Interview with Agustine Welles/Fall 2006. Agustine Tell me first of all, why did you decide to write this book? Probably the biggest question you'll get asked the most often. Carole There is very little literature on children who grow up in an alcoholic family, or  on children who experience the loss of parents. I am not counting Pollyanna or Anne of Green Gables, laughable fictions. How you feel about losing a parent as a child and how you feel about that loss as an adult- particularly having raised children of your own- are two very different perspectives. On the fifth anniversary of 9/11 I saw a television interview with a young girl who talked about losing her father and she said she was lucky. I had to turn the television set off because she is not lucky. If she isn't experiencing the loss now, she will down the road. Agustine This  is definitely a question for you to mull over. Carole Hungry Hill is , in part, a story on how parents shortchange their children. Children are just so needy for their parents that any kind of attention or any kind of action or behavior on their parents’ part they will rationalize as somehow acceptable. Agustine And how they'll take almost scraps? Carole Just scraps. Lyrics from a song…my father singing “Heart of my hearts...” I needed more from him than a catchy refrain. Agustine You've written a memoir at an interesting time. How did, if at all, did James Frey's debacle affect you as a writer, and then subsequently,  affect the publishing of the book? Carole Well, James Frey's story is the story of an addict. Mine is the story of how the addict affects family members. That is the biggest difference between me and James Frey. I sensed when I read that book that some of it was not absolutely true. When I get migraines, I get sick all the time. The last thing I do is count how many times I've been nauseous. And he reported those episodes  over and over again. In my experience, if you're that sick, you're not counting. Also, I was disappointed in his book for a number of reasons. Agustine It blew up. Everyone was talking about memoirs and their authenticity. Did that have any effect on you at all in terms of publishing? Carole No, the publisher, Bruce Wilcox, was willing to publish Hungry Hill because he recognized it as a different story. If anything, it made me more determined because I am sure that any addict leaves victims in his wake. This is the story of those victims. Agustine Now, you are a survivor Carole Yes. Agustine You put your story onto pages - that's how you channeled this - how are other family members coping? Carole Well, I don't really want to talk about other family members. Agustine Ok Carole This is my story and I think each of my brothers probably has his own story, but this is mine. There are certain myths of childhood we all embrace and I don’t know how willing my brothers are to look closely at those beliefs.  I'm not going to speak for them. Agustine Of course. You will probably get asked this question: How is your relationship with them? Carole Good. Some I'm closer to than others. I suspect my memoir may cause some “unrest” among them. Agustine How would your parents have reacted to being subjects of your memoir? Carole I do remember my mother saying that there are some things you keep quiet: You don't talk about money, you don't talk about things that go on in the family. I have a vague sense of that. I think she would not be happy with the book. I was thirteen when she died so I never had the luxury of an adult relationship with her. She never had the gift of recovery at 12 step programs. This book is in part a learning experience, a tool for people. Agustine Did you have anything like this to help you out in becoming a woman and eventually being a wife and a mother? Carole There is not a 12 step recovery program that I have not set foot in. I'm a big believer in them. The adult children of alcoholics program was  most useful to me in trying  to understand my past and my present behavior.  I was reluctant to attend those meetings since my parents had been dead for so long, but  I went every Wednesday night for two years until I was able to look at what happened in my alcoholic family. Agustine I'm starting to read your book and I have this overwhelming feeling that there is a veneer that people have to put on in order to walk through this world day in, day out.   When you read the story about that girl, and I'm sure people will be seeing you behind a desk, they are going to see... you are a really "together" woman. You're very attractive, everything looks great but when they see that, they are going to see a part of you that is so private. Now, how do you feel about having these experiences of yours being known to the world? Carole I had to get to a certain age where I could say, "I'm OK with this." There was a lot of shame involved for me with what went on in my family. As I became an adult, I was able to realize that I was not responsible for what happened.  I have created a different kind of life but  not without a lot of work.  I was able to find a therapist who dealt exclusively with adult children from alcoholic families. She knew my gig immediately. Agustine From the first sit down? Carole From the first sit down. Agustine Different cultural backgrounds attach such a stigma to therapy. Carole Certainly the Irish. Agustine Why? Carole Well, you have the parish priests. Why would you go to therapy? You could pray! Agustine  Now you chose a very narrow window of time in your memoir.  A span of a little over four years. Why? Why those years? Carole Those were the years where the crisis and the most dramatic events occurred. Also the reader may have a feeling of hope at the end when I actually do go off to college.  I think it's important to let people know that I, that girl, could get away from that family which was a very hard thing for me to do. Agustine To write better experiences. Carole I could have gone to a college two miles away. Thirty miles was not a big deal, but it was a big deal. Agustine You mentioned something about adult children of alcoholics. What did you learn there that affected you? Carole When I initially went, I looked at myself as a parent and  how I was parenting my daughters. Agustine When was this? Carole The late 80's.  