The Bonfire
by Dawn Bedore Proctor
The beginning had been spontaneous and immediate. No matter how hard I tried to silence the voice inside me, it kept humming from the instant I laid my eyes on him saying “There’s the one. There’s the one. There’s the one for you.”
I really didn’t want that to be true. There was something tentative and uncertain about him. He was dressed funny, wearing a muted orange kind of tunic with a pocket in the front that I later learned his mother had made for him. With worn blue jeans hanging off his long, lean body, he reminded me of the character in a Star Trek episode… the one seen only at the beginning of the show, that you don’t really get to know as he ends up becoming the first casualty of the story.
He didn’t seem connected to the ground. When he walked, it was light as air and he was always looking up. At the clouds by day, at the stars by night. Someday, he would show me the placement of the planets and the clues they held about the shifting of the seasons and the spinning of the earth.
I fell for him like never before in my life. I was 30, with one very young, very delightful son we referred to as “The Boy”. I was divorced from a big but short mistake. He was 28 and had never been married. He turned out to be the instructor in one of the undergraduate classes I was required to take as we both pursued our Masters degrees. To put it bluntly, he was my teacher. And yes, I did get an A.
The voice whispering his name continued through the semester like a soundtrack on a loop and a fire for him grew in intensity. Some days, all I could do was watch him move around the room, giving advice to student after student, jealous of the attention he gave so freely to others. His own work was brilliant, his renderings animated and exact, his ideas engaging and irreverent, his every movement imbibed with a grace unfamiliar to me in man or woman. He was kind, honest and earnest. The more I knew him, the more I liked him. He was a good egg.
Too ethical for my own good, I respected the fact that making a move on my teacher would be improper. So, I waited. And I wondered, was the attraction mutual? One day in his office, while explaining a concept to me, he reached out and lay his hand oh so briefly on my leg. And there it was… the spark, the electricity you only read about. A connection. A welder’s arc. Out of my control. There was nothing to do but wonder if he felt it too. Well, almost nothing.
On the final day of class, waiting patiently to be the last saying goodbye and good luck, I invited him out for coffee. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said, “but I’m going home for the Holiday and won’t be back for weeks. Maybe then.” I thought that was the end of it. It was a kindly worded brush off. The past months had been just a crush on my part and I needed to forget about him and move on.
Christmas came and went and in January, I received a postcard in the mail. He hoped I’d had a good winter break and he would be back in town soon. I stared at the plain green 3” by 5” card and read it over and over again. I was jubilant. I still have it. And I can still recall the same thrill by reading it.
We started dating as soon as he returned; gathering tinder together. I had never felt such intense attraction for, such respect of, or such curiosity about a man. And it was mutual. It was a miracle on earth. We set fire to every moment of every day. We fantasized about being together, each and every day, each and every instant. We sent large sparks dancing into the sky and warming every aspect of the ordinary world that surrounded us. We were golden, we glided, and he taught me to look up, at the clouds, the stars, at the dancing sparks.
We dated for two years and lived together for six more. Deeply in love, the years were glorious, but began to feel stretched out. I asked a male friend, “How do you know when it’s time to get married?” “Oh,” he replied, “It’s easy. The woman tells you.”
I tried to be patient. But he was gun shy. Never married before, he was afraid of making a decision that might be a mistake. After all, I did have “The boy” and he would be taking on a child as well as a wife.
Making decisions were my strong suit and I was more than ready, but I respected his position for eight long years. Meanwhile, he completed his Masters and I left grad school for a promising job. “The Boy” was growing fast and made no secret of the fact that he wanted a father. And a brother.
I couldn’t rationalize the time spent together anymore. The universe was shifting precisely and invisibly. I let him know the time had come for me to marry or move on. Not that I could have. He was buried deep within my soul. He wanted to be sure he was doing it because he wanted to, not because I was pressuring him. We were stuck in a battle of wills and wishes, breaking up and getting back together, over and over again. Totally miserable without each other. Pulled back together by the gravity of our love.
