Vision of a Happy Life: A Memoir

The 1980s was an era filled with glamour as Hollywood took over the White House-a period of fluffy hairdos, and red outfits
la Nancy Reagan, outsized wealth, and popular TV soap operas that subsidized the idea of affluence. As a single mother raising two sons on top ramen because much of my salary as a newspaper reporter went to day care and babysitters, I fell under the radar of an older, wealthy businessman. I came to love and marry him because I believed he would be kind to my kids and we would have a good life together. But when I arrived at John’s home after the Maui honeymoon, I found my step-daughter had fired the housekeeper, my two young sons were subdued after a week in her care, and the personal belongings of my husband’s late wife filled the master bedroom. It was the beginning of a tumultuous decade, as I found my way among a deceptive family filled with the pretense only a founding dynasty could have in a small agricultural community fifty miles north of Los Angeles. While my children and I enjoyed the benefits of living in a seemingly wealthy household, I came to realize my life was no different than the soap operas of Dynasty or Dallas that gratuitously filled the national passion for greed, guile, and deception. If one’s life can be a duplication of a decade, then I was the perfect example.