Open Writing

My wife and I recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of a wonderful marriage. As anniversaries go it isn’t remarkable, except that in my case it is my third marriage. If I put all three together I would be marking my 53rd. This is significant to me because I never saw myself as the marrying kind.

My marriage has been a rich and rewarding experience, though it was forged in a time of great unhappiness for both of us. I was involved in a company facing bankruptcy, and still living under a cloud of depression caused by the break–up of my previous marriage, three years before.

My future wife had been a professor, and was in her first educational administrative job at a college presided over by an elitist president. Her immediate boss was a scholarly, but eccentric man who did not support her adequately, and her staff was made up of long time employees who were unaccepting of an outsider in a rural backwater.

Putting all these and a few other factors together, plus our jointly precarious financial situation, made for a stress level that I would not wish on anyone. We desperately wanted to change our circumstances, but were numbed by the complexity of our problems.

We’re an odd couple. Eight years in age difference; very different educational and religious backgrounds; originally politically opposed, but not anymore. Sandra had never married, and I had four children from my previous two marriages.

Also, we each had our own ways to relieve the stress. Mine was to become involved in highly competitive sailboat racing. Sandra diverted her intense feelings into the love and rehabilitation of her mother, who was suffering from depression, and had been isolated from her family.

Aside from these singular therapies, we developed a shared protocol. At the time, Sandra had a house on a lake in up-state New York. She purchased it before we met, to lure her mother away from the isolated existence she had been living in the mid-west. The idea was to live together, but two strong, independent women in the same house is not a formula for successful co-habitation, so eventually her mother moved to a nearby apartment.

The Lake House became our weekend refuge. It was about fifty miles from where we lived together. Our favorite time to go there was in the fall and winter, when the weekender’s had closed up their cottages and hunkered down in neighboring Rochester. The lake was peaceful and isolated.

To hold on to our sanity we would leave from work on Friday evening and drive to the lake. During the hour’s drive, Sandra would cry angry tears, and hurl obscenities at those who had most recently done her wrong, and I would scream my primal scream. If anyone had observed us I’m sure they would have called the emergency service.

By the time we arrived at the Lake we were drained of our anger and fear of the future, and ready for fun. We’d stop at the house to turn up the heat, then set out to walk the mile or so to a local bar restaurant, the Knotty Pine, often with only the light of the stars to guide us.

We can’t recall how it began, but over the months, we developed ridiculous stories that we composed on our walk. Central to one story was the Cramping family of circus performers. Momma and Dad were trapeze artists, and Bobo, their daughter, performed a parasol dance on the slack wire. Grandma Cramping cramped. Each week we put together a new episode.

Then there was Bernice; a real person who we learned of through a local call-in radio station. Sandra could do a perfect impersonation of the apparently elderly lady, who had a pronounced rural accent, and talked at a pace that could send you to sleep waiting for the next word. I imagined the program host going off for a cup of coffee while Bernice told the semi-comatose audience about the collection of egg boxes she thought somebody might like.

One of our dark-side stories involved evil Dr. Poomy and the great Beshemoth. All silly stuff, but balm to our harried minds. Our hysterical, loonish laughter at our own humor echoed across the still lake and bounced around the surrounding hills.

After a good steak, a couple of stiff martinis and the walk home, followed by a leisurely weekend, we’d be enough healed to face the coming week. Eventually, we sailed out from that Sargasso sea with a fair wind that took us on to safer havens and brighter prospects. We will always credit our weekends at the lake with playing an important part in this, and in forming a solid basis for our subsequent years together.

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