Trip Home Day 2 - Part 1
With our six o'clock start, we made pretty good time that day. The scenery after Winnipeg was a little more of trees than prairie, but still largely featureless. The part through Northwestern Ontario was mostly trees, but the terrain did start to become more interesting as we entered the Canadian Shield. It was pretty in a desolate winter sort of way, but you can only see so many trees before they become boring.
The conversation (for lack of a more descriptive word) today started when Diane asked for some anecdotes from when Carol, Riekie and I were together, especially that first summer. She was curious how our relationship actually developed. She knew the history, basically, but not the full emotional content. I think she knew instinctively that this would bring us into reliving and dissecting the big breakup that essentially ruined the three of our lives until now.
By embarking us on a trip down Nostalgia Lane, Diane was able to connect more completely with our past so she could feel more part of our present. That girl was magic that day. She managed to gently extract the whole story, sometimes in graphic detail of our year together, the subsequent break up, and the two years of the immediate aftermath. Yesterday, in recounting how our lives had been shaped and the paths they took described the fallout. Now we returned to 'ground zero'. We were able to examine, looking back twenty years just how youthfully immature and naïve we really had been.
As we recounted our tale in a depth and detail we had never shared with anyone else, we came to see how little actual planning we did toward our anticipated future together. We had never seriously discussed how we expected to stay together as a multiple marriage if I had actually gone into the Forces with its myriad global postings and long separations. Nor had we discussed where we would actually set up housekeeping beyond vague references to someday living at the farm.
Mom and Dad had taught us some basic skills at managing a household, but we never consciously laid out a plan. The only issue we had ever seriously considered and had some solid proposals for was in the event of early pregnancy from our wanton lovemaking. We had known of the risk and were prepared for the consequences. Mom and Dad had made us a serious offer to help with child rearing to allow us to continue our educations, but we'd never needed to use it
Carol's dream of becoming a commercial artist would have tied her down to a major centre, which was where the work was. Riekie could possibly have taken up a practice in a small town, but wanted to be near a teaching university. The Army would have posted me God knows where. It wouldn't be until near retirement I would be able to select a plum posting that might be close to 'home'. As we talked, we began to wonder collectively if perhaps we hadn't ourselves sown the seeds of our destruction that that man was able to exploit. Mom and Dad had warned us of pitfalls, but in the exuberance of youth, we brushed them aside, preferring to live in the moment, as the young always do. Our greatest mistake was in forgetting Mom's early warning of an 'evil' stalking us.
Riekie's mournful and frank statement of the day before, a single, simple remark, 'I didn't just lose My Man, my wife, my lovers -- I lost my two best friends', catalyzed us into truly dissecting what went wrong both externally and from within. We all realized that painful as it might be, we needed to do this to exorcise our demons and armour ourselves against a repeat.
Like the young suitor in the movie 'Shenandoah', we preferred to wallow in our love, and forgot or lost sight of the one thing we supposedly held dearest — our friendship, our 'liking' for each other. I preached, almost literally, from day one the value of friendship, but it seemed we started to give it more lip service rather than practice it.
It came out that perhaps, no, most likely, in the hard black and white terms of youth, I had totally misinterpreted my 'Cosmic Moment' that day in the barn about our three-way relationship, and that we should have been able to survive as a duo if one left us or was damaged. I had wondered for some time, especially with what had transpired recently vis-à-vis Diane and what I learned about Kit, if I hadn't misunderstood what I saw that day. It was my interpretation of that 'vision' that locked us into the tripartite arrangement that wouldn't allow the survivors to stand if one was taken from us.
My epiphany, if you could call it that, in September about an infinite soul being able to love almost an infinite number of others made that point all too clear. If Kit had survived and came to us, I would have been forced then to re-evaluate my interpretation. If I had interpreted it correctly originally, Kit would in all likelihood have been a part of our relationship before we returned home that summer. Sounds hasty, but look at the speed with which our base relationships developed. Kit, being older, may have been just the 'mature' leavening we needed at that time.
The evidence that we lost sight of our friendship began with our disagreement over me going to Camp that fateful summer. Even my mother had to take some of the blame for that, and it may be one of the reasons she worked so hard and tirelessly behind the scenes over the years. She and the girls had Seen something that scared them to death, so much so in Carol's case, it left her an emotional wreck all through July of that year. I hadn't seen much evidence of that except the devastated state she was in when I left, and Bob's comments later. None of it showed in her letters. But none of them was willing to describe what they Saw or felt in detail, only telling me in vague terms something 'bad' was going to happen. If they had even described the full intensity of their feeling of impending doom, I might have paid more attention. In hindsight, neither Carol nor Riekie could explain exactly what they felt, but now were able describe the intensity of it.
