Part 27: Second Marriages

“In olden times, sacrifices were made at the altar, a practice which is still very much practiced.” – Helen Rowland

“All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner.” – Red Skelton

“By all means, marry.  If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” – Socrates

It is with trepidation that I write this chapter, what with just getting married and all.  But fortunately for me, I have no chance at becoming much of a philosopher.  Having achieved marriage status during my senior year in college, I have been married nearly all of my adult life.  I should be quite proficient at husbanding by now, but it turns out there is always more to learn. 

Linda, my first wife, was a rookie.  We were young, broke, naïve, and in love.  We had no idea what we were doing but we figured that life would somehow work out.  We had boatloads of hope, but no boat.  I always wanted a boat but the best I could accomplish in that area was a very tippy aluminum row boat.  Not much of a boat, if you asked me.  But the boatloads of hope were much more tangible.  There was nothing we could not accomplish.  Our love gave us strength and we nurtured and sustained each other.  I think I required more nurturing and sustaining, but nevertheless, our bonds of marriage grew stronger over time and were tested over the years.  Surviving the tests that life threw at us made those bonds even stronger.  After Linda was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease, I thought those bonds might be tested again.  It turned out that love totally dominated that disease.  But love has no limits and while life may come to a physical end, I discovered that love endures.

Husbanding comes with certain expectations.  Great expectations.  And like Dicken’s novel, those expectations are simply expressed:  affection, loyalty, and conscience are more important than social advancement, wealth, and class.  Which is a good thing because I have always been lacking in the last three.  My understanding of the responsibilities of being a husband were based on my observations of my father and grandfather. 

My grandfather was a hunter, fisher, and businessman.  He taught me how to shoot at age six and we fished together every opening day of fishing season for many years.  He was a great story teller.  He was honest and kind.  He had played football in college and a little bit after college in a semi-pro league.  He was a big man and there was a toughness about him that belied his gentleness.  He was somewhat of a handyman and engineer.  He built a rustic but spacious summer home on Camano Island and converted the kegs of nails used to build the cabin into stools for seating around the dining room table.  Interior door closers were engineered with twine and fishing weights.  Door openers were leather straps.  The sleeping porch (attic door) was a four by eight sheet of plywood, hinged on one side and held open by a rope running through a pulley and secured by a counterweight.  The used brick fireplace was the only heat source and had vents into the back hallway where the 3 bedrooms were located.

My father was a navy commander and businessman.  He inherited my grandfather’s business when my grandfather died.  My dad was active in civic affairs and was on the board of many industry non-profit organizations, and served as president of the National Exchange Club, the Arctic Club (which served businesses doing business in Alaska), the Ballard Hospital Board of Directors, and other organizations.  He believed in justice, integrity, commitment, loyalty, and honor.  He loved to play golf and fish and camp. 

While I lack my grandfather’s engineering ingenuity, the values of my father and grandfather were the models I looked to adopt and used as a measure of my success as a husband and father.  Simply stated, I had awesome role models.  And yet, being a husband and father is no easy assignment.  Like medicine, the over-riding rule seems to be, “Do no harm”.  But that leaves a ton of latitude and a hell of a lot of gray area for husbands to fumble around in.  With Linda, things were pretty clear; but only after I missed the mark.  For example, there was the time when I felt like I needed a bigger chain saw.  I had a chain saw, but it only had a 16” bar.  I had a pine tree that was 30+ inches in diameter that I wanted to cut down for firewood.  My puny little saw wasn’t up to the task.  I found a used saw with a 30” bar in the PennySaver want ads for only $150.  If new, it would have been $500.  I told Linda I wanted to buy the chainsaw and she asked how much it was and quite bluntly told me we couldn’t afford it.  Since she paid the bills, I was a bit disappointed that we couldn’t afford a $150 saw.  She put an exclamation mark on her previous statement by saying I could buy a new chain saw when she got a sewing machine. 

Now, I had never heard Linda mention she wanted a sewing machine or that she even knew how to use one.  But if the answer to getting my saw was to get her a sewing machine, then shoot, that problem was an easy one to solve.  So that afternoon I went down to Sears, opened a charge account, bought a sewing machine and called the saw owner and both problems were solved.  Linda had her sewing machine and I had my heavy duty saw.  Was Linda excitedly happy that she got this new gift?  Of course not.  She thought I was demented.  I totally failed to understand the “rules” of husbandry.  She didn’t want a sewing machine.  Where oh where did I go wrong? 

