Michel de Montaigne
Another Valentines Day has slipped by – a quarter century of card exchange and declarations of love! What does one say after that length of time that is new and meaningful?
I met Michael when still at High School having just turned the tender age of 17; he was finished studying at university and was launching in to his career. His piercing blue eyes, white blonde hair and fit physique proclaimed instant love at first sight and within 8 months of getting to know him I had an inner conviction that he was to be my life-long partner. He met my practical criteria of being able to fix anything, loved the outdoors, had a spirit of adventure and tolerated my dogged single-minded focus, determination, and fierce sense of independence.
However, I found the prospect of marriage terrifying with its burden of domesticity, routine, and the entrapment of babies. Others’ marriages seemed to embody a narrowing of the world, ‘settling down’, and a limitation of one’s outlook preventing personal growth, adventures, and explorations. I yearned to live a big life, not a confined one. Mike convinced me that we could live beyond my preconceptions and we embarked on our life of togetherness. I remember thinking on our wedding day how our vows inter-twined us through the centuries with people of different eras, countries and world views who’d made similar pledges of faithfulness no matter what the future delivered: ‘For better or worse, richer or poorer, and in sickness and in health’. What profound words! In our youthful naivety and with our buoyant optimism we did not dwell too long on what the worse, poverty or sickness could entail.
We embarked on our marriage adventure with verve and we explored the prospect of living abroad to earn real money to travel. So we took a year’s leave of absence and headed for the UK to teach for 6 months with the intention of traveling a further 6 months with our valued British Pounds; instead our 12 months became 3 years as we embarked on Masters degrees together adding to our B.Ed. post-graduate degrees we’d jointly undertaken in South Africa. Our 3 years extended further to embrace clambering up the greasy pole of career advancement. After a further 7 years Mike had assumed the Headship of a local school while I became Deputy Head at a high performing girls’ school in Hertfordshire. Our united passion for education meant we were always refining our perspectives, interrogating leadership practice and learning from each other about pedagogy and student learning. Our careers have jointly spanned a range of schools – single-sex, coed, rural, urban, international, IB, gifted, multi-cultural, faith-based, public and private, privileged and poor.
In the UK each of the extended holidays and half-term breaks we laid out our plans for travel and personal growth. We pinned out our prospects on a world map, donned our backpacks and headed to hike the mountains of Planet Earth. We simply bought air tickets, never planning anything and instead secured a Lonely Planet Guide making up our itinerary as we traveled, seeking advice from fellow wanderers. Our adventures extended to hiking the Malaysian jungle replete with leeches; tramping the Milford Sound in New Zealand; camel riding in the Rajasthan desert in India; snow-walking in Hokkaido, Japan; back-packing in the remote mountains of the Cordillera Blanca in Peru and Bolivia; scaling a volcano in Chile; celebrating the new year at the top of Mount Mulange in Malawi (our young guide Fraction was sent back down the arduous route again to acquire cold beers for the revelers); being almost trampled by an elephant while sleeping in our tent on Mount Kenya - and being transfixed at the awesome wonder of the Himalayas when we ascended to Everest Base camp and 2 years later returned to walk the Annapurna Circuit. We discovered long-distance biking and would put our mountain bikes on the plane, and when we arrived at our destination we'd raise a wet finger in the air and simply cycle in the direction of the prevailing wind. We explored mainland Europe, Portugal, Spain on our faithful steads and one summer cycled 2500kms through northern Germany and Scandinavia with panniers carrying the barest of necessities . We’d run in the morning, cycle 100kms, pick up our daily vittles before finding flattish land next to a stream in a remote area to pitch our 1½ man tent. It was the most unencumbered and free we’ve ever been.
In the early years of meeting Mike he introduced me to running; it was easier to participate in races than tediously stand at the side-lines and watch. I discovered I was quite good at it and too became addicted to the daily fix of endorphins. We’d run together training for the next marathon in the dark early morning hours - sharing our hopes and dreams and a-righting the world’s problems. We’d do interval training – me with a head-start with the intention of Mike trying to catch me. We’ve run tens of thousands of miles together in all corners of the globe.
We have so much in common - career paths, traveling and running; however, it is parenting, the most heady adventure of all, which has sealed the inseparable closeness we share. Like marriage, I came kicking and screaming into the change it heralded. I couldn’t imagine relinquishing our carefree life-style for the responsibility of child-raising and I didn’t fancy sharing my man with anybody else.
But as with embarking on the marriage journey, there was a surprising expansion of life as I knew it, not the expected constriction - for Cameron and Erin have offered us the most indescribable joy, growth, and learning. My pregnancies were 9 months of profound celebration for the life burgeoning within me. And for nine months after the birth of first-born Cameron I experienced such intoxicating euphoria, it felt as though I were living in a different paradigm. Each stage of early development instilled a sense of incomprehensible wonder. Together we marveled at the miracle of baby, toddler, then child’s growth. My love for Mike refined and expanded; I saw his gentleness, calmness and care manifest in new ways. His family came first in all things; he shared all household tasks; he took the initiative in planning new adventures and travels tailored to young children’s fancies; he read to them, snuggled them, taught them, played with them. His father-daughter relationship with Erin was especially close and she adored her Dada. Together we hatched plans for new travels starting when the children were just weeks old – Europe, China, Africa, Hawaii, Mexico, BC, a road-trip across Canada, NY, DC, the American national parks, Hong Kong, all the Disneyland locations - nurturing and infusing the closeness of family life. And in our microcosm of our home we eat dinner every night together, sharing and talking together about everything, reflecting on the day and highlighting that for which we are thankful.
And then this crippling destruction of the family as we knew it struck. With statistics proclaiming: ‘70% of marriages crumble with the loss of a child’, we made a written contract with each other to protect our marriage. We identified the things we thought would rock our firm foundation of togetherness as our world as we knew it teetered and toppled. We itemized how we could protect ourselves from the assail – from both within and without – and we committed to clenching tightly to everything we held precious.
The future – for all who share this journey of life - remains precarious. The past though with its memories of joy, fulfillment and equilibrium is secure and provides a firm foundation for rebuilding our lives and family again. Mike has never in all the years I’ve known him let me down (not even once); his reliability, loyalty, commitment, wisdom and good humour have provided the steady backdrop I need for healing. He is in all things deeply considerate and patient. We have done everything jointly and share all thoughts, plans and perspectives. In making decisions, he always consults and I know in all things that he always considers our children and me.
As a couple we have shared our grief, our loss, our anger at the unfairness of life, and our desolation as intimately as we have shared our adventures, our friendship, our love, fulfillment, bodies and joy. I had seen Mike cry once before we lost Erin; now tears are a part of our everyday life. And yes, it will be hard to create the Mandala of our family anew where we’ve invested so much energy in to developing the wholesomeness, and independence and strength of our children. There is an underlying weariness and tentativeness about starting again…But when in less than 2 months those cries of life resound proclaiming to the universe that being alive is a worthwhile venture, I know that our family will reconstitute in a new, beautiful albeit different way.
And Erin will smile on us with approval and with her blessing – for she will be walking intimately with us as an integral part of our marriage, family and lives.
Together we forge forward, hand-in-hand…