My Husband's Affair Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me (4 page)

for my own mother to take care of me.

During the four years that followed, Brian and I brought two more little people, Dustin and Tamara, into the world. Like Danielle, they were both unplanned, very wanted, and the product of deep love.

Danielle was a non-conformist child with unlimited energy. Not understanding much about children, I drew the false conclusion with her that I was simply inadequate as a parent.

I was thrilled when our son Dustin was born. Not only did we now have the son Brian and I wanted so much, but Dustin was a refreshing opposite to his older sister. He was so calm and quiet that other mothers used to ask me if I had given him a sedative. At the age of two on Christmas he was completely content with one matchbox car. We tried to encourage him to open his many other gifts, but he preferred to use the beautifully wrapped packages as a series of highways for the one small car, which he drove along while making a gentle
r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r
sound.

Throughout his years, Dustin has remained a deep thinking, calm and loyal individual. Once he embraces you as
friend,
you are his friend for life. If a person wrongs someone Dustin cares about, he defends that person no matter what the cost. Dustin is tolerant and patient, but once you cross the line, it’s not so easy to obtain his forgiveness.

Tamara was my special gift. When I was pregnant with her, I had become very depressed, convinced that I was incapable of being the mother of three children. Throughout my pregnancy, I prayed for joy. Therefore when she was born, I gave her “Joy” for a middle name. Tamara Joy. Little did I realize how appropriate this was. I’ll never forget when she was two years old. One day it was pouring rain and dark gray clouds covered the entire sky. She stood looking out the living room window disappointed that she couldn’t play outside. Then she enthusiastically said to me, “It’s raining, but soon it will be sunny!” I was amazed. I didn’t realize there was such a thing as a born optimist. Tamara was always cheerful. She brought me constantjoy. Imagine, God answered my prayer through the child I had been carrying.

I was privileged to be able to stay home and take care of them while Brian ran his construction company. With all my heart I wanted to be a good mother, second only to wanting to be a good wife. To me the greatest gift any mother could give her children would be to love their father and provide them with a home that had both a mom and a dad, something I never had.

I had eccentric parents and a very unusual childhood. My father had been a Captain in the British Army, an intellectual man who liked crisply ironed white shirts and believed a woman’s place was in the home. My mother was physically a very beautiful woman, also very intelligent, outgoing, adventurous and impulsive. As a Dane, she was strongly influenced by liberal beliefs and women’s lib. Opposites attract, but this match was nothing short of a war waiting to happen, and happen it did!

Born in Northern England, I made my first trip across the Atlantic when I was two weeks old. My father had secured employment in the United States as a high energy physicist, working at Chicago’s Argonne National Laboratory. He was an unusually brilliant man, border line genius, who has made many significant scientific contributions to the world and given many talks in the White House. Unfortunately his achievements did not necessarily make him a good husband or a good father.

I spent my childhood moving back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, because my mother was continuously getting angry and moving home to Denmark. The grass was always greener on the side we weren’t living on.

I am the oldest child and only daughter with three younger brothers, two of them half brothers. When I was two, my first brother and I were bounced back and forth between countries and guardians as a result of custody disputes, which were dramatic for everyone and heart wrenching for my mother. During this time she lost so much weight that she was reduced to skin and bones. My

mother never had anyone to help her through the trauma she suffered, which in many ways left her incapable of caring for her children, including me.

The first I ever remember being on time for school, I was in the second grade and it was the day in the fall when we turn back our clocks. I received a standing ovation from my class. I was so humiliated by the experience that from that moment forward I figured out how to set my own alarm clock and get to school by myself. I never had the right clothes or the right anything else and so I suffered constant ridicule and by the time I was in the fifth grade I hated school in spite of the fact that I was a straight “A” student. I had few friends at school throughout my twelve years at seven schools in four cities and two continents.

I love both my parents and tried hard to please them, but I always felt I failed. My father had a drinking problem which frightened me. He did try hard to be a good father. I visited him on weekends whenever we lived in the United States and he took me on special outings and to eat in fine restaurants, something my mother couldn’t afford. My most positive memories with my father are walking in the arboretum listening to him whistle a tune, and when he used to read me poetry. His enchanting British accent contributed to his fascinating poetic rhythm and captivating voice.

My mother was often too busy working, being a single parent, to be my mother. She just wasn’t able to be home much. But when she was home she used to tell me not to worry, that I was like the ugly duckling in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale and that really, I was a beautiful swan. It was just that the people around me couldn’t appreciate me. That always encouraged me.

As a child, the only thing I ever wished for was a whole family, a mom and a dad together with me. I was always envious of the kids whose family lives seemed normal.

Now this gift above all gifts belonged to me. I finally had a family, and even if I had to be the mother and not the child, I was content to finally have fulfilled the desire hidden in the most secret place of

my heart.

Brian turned out to be a very good father. In fact, he had an amazing ability to connect with children. He was also a good husband. And when it came to romance he was second to none.

One year when Brian had been putting in long hours at work, I had been complaining that he wasn’t spending enough quality time with me. When Christmas time approached, I told him I didn’t want a present. I just wanted his time. I’ll never forget the thoughtful gift he gave me that year. It was a beautiful burgundy briefcase and inside was a matching daytimer. In the daytimer, he had already penciled in weekly date nights for the two of us. He kept them all!

I think my friends were envious. But I often found they were not as enthusiastic about sex as I was.

