Forgiving Myself?

Probably the first person I have to forgive is myself. I've done a lot of dumb stuff, maybe not as much as some people have done, but more than I should have done. But mostly that's small stuff. There's one thing I did that has left me conflicted for nearly 40 years. That 40th anniversary is coming up in a few months I realize, and I don't think I've ever told the whole story of why I divorced my first wife.

We got married in February, 1969. It was a shotgun wedding, though no weapons were involved. Truth be told, her mother was dead set against it. Not only were my parents against it, Dad let me know that he would help me get out of marrying her, though no specifics were ever discussed with me. I was stubbornly set on marrying her. Not only did I believe I loved her, I was determined to know my unborn child.

It was not a political statement but a personal one. A year or two before that time, I had seen the movie "Blow Up," which as I remember it from this 50 year distance was about a young woman who seeks out her photographer father and poses nude for him (yeah, that was the movie's initial draw for horny old me) and then reveals their relationship. I remember thinking then--before I'd ever had sex--that I would never abandon any child of mine without at least knowing her, and her knowing me.

And so we got married in February of 1969 in a civil ceremony. Since we were both Catholics, the parents seem to have decided that if they were going to give their consent (the age was still 21 for me in Indiana) this was how it would be. After the civil ceremony, a most unsatisfying affair, we had an overnight stay at a hotel in town that was our honeymoon. Not sure who paid for that. I wasn't working. Officially, I was a student. In reality, I was a student who didn't go to class and would flunk out, again, in May when the next grades came out. So we had our first night of legal sex and Sunday went back to our apartment, and Monday she went to work (I think she was a sales clerk at the time) while I went off to campus to play bridge and pinball while not going to class.

One may ask why we had this child? Abortion was not legal in Indiana as far as I  know, and we were sort of good Catholics. I know we never discussed it. Nor was putting it up for adoption something we had discussed. She had told me that she was actually a cradle adoption by her parents when it turned out they could not have children of their own. So I knew that she would not do that willingly. Not that her mother couldn't have pressured her into it. Her (adoptive) mother was a real bitch. It is hard to be associated with a mother-in-law you come to hate. As for birth control, that was also a very new thing in the world and very hard to come by in Indiana. And again the Catholic teachings got in the way saying that contraception was a mortal sin (along with a host of other mortal sins that leaves one reeling after awhile).

So I did the honorable thing, which also got each of us out of home situations that we thoroughly disliked. We saw it as a win, and as long as you don't mind living poor, which I always had but which my wife had not, you can make do.

I flunked out in May and shortly thereafter Selective Service informed me that I was reclassified 1A for the draft. That meant that I would be drafted into the Army and probably sent to Vietnam in about a year. Now this was not all bad. Not only would I get a paycheck, pitiful though it was (less than $100/month?) but my wife and child would have healthcare, prenatal care, well baby care, and a housing allowance all from the government. During my first three years in the military, my wife was paid more from Uncle Sam than I was when you factored in that allowance.

The only problem was that trip to Vietnam that I was not relishing. I was not a brave lad back in 1969, and I don't think I got much braver over the years. Attend me, oh wise ones, and learn from my sad tale.

I did not get drafted, because I enlisted to avoid the draft and being sent to Vietnam. (Oh the folly of youth to think you can escape your fate.) I knew that if I was drafted it was only a two year commitment, but one of those years was likely, almost surely, to be in Vietnam. But if I would take an extra year's commitment, I could join the Navy, but that would mean probable separation from my new wife (and sex!) and baby for probably at least half of that time and little of it contiguous calendar time.

Now the Air Force required a four year commitment. Four years! But, I knew that with my eyesight, I wouldn't be a pilot (I knew nothing about all the flying jobs that were not filled by pilots; I knew nothing really. Research? Well THAT would have been a nice idea, I'm sure, but we're talking about a kid who couldn't be bothered to show up in classes to avoid losing his 2S student deferment which one could parlay into other draft-deferred activities until one aged out of the Selective Service (quite a few did) or the damned never ending war would end.

