My best friend, Jessie, comes up for visits whenever she can. She picks the oddest hours to fly. Inevitably, it would be in the dead of night. I used to dread the drive. What would happen if I had an accident? Or worse yet, if my car broke down or if I got lost in some scary part of town? The first time she asked me to pick her up at night, I was excited to see my friend, but night driving is so different from day driving. The headlights are so bright and make it hard to see. That kind of motivation, though, has helped me to become a pretty proficient driver with lots of airport runs under my belt. Those drives to and from the airport have been the best practice I could ever get. I have even found out it’s a good time to think about things.
At first I mostly stayed in the slow lane. Although I quickly discovered that lane was ruled by trucks. I hated changing lanes. I watched how other people drove, which was helpful to me. I have been told I’m a visual learner. That made really good sense to me. Because anything I do I must observe it first. Everything from writing checks for the first time to learning to canter on my horse was done by me watching someone. If I see it, I can do it. I learn an awful lot watching YouTube videos.
I drove with my two hands on the wheel for quite awhile. Jerky stops were my MO. As I became more comfortable, my hand position changed to a more relaxed, natural position. At times I still find my two hands on the wheel, even today. I think my age and common sense have helped to make me a pretty safe driver. I mean, I like to think I did not go through all this to get in a car accident. My car is more than just a vehicle of transportation. It is a symbol to smile. It takes me anywhere I need or want to go. It’s a strange feeling at times. Even now, being free and able to go where I want surprises me a little bit. I wonder if the feeling of surprise ever truly disappears.
I remember the first time I got pulled over. I was coming back from a friend’s house late one night. Cars were slowing down on the road, and we were wondering what was going on. We saw there was a police checkpoint up along the highway. The sign said DUI Checkpoint. Everybody had to show their license to an officer when they passed a certain point in the roadblock. Even though it was dark, there were powerful floodlights everywhere. The lights blinded me as I pulled up. When it was my turn, I pulled up and held my license out. The officer asked me some questions. Do you live here, and where are you headed? I said I lived close and was headed home. He said, Why do you have a different address on your license? And I said for privacy reasons. Instead of waving us through, he told me to pull over to the side parking lot and wait there. I was really nervous. I was afraid I had done something wrong. There were a few other cars waiting, too, but I felt singled out. Like there was something else going on besides just a DUI checkpoint. Another officer came over, and I gave him my name and explained my circumstances, the reason why I chose to have a different address on my license. I told him in a shaky voice that must have been ringing bells in his head that something was wrong. But I couldn’t help myself. It was the first time I had been pulled over, and I didn’t know how to react. Or what was going on, for that matter. I told him he could call the chief of police for the county and that he could verify it with him. The chief had been a friend since the beginning of us moving into the neighborhood. The officer said to wait here in the car and he would check it out. I was kind of shaky but told myself everything was okay and I hadn’t done anything to be in trouble for. It wasn’t like being in the backyard. I had no reason to hide my identity from the police. Within a few minutes, the officer came back and started apologizing profusely. He told me we could be on our way. I was so relieved. I pulled out and forgot to buckle my seat belt, I was so anxious.
Later, I really wanted to be mad. I didn’t like the feelings that were popping up. Why was I put through that? Was it really just a DUI check? Or something more? Clearly, I had not been drinking. Thinking about it later as I lay awake in bed, I really felt something else was going on. It felt like they were actually looking for someone.
The next day as I read in the paper about a missing person in the area, my suspicions were verified. Even though it was tough to go through that the night before, I realized I was happy—happy they saw something that didn’t look right to them and pulled me over to check it out. Even though I had not been who they were looking for, they were doing their job. They left no stone unturned.