I wasn't much better. I got my back up at what I took to be simple female and lovers' angst at separation and became uncharacteristically stubborn about going to camp. Yes, it was a feather in my cap for entrance to RMC, but by no means a requisite. I had been raised to believe in discussion and constructive compromise, but on that one issue I became absolutely obstinate, and wouldn't trust Mom's or the girls' Sight. Operative word — trust.
Carol, being the most emotionally volatile of the three of us (artist's temperament?) was distraught, and became vulnerable to her father's manipulation. Because she knew I'd lacked trust in their feelings of impending disaster, she lost faith in me, and easily fell victim to his lies, believing the stories of infidelity. Operative word — again, trust.
Riekie, perhaps a little more emotionally stable, with a brilliant analytical mind and believing strongly in friendship, didn't fall for their father's guile, but her trust was still undermined. Because Carol had lost faith in me, Riekie thought Carol had also lost it in her. When that man raped Riekie, she had no one to turn to. She only told part of the story to Carol, but Carol refused to believe — her father by this time had her so enamored of his 'good guy' status, she simply couldn't. With the violation of her trust in her father, and the emotional devastation of that, Riekie ran because she thought no one would believe her. And then, like Carol, she lost trust in herself, thinking she'd been somehow a willing partner, thus making it virtually impossible to tell the one person she still trusted — me. Again, the operative word — trust.
Carol finally did regain her trust in me over the purported infidelity, and lost faith in her father because his lies were becoming transparent, but too late. When he abused her, Carol, already emotionally fragile, lost that most valuable form of trust -- trust in herself -- believing she had somehow betrayed everything she believed in. Carol's emotional breakdown was almost complete. To this day I'm still amazed and eternally thankful that we were able to salvage her. One more time, the operative word — trust.
I was as guilty in the breakup as anyone. I didn't trust the system to work, although in hindsight (wonderful thing, that!) it probably would have. I didn't trust Carol to believe me if I told her the truth, and I didn't believe anyone else would believe, even though we had witnesses in the form of her young brothers that all that happened was a beating (All? Shit, it was brutal!). Again, with that wonderful tool called hindsight, I should have confronted their father, told Dolly at the very least, and once I figured out the full impact of what had happened, confronted Carol, even if it meant knocking down her door to do it. It may have been traumatic for her, but no worse than what she already experienced. When she most needed to be held and comforted, she didn't get it — from anyone. Like Carol, I lost trust in me, and her ability to handle the truth. Yet again, operative word — trust.
And I should have been more forceful with Riekie. I should have gone straight to her, ignoring what she said in her last letter. Hell, in that letter, she said no communication — letters or phone calls — basically a direct plea for personal contact; she didn't say what would happen if I showed up on her doorstep. I should especially have told her what happened to Carol. In this, I had a misplaced sense of trust. When I should have been telling what I knew, I kept quiet, fearing I would be violating Carol's trust. In point of fact, the only trust I would have violated, was that of the perpetrator. Knowing she wasn't alone, would have allowed Riekie to tell what happened to her. With two separate attacks, the system would have worked for sure.
So, supposedly being the 'mature beyond my years' person I was supposed to be, I handled the whole situation like almost any other seventeen year old kid would. I wimped out and waited for the 'adults' to look after it, except there was only one adult aware, and he was the perpetrator. Looking back, like my uncharacteristic stubbornness over the camp issue, this was totally out of character for me. I had stood up to the beast before. Why couldn't I then? Threats and promises of future retribution may have protected the girls from future physical violence, but did nothing to address what had actually happened. Yes, my mind was distracted by the emotional upheaval, but something more insidious clouded my judgment.
It took two years, with the news of rejection from my chosen career path before my own guilt at not intervening, which I buried for all that time, surfaced. When it did, instead of then being able to act proactively as I should have, I fell completely apart. For seventeen years after that, I carried that burden of guilt that almost at any time could possibly have been resolved with a phone call and some plane tickets -- phone call to Bob to round up his father for a confrontation, and plane tickets to get everyone together. With a little spine and resolution on my part it could possibly have been done even before they even moved to Toronto that fall.
But that is what 20/20 hindsight tells us. The reality of course, is entirely different. The resolution was left to chance and the Power or as it turned out, the lack of it. There is no right or wrong in the way the girls and I reacted. The true wrongs were perpetrated by one man. Easy to say because what he did, including the lies he told about me to Carol are patently illegal. The fault that lay with us was our youth, inexperience and naïveté, aided and abetted by our break down in trust amongst ourselves and for ourselves. Trust, the very cornerstone of friendship, and we lost it.