So I chose the Air Force, and I chose communications, which included such glamorous work as commercial radio and television, telephone, and a curious thing called radio telephony. Turns out that's a fancy word for Ground Radio Operator. This is the guy in the movies with the radio on his back instead of (or in addition to) his pack. Said radio has a whip antenna which can extend several feet in the air and literally tells any enemy soldier within visual range that at the base of that antenna is a person who if you can kill him you mess up communications in the first crucial minutes of a firefight. In the movies the radio operator generally gets killed with the first shot, which often takes out the radio, and the heroes of the movie have to win the battle the hard way, that is with no air support. (No one even drinks a beer to the memory of the radio guy who got it with the first blast.)

Fortunately, there are other ground radio jobs, and I got one of those.

After a couple of years at a deployable unit in Oklahoma (honestly, I don't think I wore Air Force blue or even 1505 khakis in my first enlistment at all; I might as well have been in the Army), I was sent to Vietnam where I was assigned to a small Army operations center in the Delta about 17 km from the Cambodia border. This unit supported Army air operations in southwestern Cambodia resulting from Nixon's invasion of Cambodia in 1970? 71? (well somewhere around then).

Then I came home in late 1972. By January 1973, Nixon and Kissinger had declared victory, gotten the POWs released, and by the end of March the USA was totally out of Vietnam.

I had managed to pass a math test, which got me into the new field of computer programming. I stayed in the Air Force (now I was finally in the blue Air Force) until September, 1977 when the whole family, we had a second child in 1971 not long before I left for Nam, moved to Columbus, Ohio where I got a computer job that paid A LOT MORE than SSGT (E5) pay at the time.

Still, that wasn't enough to keep up with my wife's spending habits, which I could not seem to curb and which she would not curb herself. It because a struggle to pay the bills, starting when I came back from Nam. We got credit cards. We maxed them out. We did debt consolidation. That was only a temporary solution. So I left the Air Force and took a job that paid, even with benefit changes and cost of living in the civilian economy more than double my military pay. Within a year, I could see that it wasn't enough.

And she didn't seem to care. Not really.

Naturally, this affected our whole life otherwise. We didn't argue. I hated yelling and she didn't know another way, so we each shut up about the things that were bugging us. It took me about a year and a half to decided that I needed to make changes even if she didn't feel that way. I was drinking heavily.

It's useful to know at this point that my father was an alcoholic. For the first 10-15 years of my life, he was a dry drunk. He brought every paycheck home, as far as I can remember, but he sure beat the hell out of me and two of my brothers in those years in what I'm sure now (but had no clue then) was his frustration that he couldn't get a drink. (Example: sometimes mom would find a 6-pack of Blatz or some other cheap beer on sale during her Friday shopping; if she could afford the $2 or maybe $1.50 out of the food budget, she would buy it. Usually before he went to bed Friday night, Dad had finished that six pack. It never lasted long into Saturday when he didn't finish it Friday.)

I tell this because I was seeing myself become the frustrated drunk my father had been for all of my life to that point, and I DID NOT WANT TO DO THAT. I did not know of another way out, so once it seemed to me that even the love my wife felt for me had fled our marriage, I saw no reason to stay except the kids. It took me months of agonizing to accept that I could do my children more good if I was not my father to them but was more of a calm, rational being who didn't spank the children to work off his own frustrations. (Today the bruises I got would be considered prima facia evidence of child abuse, back then, not so much. Dad told me more than once that he took pride in the fact that he never his his children or his wife with a closed fist.)

So, I left. It still hurts that the price was losing my children. She and her mother seemed to do everything they could to undermine the children having any relationship with me. She would tell them one thing and me another. She conveniently forgot to tell me about activities the kids were involved in but be sure to tell them that she had told me and that I couldn't be bothered. I saw the pattern, but I was powerless to stop it because I made one firm rule. While she lived, I never said a bad thing about her in their presence. I bit my tongue so many times, I'm surprised I still have one.

While I regret that my children, even after their mother's untimely death, want nothing to do with me, I do not regret for one minute getting out of that marriage. At a minimum, I would have died already. And I might not have gone alone. Every action has consequences. I dithered because I didn't want to pay the price until the price of inaction began to exceed the price of action. Perhaps I missed options that would have served everyone better. Perhaps not. But the past 39 years married to my current wife have been ample compensation for me, and aside for their dislike for their father, my biological children seem to have turned out all right. Who can ask more for their children?