Chapter 2: How a fallen tree saved him.

Had he ever known his wife?

I guess that this is what husbands think when they get in his position. It is probably the hardest question for a man to handle, too. The answer could mock your entire existence. Like ripping a tablecloth from under crystal and china.

Leaving a mountain of shattered illusions.

You may be amazed that he never saw it coming. Sure, he had seen her growing distant, this last year. But he thought it was the empty nest thing. And he thought she had dived into her job, going from a few days to fulltime.

But mostly, yes, he hadn't noticed.

You see, many men don't live in the now. They live around it. Their mind is on projects and dreams. On things to come, mostly. They love challenges - building, creating. They plan together and tell each other how important it all is. And of course they need to know how very good they are at it.

Obsession is the word.

It made John a poor judge of people. He hardly ever paused to look at them. And he was no exception. Men are like the boys at the beach, teaming up to build a sand castle. Or in the woods, damming a creek.

The world narrows around them. They can only see the project at hand. The challenge. And they know they are safe. Their back is covered. At least, they think it is. As they plan their exhilarating projects together, they trust that they are lovingly cared for.

Are they naïve? Or do they take it for granted?

Women have a hard time understanding this outlook. And a hard time hiding their disdain. At best they make mild jokes about it and shrug their shoulders.

Women live in the present. They own it.

They love to meet and talk — to weave a collective web that spreads in all directions. It is the fabric of the now. It sustains families, communities, workplaces, even whole cities. It is an intricate labyrinth. And they know their way instinctively.

Men don't. They have no time to even see the web. That is why they get so easily caught in it, I guess. Women are sweet and beautiful spiders. They catch men. They cocoon them. And from that moment on the men leave the world to them.

John considered his thoughts and he knew he was rambling. His mind was not as neatly arranged as it usual was.

After he left the house, he parked his suitcase in an appropriately sad motel a few miles down the interstate highway. Then he walked. Or rather, he hiked.

He hadn't been doing that much since he married Sarah. She was a city person. Her idea of relaxation comprised of beaches and shopping malls, tanning and the general beautification of her physique.

John loved to hike as a boy. He used to devour country trails and mountain tracks when in high school. In college he used to find fellow devotees to hike through empty canyons and raft down the wildest rivers.

Then he started courting Sarah.

She was out of his league. I suppose that is how they call it when a serious guy falls for a party loving whirlwind. John knew he was the sturdy but beige colored rock to her frivolous sea surf. She was achingly beautiful. And she drowned him with her passion.

He loved it. He drank it up with giant gulps. He was like a lost traveler crawling in from a scourged desert.

I guess he never entirely understood why she wanted him. Maybe she did neither. It must have been love. After all, when you can't explain a thing, why not call it love? Or art.

They were so close those first years. They shared sweet and hard times. They found pleasure and fun in everything. Traveling, discovering.

And making Julie.

She was a godsend. More so because her birth was complicated. It never threatened her or Sarah's life. But it meant they should not have other children.

Sarah got a hysterectomy while in hospital.

Is loyalty a sign of true love? John thought so. If Sarah had to, he would too. So John shared her fate and had a vasectomy.

He didn't remember if she was pleased, back then. Last year she said he had been stupid. What if he found another woman and wanted children with her? He laughed.

He thought she was joking.

As he hiked through sand and tall grasses, John found out that he didn't recollect a lot of the more recent memories. They all seemed to have submerged in a grayish soup. But as he walked there, the high wind cleared his brain.

Maybe there is a kind of love that isn't healthy, he thought. The kind that eats away at your self-esteem. The kind that prevents you from seeing how your lover's love is seeping away And the kind that makes you forget how you've started discarding your self.

He sat down on a fallen tree, overlooking a valley. There he saw something else he'd forgotten. He saw how green trees are in May. How blue a clean-washed sky can be - how sparkling a meandering stream.

His eyes almost smarted from the overload of restored impressions. As did his brain from the influx of long forgotten memories. Their pain at last tore through the numbness that had become too familiar to notice.

You see, when they filmed vain Hollywood stars in the old days, they used to coat the lenses with Vaseline. It eased the contours and in a magical way reduced the wrinkles in a woman's face.