The scariest thing happened on my birthday while I was driving my car. It was my thirty-third birthday, and my best friend, Jessie, had flown up for it. I didn’t want to do anything special. Just have a relaxing day. As I picked her up at the airport and pulled out onto the highway—SMACK! A bird had flown directly into my windshield and went splat! It actually made that sound. OMG! I remember shouting, and Jessie echoed my sentiment. I didn’t know what to do. It was so stressful, I started to giggle. Sometimes I giggle or laugh at the most inappropriate moments, and this was one of them. Luckily, my friend didn’t think I was a complete loon because she started laughing, too! Splat! OMG! Another one? What is happening? This is my birthday! How could two birds hit my car one after another! On my birthday! Don’t they know this is a special day? I guess they didn’t get the memo. Jessie said I should put the windshield wipers on. Well, you can imagine what that did. Smeared the poor birds, or what was left of them, all over the windshield. I could hardly see out now. I pulled into a gas station and we went to work getting the guts off. Those birds must have been traveling fast because I had just started to pick up speed.
At the gas station we were still running high on emotion with the evidence of tears running down our faces. I had never hit anything before, and it was traumatic. Laughing about it helped relieve the pressure of the situation. This was not how I pictured my birthday going. I felt so bad for killing the birds, but Jessie reminded me that the birds did fly into my windshield and there was nobody to blame. I drove us home. She turned up the radio and we sang songs all the way home. She is just as bad a singer as I am, so together I’m sure we sounded great!
Cold Soup?
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For many years of my captive life, food came in a bag. Sometimes with those famous golden arches and sometimes with a crown. It got boring after a while, but it was what I knew and later what my daughters knew as food for most of their lives.
Before Phillip’s mother became demented, she would cook meals on Sundays. It was a real treat for us when Phillip or Nancy would bring homemade chili beans or some kind of homemade dinner to the back for us. Those were luxuries we normally did not have.
When we were first recovered in 2009, we were introduced to Rebecca’s husband, Charles. He had been a professional chef for many years and was now helping out with food prep at their Transitioning Families program.
In those days after recovery, food choices were not something I was used to making unless it involved telling someone what I wanted from the drive-thru. So when we were brought to a house that first month of transition and Chef Charles asked what kinds of food I would like stocked in the house, I had no idea what to say, so I just said, “The basics, please.”
The next day as I rummaged through our stocked refrigerator looking for some tasty morsel to munch on, I came across the peanut butter—peanut butter in the fridge? Weird! My peanut butter, even as a little girl, was Skippy and lived in the cabinet. This one was an organic kind and had a funny layer of oil on the top. I was embarrassed to ask, but sometimes it’s better to ask those you trust than find out from strangers, so I asked why the peanut butter looked like it did. Was it spoiled? No, the reply was, that’s just how some organic peanut butter is. You have to mix it because the oil separates. However weird and new this new peanut butter was, it was tasty and went great with the organic strawberry jelly. “Organic” was not in our vocabulary yet. Yes, we knew what it was from hearing about the new fad on TV, but we had been lucky to just get plain fresh fruit and veggies whether they were organic or not.
Another culinary discovery came in the form of something I had not encountered before. We had been
invited to a very sacred place called the Maple Ring. The history of the place goes back generations, and I was told that the local Indian tribes would use the trees as burial spots for their food when they needed to store it. Legend has it that all the maple trees sprang up from the one in the middle and they all lean toward their mother and form a circle around her. This story kind of reminds me of me and how I just wanted to be near my mom all those years Phillip and Nancy kept me prisoner. The story also says that other trees were planted in the area, but they always grow away from this mother tree and her maple offspring.
That day we felt honored to be able to share the day together in such a beautiful place. Chef Charles had prepared us a family picnic lunch complete with fun napkins with turkeys on them and straws made out of paper. Our first course was soup. But not just ordinary soup. Chef Charles had prepared us something new that day.