Then, one afternoon, as the white winter sun sank into the frozen lake, we had taken “The Boy” sledding. Suddenly he turned to me and asked, “Would you like to go down the hill together?” The proposal. “Yes,’ I said, “I will go down the hill with you.” It was settled. He gave me his grandmother’s ring, a small, worn, elegant diamond. I loved it. I still wear it.
He came from a quiet, small, well-mannered family based in Indianapolis. At least I thought so then. I came from a loud, dramatic circus of divorced parents and five aimless, drug addicted siblings that were scattered all over the southwest and that I barely communicated with anymore. I thought the wedding invitation should read, ‘’The Quakers meet the Cowboys, Sunday. One o’clock. Be there.”
We were married outside among the trees and flowers, by both a Quaker minister and a Lutheran priest, with an audience much bigger than we expected. Everyone we invited came, from all over the country. I think seeing him finally marry was something none of his friends wanted to miss.
I was never so uncomfortable in my life. I didn’t want all the attention that came with being the bride. I had organized and planned an event, but was not prepared for the pressure to do things just right. At the reception, I sat alone at a table and let people come and go. They congratulated me, but I was numb to the celebration and platitudes. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I just didn’t respond to the meaning of the day I had wanted for so long. I realized that I was still not secure, because I was not secure in myself. Intimacy. A new frontier. I didn’t know if I could pull it off. After all my waiting and nagging, I was suddenly scared to death of marriage.
Intimacy was something he expected and desired. But years of verbal and sexual abuse in my family growing up had numbed me to the eventuality. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t let down my guard and give myself as freely to him as he needed. As freely as he felt he deserved by marrying me. I acted the role of a wife, making dinner, doing the laundry, tending the garden. But the façade was not good enough to fool him and we soon found ourselves in a counselor’s office, attempting to work through our own personal galaxy of family legacies. Let’s just say there was a lot of luggage. We each brought our own.
Not that he didn’t try. Stoking the fire, he made every counseling session despite his busy schedule, but his idea of marriage and mine were not the same. He wanted to be closer to the fire, to rearrange the flames and to live life as deeply as possible. I wanted security and stability, a shed filled with plenty of wood dried and ready for the winter. He prodded me to move outside the box, explore my potential, to get involved in groups, to sing while he played his guitar. But I was too shy and the public appearances painful for me. It took a few years, but I learned that his need to be constantly exploring, going out, being part of a larger community, and his near-frenetic pace was deeply embedded in his personality. Once I grasped the reality of our relationship, I never kept him from going anywhere he needed or wanted to, and I gave him all the freedom I knew how. He had the wanderlust, as they used to say, and my fear of risks didn’t mesh with his vision of his life. My skittish behavior was met with long thoughtful silences and unsatisfactory answers to unsaid questions.
The marriage was as bumpy as the courtship had been, but there were many good times and irreplaceable moments. We shared the same core values and honesty above all. We were loyal and could trust each other. We loved travel, from drives in the country to flights to Europe, drive-in movies, discovery, history and music. Neither of us drank or smoked. We both loved “The Boy”, our jobs and our dog. We loved our small house by the lake and worked on it together, reviving it’s nearly one hundred years of character with both modern and classic improvements. We explored Amsterdam, Belgium, Paris, Montreal, and Quebec. We visited the high plains of New Mexico, the brilliant hues of Sedona and the sparse wind-swept Indian reservations on the eastern banks of the Grand Canyon. The sparkling harbor in Vancouver. The reckless people and haunts in New Orleans and the fading plantations along the bayou. On his own, he would spend a month in Japan and weeks in North Africa. We took the boy to San Diego for the skateboard parks, to New York to meet Spiderman and stroll through Central Park, and to St. Louis to ride the Arc.
