relationship. I was separated from Tom. At the time, Jay was married to Gail. Jay was kind, good looking, tall, dark, and handsome. I was very sexually attracted to Jay as well. My mother always told me you need to marry a veterinarian. But I never really thought that Jay and I would get married. I never thought Jay would leave his wife and kids to pursue a new relationship.

There was a lot of turmoil for Jay and Gail. I was just learning to be single. I had never been truly single in my life. When I was in high school Chuck was my boyfriend. I had a child with Chuck, and I went from that relationship to Tom, and then from Tom to Jay. I was enjoying the single life. I had a short relationship with an intern at the veterinary hospital between Tom and Jay. It was on again, off again, until Jay decided that he wanted to be with me. Jay’s daughter Kenley was 5, and Brett was 10. Christian was ten.

So we became a combined family. We got married. Jay and I both got a divorce. That was a difficult time for us because the kids were resentful that Jay was with me and not with their mother. Christian was very happy, and he’s still very happy with Jay. To this day he says that Jay is his father. Christian says that Jay earned the right to be his father.

I kept working at the vet hospital for a very short period of time. Then they fired me. There was a corporation rule that husbands and wives could not work together. When Jay and I got married, they fired me. When I was fired I asked why me, why not Jay? I tried not to take it personally. It was hard because I really did want to work at the veterinary hospital. I really enjoyed my job, and I think I was really good at it.

So I tried to get jobs and other veterinary hospitals but they all asked me: “why don’t you work in your husband’s office?” I think they were afraid to hire me because they thought I would go home and tell them things.

After Losing my Veterinary Job, I Discover Retail

So that’s when I really got into retail. I was shopping at one day at Harry Scari’s in Aptos owned by Tom Cahill. The girl that worked there said that she was leaving and I thought “gee, that might be fun.” So I got a part time job there.

I really liked clothes and merchandising, and putting things together. And then they closed the store and I was laid off. At that time I had become friends with Sherry Fisher. Christian and her son Stefan were in the same class. She knew Sandy Pavlovich. While I was there shopping one day with Sherry, we spoke to Sandy, and one of her daughters. She was leaving. So I got a job at Innovations.

That was in the nineteen eighties, and I’ve worked there for twelve years. That was fun because it got me out in society. In turn, Jay and I made a lot of friends. We were this couple who had come together in an abnormal situation, so my friends went in another direction. And his friends went off with his wife. So we had to make all new friends. Innovations was a way to make friends, and I made a lot of lasting friendships.