As I prepared to sample this soup, my daughters blurted out, “Hey, this soup is cold!” Chef Charles said it was supposed to be. It’s cold on purpose? What trickery is this? I thought. COLD SOUP! After the initial shock wore off and we knew it was cold on purpose, it was easier to taste again. I thought it would be gross, but whatever Chef Charles makes must at least be tried once. At first, when it hit my mouth it felt wrong, like when you taste cold mashed potatoes, but then all the flavors come rushing at you, and I found myself with another spoonful ready for the hatch. It really was quite an experience and memorable. I learned that some kinds of cold soup are called gazpacho. Chef Charles made this one from tomatoes, shallots, and slivers of avocado.
Also served were delicate tea sandwiches to go with our soup and a fluffy salad made with a type of lettuce called frisée. The food got us all talking, and it was nice because we had been talking in therapy about some tough topics and the break was much needed.
Throughout our time at the Transitioning Families program, my daughters and I learned from Chef Charles how to prepare tasty meals. Much to Chef Charles’s dismay, none of his lessons have stuck with me, and I will not be the next Top Chef! This, however, was one aspect of the program I loved the most, besides working with the horses. And to this day, the families we support to come to the JAYC Foundation for reunification all take away a special culinary moment with each other.
Food is such a versatile thing. Have you ever really thought about how important food is to all of us? I have. It’s something that we all have in common. It brings people together from everywhere around the world and even the toughest days seem like a walk in the park because you are eating the most delicious pasta primavera you have ever eaten in your life! Food can be good, bad, ugly, beautiful, delicate, heavy, and every color of the rainbow. I think food plays an important role in all our lives, and we can always count on it to be the subject of conversation when nothing else comes to mind.
I have found it an especially useful topic when the not so great topic of politics comes up. I used to think I wasn’t smart enough to talk politics with people. Phillip always made me think my opinions were not good enough, so I learned to keep my opinion to myself. Relearning that it’s okay to have an opinion has taken time. It’s not an overnight process to all of a sudden be comfortable talking about my thoughts and feelings, but I have become more comfortable with receiving the negative and positive aspects of conversations. Most of the time I can really see both sides of an opinion or argument a candidate makes. I hate it when people talk in absolutes, though. Because really, is anything in life absolute? Gosh, I really can’t imagine having Donald Trump as a president. All I can see and hear when he talks is “You’re fired” from his show The Apprentice. I feel like the whole country is turning into one big reality show. Really, that’s what the debates have turned into: TV ratings. And it’s all coming down to who is the most entertaining. At times I find myself just laughing at the absurdity of it all. In my world, it’s all good, though. I try to see the good in just about everything. It’s not an easy thing, but I like the challenge! Food conversation always trumps politics in my book.
It was not hard to instill a love of fruits and veggies into my kids. In fact, they are both vegetarians and they love to cook, something that my mom (their grandma), who is a fabulous cook, and Chef Charles instilled in them. It works for me because I like to be cooked for!
I’ve learned a lot from Chef Charles throughout the years, and he has also been a very good friend to me and my family. He always encourages me to try new foods, so in the spirit of trying new things, which is very important to me because life in the backyard was so boring, I tried sea bass for the first time. I’ve never been a big fan of fish and usually stay away from it, but the sea bass was actually delicious. It was delicate and didn’t have a fishy taste at all. Since then I have also tried swordfish, salmon, ceviche, and tuna. I really liked the sea bass the best, though.
I think it’s always good to try new things unless it’s scallops, oysters, or snails! I have to draw the line at snails and slimy things. I also cannot stand the taste of cilantro. I have tried my hardest to like it because one of my favorite kinds of food is Mexican, but the taste of cilantro always ruins it for me. Chef Charles tries to be sneaky sometimes and tell me it’s only parsley, but you can’t fool me: my tastebuds always know!
I’ve always been one to follow what I think of as rules. Chef Charles had a rule about no minis in his garden. He dearly loved his garden, and whenever Rebecca would let the miniature horses out to graze, he would always shout, “Keep those guys out of my garden!”
At first I saw Charles as the “guy in charge” and didn’t want to break his rules. But as I got to know him better, I realized he wasn’t like other men that had been in my life. He was encouraging, kind, and had a wry sense of humor that brought out my sarcastic side. And before I knew it, I was not even listening to his so-called rules anymore. He just made them up anyway.
