second marriages

The Little Grand Canyon – Illinois


Our first hike of the honeymoon was to be a loop in Shawnee National Forest that would take us through the Little Grand Canyon. Not, according to my husband, very aptly named. He was right. Grand Canyon mini-miniature might have been more accurate, but to be fair, once we made it down from the Big Muddy bluffs and climbed down into the crevices, it was pretty impressive. Rock formations created by water usually do invoke a bit of awe. This particular place reminded one more of Devil’s Den in Arkansas than the real Grand Canyon however.

 

The loop took 3 to 4.5 hours to complete according to the information at the start of the trail, and it warned of places where climbing would be necessary and that the trail sometimes disappeared and in those circumstances one should stay alert for the trail markers. From up top, we could see the toll that the recent flooding had taken on the area. Drowned landscape was apparent because of the trees that popped up like shipwreck survivors, waving branches frantically for help.

 

The top bluff took about 40 minutes including the photo opp and we figured that the trail wouldn’t take us as long as the average middle-aged couple as we were in better shape and hadn’t any tiny people to carry or whine at us to turn back. As we descended the trail become slightly more challenging and then we lost the trail and after a heavy breathing jaunt up a hill that angled up like an extension ladder, we found ourselves back on the first part of the trail. Convinced he could get us back on the proper path, Rob led us back down into the crevice and within ten minutes we were happily, and carefully, descending. We lost the trail in flood waters. It simply disappeared beneath the muddy water. In the distance Rob spied a trail marker on a tree trapped in the deluge and decided we could scoot around and pick it up at a site farther down the way.

 

First we had lunch. We might have had a bit of nookie too but the ground was still flood soggy and we didn’t have a blanket. Nakedness and gnats might be okay for lust-addled teens with a six-pack, but we had an hour or more of hiking – either pushing on or turning back – and it was a somewhat unappealing prospect to do this wet and gnat covered.

 

We pushed on after our break only to quickly discover that most of the trail was lost in really deep water with just the tippy tops of trees visible. Faced with turning back and climbing the slippery rock we’d clambered down originally, Rob convinced me to climb up the opposite bluff. It was steeper than the ladder hill and muddy and slipping off would have been more than just painful. Bone-breaking at least and the worst I didn’t want to think about, but off we went. Rob is a like a mountain goat. Sure-footed. Perfectly balanced. If I hadn’t been clinging to the muddy ground for dear life, I would have marveled at what a physical specimen he is. Hockey has left its legacy in his legs and bum for sure.

 

Although it felt like forever, we reached the top in about 15 minutes. Rob reminded me as we stopped to catch my breath that this was an exhilarating experience and I would be thrilled when I reached the top because I would have done something I hadn’t before. And then he added, and maybe we could have sex up there. Yeah. We didn’t by the way. Have el fresco amour.

Once at the top, Rob – in full hunter/gatherer mode – ascertained that we would have to hike the bluff top until we merged with the original trail. I didn’t doubt that we would. Rob never gets lost and he is my Sasquatch. He has no fear in the outdoors and I know from the tales he has told that he knows exactly what to do in the woods in every situation. Two hundred years ago he would have been a mountain man. A trail blazer. Trapping, living in the wild and amassing knowledge of the wilderness that would save his life and that of others.

 

We ended up covering the trail in four hours including breaks. Not bad for a couple of 40 somethings.

My Husband Gives Hickeys


To me by the way. He is not in the business of hickey placement on anyone other than me. Just wanted to clear that up from the get-go.

 

When first we met, in person, and things got heated (okay, burst into flames), I made mention of the fact that I bruise pretty easily. Being a high school teacher at the time, I didn’t need to show up at work with hickeys.  Correction. I didn’t want to show up at work with noticeable love bites on my neck. (An aside here, I love when Olympia Dukakis’s character rags on her grown daughter, played by Cher, for having “love bites” on her neck the morning after she has been shagging mightily with her fiancé’s younger brother ( You… you got a love bite on your neck. He’s coming back this morning, what’s the matter with you? You’re life’s going down the toilet! Cover up that damn thing! Come on, put some make-up on it!). It is an awesome mother/daughter exchange and my favorite movie by far, which is weird given the fact that it came out nearly two decades before I became a widow myself -Cher’s character is a widow – FYI). Okay, back to topic. I didn’t want my students to see aggressive kissing evidence on my neck. Not because I was not entitled, as grown woman, to engage in consensual lovemaking with my boyfriend, and then fiancé, but because I wasn’t married and the kids knew it. No matter what you say to kids about the difference between adults who can take care of themselves engaging in sex and teenagers – who are still trying to either pull their heads out of their asses or wipe the shit from the eyes  –  it still pays to claim the moral high ground literally with them. This applies even when you aren’t, in fact, being all that moral. Teens will do what you do only because everything that comes out of your mouth sounds like, “Blah, blah, blah and blah.” That’s why I had colleagues who had miserable times with their students. They were rude and bossy and couldn’t figure out why they got that back in kind. And it’s simple. They do as you do. So fake it, even if you aren’t doing what you are telling them they should be.  The second reason I didn’t want love bites, is that I didn’t want to be teased by any of the adults that I knew. Co-workers mostly. Not that I didn’t get a little ribbing about the whirl-wind romance and the whole Internet meet-up thing, but there are just some things I considered too much information. Really?! You ask. You?! To which I reply – don’t mock. On the screen I am fearless, but in person I am so shy and introverted you might wonder if I write this stuff or someone is just pretending to be me. (You might also ask why anyone would want to pretend to be me but that isn’t today’s topic.)

