About the Troubles...

Got back late yesterday from a week of drilling outside Skagway, Alaska. 

 

VERY weird place; it's like a Gold Rush theme park complete with boatloads of tourists. 

 

I couldn't help thinking how the "gold rush" was awful - guys desperate because the economy sucked, being cheated and fleeced by an army of grifters, and most of them going home broke after a miserable time. 

 

It's like a Disneyland "Great Depression" ride. Who wants that? 

 

Apparently lots of people!

 

Anyway, regarding the troubles.

 

In the 22-plus years we've been married there are times when my Bride sort of...goes away.

 

She retreats within herself, barricades herself behind her tablet reading, doesn't engage. She's not nasty or rude about it, but she withdraws from our marriage more than a bit.

 

The result is that eventually I come to her. Ask her how she's doing. Remind her that it's hard to do things together if we're not, y'know, together. 

 

She always acknowledges what is happening, and slowly re-emerges and we're back together.

 

About a month ago I noticed that she was doing this again. This time the problem was exacerbated by chores from the big remodel that needed "couple" sorts of inputs; paint colors, decor, that sort of thing. So, again, I sat down on a Friday evening, got her attention, reminded her of what she was doing, and asked for her to re-engage with me. She said she needed to think and she'd reply the next day.

 

Saturday morning she and I went down to the Willamette, where she told me that she had looked into herself and could find no more love. No dearness. No "us" there.

 

I asked her if she was sure.

 

She said she was.

 

I was stunned.

 

Before I left I asked Mojo to take the week to consider whether we had a chance at finding a way back together, either rekindling what we had, or finding something new.

 

Last Saturday I couldn't wait; I called and asked for her decision.

 

It was "no". 

 

So we're done.

 

Tomorrow we go see our financial planner to get the bad news. The best I can hope for, frankly, is be able to find a way to not die homeless. We're looking at having to practically double our expenses without increasing our income unless I can find someone who will hire me full- or at least part-time and right now that's not looking promising.

 

I'd like to rage and scream. I'd like to be mad at how unfair this all seems...but the only thing I can really be frustrated with is that Mojo, like my first wife before her, said nothing to let me know that her love for me was dying (or I was helping to kill it and how).

 

With my...well, soon-to-be-FIRST-ex...at least there were priors to explain why; we had very mismatched responses to stress; I got angry, she'd withdraw, and so she kept everything inside until she was just done and past done.

 

But my Bride KNEW that! 

 

And she knew that - had I known what was happening with The First Mrs. Lawes, had I known with Mojo now - I'd have done whatever I could; pretty much made myself over, made our marriage over, done whatever I could to prevent that death of love.

 

Well...it's  too late. It's done now, and all I'm left with is grief. And the hope that I can, at least, endure that grief under a roof somewhere and not under a bridge.

 

Sorry, I know that's bleak. But right now things look pretty bleak.

LIFE, No. 2: Women in Chains

More than any other bit of social commentary the 1906 editors of LIFE magazine keep returning to the issue of divorce and remarriage.

Now I have no idea whether this truly was a heated debate in the summer, autumn, and winter of that year. Certainly if the editors are to be believed the American wife was little more than a chattel slave six years into the new century. The theme of the woman chained to a wastrel husband, or a lecher, or a brute turns up again and again, whether in graphic form:

On the editorial page, or, here, both terribly and delightfully, in verse:

I really can't tease you with just a single page from this beauty. So here is "In re Remarriage" from the LIFE poetry series Ditties on Divorce;

Bill Baker bought a thoroughbred
And hitched her to a cart;
He overworked, and underfed,
And broke the poor beast's heart.

The Rev. Dr. Boner¹ ran
To the S.P.C.A.
And made them send around a man
To take the horse away.

Bill Baker next was roundly fined;
They sold his trembling mare
To Mr. Brown, the good, the kind,
Who promised gentle care.

Now this Bill Baker had a wife
Who saw, with much remorse,
The she'd endured a harder life
Than had Bill Baker's horse.

She'd been his serf for years and years -
He sought elsewhere his pleasure;
He made her weep, then cursed her tears,
And beat her for good measure.

So now she called on Dr. Boner²
And told him of her plan:
"You found our mare another owner,
Get me another man."

The preacher grew aghast, aghaster;
He cried, "Are you insane?
How dare you thus address your pastor?
Oh, have I praught³ in vain?"

"I've thundered till my throat was hoarse
At justice's miscarriage.
The world's worst evil is DIVORCE,
Except one worse - REMARRIAGE."

"God chastens whom He loveth well,
You husband does the same.
If he's unfaithful - who can tell?
Perhaps you are to blame."

"Go home and pray, and if Bill smites,
Just turn the other cheek.
Preserve the best of Woman's Rights -
The right of being weak."

"And then if Bill does not repent
After a year's probation,
Perhaps we'll graciously consent
To legal separation."

"But howsoever you're estranged,
Think twice before you travel;
Our wedding goods are not exchanged,
However they unravel."

"At least, unless the Lord at last
Should summon Bill above;
Then, if you also have not passed,
You're allowed another love."

"In fact, as fast as husbands die,
As long as you've endurance;
But while one lives, it won't apply;
It's something like insurance."

"Body-and-soul, you are Bill Baker's
On this side of the tomb.
It's not my job, but an undertaker's
To mitigate your doom."

These words the woman did astound.
She gasped, "Is this religion?
To trap the rabbit for the hound?
To snare and cage the pigeon?"

"I ask for food, you offer a stone.
If I leave his hateful bed,
You send me out in the dark alone,
Childless, unloved, unfed."

"In barren travail's discontent,
Not widow, maid, nor wife,
Such liberty were banishment;
The Wandering Jew's free life."

"What crime have I done, thus bereft?
Does Heaven so abhor it.
That first I must endure the theft,
And then do penance for it?"

"Forbid the divorcee remarry?
Why not take just one more step,
And force the wretch to hari-kari
Upon her husband's doorstep?"

"Why did you rescue our poor mare
Before poor Bill was dead?
Must I go homeless, just because
I'm not a quadruped?"

The parson stammered, "Can truth be hammered
Into a woman's brains? -
However spouses grow unenamored,
The sacrament remains!"

"As for the horse - well, it's a horse,
A woman's but a woman;
The devil's self-devised divorce,
Remarriage is inhuman."

"Good-day, madame!" - accenting "dame"
The visit to determine -
He gave the door a dulcet slam,
And went back to his sermon.

~ John Lomax

¹Based on the lack of actual humor visible either elsewhere in the verse or the illustrations accompanying it I have to assume that Mr. Lomax was either unaware of the childish jape implied by his fictional clergyman's name or was some sort of Ragtime Era zen master of deadpan humor.

²OK, I think have to concede it; Lomax just didn't get the joke here.

³Praught caught me cackhanded; WTF? But apparently the word was used sparingly as the past-tense form of the verb "preach" instead of "preached" (as "taught" is for "teach") but was never accepted; its use here smacks to me of a rather pathetic attempt at erudition from the inventor of the Rev. Dr. Boner.

A heartrending little vignette, isn't it? I think that was the idea.

The odd thing about all of this hoo-raw is that I simply can't find any source of controversy or discussion of the issue of divorce and remarriage for this period outside of LIFE magazine. Try it yourself; Google any of these subjects and you'll find all sort of recent tracts on the subject from the usual suspects - it seems comical and sad that after all these years there are still bible-beaters and Christopaths (and orthodox Jews and docrinaire Muslims...) fighting this rearguard action.

But as a remarried divorcee myself, I may be a trifle biased on the subject, yeah?