Chapter 84

Trip Home Day 1

We left the Bragg creek house at six thirty MST in the dark of a cold December morning in 1985. Our adventure, which started on a warm June day in 1965 had resumed after a nineteen year hiatus. Carol, Riekie and I were back together after almost twenty years of separation and pain, our vows renewed. We had a new wife, Diane, four children among us and three on the way. Life was certainly improving. It looked like our future together was getting brighter all the time.

I could bore the reader with all the details of our daily itinerary (rest stops, fuel stops, ect.), but I won't. The evening stops could be interesting, so I have included them. The first day traveling was relatively uneventful, travel wise. What transpired inside the van and inside us was what this trip came to be about.

Twelve or more hours with little distraction besides scenery and traffic is a long time to be cooped up together in a small space for six people. Then coop those same people up in small motel rooms in strange towns. Do that for four days and three nights. It can test any relationship. Having only been back together with Carol and Riekie since Christmas Eve meant there was a lot of baggage we were each carrying that must either be sorted or dumped. Once the novelty of being on the road wears off in the first couple of hours, what do you talk about?... Everything and anything -- but it always came back to us.

There was almost twenty years out of our lives that we knew little or nothing about each other except what we gleaned from Bob and our mothers' infrequent communications. We could try to pick up where we left off, but we all knew that was unrealistic. We were fortunate it seemed in that many of our attitudes, especially toward each other, remained unchanged. Yes, we had idealized memories and expectations of each other, but somehow, each of us, at least so far, seemed to be living up to them. We also had one member who was new to two of us, and they needed to get to know each other as well.

Almost twenty years of life experience cannot be ignored. As it transpired, though, for all of us, it was as if we'd lived those years in a fog, experiencing the world, but not really part of it. Carol was the most extreme example of that 'being in but not part' through her emotional breakdown and subsequent withdrawal. Lost in her pain, she basically avoided the world, except for the past six years with Ben, and even those years were highlighted only because of the boys and helping recover a failing business. I had reconnected emotionally with Carol in September, but we didn't have the time because of our other activities and commitments that weekend to reconnect in time. Yes, the weekly telephone conversations and her pregnancy helped, but we still had to get to know each other again.

Riekie had only rejoined us on Christmas Eve. Again, there was the emotional reconnect, but hardly any time to really get to know the woman who spent almost twenty years building a career only to suddenly decide to throw it all away just for us. The amazing effort of planning and follow through to have my children still boggled my mind. I carried a burden of guilt and gratitude for her sacrifice. Still, except for the twins, Riekie had lived similarly to Carol. Lost in her work to avoid to her pain, only the last six years stood out significantly for her, and she had gone to great lengths to document that.

Diane I knew the best, having spent the last eight years legally married to her, but the first seven of those years, I never really got to know her. In some ways, she was as distant emotionally as Carol and Riekie had been geographically. It was only in the last few months after the terrible secret of her abuse at the hands of her step-father was revealed, that the beautiful Princess of the Goddess emerged. I was just getting to know this person. The changes were astounding — the girl who once wouldn't say 'shit' if her mouth was full of it now spoke more forcefully and graphically. The shy retiring girl who normally only spoke when spoken to, who often literally hid from social functions, even in our own home, was now an outgoing and even colourfully outspoken person, quick to display the full range of her emotions.

Diane had a significant advantage over the rest of us. She simply took Carol and Riekie as she found them, and they her, and developed relationships with them from that point forward like you would with meeting any new person. It was this that allowed us the emotional stability and yes, even crutch, to come to grips with who we had become (or not) over the last twenty years.

Then there was me. I carried almost twenty years of guilt, pain, and self-recrimination. It was always in my mind that I had failed my wives -- that I could have and should have tried harder to prevent the disaster that befell us. If it befell us as it did, I thought I could have and should have made more effort at reconciliation even with Carol's emotional breakdown. Perhaps I should have forced the confrontation with that man sooner.