I guess John coated his eyes with Vaseline as long as he had known Sarah. Call it love, call it stupidity. But there, on that fallen tree, the soft, familiar veil vanished.

It was torn away. And it left him with reality.

Can one overdose on reality? Oh yes. Just look at that man on the fallen tree trunk. Watch his shoulders shake. Hear his muffled sobs which even now he tries to hold back.

When a dam breaks, it is impossible to register all the separate logs and debris and flotsam that pour out with the roaring stream. Don't even try to. Just wait until the waters subside. Then get into your waste-high boots and sort out the damage.

It was what John did out there, on that tree. Sorting out the jetsam of his life with Sarah - weighing logs and chunks in his hands. He was amazed at how light they were. How brittle too.

Except for one, a sparkling gem that lay in his hand and smiled at him.

When he looked up, the sun was in his eyes. It almost touched the crowns of the trees. He rose on stiff legs to return to the sad little motel room. A long shadow preceded him.

He had to make a phone call.

Julie looked well, although a bit flustered.

He mused. Is it possible for a twenty-year-old girl to not look gorgeous, even when she looks worried? It must be that one ingredient: youth. Envied by the old, taken for granted by the young.

"Hi dad," she said and she kissed him. "You look tired." It was so good to feel her firm body press into his.

They sat down at the little table in the back of the tiny Italian restaurant. The smile didn't leave their faces. The silence was quite okay. He liked her simple sweater and told her so. Sky blue had always been her color.

"Did you call your mother?" he then asked.

"I did," she said. "But she had to leave. I'll see her tomorrow at lunch time."

"Yes," he said, toying with his napkin. "Your mother is one busy lady at the moment."

Her hand covered his. Her eyes seemed huge.

"Daddy. What is going on?"

The waitress interfered. They ordered. John held back till she brought their wine, bread and water.

"Julie," he started, turning the glass to make the ruby liquid catch the candlelight. "Your mother has no need for me anymore."

She gasped.

"What do you mean, dad? What..."

He shushed her.

"Honey," he went on. "You are young. Everything is new and exciting. Just as new and exciting as things were when your mother and I met. We fell deeply in love and it felt ... unique. We were convinced that we must be the only ones in the world feeling such intense love for each other. It was..."

John had to pause. Finding words for the overwhelming memories was impossible. He smiled an apology.

"Darling. If you want to know how incredibly deep our love was, just look in the mirror. It was what made you."

His hand was now on hers. He felt a tear burn in the corner of an eye. Julie had stopped breathing.

"Oh, Daddy," she said.

"You were born and we learned you would be our only child. Ah well, you know that. But I now know that there was more that started ending then. I think from those years on your mother gradually stopped loving me."

Julie stared in horror. Then she shook her blonde head in protest. The rims of her eyes swam with tears. He raised his hand to stop her.

"You see, honey, I think I disappointed your mother. I think I ought to have been someone else. Stronger maybe - more ruthless? More ambitious for sure. Fond of showing off. But I wasn't like that. I never was. I thought she loved me for it."

John smiled apologetically, drawn into the sadness of his thoughts.

"I tried to pamper her with my love. I worked real hard to give her all I thought she needed. I believed I gave her all she asked for, but she kept asking more. And in the end it may not have been what she wanted at all..."

John guessed he confused Julie. She just stared, slowly shaking her head.

"Honey," he went on, wondering why his voice was so calm. "All considered there is no one to blame but me. And time. You can't understand that now. I guess I wouldn't have either at your age. But time is the great love killer. It drags and gnaws. It can change us into these giant, clammy slugs. We are condemned to crawl along an endless concrete road that has no feature but repetition."

"Please, Daddy, don't," she whispered. He smiled and tapped her hand.

"Sorry, yes. I should not talk to you like that," he apologized. "Because it doesn't have to be like that. It never was for me. I had two unique people in the world to love. They kept every moment new for me. They were worth every hour I worked."

He sighed as the thought came to him.

"I guess I was by then quite limited in the way I expressed my love. I worked. I put in hours, weeks, months of work. I thought it mattered. I was wrong, wasn't I?"