Looking back, Carol, Riekie and I did come to the conclusion that if — if, the biggest word in the English language — we had patched things up or not broken up at all, the next two years of high school and gained life experience plus the teachings of Mom and Dad would have better prepared us for life together. We had two years of high school and however many years of college to work out the details of our final family — where and how we'd live. We were no different at age seventeen than any other high school sweethearts, even those in 'monogamous' relationships, at that age.
Reference: Patty and Roy. They decided to marry at the same age, but looked only to the future as far as education and the fact they wanted to be together. I knew this from talking to them. Their final plans were not made until the last year of high school, and that was with the help of two supportive families.
We had a similar circumstance, and Fate or the Evil clouded our judgment on the cornerstones of our relationship itself. This was the time to be building our relationship and learning about ourselves — to grow, and that was where we failed, by losing trust. Our love was never at issue, it was our trust. We had a bit of a weather eye to the future, but in many respects, the future, as it applied to actual living arrangements would have looked after itself as the situation at the time dictated. It always does.
One of the amazing things we discovered in our dissection of the breakup was that we had all, at some point over the last years, come to the same conclusions independently. Even distanced by time and geography, we had, somewhere, somehow, rediscovered our trust in each other and ourselves, and decided that our breakup may not necessarily have been inevitable, and maybe was preventable. It was inevitable when we lost trust, but only then. Looking back twenty years, it was preventable and even repairable — looking back twenty years, that is. At 'Ground Zero' in real time, it was inevitable.
The strange thing is, when we did come to our independent conclusions and learned to trust each other again, that became the incentive to start the rehabilitation of our relationship. We had always felt connected on some level beyond normal understanding. Once we all made that final leap of understanding and faith, that profound interconnection of what can only be described as our souls, started drawing us inexorably back together.
We couldn't mark a day in August of this year on the calendar of when it started to move together, but we all agreed, August was the pivotal month, although each of us had felt some stirrings as early as June or before. None of us had made particular note of a specific day, but it appeared to be connected to an August event specific to each of us.
Roy had broken his news to me in July, but it was early August when I felt it was time, and trusted myself enough, to beard the lion and to trust Carol that she could handle the truth, close to the anniversary of that Civic Holiday weekend where I threw down the gauntlet to that man the first time.
Riekie said she felt the call of my heart as usual, beginning in early August, but admitted to feeling an uneasiness as early as June. By her August anniversary near my birthday, the call became overwhelming, and she placed her complete trust in me and Diane to take her and the twins in out of the blue. Her plan, except for Carol 'letting the cat out of the bag' had been to arrive unannounced.
Beginning in June, coinciding with our first date, Carol felt strong enough and trusting enough to establish contact with Diane. By the anniversary of our first tryst in August, coincidentally the anniversary of the Promise, Carol began to trust herself enough to take on a meeting with me to, of all things, produce a baby, and trusted me to do the right thing. Was her decision tied to that wonderful Friday afternoon when she trusted me completely with her body, and the same day she extracted that promise from me? Operative word — trust.
This conversation, meeting-of-the-minds, meeting-of-the-souls, or whatever you would call this highly charged interaction, occurred over the twelve-plus hour journey from Brandon to Thunder Bay. I don't know how we survived it sometimes. When I was driving, there were times I couldn't see for tears, and the same for the other two. Many times we pulled onto the shoulder and held each other as sobs wracked us, mourning our love, the what-might-have-been's and our lost opportunity. We must have been a strange and pathetic sight to other passing motorists as the three of us clung together in a sobbing huddle in a snow bank in below zero (Celsius) temperatures without coats. During those moments, Diane watched the kids and grieved with us.
This was the three-way confrontation we all knew we had to face, and dreaded, thinking it may just put paid to our whole relationship. Instead, it was the catharsis we needed to rediscover ourselves, our relationship, and our love.
From the perspective of twenty years on, we could see just how fragile we really had been. That our love actually survived those twenty years was a miracle of major proportions. We also concluded that what happened to us somewhat stunted us all in our later emotional development, such that now we were in many ways, still those naïve, idealistic teenagers. This was a sobering thought to us, and we came to realize the value of Diane in our midst — that as she had been given a second chance at growing and maturing, so had we.
Carol and Riekie almost relived their terrible fights and arguments of that fateful summer, clearing a lot of misunderstanding and acrimony from their relationship. I had seen it coming from the night Riekie told of her own abuse and Carol's very supportive reaction to that. The love and tenderness they showed for each other since we reconciled was remarkable, but they still needed those emotional moments huddled in a freezing snow bank somewhere in Northwestern Ontario.
