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Summer of 1971. I was 17, a couple
of weeks out of 10th grade, enjoying my first cigarette and looking
forward to a lazy vacation. I had never faced a serious problem,
never taken an important decision, and never led to believe that
I was anything but a typical teen-ager. I loved the Beatles, the
Doors and Velvet Underground. Flower Power was groovy and the
future … well, I didn't think about the future.
Meeting
Prince Charming
Then I met him. Nothing dramatic.
A friend of my older sister's. He was visiting Montreal for the
first time and came to visit her in our home.
He invited me for an ice-cream and
we went to a park and I told him the story of my crush on the
neighbor and he kissed me, oh so tenderly, and deeply, and softly
and I fell in love for the first time in my life.
He was 24, an only son from divorced
parents. He had been travelling the world since he was 17. He
was handsome, intelligent, full of stories, adventures, fantasies
and dreams. He swept me off my feet and I looked up to him with
adoring eyes.
Telling
my Parents
One night, I walked into my parent's
bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed, and said to my father, sniffling
a couple of tears, "You are not the only one who loves me.
I am in love and I want to get married." He said to me "First
you finish high school. If he loves you, he'll wait for you."
My mother was re-living her own love story with my father, whom
she met when she was 15.
The
Engagement
We had an intimate engagement party
a couple of months later, on my 18th birthday. He was the son
my parents never had. I was the first of my girlfriends to get
engaged. The wedding was planned for the summer.
I went to high school with my diamond
engagement ring like a trophy around my finger. Sometimes I would
skip classes and meet my lover in his bachelor apartment. We would
plan our life together: we would go around the world, settle in
some island and live like the natives. I couldn't wait.
Before
the Wedding
We rented an apartment (two streets
away from my parents' house); bought all the furniture in one
day - the store had the most romantic display of 'love nest' and
I melted. The day I tried on my wedding dress, handmade by my
mother, I fainted. Love does that to you when you are 18. Everything
is tainted by the promise of freedom through love. One thinks,
or doesn't, which is the same at that age, that marriage is the
ultimate escape out of adolescence.
The
Wedding
My last matriculation exams were
on the 24th of June and I got married on the 27th. It was a big
and beautiful wedding. From time to time I would sneak into the
bathroom with a girlfriend to have a cigarette. I didn't smoke
in front of my parents.
Then we went back to our 'love nest'.
He carried me over the threshhold.
I was totally happy.
Married
Life.
I didn't know how to cook. I didn't
know how to clean. I didn't know how to iron. I had no idea how
to keep a house. It didn't upset him. He would take his shirts
to my mother (on her insistence and my nonchalance) and she would
iron them for him, lovingly, as she had done for my father for
more than 30 years.
I went on to college, majoring in
philosophy and feminist studies. He worked in sales, wrote poetry
and played the saxophone. We made love passionately, but talked
less about travelling the world.
Becoming
Parents
Three years later, we had a baby
girl. No more playing house. I was projected into the real world.
I was a mother and I had to be responsible. For the first time
in my life. Well, I didn't get onto a good start with motherhood
and had a post-partum depression. My 27-year-old husband's idea
of being a responsible father was to work day and night. I had
no one to talk to, if I had dared to talk.
Nine months later, I snapped out
of my depression after being accepted to a first job interview.
Drifting
Apart
I was shedding my teen-age skin,
and my new one as a young adult woman already had scars. But I
still lacked life experience. He started going away on week-end
fishing trips. Even though my mother would warn me to open my
eyes to 'his whereabouts', they were open in another direction:
Feminism. Social Consciousness. He was doing his thing. I was
doing mine.
The
Divorce
One year later we divorced. Strangers
with familiar faces. We had nothing in common anymore, but an
adorable toddler. Did we ever share the same dreams? I had wanted
a life of adventure. He had wanted a home and family. But
when we divorced, he moved on to his adventures; I was now a single
mother - settled down, but not quite settled in.
If I
Knew Then What I Know Now
Today, sixteen years into my second
marriage, I know the power and the pull of home and family. It
always wins. Even if it fails. Love is the ultimate bond between
two people, but love is not a gift to put on the mantelpiece after
the wedding night. Love is created daily in acts of kindness towards
your partner.
As a teen-age couple, it is a challenge
to finish adolescence together, and to enter into the adult world
as two committed human beings -- each responsible for his part
of the relationship. The real question then becomes: Will you
grow up together? Or will you grow apart?
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