I have been doing a great deal of finishing up unfinished business as I art journal. This will be my most honest art page I have done. This happened on a page in my art journal as easily as it happened in real life.
Once upon a time…
I was invited out with a girlfriend to go to a nice bar for my birthday coming up. I never went to bars, ever! It was not my thing. I was struggling being a single parent and with heavy summer session course load at university. I was Mature Student President and the girls were going out. I was almost mortified at going, but I went. In the middle of a huge bar was a long table where the friends were sitting. It must have been “bring a friend” night because sprinkled in the chairs were friends of friends. The only chair open was across from a couple I did not know. There was one other chair open, next to me, at the end of that table. Apparently, they were waiting for someone because when I went to sit in that chair, they nicely told me, they were saving it for someone. About half an hour later, that someone made a small grand entrance. Most everyone knew him. He was, I found out, the guy who was in charge of the park where we all took our kids and each others kids when we were watching them for the mothers to get some course work done without their kids around to take attention from the heavy duty paper work. Happens, as the conversation went, my kids already knew him. Happens he knew them by name. He was the person my kids called “Big Burt”. I had heard of him often, from them, since he was in charge of kids’ programs in the park, as well. Happens we were both celebrating our birthdays. Happens he liked to dance. Happens I did too and had not danced in years. He was such a gentleman and we hit it right off. By the end of the night, I knew it had been a “set up”. I, also, had given him my number and he had given me his.
I was super busy with work load of summer session courses where you take a semester long course in six weeks so there is a great deal of take-home work. I was struggling with everyday mothering and a recent divorce that made animosity so I was having to deal with protection issues. I had no business getting into a dating relationship but…
He called the next morning and invited me to go out for the day (It was a Saturday, my day to do laundry, do something fun with the kids, get ready to do homework all day Sunday…) no, I had no business… Of course, I said yes. He was interesting and, he was a romantic. He understood about course load and really took time to take the kids out to have an adventure. He won me over. I was in my third and final year of university. I did five years of university in 3 ½ years. It was the one time in my life when I was grateful for a type A personality. I could get things done, for sure. My drive was to get through and get to a job to make, my own way, a living for my kids and I.
I had entered university knowing I was going to be a single parent mom. I did not want to be a burden on society. I was shocked I passed the entrance exam. I absolutely loved it. I worked hard, got high marks, missed the Dean’s list by one class (which, by the way, was Native spirituality. Lololol. Little did any of us know what service I would give and what Native Spirituality would mean to me as soon as I got to my first community). I had had no room for any “relationships”. My head was split in two over university and my personal life. I was about proving to myself and anyone else who might have mattered, that I could ace university and raise great kids, and I could get a job. I worried all the time I might do something that could be misconstrued by “the other” and he could go to court again and try to get the kids. This was total non-issue but I worried because I was, of course, a type A worrier as well. I had kept my nose clean, to say the least. And the kids and I thrived. But my boundaries, as a woman, were starting to weaken. I had not had Romancing in a long long many years. Romance won when my ‘friend’ was laid off for the winter and offered to take care of the kids. His apartment was small. I had student housing. The kids adored him. He got my boys into hockey. He had all the kids signed up for T-Ball. He was a great male figurehead for the kids. Financially, it was a sound idea. We moved in together and became a happy family. It worked.
Graduation Day and as I walked to the podium to have my tassel moved and get my official graduation Parchment, my crowd of friends and acquaintances cheered for me. Not only that but, I was already at my first job. And between this photo and my job lies the crux of the matter.
Before I even wrote my final exams, the Dean of Education called me up to his office and floored me. “I have your job in hand.” What? “It has your name written all over it. It is in a Northern community that has contacted me. They need exactly who you are. You have 24 hours to be there.” I sputtered and muttered that I had not written my finals – “I have talked to all your profs and they all say you are sitting at an A, A+. The Board who needs you asked for someone and they described what they need and you are it. You have the job if you call and say you will be there in 24 hours.” He told me what they would offer me. Holy moly. How could I not? He had in his hand an envelop that contained moving expenses and I could try it out from April until the end of June and I would be offered a contract for the following year. I was dumbfounded. How in heaven’s name could we just up and go?
Before my partner got home, I had stewed and brewed and fussed and mussed pros and cons and decided I would just tell him that I wanted to go, that the finance issue was huge and that, I could spend two weeks until Easter and then we could all move up during the Easter Break. Then we would have summer and the kids and I, if it was a great fit for me, could move up and he could come up during the winter. We could travel back and forth for holidays, etc. I thought it a perfect plan. Of course, he did not. Of course, I know now.
It was a hard sell. He gave me ultimatums; I gave him some. He said, and this was the deal breaker, for me: “I thought once you were through university that you would stay home and just be a wife for a while.” No, that was an ultimatum. How could he suggest I would do all that hard work, sacrifice so much, and then sit home? I told him I was going for the two weeks and then come home for easter and my mother would stand in when he needed her to watch the kids. I was going. The more he demanded I do as he said, the less I was going to. I now had an “Obey” issue.
And I went. And I came home in two weeks and collected all my stuff and he brought the van and moved us all up…all except him. And I loved my job and the people and the community and I signed the contract for the next year thinking I could talk him into coming along with it before Fall. I could not. He did not. We grew apart quickly. The great romance was over. We never had an argument. We never had any other disagreement. We were great together and we were great for the kids. By Fall, we knew we simply were going to walk away from each other. There were some sad goodbyes. By thanksgiving, the kids and I were settled in the greatest community I ever lived in. By Christmas we signed our divorce papers – totally without animosity. We both honored each other and always have since then, as well. He was a good man and he told others when we ran into them that I was a good woman. By the following Easter he was remarried. We had still met whenever I came down from the North on holidays for coffee and to catch up, but once he was married, we no longer did. We drifted into each other’s once-upon-a-time.
I did not think much about it all, deeply, it was and then it was not. It has taken me since 1987 to realize that I could do anything but “Obey”. Isn’t that just like me. I have not been an “obey-er” all my life.
©Carol Desjarlais 11.16.22
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