When all was said and done though, and we'd forgiven each other and kissed and held in our sobbing huddles, at the end of the day, what mattered most was we LIKED each other as intensely as we loved each other, and always had. We tried to list off all the things we didn't like about each other, the little annoyances that might turn into major hurdles down the road, and couldn't find any.
All four of us came to the collective conclusion that right at that moment, we were with our three most favourite people in the world, children aside as a special case. There were no others we felt as comfortable with or wanted to be with as much as we did the other three, and it wasn't just because we were in love, but because we thoroughly enjoyed the others' company as friends. We had no secrets and could act as silly or immature as we wanted without fear of the others thinking less of us. We could say and do almost anything together without fear of recrimination or rebuke.
Riekie put it into perspective. "Now I'm happy again. I'm back with my best friends in the whole world."
Another thing we realized was that even for young people, how seriously we took our vows, oaths, and promises to each other. Riekie's oath before the Goddess of eternal fidelity and love allowed her to find emotional shelter in a loveless, sexless marriage and to have my children. Carol had been dealt a similar hand, except her sexless marriage was a loving and supportive one. Raising her step-sons had kept her maternal instinct alive, allowing her to actively seek payment on my promise despite her emotional frailty. My promise to have children with Carol led me to an otherwise unlikely situation in September.
For the most part, Diane stayed out of it. This was mainly for the three if us — we had to work it out. But as I said before, she was magic. She kept us going, asking just the right question here and there to make us think and open up when we thought something might be hurtful. Diane was the friend who listened and prodded as needed to get it out. Never judgmental, always supportive, she was by definition, a true friend.
By the end of day two, our eyes red from crying, we actually felt good. A huge weight had been lifted off us. We had gone down that road together and LIKED what we saw in each other and for the future. We had been through the crucible of fire and came out the other side better for it. Perhaps what transpired that day helped explain the intensity of what happened during the evening.
Our Second night on the road was spent in Thunder BayOntario
Despite all the unscheduled extra stops along the shoulder, we rolled into Thunder Bay more or less on schedule, with time to put in during the evening. We took our time finding a motel, and got one with an actual suite advertising a king size bed. We thought we'd died and gone to heaven. There was tons of room, and the kids even had their own room for the night. The bath was bigger than most, too. While the wives got us settled in, I ran the van to the nearest gas station and filled it up for morning. Returning from that errand, I stopped by the office and collected some extra bath towels. Settled in to our room, we freshened up, called a cab and went out for a leisurely dinner at a nearby restaurant the hotel manager recommended. It was a little pricey, but the food and service was excellent.
The cab returned us to our room with lots of time to put the kids to bed close to their regular bedtime. The suite even had a proper courtesy coffee maker with a timer and a small bar fridge stocked with juices and soft drinks. With the kids bedded down for the night, we called home to let them know we'd made it as far as Thunder Bay and were back in the same time zone at least. The girls visited with the aunts and Paul for a bit as Mom and Dad had gone home for the evening. We told them we weren't sure of our next destination because we hadn't decided on the route yet, but would call them tomorrow night again from either Sudbury or North Bay.
We would soon have to decide which way to go home. We could take the northern route favoured by long haul truckers by Hwy 11 or we could take the Hwy 17 route along Lake Superior. The time factor was similar, and the Superior route was far more scenic, but it had the disadvantage of being a notoriously bad road in winter, with the possibility of heavy snow squalls and fog off the lake. Hauling a trailer through those hills would cost us in fuel, too. I had been both ways on my moose hunting trips. I thought the women would prefer the scenic route if the weather cooperated. We didn't have to decide until we got to Nipigon where the highways diverged in the morning, so we decided to wait and see what the weather forecast was just before we left.
After we talked with Paul and his family we called Bob and Karen to let them know the same thing. They said they'd finally had a chance to check out the hot tub and were definitely going to have one of their own. We visited with them for a while and then had the rest of the evening to just loaf. We set the coffee maker to brew up fresh coffee for five, arranged with the front desk for a five o'clock wakeup call, and settled down to watch a movie on the television. We hadn't had a TV set on except to check the weather since before Christmas.
After the emotionally draining trip today, we were exhausted and quickly became bored with the movie so we decided to turn in early. Regardless of which way we went, tomorrow's leg would be the longest hardest part of our journey, and a good night's sleep was imperative. With two sinks in the large bathroom we quickly had everyone washed and brushed, but I was still the last one out. Tonight Carol was in the 'snuggle spot'. She patted the bed between her and Diane. I turned out the light and slipped in between them. I noticed as I snuggled in the extra towels I got from the desk had been put to good use. With some privacy from the kids tonight and being in bed this early, I was hoping for a little fun. The towels indicated I wasn't alone in that hope. We got more than any of us could ever have imagined.