Chapter 44

The next years were basically a lost cause for me. I gave up on my education completely. Who cared, anyway? I bummed around for a year around home, picking up odd jobs, but not doing anything worthwhile with my life. I still heard from Bob now and then. He told me Carol had dropped out of OCA at the end of her first year, and like me, seemed to just wander aimlessly through life.

After a year, I finally started to come around a bit, and looked seriously for a job with a future. I got hired by Northern as a Central Office installer, and found the work enjoyable. My first pay cheque repaid Dad for the now useless wedding rings I'd bought my girls.

As a Central Office installer, I was sent literally all over the country on jobs. I loved the technical aspect of the job and the traveling. It lasted two years. Usually I worked on the switching side of the CO's we installed, but occasionally would be required to work on the power side. Because of the electrical hazard involved, we weren't allowed to wear jewelry. On one particular job I'd taken off my wedding ring and put it in my locker. Someone broke into several of the staff lockers that day, and mine was one. I couldn't find my ring, and assumed it was one of the stolen items. I was pissed off at the company for its lack of security and really pissed at the thought that whatever had conspired to take my marriage to Carol and Riekie had finally finished the job by taking my ring too.

I went into another tailspin and left Northern and lost another promising career. I wandered from dead-end job to dead-end job, looking for something I couldn't find. I tried the dating game, and had a few relationships, but nothing worked. They were all nice girls, but it always ended when they said I was a nice person who made them feel good, but they knew my heart wasn't in it.

I did make some very good friends along the way, and they often helped me over some rough times when I'd let myself slip into despondency and despair. Another Bob emerged as my number one best friend. He still is. We've 'been through the wars' together.

Mom and Dad were the foundation to which I clung. In 1970, they adopted my third sister, Joan. I was smitten by the little eight year old waif, and we developed a very close relationship. She was very rebellious and moved out at the young age of sixteen. She lives in another city now, and we hardly ever see each other. She knows of my girls only from the stories she's heard.

Mom stayed with the new coven she found and completed her training as a priestess. She gradually withdrew from active work in that coven and took up a life of reflection and contemplation at home. Having three new grandchildren in Montreal took up a lot of her time, too. Val married my friend Wayne when he graduated college and she finished high school. He found work in the new high tech field of computer programming and they moved to Montreal. Heather was still at home until the late seventies when she married her own high school sweetheart. They moved in with my uncle across the road from the farm and started a family. They had three boys.

Bob Scott and I kept up sporadic contact. He never finished college either, and tried his hand at various jobs and businesses in the Winnipeg area. Riekie graduated from U of T and took up a position with the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. Carol never finished college either, although Bob said she tried again a couple times. She finally settled down into a job as a legal secretary, and worked at it for several years. She made pretty good money, but never spent it on anything, he said. During the early and mid seventies, neither woman dated. Riekie claimed she was too busy and Carol just wasn't interested.

In 1976 I met a sweet little girl who seemed different somehow. She was tiny and beautiful. Her features could only be described as 'elfin'. Looking at her, the word 'pixie' often came to mind. I felt my quest of the last eight years might finally be over. I courted her, and we got married in 1977. I called Bob Scott the day we got married and told him my good news. He was glad for me, and said he'd let the rest of the family know.

When Bob called that Christmas, he told me Riekie was getting married to another doctor, and they were opening a practice together, although she was still continuing her work with the University. Bob didn't care for him much, saying he was 'odd' and described him as a 'cold, sexless workaholic'. He said this guy Rick, was several years older than Riekie, and had never been married before himself. Bob thought he was marrying Riekie for her credentials and eye candy value, sort of a 'trophy wife' as Bob described it. It was the first time I ever heard that term. Bob's very vocal distaste for Riekie's fiancé was unusual for him, but he was a pretty good judge of character, and if he thought this guy was a dud, Riekie had better watch her back. I felt a twinge of the old pain at the news about Riekie, especially with Bob's concern about her fiancé, but who was I to say anything, being already married and otherwise out of her life.

Carol wasn't seeing anyone just then, but had been dating casually. I wondered how she was doing, and if she was finally through her nightmare. I hoped so. Dolly and Bob Sr. had finally split. He was living permanently in Florida, and Dolly kept the house in Winnipeg.

During our courtship, the closest Diane and I got to physical contact was a rather chaste good night kiss. Diane was a wonderful girl, but she seemed fragile somehow. She exuded a natural sensuality I'd only seen twice before, but our sex life in the first few years of our marriage was less than satisfactory. She didn't seem to want it, and it appeared she only had sex to perform her wifely duty. It wasn't until she got pregnant with our first child that some of her latent sexuality emerged, but even then she was reserved, and when she had an orgasm, she acted guilty.