He loved to drive. I loved to ride. I tried as hard as I could to be open to new experiences, but let’s face it. He liked the tent, I liked the hotel.
Raising the boy together would prove challenging as he entered high school and discovered drugs, a way to travel without leaving home. Together we faced the adversity of his addiction but would end up losing him to prison time and time again. We went to countless parent groups to help us through difficult times. If we could survive this, I thought, we could survive anything.
But we wouldn’t survive this. The stress of raising a drug addicted teen took a massive toll on our relationship. I injured myself on the job and found myself trying to be a professional homemaker. I was heavily medicated against the pain and resentful of the injury that turned my life around and killed my career.
There was an absence of positive energy in his family of origin and mine. He had witnessed his parent’s own passive-aggressive dance. Visits to his family were foreign excursions of their own, walking on eggshells, trying to talk to a cast of withdrawn characters. Slowly but surely, I began to back away from subtle and not-so-subtle rejections, their seemingly unaware and ongoing silent movie of sadness. Eventually they would separate when his father moved out, on the eve of his brother’s wedding, yielding up the saddest wedding photos ever seen.
My own family lived far away and there was little if any contact between my parents siblings. Another nest of unhealthy behaviors, but louder more dramatic, and completely unreliable. An embarrassment, a pain in my heart, a discouraging premonition.
Slowly but surely, the logs in the bonfire grew weaker and started to crumble down upon on each other. For moments there would be dancing flames and then the wind would shift, blowing smoke into your face and stinging your eyes. Until suddenly the core of the fire collapsed and crumbled into a bed of disappointing embers that stubbornly refused to grow. We were becoming more and more isolated, surrounded by the encroaching darkness and feeling the cold for the first time.
Unable to live without community, he grew distant and soon, somehow, he was speaking to me in abstract terms, telling me about a longing, about a specter of regret that segued into his plan to take a break from our relationship, moving out temporarily, just for a few months to explore himself, to examine his future and find his way. Without my influence or presence. That he was afraid of dying without experiencing more than what our marriage was offering or providing. Until then, his romantic relationships consisted of his high school friend and me. Now, he saw himself “slowly backing into a new relationship.” When I discovered he was seeing someone else, I didn’t think I would be able to keep breathing.
I was stunned, but I understood what he was saying. He wanted to fall in love with life again. To take the ride down the hill one more time. To feel more alive. To be relieved of his duties as a supportive husband with a disabled wife to recreate his world in a new image that required only his permission and passion to create. Without saying anything, he stopped wearing his wedding ring.
How to explain the hollow feeling, the huge abyss he created in my soul and the complete circle of loss that flooded my mind and feelings? The spring that came and the summer that followed his sudden departure was now a blur of a brutal, physical, overwhelming heartache that left me immobile. I only forced myself out of bed to move to my couch and the television. When I did venture out, every smile was an affront to my reality, every couple a cruel cut, and every celebration a farce…an aspect of a shared delusion that love conquered all.
Then, he was really gone. I was like the survivor of a car accident, too stunned and in shock to act on my own behalf. And for some inexplicable reason, I felt too ashamed to even want to be seen. Like it was my failing, my public disgrace. “Wonder what happened,” they would whisper as I passed. I was sure of it.
The neighborhood was abuzz as the news of our separation swept through the annual Fourth of July picnic. I was respectfully avoided and wordlessly watched. But I knew what everyone was thinking. Who left who and why? Whose midlife muddle was it, his or mine? They had always seemed so happy together. Why?” I don’t know” I wanted to say, “you tell me what you see.”
We had been happy. Not all the time, but I accepted that as part of the lot in life. I don’t think he was, and wonder if he could ever be happy. He was always doing, racing from one thing to the other, one project or group of people to another, afraid to waste a moment, afraid to miss one single opportunity that might hold the key to his complete serenity and optimum health.