Twenty years of 20/20 hindsight and life experience can be a terrible whip for self-flagellation, and grossly unfair to the young, idealistic people we were. Given the emotional trauma we experienced and the teen angst that accompanied it, it's a wonder we didn't all become statistics in the negative column of teen suicides. Modern record keeping shows us that kids kill themselves, and in far greater numbers than we would like to believe, for a lot less. Thus, that we survived physically could be construed by some as a minor miracle. That we died emotionally and spiritually simply made us hors de combat on the field of love.

At almost every level, this trip home was of paramount importance. We had the opportunity for four days and three nights of almost continuous family meeting. Getting to know the strangers we had become was an unspoken priority of the highest order. Before we left, I wondered why My Girls acquiesced so easily to the long drive as opposed to flying. We never discussed it beyond the purely pragmatic 'Let's do it in one fell swoop so we don't have to come back'. Yet by some unspoken agreement, we all seemed to know there was more to this trip than a simple drive home. I suppose it could be argued that our 'spooky' ability to communicate nonverbally had manifested itself in this silent, but mutual agreement we needed this time to sort our selves out. That we had this particular ability already spoke volumes for the strength of our relationship.

I'm reminded of a movie I once saw set sometime around the U.S. Civil War called 'Shenandoah'. In it, one of the main male protagonists asked the female lead's father for her hand in marriage. One of the characters was played by Jimmy Stewart, but I can't remember if he was the young man asking or the wise father. No matter. With apologies to the scriptwriter, as I recall, the exchange went something like this:

Father: "Why do you want to marry my daughter?"

Suitor: "Because I love her, Sir, and she loves me."

Father: "I see... But do you like her.?"

Suitor: "Sir! I love her!"

Father: "I didn't ask if you love her. That is obvious. What I want to know is do you like her?"

The young man couldn't seem to get his head wrapped around what the old man was talking about, so after a few more exchanges, the father explained that marriage involved more than just love. The two people committed to each other in love must also like each other enough to be able to see their best qualities and routinely work around the flaws. What they see in a person, the good should outweigh the bad. The lovers must like each other for their relationship to last. Love can be ephemeral, but like is a long time.

He made the young man stop and consider and list off what he saw as his prospective mate's positive qualities versus the negative. Then to consider the balance of what he saw. The young man did, and what he found staggered him. He found that what he thought as some of her negative features were parts of the whole and made him actually like her. The father was impressed with the young man.

Father: 'Let's go through this again. So why do you want to marry my daughter."

Suitor: "Because I love her, Sir... But more importantly, I like her. I like almost everything about her, even her stubbornness."

Father: "Then I give you my blessing."

I realize I've taken terrible liberties with the script, but the point is, as the father in the scene emphasized, for any relationship to last, not only must there be romantic love, there must be like. To like someone is to be their friend. Every successful marriage I know of, the partners refer to each other not only as their spouse and lover, but invariably their best friend. And within that framework, those people are also the ones who will act like silly teenagers still in love even after forty or more years of marriage. I personally know of at least one such relationship. They met when they were fourteen, married when they were sixteen (No, she wasn't pregnant — their oldest just turned thirty). They're in their sixties now, and are the two happiest people together I've ever met.

So... we were off on a cross country trip that was more than coming home literally; it was an opportunity to come home spiritually — to come together. Four days to let it all hang out, maybe even beat ourselves up a bit on the why's of how we split originally and how to avoid a repetition. Our relationship could get stronger, as I, and I'm sure we all hoped, or it could stumble and fall on what we discovered about each other. Twenty years of disparate life experience could be an opportunity or it could be a deal breaker. The bottom line when this trip was over, would we all like each other, and would we all be friends or would we still be riding just the volatile balloon of love.

Riekie had started into our relationship as a friend, and showed it constantly. Could and did that friendship endure the test of time and separation? Carol had come to us in love and learned friendship later, often at high cost. I had tried to be a friend to Diane, and when I think of it, it was that friendship aspect that kept us together when it seemed the love side wasn't there.

Somewhere along the line, Carol and Riekie had to face their mutual demon of bitterness and rancor when Riekie moved out that fateful August. Since reuniting, they had skirted the issue. Carol said they had talked about it over the years, but never fully resolved it. The two had made their emotional reconnect at the love level, but what about as friends? Their co-operation in the financial arrangements bode well, but I thought they still needed to hash it out.