One of his rules was “No clients riding in the arena.” Before my family came along, Rebecca would just do on-the-ground horse exercises with her clients. She knew me and my mom needed something more, though, so one day, much to Chef Charles’s dismay, she had me sit on Velcro blindfolded while my mom took the lead rope and lead us around the arena. Mom led the way and kept me safe at the same time. It was a beautiful moment for me and my mom for building trust in our relationship.
Another time that I broke the “rules,” Chef Charles actually taught me how. I was looking for some hutches for my daughter’s baby chicks she had rescued. My daughter loves animals as much as I do and didn’t want to see these sweet babies get hurt. So she brought them home, and we made a coop together for them.
Chef Charles said he knew where I could get some for-free hutches for them. I thought, Free sounds good. But where? He took us to the back of a grocery store where they had crates and boxes from the food. He said the crates would make excellent hutches. I felt like there was some law against just taking the crates, but he said it was okay to take them. I felt like we were stealing from the grocery store. Was this an irrational fear? Yes, probably, but I was just used to doing things differently. It felt freeing in a way, though, and I didn’t really think I was hurting the grocery store or anyone for that matter. Chef Charles seemed confident that it was okay, and for the first time I broke what I thought was a rule. I stole the crates for the chickens! I felt kind of guilty. But it also felt kind of good, too. I learned to be more flexible that day. Some rules are meant to be broken . . . well, maybe a little.
A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes . . . When You’re Missing
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I had never had a housewarming party before. In fact, I had never owned my own home before either. I have been lucky in my new life to have experienced both.
The day was bright and clear with no chance of rain in the forecast. Very lucky for us because before that day, we had been getting rain every day. This day was clear and reflected my feelings. We had just moved in a few days before, and it felt so good and comfortable. Almost like an old shoe that fits just
right the first time you put it on. This house felt like that. We decided to keep our cats in for the first month or so to get them used to their new home. Bull just loved running the hills and smelling all the new smells. Best of all, I never really have to pick up his poops anymore because he always goes where no one can see him in the bushes. He’s shy like that.
The day of the housewarming party all our new friends and family gathered to celebrate us moving in. I had no idea they had a big surprise for me that day, one that I would cherish forever.
When everyone arrived, we all gathered on the deck of our new house. One by one they read special cards with clues about my surprise. Jane had written them especially for the occasion.
Jane read the first clue:
“Clue number one. Once upon a time there was an eleven-year-old girl who went missing.”
The card went on to say:
Stop the presses! This is not a story about a little girl who went missing; it’s a story about a lovely young woman who reentered the real world. On August 26th, 2009, the anniversary of Women’s Suffrage Day, the young woman celebrated the first day of the rest of her life. While this young woman grew up in captivity, she had many dreams that kept her going. Today we will revisit how, with the help of Team Jaycee, family, and friends, some of her dreams have come true. This is a treasure hunt, Jaycee. The prize is a housewarming gift from your team. Find the next clue #2 and make sure it is read aloud.
I found clue number two. One of my new friends read it aloud:
“One of the dreams of the young woman was to have friends and for her daughters to have friends. They came to a house on Buena Vista where all kinds of people were in and out. Oh my! How overwhelming! To name but a few, there was Rebecca and Jane, Liz and Suni, Cheryl, Harla, and Trish, and on and on. The list would grow and grow: Charles, Theo, Mark, Bill, and Pat, Nick, Mike, Ana, Janet, Michael, Sean, Dale, Margie, Jack, and even extends to the East Coast with Marsha and Lanae. And don’t forget those four-legged friends: Fressia, Velcro, Skye, and Stella. Early in this chaos, you met a man named Todd. He would be a friend for a long time to come. To the beach, helping move . . . need help? Call Todd. In fact, find Todd now because he has your next clue.”
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