Despite the problems with sex, we were relatively happy together, and had an otherwise open relationship with few secrets. She knew about all my girl friends, including Carol, but she didn't know anything more than she was very, very special. She knew about Riekie, too, but never quite made the connection. She seemed to think I dated Riekie for awhile after I broke with Carol, and that we had become special friends. I could have told Diane everything, but it was just too painful for me. I had tried to bury that part of my past the day Carol's ring disappeared. I wouldn't tempt that evil by revealing too much. It might decide to take this last tiny bit of joy I'd found.

Rhiannon, our oldest, was born in January of 1979. When she came along, I felt something I hadn't in years, and began to believe maybe the past was behind me. Once again I called Bob Scott with my good news and told him I had felt something I hadn't in years, as if the old Power had stirred. Once again, he said he'd pass along my good news, and was particularly pleased at my reference to the Power. He said Riekie and her husband Rick were too busy to have kids and didn't plan to have any soon. His distaste for the man showed in just the way he said his name. Carol had taken a job in Calgary and was dating a nice guy out there, who Bob said he liked a lot. Bob thought they were fairly serious and might get married.

With the birth of Rhiannon, my old melancholy at Christmas and the New Year waned. I still felt twinges on those old anniversaries, and thought I could still feel those beams of love faintly glowing from the west. It helped that Rhiannon's birthday coincided with the anniversary of Riekie's first private day, and made the pain of that old memory fade almost, but not completely away.

Late that summer, out of the blue and unannounced, Bob Scott showed up on my doorstep with his wife, Margaret. They'd been married over a year, and he'd never said a word. Typical of him, aside from what he was doing in the work world, he hadn't told me anything of his personal life. They were back east on a business trip. Diane had heard so much about Bob, she didn't think he was real until she met him.

Bob brought news that Riekie had just announced she was pregnant, despite their decision not to have any kids soon, and said Rick was strangely dispassionate about what should have been good news. He still thought Rick was 'odd' and wondered why Riekie stayed with him. I reminded him she was pregnant, so there must be something there. He reluctantly agreed, but he still didn't like Rick. Bob said any time there was a family function Rick refused to attend, saying he was too busy with work, even at Christmas. It was like he didn't want to have anything to do with Riekie's family, and that just set Bob against him even more. Again, unusual for him, Bob went on quite a rant about Rick until Margaret, seeing my discomfort at talking so much about Riekie steered him on to another topic.

Bob also informed me Carol had just married her boy friend in Calgary. His name was Ben, and apparently he was a very nice guy. In contrast to his obvious and vocal dislike of Rick, Bob liked Ben a lot, and they had become good friends, despite the distance between them. He said Ben was quite a bit older than Carol, was a widower, and had some health problems of his own. He had two boys from his first marriage, but they were almost grown. He thought Ben was good for Carol, and was very protective of her. Bob didn't go on much about Carol aside from his news. He knew talking about Carol, especially, was an extremely painful subject for me.

During the first three years Diane and I were married, I still didn't have a good job. I worked at two poor-paying jobs to keep a roof over our heads. In the spring of 1980, with Rhiannon just a year old, one of the jobs suddenly ended. We were broke and would soon be on the street so Mom and Dad took us in. Losing that dead-end job was a blessing in disguise. By moving back to the farm, I was in the perfect position when a job opened up with the national park I'd worked at the summer of 1968. It was a decent paying job with a future, and to top it off, I loved the work. Dealing with the public on a daily basis as a 'tourism professional' and the technical aspects of the work appealed to some part of me, and I progressed rapidly. The hours in the operating season were very long but the pay was amortized so that we had the winters off with full pay. This allowed me to pursue hobbies and work on the farm. We heated with wood so the time off in the winter allowed me to cut all our firewood.

Life on the farm and the job became very good for us. I still heard from Bob Scott occasionally. After their visit the year Rhiannon was born, he and Margaret moved to Vancouver. He got a good job with the local cable company and did very well. Riekie had twin girls in January and seemed content. Carol's husband owned a construction company and was doing very well in the Calgary oil patch boom times. It sounded like Carol finally had a certain measure of happiness and security. The little boys were completing college. Iain would be taking up a position in the emerging high tech industry in the U.S., and Sandy was returning to the North he loved so much.

Contact with Bob became even more sporadic. I called him when Jenny was born on New Year's Day, 1984 to pass along my good news. He said his dad had retired and moved to 'some sort of hippie commune' in the Queen Charlotte Islands with a much younger woman. She left him for a man her own age shortly after they moved. Bob didn't sound very impressed with his father.

My dad retired from the Pen in 1983. Diane and I bought the farm from them, and they built a new house across the lane in our old pine bush. They were still rocks I clung to, and Mom's faith in the Goddess never wavered. Mom and Dad were especially close to my kids, from living with us, and then from living right next door. After they built the new house, Rhiannon was there almost as much as she was home.