In many ways we were groping around with our future almost like the immature teenagers we were when we split. We were picking up the pieces of our lives, and at the same time almost picking up from where we left off then picking up Diane along the way.

Once we were comfortable with the drive, and the initial excitement had worn off, we started catching up on each other's past. It all started when I made a comment about working in Edmonton with Northern. I ended up telling my entire history, including the story of losing my ring. Carol and Riekie knew some of the early parts from 1966 to 1968 from semi regular contact through Bob and of course those weeks in Toronto. In the telling, they could discern the heartbreak and lack of sense of purpose until I met and married Diane.

While I regaled them with the story of my life (and despite the underlying pain, their had been moments of high drama and great fun), certain dates or years seemed to stand out, as something I was doing recalled a parallel event in someone else's life. No one told their stories in a strictly linear fashion. There were leaps and jumps around as one or another was reminded of some experience of their own, but we were able to piece together each other's lives.

Diane and I told the story of our marriage together. I learned just how much my pixie had really loved me from the start and the pain she felt at not being able to express it, confused and inhibited by a third of a lifetime of guilt and repressed anger. She hadn't said too much even after the revelations of September and the events that literally turned her world upside down, probably more than the rest of us in some ways. She had to suddenly, literally out-of-the-blue, shift mental and moral gears regarding marriage, love, children, and the whole nine yards. That she totally accepted and adapted so well was a testament to the true strength of the person who had been so cruelly locked up inside.

And of course, the full story of her abuse was laid out in painful if not graphic detail for the other wives. Carol knew some of it from what I'd told her, but Riekie had only heard allusions. When the full story was told, Diane was mobbed by her wives and the children. I don't know who wept the most. We talked openly in front of the twins. At home, Rhiannon knew most of the gory details, so the twins should, too. After all this was their history too.

Diane had someone cuddling her close the rest of that day and usually the rest of the trip. When it was Riekie's turn to drive and Diane rode shotgun for her, whenever possible to drive one handed, Riekie held her hand. Diane's life story did more to bond the three women closer together than any other single thing. Yes, we'd all started out madly in love, but this cathartic story bonded them in friendship.

That first day there were many unscheduled stops where the driver had to pull over simply to dry their eyes or participate in a group hug as old wounds were re-opened and then salved with love, and more importantly, affection.

Over that drive, I learned more about Carol and the burden she bore needlessly for that time. I had already had indications of just how deep her love was, from changing her name to saving money for us even when it seemed there was no hope. Her job history paralleled mine, bouncing from dead end job to dead end job, giving up a promising career to chase a dream she couldn't even properly formulate, by moving from Winnipeg to Calgary on a whim. Her meeting with Ben and how that most unusual relationship developed. Her marriage to Ben met the first criteria of the father in the movie — they liked each other and were friends. Carol, amongst all of us in the initial split, had lost that friendship aspect of trust, and allowed herself to be manipulated. It took Ben to make her realize what she already knew, but had lost sight of -- the true value of friendship.

Riekie's story at first glance was one of academic and career success. But she admitted to an emptiness she just could not fill. A large part of her was missing, and she was the one who openly said.

"I didn't just lose My Man, my wife, my lovers -- I lost my two best friends."

That vacancy had never been re-occupied. The closest she had was Bob, and he'd been a friend from day one. She said part of the vacuum was filled by the children, but the love and friendship for them filled a separate part — that part that probably defines 'motherhood', which most women have.

She described her 'successful' career as busy, but non-fulfilling. She had moments when a life was saved or a treatment successful, but the overall sense of job satisfaction just wasn't there. She suspected it was similar to me. She used it to lose herself in because the real reason for doing it — our family, wasn't there any more.

Through all our biographical details and revelations on our emotional states, we skirted around one of the main issues we were going to have to deal with sooner or later -- what happened in August-September of 1966, and why we didn't or weren't able to handle or cope with it better. For us to have a healthy relationship amongst the three of us, and most importantly with the four of us, that particular baggage had to be hauled out and dissected to its smallest part. We just weren't ready for that yet. We could not be fair to Diane until we resolved that issue ourselves. We all knew it. Carol and I had even talked a little about it in September.