ROADBLOCKS, DETOURS and ROUNDABOUTS

Those years in our first home went smoothly. Our expenses were reasonable, our income steady. Best of all, we lived in a town that posed very few temptations when it came to spending. There was a single movie theatre, two small malls, and a few modest restaurants and a string of fast food places – that’s all. If we were in the mood for something more, we had to drive to Toronto, an hour south of us. That happened only rarely. We were content to have a quiet, simple life, and it did wonders for our marriage.

Neither of us had been particularly ambitious when we first met, but gradually, that seemed to change. The same spirit that brought my husband trouble in school began to work in his favour now, and promotions came his way. Inevitably, he began to dream of bigger and better things. I couldn’t help but be excited for him, though in the back of my mind, I always feared the insecurity of his business ideas.

Those dreams came to fruition on one particular fall weekend, when he and another mechanic went to check out a garage in Toronto. Their intention was to rent it on Saturdays, where they would do repairs to supplement their regular income. He was gone for hours and arrived home on a cloud of euphoria.

“I’m starting a business,” he said.

“When?” I asked.

“On Monday,” he answered.

My jaw hit the floor. I wasn’t happy about it, but he’d made the decision already and there was no going back. I didn’t know it then, but it was the first in a series of impulsive career changes my husband would have throughout our marriage. Each time, I’d be blind-sided, but the truth was, his ambition and faith in himself, in contrast to my own rather limited self-confidence, amazed me. It felt wrong to squash his enthusiasm because of my own ingrained fear of risk. I felt powerless to do anything but close my eyes and hope for the best.

The move to his own business came with no plan and no extra money for the equipment he felt he had to have. Somehow, we managed, though not without going into debt. I became pregnant, and he sold his precious Mustang, saying it wasn’t appropriate for a newborn baby to ride in. The money helped keep us afloat for a while longer, until finally he gave the business up and returned to the job he’d left the year before.

In between, our marriage faced some personal challenges. We wanted to have children, and that proved to be a problem. It was a time when everyone seemed fertile but me. The joke I often heard was “I wish I had your problem,” or “I get pregnant every time my husband passes me in the hallway.” The idea of having a child of my own consumed me. After two years of trying, we saw fertility experts and I was put on clomid. Three months later, I was pregnant, and on cloud nine. Nine months aftere that, just one week past the baby’s due date, her heart stopped en utero, and my labour was induced. I never even got the chance to hold her, and I never really got over the loss. I’m not sure you can.

Having a baby became my obsession. I may, I was preganant again, but miscarried in August. I got pregnant in October, but miscarried in December. Two wweeks later I was preganat, but this time a I was under the care of a guynecologist who gave me propgesterone injections oince a week to heelp maintain the pregnancy. My son was born in September of 1977, and until he was walking and talking, I’m not sure I believed he was real. I was still in mourning for my daughter, though I didn’t know that then.

We quickly moved to a bigger, better house in Pickering, so Steve could be closer to his next job. Eight months into the job, we knew nit was not going to pan ou. We also found out I was pregant again, and accepted the fact that to make it financially, we had to take a few steps back and move to a smaller home in Brampton.

Soon Steve was promoted again, and at the age of twenty-eight, he became the youngest service manager at any Ford dealership in Ontario. Leadership came naturally to him. Within a year, he was president of the Ford Professional Service Managers’ Association. For the next fourteen years, there was the occasional roadblock, and sometimes a step backwards for a short while, but overall, his career flourished and he continued to be recognized as a bit of a maverick. He was chosen by General Motors to help develop the first automotive dealership college programme in Ontario. He represented his company at Rotary and sat on the executive. He initiated the General Motors Service Managers Association for Ontario. He won trips every year based on his department’s productivity and customer satisfaction ratings, and we travelled to places we’d never dreamed we’d see: Rio de Janeiro, Acapulco, the Canary Islands, London, the Pacific Coast of Mexico. In each case, we were treated like royalty; we ate in the best restaurants, saw 5-star theatre performances, stood in the courtyard of Blenheim Palace drinking mulled wine and watching the Queen’s Royal Guard march to “O Canada” in our honour. A private plane took us to Lanzarotte, where my husband snagged contraband volcanic rock to bring home (ironically, he has frequently blamed that rock for our bad luck since). On one particular trip, we were invited, out of the hundred and fifty other couples there, to sit with the top executives from General Motors Canada. People called him “a diamond in the rough,” and we both fully believed that nothing could stop him.

I can only write from my perspective in all this, because even though I often seemed in the background, I had some influence. Though I had less ambition than he did, I thrilled at his accomplishments. I had no trouble adjusting to the role of a woman married to a successful man, particularly when his colleagues seemed so warm towards me. I didn’t feel that I was spoiled, but looking back now, I was definitely living well. My husband told me constantly that I deserved it, and if I was dressed well, or spoiled in another way, he saw it as a reflection of his own success. It made him happy.

Perhaps you can hear it in my voice as you read this, but a subtle change came over me during those years. I’d married a mechanic, but he’d evolved into a true force of nature in the automobile business. I remember listening toithe song “Don’t Fall in Love with a Dreamer,” then saying I can’t imagine loving someone who was incapable of dreaming. My husband had been the underdog in school, and as a teacher, I loved nothing better than to see an underdog surpass everyone’s expectations – particularly those who’d put them down.

In some ways, you could say that my husband became my “project,” my prized pupil. I was in awe of his success. My role came to be one of support for him because it seemed that if I helped him, made his home life perfect rather than forging ahead on my own career, his success would come more easily, and would surely outshine anything I could accomplish as a teacher. I effectively “tied my horse to his wagon.” I stayed home, raising our two sons, and taking care of the mundane things that didn’t interest him: homemaking, cooking, cleaning, handling the bills. A couple of times I ventured out into the working world: two years in human resources and a year in social services. Then we moved to the home we’d always dreamed about, a country place still close to the city, and I fell into occasional supply-teaching assignments at my sons’ school.

It all felt perfect, until a particular day a year later when my husband called to tell me that he’d be home early, that he’d been released from his job of six years. The reasons for his dismissal were really never clear. He was told he’d done nothing wrong and was given a fair severance and letters of reference. The disappointment was that he’d believed that it would be his lifelong job. He was devastated.

A week later, in mid-October, the principal from my sons’ school called to ask me to take over a class whose teacher had gone AWOL. I had no time to think of the all the reasons why I really didn’t want to do it. I felt I had no choice. I said yes.

The balance of responsibility in our marriage shifted. For three months, my husband took over the homemaking duties, and I returned to the role of full-time classroom teacher after an absence of eleven years. We expected it to be temporary, over at the end of that school year. Fate had a different plan.