This was illustrated in a discussion I had with several of my girlfriends one evening. One friend had read somewhere that it might be a good idea to dance naked in front of your husband. She said she couldn’t imagine herself doing that, and confessed that she felt shy about allowing her husband to see her naked at all. I encouraged my reluctant friends to feel free, have fun, and enjoy sex.

“After all, you don’t want your husband to be tempted to go somewhere else to watch nude dancing, do you?” I asked. I would remember that remark twelve years later when I learned that having a great sex life is no guarantee your husband won’t have an affair.

In 1993, Brian’s business began to flag. Financial pressures mounted, and before we knew it, we found ourselves dangerously near bankruptcy. Then one Saturday morning while Brian was attending a seminar at the church, he received an urgent phone call. It was one of his staff members with bad news: more problems with customers and suppliers, more money lost.

When Brian hung up and returned to the meeting, the speaker was saying with authority, “It takes courage to face the reality of the situation. It takes courage to make a decision. It takes courage to do

something about your problems.”

Brian felt as if a ton of bricks had just landed on his head. Yeah, he thought, the reality is that I have failed in my business and I’ve been refusing to face it.

That afternoon Brian discussed the details of our dire situation with a close friend and spiritual advisor. Eventually they agreed that bankruptcy was inevitable and Brian would have to act fast. Otherwise, on Monday we would have to borrow even more money from the bank to appease suppliers, which would only make matters worse. They felt that leaving town, and relocating to the Vancouver area was our best option.

I felt resentful about being excluded from the decision-making process. I understood that bankruptcy was inevitable, but I didn’t understand why we had to move to the West Coast. In my mind, there were many possibilities, including returning to Denmark, where I was raised and where most of my family still lived.

Brian’s advisor, Pierre, said we should leave town as quickly as possible. Staying in town would mean no work for Brian, as well as mounting criticism and potentially volatile confrontations with debtors. Pierre suggested that losing the business would be hard enough. We didn’t need to hang around for the hurtful gossip as well.

On Sunday night Brian made a plan. He would go to work in the morning, pretending everything was fine. I was to pack up the entire household into the large truck we owned for our business. At night Brian would collect his tools from his deserted construction sites and then come home. We would move out of our house by the end of the day, stay with friends for a couple of days while we took care of the legal paperwork with our bankruptcy trustee, and then drive the six hundred miles to Vancouver with no money and no real prospects.

On Monday morning I called one of my best friends, who sobbed in disbelief at the news of our plan. However, she also went into action, and by eleven that morning my living room was filled with empty cardboard boxes and twenty trustworthy women from our church. They had dropped their own plans for the day to work like bees and help me cope with my emergency.

The things that transpired in my home that day were a miracle, and a true reflection of how kind people can be in a crisis. Everything was taken care of. Someone looked after my children. Another person made a giant pot of chili and brought it over to feed everyone. Yet another friend put together a care package for my long drive. She included snacks and activities to entertain the children. She also packed encouraging cassette tapes, because she knew that once I stopped packing and started driving, I would begin to see the mess we were in and feel the pain of suddenly saying goodbye to virtually everyone I knew. I would need encouragement.

By midnight all the personal and household belongings that could be packed were loaded up. While some friends continued to move miscellaneous items from our basement, I was encouraged to go find the bed awaiting me at a friend’s house. As I stepped out the door of the house into the crisp November air, it really hit me: I would never again cross this threshold and enter the house I’d called home for ten years.

That night a chapter in my life ended. Once again the future had become a great unknown. My pastor once said, “We may lose many battles along the way, but if we remain on the side of that which is good, in the end we win the war.” I was shocked and saddened and afraid, but I was a warrior and I was going to win my war.

Rain was pouring down as we drove into Abbotsford, a small city thirty miles east of Vancouver and close to the Washington State border. With no place else to go we landed on Brian’s mother’s doorstep. Home is where they always let you in, no matter what you’ve just been through.

By May we had rented a house, and our life slowly began to settle into a new routine. I regret to say that it took me a couple of years to fully forgive Brian for not really including me in the decision-

making process, and for moving me away from my close Alberta friends so suddenly. As it turned out though, Brian had made a very good choice. Abbotsford was a wonderful place for our family.

Overcoming bankruptcy proved to be both difficult and humiliating. It was not easy to go from driving new vehicles and having a nice home, to having one clunker work van and a rented house. I was quite sure that our new friends perceived us as a couple of really needy down-and-outers. People do judge by appearances.

As the years progressed after our bankruptcy, it seemed that life just continued to get busier and busier. We were working longer and longer hours, yet seemed to be enjoying fewer and fewer luxuries. Some years we couldn’t afford to take any holidays at all. If Brian did manage to get time off from his construction business, our budget afforded us not more than a camping holiday. We rarely allowed ourselves the pleasure of eating out in a restaurant or going on a date.

Adding to our growing list of discouragements, Brian’s father had just passed away. That was a story in itself. It didn’t come as a shock. He had been in a near fatal accident some years previous that had left him in a wheelchair and with a serious head injury. The strange thing about his passing was that there was no funeral, so his grown children never had the opportunity to grieve the loss of their father. Two days after his father’s passing, I asked Brian, “Are you really okay about losing your dad?”

“Yes,” he answered, “I’m fine.”

It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was tired, so I laid down for a nap. I awoke to find a barren wilderness, in place of my previous garden. Brian’s decision to “trim” the shrubs had resulted in their complete disappearance. Fine, indeed!