When I went there I still canonized my father and considered him a saint. In those meetings, I had to look at his behavior differently and to realize that he took no actions to protect me from my stepmother. He chose to drink rather than to confront. While no one in my family is particularly comfortable with anger, I do think that anger has a very valid place. I wonder if he had just been angry and confronted my stepmother if things might have been different. Drinking was his way of coping, not a healthy way. I learned about the defense mechanisms that we used as a family to survive. My father, in particular,  would act as if nothing was really a big deal. “Just take it easy… don't worry about nothing.” In fact,  some of these events were incredibly big deals. For example, sending me to buy a sofa when I'm 13 years old. That is something he could have done himself. Agustine What role, if any, does religion play in your life right now?  You come from a very specific- Irish Catholic- background in Massachusetts in the early 60's. We're faced early on in your book with the question of faith. Or, as opposed to asking a question about religion- does faith play a role in your life now?? Carole God plays a role in my life now. Some mornings when I wake up I'll say, "Thank you, God". He or she certainly plays a role on the tennis court when I am trying to get a ball back. But, not what it was then. As I said earlier, the Irish resisted therapy because they thought prayer was sufficient but it was not sufficient for me. There is a line in the book that I may have prayed the wrong prayers and there was always that feeling that no matter what I did it wasn't enough with my family. I didn't save them. I tried to rescue them. I tried to control things and I couldn't and I failed. So that made me lose my faith a bit. But I have a wonderful life now so I am letting religion come back.  One of my brother's claims he is returning, too, because he doesn't want to hedge his bet. Agustine Well, I think you hit an interesting point and you mentioned a little- in terms of yourself.  I want to expand on  the theme  of forgiveness. Have you gotten to a place of forgiveness? Carole I don't think so. As for my  mother, we never got to have an adult relationship, which I regret. It is a tremendous loss. She didn't see my daughters, she didn't see me get married. Sometimes I would have to stop in my tracks when I hear a mother and daughter talking on a cell phone. It's something that I never got to experience myself. With her, it's not a question of forgiveness.  Certainly I resent that so many things were handed over to me in terms of caretaking my younger brothers. As for my father, it's not that I can't forgive him. I just wish it could have been different; which is a childish thought. I mean it was what it was.  I regret his behavior. I realize now that he was weak.  That was hard to accept. He was honest, but he was not honest when he needed to be honest. When he needed to protect us. Agustine You use the word childish. I think that is interesting because the story is told in that voice but it's not a childish story in the least. It's terribly adult.  The lessons learned here go far beyond that age. I'm assuming, just for confirmation, that it's taken all the work that you did to get you to where you are now. There wasn't, or was there, a moment of revelation that all of this seemed crystal clear to you? Or is it something that you still work on now? Carole There were many  awarenesses  for me that came up as I was writing the book. At one point I was interviewing anyone I could find who knew my parents. One of my aunts, now dead, said to me "Well, I don't know whether your mother was an alcoholic or not". And I remember being horrified that she had said that because it just never occurred to me that my mother could have been an alcoholic as well. True, she joined my father in his  drinking. Alcohol can be a dance between parents-the drinking dance. It’s a way for them to avoid looking  at their own issues. Agustine What are your attitudes towards alcohol consumption in your own life and how about for your girls? Carole My daughters drink. They know that I don't. They know that there's a danger with their gene pool.  But the other point is that we knew nothing else. We did not know that you could play sports. We didn't know that you could have hobbies. We just knew that you could have a beer in the backyard. So, I have worked hard at letting my daughters know that there are other things in life besides drinking.  I stopped drinking when I realized that I could either drink, or raise my children, but I couldn't do both.  I thought I'd stop for a day or two. A week or two. And then I decided I liked my life better without it. I had not reached the point where I had crossed the line. Agustine What would you say to someone who is at that crossroad as a parent or a young person? Carole If someone is uncomfortable with his or her drinking, he or she could go to five or six open AA meetings and see how it feels to them.    They could find a therapist who deals with addiction issues by calling an outreach program of a rehabilitation center.  Sometimes it's hard to find a therapist that fits.  I was rejected twice as being highly functioning. Agustine Tell me a little bit about that. Carole I went to one therapist who said that I didn't need to be in therapy. Agustine Wow, that is amazing. Carole Which when you realize that I had lost two parents at a very early age seems like a little bit of a shortcoming on the part of that particular therapist. Agustine I have one final question. The novel is written in a very cinematic way. Would it make a good film? Carole I think it would. I remember when I saw the movie “The Sound of Music” and I cried-totally overreacted to that movie and thought they have eight kids, they have a stepmother.   I thought that our great failing was that we could not sing.  Then later, I found that that the Von Traps weren’t all that stable either.  I think it could be done. It would be tricky. I spoke with Frank McCourt about "Angela's Ashes" and he felt that the movie did not capture the chaos of his early life and I would say that it's important that the chaos be captured here as well. It was chaos.  Agustine Thank you very much Carole Carole You're welcome, Agustine.

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