This evening I went to a barbecue with Kyle's father's family. It was the first time I met several of them. I met the grandfather and his wife while the grandmother and her new husband were also there. I met an aunt and uncle, and Jack was there with his girlfriend as well. (Jack has had this girlfriend for fourteen years. Why do people want ME to date him? I see an obstacle.....) I met two cousins and several friends.
It was interesting to sit with the sets of grandparents. They get along quite well. Alone with me, the grandfather spoke candidly about his three marriages. His first was the one that produced his three children. (I thought that was tidy.) He said he didn't know what happened to that marriage. He had a midlife crisis, moved to the Marina and started dating younger women. It was just, well, a crisis. He left his wife with a nice house, a Jaguar and three teenagers. I don't know if she got the short end of the stick. His second wife was borne out of this midlife crisis: she was thirteen years younger than he. When I mentioned this to Kyle at home, he said, "Oh, Sandy. That crazy bitch! I'd forgotten about her. She used to carry a Derringer in her purse. She was nuts." That fits in with what the grandfather said, but he was very diplomatic about it. He said you should never be married to someone that much younger than you. You're from different generations and you just can't really understand each other. She got very involved in working with Vietnam vets and, while moving his hands away from one another, he said they just grew apart. His reflection was that he went into his first marriage when he was 23 and his first wife was 20. He said he didn't know who he was, or who he was going to become, and he felt the same about her. He said, "How could I have known what I was going to grow up to be? How did she know? I didn't do anything wrong. There was nothing I could have foreseen that would have told me my marriages weren't going to work." Then he said, "But if I had met Marge," his third and current wife, "when I was 23, I would have only had one marriage." I have serious doubts about that last statement, but Marge is definitely a special and lovely woman. Her first marriage had lasted twenty eight years. She gave no reason for its demise. She was just glad it ended. At a few points during the evening, she compared her first marriage to her current one. She said in her first marriage, she did all the driving. In this marriage, her husband does. In her first marriage she did a lot of boating and traveling. In this one they hang around home and take a trip or two every now and then. She had been a flight attendant, a special needs teacher, and an esthetitcian. Her first wedding had been formal, in a church, with all the trimmings. Her second one was in a living room. When the pastor asked if the Grandpa Bernie would take her to be his lawful wedded wife, he said, "I don't know. I'd like to phone a friend." She was shocked. So when the pastor asked her if she would take him to be her lawful wedded husband she said, "I don't know. I'd like to poll the audience." "Good comeback. And quick," I said. She's a good match for him. Her skin was flawless and wrinkle-free. Must be tricks of the esthetician trade. The two wives at the party, Bernie's first and third, really like each other and they understand their common 'husband'. The husbands like each other, too, sat next to each other, and chatted amiably. These people have let go and have moved on.
I think back on my first ex. We had a tumultuous divorce. He didn't want to let me go and followed me day and night. It was before O.J. Simpson, before there was a name for it. He stalked me. I was frightened. I spent a lot of time looking over my shoulder, and when I did, he was usually there. He waited for me outside my apartment building on my birthday and when I returned from buying a new pair of sandals, he refused to let me go in my apartment unless I let him in with me. Since there was no way that was going to happen, I spent the whole day walking around town with him. In my new sandals. I called the police. They said to humor him, try to calm him down, spend some time with him so he'd go away. By the end of the day I had terrible blisters on my feet. After ten weeks of that type of behavior, I fled to Europe. Eighteen years later I threw those sandals away in a trash can in Chicago and, oddly enough, that same month I had my first civil encounter with him at a reunion of a group we had sung in, a group that had toured Europe and the United States extensively. It was a little awkward at first, but I broke the ice with something I said, and we relaxed. Time had healed our wounds. We could be in the same room and talk politely. He looked exactly the same as he had when we had been married. He was married to his third wife who he had met online. She had moved down from Seattle to marry him, and brought her teenage son in tow. I saw him again five years later, at another reunion for the same group. This time I didn't even recognize him. He had changed dramatically. He wore glasses, his facial features had shifted, he looked like his father, and his third marriage had ended. He said, "You're wondering who I am, aren't you?" Yes, I was, but knew it was he when he had brushed his hand on my bottom while I was posing for a picture with some others. Yep, he was becoming just like his father, too.
But back to Grandpa Bernie. How do you know if your marriage, a union that looks so beautiful, is going to work? Should you NOT be too young? Should you NOT marry someone too much younger or older? Should you marry someone whose wit is as sharp as yours? What's the magic formula? At times it seems easier to spot what not to do than what to do, what not to look for than what to look for. It's a strange animal this business of going about choosing a spouse. Will I ever sift through the layers of meshing personalities and creating unions? Will it ever make sense to me?
One thing I know: I can't just 'settle'.
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