So, here’s the thing.  Wives generally aren’t looking to have problems solved.  They may state that a certain issue exists, but it doesn’t mean that they are asking their husband to solve that issue for them.  It is simply an acknowledgment of the existence of a possible problem.  My most common mistake as a husband was to assume that the issue needed immediate resolution and the role of a good husband was to solve problems and resolve identified issues.  You know, to “manage” the situation.  That, gentlemen, is a rookie mistake.  Resolution is not the issue.  I know, many of you are now asking, “then what is the issue?”  The issue, dear reader, is dialog.

Dialog.  This is another fraught term.  But before I go on; there is one other matter that I should clarify for you.  That has to do with the word “manage”.  I learned early on that wives do not like to be managed.  “Manage” apparently infers “control”.  And that was a lesson that became incredibly clear to me during the first week of marriage.  We honeymooned in Hawaii.  We had dinner at the Top Of Waikiki.  Dinner and drinks.  I had a mai tai.  Linda had a Volcano which was rum and blue curacao or something like that.  As she became a little silly and her words were slightly slurred, I helpfully suggested that perhaps we should order coffee and go for a walk on the beach.  Her response was, “waiter, I would like to have another one of these delishusss tornados”.  And so she did.  It was obvious that she ordered the beverage out of her disdain for feeling that she was being managed.  Let’s just say that the end result was not very romantic. 

So, back to dialog.  Dialog isn’t just conversation.  It is an intentional effort to achieve mutual understanding.  Linda and I had some conversation about my chainsaw, but there was no dialog despite, perhaps, Linda’s feeble (my opinion) attempt at dialog.  She apparently wanted us to have a dialog about family budget and goals and that was totally unclear to me as I was simply trying to solve a problem and not as invested in an existential conversation about the future.  This was a tough lesson for me as it required reading between the lines a bit and that is not in my natural playbook. 

You may notice that my mind tends to drift a bit as I write so I will try to get back to second marriages.  After Linda died, I had no intention of dating anyone.  I was quite comfortable in my newfound bachelorhood.  I was looking forward to playing bridge at the bridge club I had just joined, going fishing on mountain streams, and puttering.  I am a very skilled putterer.  I can putter with the best.  I am a better putterer than a fisherman even though I love being out on a stream or on the ocean.   But life has a way of playing tricks on you.  Sometimes they are not especially desired tricks but sometimes they are magical and transform your life in ways you could never expect.  And such was my experience with the lovely lady known as Virginia. 

We met at the bridge club, discovered we had a shared interest in food, wine, bridge, the outdoors, local farming, environmentalism, and politics.  We became friends.  We enjoyed each other’s company.  We had both shared great, inconsolable loss.  We had both survived.  And survived with optimism about the future.  We went wine tasting, out to dinner, and our friendship continued to grow.  More time together resulted in a desire to spend more time together.  And then there was the dinner.  The dinner that changed everything.  The dinner at Farm Food Restaurant.  The dinner with the $100 bottle of wine and lamb chops.  The dinner when Virginia invited me to visit her in New Zealand.  The dinner when I said “yes” knowing that her invitation and my acceptance could change everything.  Perhaps we would fall in love.  Perhaps we would find that we were incompatible in some way.  It was the dinner when we knew we needed to know if there was more to this relationship than good conversation and friendship.  But even if there was nothing more, the friendship we had formed was, in and of itself, worth it and sustainable, so I traveled to New Zealand with confidence that there was little possibility for a negative outcome.  We might become even better friends.  We might become lovers.  Who knew?  And in either case, we would have a wonderful adventure together.  And what an adventure it was!  I think that is all I can say about that without jeopardizing all I have learned about the rules of marriage. 

Our relationship didn’t follow a typical script.  We honeymooned in Tahiti before we got married which was a good thing, since we got married during the first week of enforced social distancing due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic which put a crimp in our travel plans.  This second marriage is only in its third week, as I write this, so there is much more to learn.  Fortunately, Virginia is an excellent professor and teacher and I know she will patiently and persistently help me in my continuing education on the proper role of husbanding.