True Romance

A Canadian pen pal and I were looking back on our historic romances. She had married a man and helped him build a boat that they used to sail to Hawaii! I had married a man who had been drafted and I went to live in Germany with him when he was posted at Wharton Barracks, Heilbronn. My first (and only) husband and I traveled around Europe for most of a year visiting about 38 countries in the VW van he had outfitted during his free hours in the army post wood shop. It was very comfortable. In the early mornings, he would reach out of the sleeping bag and turn on the little propane stove he had hooked up with the percolator all set up on top. The heating coffee pot would heat the camper and we would get out of our double bag and begin our day on the road. We were happy then, Mike and I, on the great adventure of our youth. I wrote a little book about it.

e Mike and I met when I was in high school, age 16. He had graduated and he was working in a pharmacy (where he was able to get condoms!) When he got drafted, we married. We came back to the US and during the 1970's traveled a lot in another camper he outfitted, driving back and forth across America and across Canada. I think his marijuana smoking helped to keep his temper in check but when he got sick and had to stop smoking, his rages got out of control and so did he. I left him in 1981. We had been together from 1961 to 1981. He moved to Colorado with the company where he worked as a computer programmer.

During the time that I lived in New Jersey, before I moved to Philadelphia, I had volunteered to be a lap counter in the Edward Payson Weston Six Day ultramarathon on Cooper River Park. A small group of elite ultra marathoners were running non-stop or as long as they could without stopping, and the one with the most miles won. I can only remember a few of the names, Wesley Emmons, a Philadelphia jeweler, since passed away, Don Choi, Sabin Snow, Rob Sweetgall (whom I later dated). I can't remember the name of the winner but I will look it up, something like Park Barnes or Barnes Parker. Anyhow, I was the lap counter for Rob and we hit it off. When the race was over and my marriage had ended, I moved to Philadelphia and helped Rob prepare for his around the country 10,000 mile ultra marathon to kick off his new business to promote walking/running as a cardiovascular fitness practice for corporations and schools. I designed his brochure and went with him on is lecture tour. We dated for about two years and planned to marry on his return. He owned a home in Newark, Delaware, but we mostly stayed in my apartment in Philadelphia. After he left on his tour, I flew to meet him once a month all over the country. While he was gone, after about seven months, I went to a New Year's Eve party given by an old college friend of mine about whom I wrote recently on this blog, Roni Chernin Levy. At the time, she was divorced also, and living in Germantown. At her party, I met and fell in love with an artist, Karl. He lived in a studio in South Philadelphia. Soon after our affair began, I found myself pregnant. My birth control failed; I was using a diaphragm as they wouldn't give me, a smoker, birth control pills. I had to tell Rob what had happened. I was afraid he would break down and fall out of his marathon, but he was a strong man and no quitter. He continued his marathon and later met and married a woman from the Rocky Mountains and they went on to have a happy marriage and write several books together.

Karl and I broke up before my daughter had her first birthday. He was doing renovations on a building owned by another artist and they fell in love. I moved to New Jersey and bought a house, and got a full time job teaching in a high school in order to provide a decent life for my daughter. I wanted a home with a back yard, a nice school, and I needed medical benefits as well as a liveable income. Before her third birthday, Karl and his now wife took me to court for visitation rights. It tore my heart out.

There was crushing heartbreak in between each of those paragraphs for all the people involved. My ex-husband and I truly did love one another. We grew up togetherk knew one another's parents. It wouldn't be too far a stretch to say I adored him. I thought he was wonderful until he became terrible. I lost a marriage, my faith in my main human being, a home, all my money, everything. I was too afraid of him to fight for half our assets, though my father thought it was cowardly of me. I had to pick up the pieces and start from scatch.

His heart was broken too, I know that, but he did marry again and they had a son. Eventually, they divorced as well and I am sure she went through the same misery I did.

Rob's heart was broken when I betrayed him. He came to visit when his tour was completed and when he saw my baby, he cried, no doubt at some level thinking that it could have been his baby had things been different. He went on to marry again as well. I am glad he found happiness.

They all married again, except me! I mothered instead. I worked full time Monday through Friday, all day Saturday at the University, three or four days after school in home tutoring programs and one or two nights a week in community education. I had no more time or energy left for anything but the house-work, yard maintenance, grocery shopping and child care. It was no sacrifice; I was happy and I didn't miss romance at all. My heart was broken and I was too traumatised in that area to be able to take another chance.

When my daughter grew up and left home, in my 50's, I dated, disappointingly. There were a couple of men I saw for more than a year, but I wouldn't have married either of them and they knew it. Those relationships faltered and petered out. One of them found a woman who would marry him, the other one died of lung cancer from his work as a dry waller.

So that is the cliff notes of my life in True Romance. I have now lived longer with my oldest cat than with any man. It is my cat at 17 years, my daughter at 18 years, and no man has ever lived in this house, my marriage lasted 13 years to separation, 15 years to divorce.

I don't have much to say about any of it. I DO NOT miss being married or being in a couple. There was a decade from age 55 to 65 when I might have felt a little of that, but it passed. I am glad that I experienced true love in a couple of its versions and I have no regrets. It all worked out fine.

Because of where i live, I often drive by the house where I lived when I was married, in Collingswood facing the Cooper River, where the Edward Payson Weston Six Day marathon was held. And I drive down a back road from Maple Shade through Pennsauken that i often drove on with my boyfriend in his TR3 sportscar. Mike was a car guy. Today I passed the garage that used to be a repair shop for imported European Sports cars and where he took some of his sports cars. When we met and dated when I was in high school, he drove a midnight blue convertible corvette which was the apple of his eye. One of our dates was to go to the Admiral Wilson Boulevard, which at the time, the 1960's boasted a long strip of car lots and was very popular.

In Germany, Mike drove a vintage Porsche which he had sent back to the US while we traveled in our VW Van. Do I miss him? A little and as soon as I do, I remember his rages and my fear, and his intimidation and his deceptions, and I don't miss him anymore. Really I don't miss any of them. If I search my heart, I find no fondness for Rob, though he did no harm to me, or for Lavinia's father who did a geat deal of harm to me. But I hold no resentment at this late stage either. I am 80 and Karl is 70. We are old people now. My ex-husband is 82! Some of the men I dated have died and I read their obituaries, like Rob Sweetgall - you should read his! It is very moving and impressive. He was a good man.

Happy Trails! whether on the road or thrugh life or the valley of love.

wrightj45@yahoo.com