Pat Montandon - Oh the Hell of It All

On my fiftieth birthdayDecember 26, 1979my dearly loved husband Al, and our nine-year-old son Sean had awakened me with an armful of white Moondance roses, a steaming cup of French Roast coffee, and a three-pound tin of Beluga caviar. This is just for you, Patsy, Al said. He put the breakfast tray over my legs and then kissed me. We know how much you love caviar.

Ill share, I said, laughing. Sean climbed up on the bed next to me but when I spooned the glistening gray eggs into his mouth, he made a face. That tastes awful Mom, why do you like that stuff? he asked. I just do, Sean-Sean, I said, amused.

Al said, Sweetheart, Sean has a surprise for you, right Sean?

Yeah, Sean said, scrambling off the bed. He fished a small box from Als jacket pocket and handed it to me. I made this for you at school, he said. Its a ceramic cross on a string so you can wear it.

Oh, Sean-Sean, I said, putting the cross around my neck and hugging him. What a beautiful present. Ill treasure it forever.

Having my adored family around me was a delicious way to begin a milestone birthdayevery bit as good as our extravagant eighth wedding anniversary when Al had taken me on a whirlwind trip to Paris.

In the City of Light, my handsome husband had put on a tuxedo, looking more handsome still, and I had donned a Dior evening gown for a gastronomic feast at the famous La Tour dArgent. We dined on roast duckling with orange sauce and drank vintage Chateauneuf du Pape while enjoying a killer view of Notre Dame Cathedral from across the Seine. At the end of the evening, Al gave me a pair of emerald and diamond earrings. Al darling, you are too good to be true, I had said, kissing him.

Ive told you many times that you saved my life, Patsy, Al said. I was just sitting up there in that penthouse waiting to die until I met you.

On this day of my fiftieth birthday, we were in our San Francisco penthouse with its twenty-three-foot tall glass walls enhanced by furniture of beige travertine by the famous interior designer Michael Taylor. Our dining table seated fourteen and was so huge that it had had to be lifted by crane up to our thirty-third-floor aerie. The view was spectacular, too, and included the entire San Francisco Bay, from the Faralon Islands thirty miles in the Pacific to the Port of Oakland, and the hills and water and three bridges in between.

Al would fly us over that view in his jet helicopter to our beautiful country home, River Meadow Farm in Rutherford, California, in the famed Napa Valley, the day after my birthday. River Meadow was my dream home and the place where we relaxed, and swam, and dug in the earth and grew grapes.

After growing up poor, I appreciated all the material things Al provided, but my happiness was more deeply rooted than that. The true blessings of my life were my husband and son. Growing up I had been blessed with a kind and gentle father who had taught me to care about those marginalized by society and not to be impressed by possessions. My fathers It can be done motto, along with my mothers insistence that I be able to speak out in public had stood me in good stead. Mothers sense of humor and her ability to handle adversityincluding hungerwere gifts I hoped to pass along to Sean. In spite of the fact that she had twelve pregnancies and eight living children, she always expected us to be clean, properly dressed, and insisted we were to be educated. But she could also be a rigid taskmaster and I could never please her. I was determined that I was going to be a different kind of mother to my child.

Al and I lived a grand life with grand friends and grand parties. There was the house blessing at River Meadow Farm where Benny Goodman serenaded Alex Haley, Danielle Steel, and two hundred other friends, the 40s Sentimental Journey party where Clint Eastwood, Ethel Kennedy, and Valentino danced to the music of Les Brown and His Band of Renown.

Since marrying Al I had enjoyed an endless stream of happy surprises. We flew to Florida in a Gulf Stream jet to attend the space launch of Apollo XIV. We relaxed aboard a yacht in the Florida sun with Cary Grant and John Wayne after attending the moon shot. At a dinner in our San Francisco home, astronaut and fellow Oklahoman Tom Stafford, the commander of Apollo X, gave me a gold pin that spelled Okie that he had taken to the moon.

On the night of my half-century mark, Al threw a dinner party for me at Trader VicsTHE restaurant in San Francisco. Among the guests were our closest friendsDanielle Steel, Alex Haley, Cyril Magnin, Ann and Gordon Getty, and our Napa Valley neighbors John and Dede Traina. Dede was not only my best friend but Sean thought of her as his best friend ever as well. He was smitten with the woman, and although her two sons, Todd and Trevor, were his age, Sean always preferred Dedes company. She seemed to enjoy Seans company, too.

Touched by Als thoughtfulness and very much in love, I toasted my husband. To Alfred Spalding Wilsey, the most wonderful husband that ever was. Youve made my life into a flower garden. With tears sliding down my face I raised my glass, Heres to the love that produced our beautiful son Sean and to the rest of our lives together.

Eight days later, on January 4, 1980, as we prepared for bed, Al said so casually that I might have missed it had I not been listening, I want a divorce. My world collapsed.

Almost everything was considered a sin while I was growing up as a preachers daughter in Texas and Oklahoma in the 30s: makeup, dying ones hair, funny papers on Sunday, movies, short-sleeved dresses, and jewelry. Tent revival meetings with sermonizers exhorting sinners to confess dotted the landscape, which stretched mile after mile across the flat plains of the Lone Star State and throughout the rolling hills of Oklahoma.

As a child my world was family, school, friends, and church. Church came first. It permeated my youth. As the seventh of eight children born to a West Texas fundamentalist minister father, I was constantly exhorted to be good. Goodness was enforced according to the rigid tenets of my parents faith.

My strict father was often warm and kind, although he could fly off the handle, scaring us kids half to death. He loved all humanity, advocating equality between races at a time when it was dangerous to do so. His friendship with Negroes was the one point of contention between my father and mother. She would often tell him he would rue the day he allowed Coloreds to attend his services.

Mother was severe and unsympathetic, yet she loved music and played the piano, taught us poetry, and emphasized the importance of being able to read and speak in public. She could also be quite humorous, but that was rare.

One of my sisters, Betty Ruth, had died from a mastoid infection when she was two, shortly before I was born on December 26, 1928. The ghost of my dead sister haunted me. Knowing I could never replace her I would try to be more accomplished than my older siblings and then maybe, some day, my family would love me too, I thought. My six surviving siblingsthree sisters and three brotherswere usually in Mamas good graces, because they never dared to disagree with her. But she and I were constantly at war. I wanted to listen to The Pepper Cadets, a kids radio show, play dress-up using lipstick, and go to a Shirley Temple movieall sinful things in my parents view.