 

I noticed the bruises last night when I got up to pee. Damned middle-aged thing but also, I don’t find UTI’s fun. I hoped that they were just the result of the recentness and would fade by morning, but alas – no. Of course by morning, I had forgotten and in my rush to get my workout done, I took off for the gym without even combing my bed head out. I must have looked the sight dropping off my little girl at the child minding. Disheveled and sporting love bites. Left no doubt as to what I had been up to the night before (or even that morning for all they knew). Rob redirected my attention to them at lunch. And being reminded, I scolded him. I also recalled for him the fact that he once told me that he didn’t give hickeys because they were crass and immature. That was in response to my original warning about the ease with which I bruise. He was sheepish but ultimately unrepentant and tried to conveniently weasel out of the, now, numerous instances of hickyage he has bestowed on me since I retired from teaching last June. You might wonder if I have been able to leave my mark on him, but sadly, I have not. His swarthy Hungarian heritage protects him and I, apparently, haven’t the bite to match my bark. (By the way, I do not bark at any time during sex. It was just a metaphor).

 

Since I had errands to run in Sherwood Park after dropping Katy at school, I needed to camouflage said love bites. I don’t own much by way of make-up. I don’t use foundation because it just accentuates wrinkles. So, I took my hair out of its workout bun and hoped it would hide the “evidence” or at the very least shadow it a bit. Later as I chatted with Rob, he reminded me again that he has never given me a single hickey and that any love marks were probably the work of an incubus. You know that you are a fortunate woman indeed when your husband can come up with a cover story like that one.

 

I guess that I shouldn’t mind. After all, I could be one of those women whose husbands prefer porn to the real thing or don’t take the time to do a thorough even job to even leave a mark. It could be one of those 15 or 20 minute once a week jobs that even have an assigned day of the week  like lawn mowing or putting out the trash. Hickeys are a sign of heat and being lost in flames. I should wear my hair up on purpose on days like today. Flaunt them like a new tattoo. 

Us


This time last year I had known Rob for about ten days. He introduced himself to me via a PM (private message) on the YWBB (young widows bulletin board) in response to my response to one of his posts. He had posted about his daughter, Jordan, commenting on his teenage like behavior and I had replied, jokingly offering to be his evil twin as we seemed to share many of the same behaviors. His reply message to me was entitled, Hey there Evil Twin. Our hailing each other as twins proved more prescient than either of us could have known at the time. He offered an ear via email despite the fact that he’d recently had a bad experience with another person on the board. Someone who had contacted him, and he misunderstood the true intent behind this woman’s reaching out to him. Despite that he reached out in friendship to me anyway. He had been reading my posts, sensing that we had much in common and also they occasionally made him laugh.

We began writing to each other off the board on December 18th which was just short of a week later. We nearly stopped communicating a few days after that when he told me I reminded him of a character from the Chuck Palahniuk novel, Fight Club, and I googled the character only to discover she was a support group junkie and a nymphomaniac. I was more than taken aback, and he was profusely apologetic, and persistent, and we continued writing. Now Rob tells me that his initial impression of me, based on my posting on the YWBB, was way off, but I have since watched Fight Club and I can see why I reminded him of Marla Singer. He remarked the other day that “last time this year I was on the verge of fucking things up” and I had nearly forgotten all about it. Later that evening I went back and reread the letters from that week and the week of January 1st. I was at a low point then, and I remember how much I looked forward to hearing from him, reading his emails. They weren’t necessarily grief-related, and they certainly weren’t romantic or even leading to that way. They were just the kind of emails you would send to and receive from a new friend. Full of information about daily goings on and sharing interests and interesting things. They are long letters. I have plans to print them out someday and bind them for posterity – whoever that might end up being.

A year ago tonight, Rob was in Vancouver with the girls and Katy and I were just getting back home from Christmas Eve dinner with friends who are like family. Tonight, I cooked a Chinese feast and we were all together. I don’t think I could have imagined this back then. Even though I knew I would someday meet someone and know love and marriage again, and even though I thought I would be lucky to find someone just like my new friend, Rob, I don’t think I was quite ready to imagine it was Rob. Or he me. But we were closer than we knew.

Merry Christmas to all my friends out there.