THAT SECOND HUSBAND
There are people who come into another's life to be the Help You Need To Go On and they stay for years maybe and are beloved with a gratitude that is not appreciated because it falls so far from Love. It's love as duty: the love when you're so thankful you can hardly breathe with the hope and relief. and the affection is terrific. and not being alone. and having someone who'll help all the time and do it your way with your kids. it's a blessed miracle is what it is...there's nothin' quite like it. So was her second marriage. It was a wonderful second marriage. and it was doomed from the start to end when the kids left the nest, wings flappin' away. it had been a war, but it was a good war. and they had won. she and him. they had won the war together: the Raising of the Teenagers. The Peace would be Something Else Again.
He was a Good Man of course, and very, very bright. an Intellectual. he had a Masters Degree. he knew more than she did about Academic Matters. in every way. he was well read. they read together all the time. sometimes they sang together. she would have liked to sing more. but he didn't. in regards to the kids, they did mostly what she wanted to be done. in regard to the monies and the management of the house and so on: they mainly did what he wanted. it worked out pretty well for over seven years.
The kids were very hard to raise as teenagers. they were very fiesty kids and stubborn and also a bit sneaky. and very sexual. and good people. but not easy to raise. not at all. they had music and sports and dates and stuff to do. it took up all of their time and all of her and her second husband's time. work and the kids. that was it - day after day. they were all very close. but very intense. it was hard. so hard. and it got out of control. even tho they were so consistent and constant in the kids' lives. People growing up will push into their own paths in the world and head off in unknown directions. that is often the way...the oldest graduated from college and had a baby as a single parent...even then, she knew what she wanted to do, and that is what she did. over time that all worked out. the youngest one finished highschool well and then he went off to become a Karate teacher, and soon, to own his own School. He was very Intense. it was the middle daughter who pulled their lives this way and that.
The middle daughter did drugs and had two babies between leaving after highschool graduation and being nineteen. there were seven years of difficult, difficult times. she and he worked hard to keep a regular life going while working with her days after days of trials and trails into places that were Not Good. when she came through her Dark Ages much was much bettter. but the War had taken its toll. to put it mildly. everything was the way it is after a very damaging War. won. but not finished. too much to rebuild. much hard work yet to be done. much. much. they were exhausted. everyone was. yet everyday life must be done. everything has to go on for everyone else as well. work to be done. they looked at eachother: these comrades at arms. they had been so close during the war. who were they now?
They had always gone up to the Country: to his land with redwoods and the stream where the raised apple trees. it was their only times away. it was always lovely to be there...close to the sea and the forests and the rivers and the streams. a Peace of a place to be. now even that was not enough. it was a fragile Peace. they were different people now. really Different People. especially her. there were no songs or dances or books or country-side or gardens or times of love-making that could change that. she was no longer real with him. and he had never asked her enough about her outer world - much less her inner world...he know so little about her. well then, she know so little about her own self. she was learning though.
They separated...still in the same home...he started dating, and would talk with her about it. as usual. he had always expected her to listen to all his work stories and relationship stories. she listened. as usual. she was dancing in a Folk Dance Group. one of the dancers was beginning to be a closer friend. they were separating more. finally, he moved out. everyone blamed her for the 'break-up'. because he was the Perfect Man. she called him 'Saint' herself. she took responsiblity for it all. after all, he had Not been Bad to her in any way. not at all. he had just not known her at all. or tried to, really. not in a Bad Way, tho....for all the rest of their years, he would never understand her or her ways or her writing or her song. he didn't like her really. but he would rarely say so. inside, he would always know she was right: they did Not Belong Together. but: they had finished raising the 'Kids' together. That was the Good Thing they had done.
The 'Kids' grew up to be Great People: Creative. stubborn. Intense. just as they had been. also: responsible. good-hearted. opinionated too. bossy. but Good to others and to their own Children. Good Folk. this had been her work with her second husband. and he had come through. for which...she would always be grateful.
No one want Grateful the way they want Love. that is often the end of a marriage of otherwise Good Folk who divorce tho. they are grateful for the good times and the good ways of the other. they are angry for the parts that went 'wrong'. parts go 'wrong'. sometimes couples make it through those times. some times: they do not.
Love is so multi-facited. a rare gem with common ways that please and then do not. it's all in the turning in the light. and then there is Peace. Peace after any war...it's something else again. The second husband has a good woman who loves him as he is now. and he loves her as she is. no further expectations. expectations are something else again as well. so life goes on to death with memories. hers are Good about the second husband. he was a good man who helped her raise her kids for ten years. she herself went on to other loves and other times...they are much older now. she and her second husband... so it goes. few will remember. so I told this little story....
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Teens fool you, especially when they don't require an intervention. In Morton, IL, a Peoria suburb, my oldest son could date any girl in high school because they knew him to be "safe" (as in "gay," something his mom didn't realize but his classmate girls who didn't want to be molested really liked about him). His junior-prom date was almost a dead-ringer for Natalie Portman. My oldest daughter, who is a lesbian, in high school "sneaked" a date with a terrific Vietnamese guy (he later became a Caterpillar engineer) whose Catholic parent refugees had crucifixes in every room of their Morton, IL house. She didn't consider herself "gay" in high school because she had affections for every kid she thought was "interesting." She didn't "self-identify" as a lesbian until she was nearly 21.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, my youngest child, the "hetero," has been the source of more grief than his older siblings, save for one - very odd - thing. He still talks to his parents without prompting. In the middle of doing both "intern" and "paid" work for his audio/analog/digital recording license, he carved out time in June 2012 to move his dad to Oregon by driving a U-Haul truck. He missed a turn in Sisters, OR, and took the McKenzie Pass over the Cascades, a route I wouldn't have taken in a car, let alone a truck towing a trailer.
I can't imagine taking on "teens" in a second marriage, but, then, I cannot even imagine a second marriage, other than to a person like Denny. My sister told me that she thought Denny and I had a nice emotional connection. Good for her. We always did. I actually went on a date with him to the Cascade Drive-In Theater on North Avenue, just east of where I lived in Waynewood. You "like" the people you love to be with - and it was fun to be with Denny in a context other than playing music. On that date, he was very dear and very respectful, signals that told me I would be the "like" (as opposed to the "love") of his life, which I've always regarded as a wonderful thing.
Bill and I thought Denny was the "best," partly because when we got together and played music at our house, my dad forgot that he had cashed in his Sears bonus check to get Bill a Vega banjo instead of a snow-plow attachment to his tractor. My mom and dad adored Denny. They couldn't think of anything better than to sit down and hear the three of us play in the living room.
There is a folk festival in Florence, OR in January. I've been to one of them. I like this, but I am not into folk music, although I find it appealing. I got into German lieder - Schubert, Mendelssohn, Strauss. Songs that you think of as "classical" emigrated in odd portions to America almost as profoundly as did "folk" music, which scholars typically define as Anglo/Scottish/Irish.
That I couldn't connect with my children on the level of "serious" music was a supreme disappointment to me.
Then, again, my son Russell's "call waiting-leave a message" music is Vivaldi.