Had I pretended to be one kind of person when in pursuit of him, only to find myself inadequate when the deal had been struck? Or was he unable to settle down and relax into marriage, to thrive on its reliability and constancy rather than ruminate on and resent its responsibilities and constrictions?
Or, is this what a run of the mill mid-life crisis looked like? I had prepared myself for the latest car, or temporary depression. Instead, I had felt relieved when he wanted to re-mortgage the house to build a home studio, a large beautiful light washed room with its’ own entrance. A place that was his alone. Just the way he wanted to. But it was not enough to stem the tide of whatever overtook him.
Months morphed into a year and still, he did not come back. I was learning to live alone and take care of the house he left… fill the water softener, unplug the toilet or move enough snow in below freezing weather so I can put the garbage on the curb. But my reconstructed back couldn’t handle the myriad of chores and tasks it takes to keep a house. I couldn’t do it.
Unavoidably we debated the best way to divorce. Finally, we each got our own lawyers. While in my gut it was the time to move slowly and carefully, he pushed the divorce through, impatiently, almost urgently. I realize now I had needed more time to think. And he had taken more time to plan.
I was managing to remain cordial, even friendly, and wise about the world and what was happening. But when he warned me that if I stayed in our house, I should prepare myself to see him and his new girlfriend walking hand in hand in the neighborhood. By the end of the week, I had bought a condo, left my home and neighborhood of thirty years, taking with me half of everything. And leaving half of my heart behind.
I didn’t want a divorce. I still loved him. I came within seconds in court of standing up and calling the whole thing off. “Is this marriage irretrievably broken”. My entire body screamed, “No!” I believed it could be fixed. I still believe it. But it takes two to believe it. So, I lied.
I decided I would be true to myself and try to be empathetic and supportive of his spiritual crisis, in spite of my wounds. I knew he still loved me but wasn’t feeling the spark and needed to. At least one more time.
We communicated by e-mail when he wanted to see my grandchildren. And this was the greatest challenge of them all. He wanted us to continue to present a united front to the grandchildren. So, on their monthly overnight visits, he would come to my new home, He wanted to be at the house with me for every moment of the weekend they were there. He was gentle and funny and ready to play. And they adored him. Should I have forbidden the visits, either on principal or vindictively? Technically, they were my son’s children and no blood relation to him. Still, the kids knew and loved him as their “Bumpa” and to take that away seemed cruel and unnecessary. Who would pay the price for that principal? For my wounded pride? The kids would, and there would be nothing fair about that.
I was able to keep up a slightly ambiguous brave face for about six months. My friends thought it strange and couldn’t understand what I was doing. This was supposed to be war, damn it, and I wasn’t acting according to Hoyle. I was supposed to be angry. And while there were still trace amounts of irritation, immense amounts of hurt, and even hate among the burning coals and swirling stars that remained. I understood too much about how he was feeling to be really angry. How can you be mad at someone else’s truth?
After several months of hiding the news from the grandkids, the oldest just came out and asked, “Why aren’t you two living together anymore?”. We were unprepared and did not have an acceptable answer, worse than that we offered an uncomfortable silence. The ten-year old cried and refused to come for her next weekend visit. I was furious. Everyone but he was getting hurt. Ripples in the pond more like tides, forceful and deceptive.
Some days it feels like I am considering every else’s feelings but my own. But a strange thing happened when he left. After the suffering and tears, I too found room to find myself. To reach inside and pull out a true feeling that wasn’t affected by what he might think and how he might feel and what he needed in the moment and in his life. I had felt constantly judged and usually wanting in the relationship and I can see that now. It feels good to be good enough for me.
I wonder about him each day. I can’t seem to get over him and doubt I ever will. However, much damage has been done and after learning to live on my own, I want something different in my future. I want to throw aside all the rules around separation, divorce, and marriage, friendships and relationships and find a new place, free of jealousy and regret, open to many shades of the same color, with the wind at my back, seeking the warmth of a fire that never goes out.