Ch. 01: I don't want to hear what I don't want to hear!
I remember the day that it all started to come apart. My wife, Jo, had come home earlier than usual and she had a look of excitement about her that I hadn't seen before. She virtually bounced into the house, coming in from the garage, through the laundry room and into the kitchen; our normal family meeting room at almost any time of the day. I was standing by the refrigerator having just extracted a beer when she arrived, wrapping her arms around me, and giving me a big kiss and a strong squeeze.
"Guess what happened to me today?" she chirped.
"You won the lottery." I kidded.
"No, but almost as good." she gushed.
"Wow, what could it be?" I said with exaggerated curiosity.
"I have been offered a big promotion. I mean a really big promotion. You're talking to the next V.P. of Market Development ... tah tah!" she cried with hands spread wide in a "look at me" gesture.
"That's great honey." I said sincerely. "You've earned it with all the hard work and long hours you've put in."
"Oh Mark, it means a huge salary with bonuses and even stock options. I've really hit the big time. God, it feels great." she enthused.
"Well." I said. "This calls for a celebration!" I went to the wine closet and took out a bottle of a very good Cabernet that I'd been saving for a special occasion. This clearly qualified. "When do you start?"
"Well, that's a bit complicated." Jo said with a less enthusiastic tone. "I haven't accepted the job yet. I have to give them an answer by next Monday." she explained.
"Well, it doesn't sound like that's a tough decision, Jo. What's the complication?" I asked, suddenly curious.
"Uh ... the job is in Chicago." she said quietly.
"Oh ... yah ... that is a complication." I agreed.
"I've given it some thought, Mark. You can move your agency to Chicago and we can move there in a month or so." she said tentatively.
"When did you have time to give it some thought, Jo? On the way home this afternoon?" I'm sure she could detect the irritation in my voice.
"Oh, Mark. Be happy for me. This is huge. I'll be making more money than I ever dreamed of. I'll have a big staff and all kinds of perks."
"Jo, this is our home. We've lived here almost since we've been married. I've spent twenty plus years building my agency. Surely you remember those days. We worked our asses off to make a go of it. I can't just walk away from it." I must have sounded pleading or even a bit desperate. I had to make her see that it wasn't just as simple as pulling up stakes and heading off to Chicago.
"You can start a new agency in Chicago, honey. You've got lots of time to do that. What's even better, money won't be a problem. I'll be making more that enough to let you get it up and running." Now she was pleading.
"Jo, I think we need to discuss this more thoroughly. It's going to have a big effect on us. It isn't as simple as just picking up and leaving Minneapolis. This is our home. This is where we grew up. This is where our kids were born. It just isn't that simple."
"I have to give them a decision by Monday. That gives you five days to make up your mind, Mark." She was using a tone of voice that I didn't like very much. It was more like I was being an obstacle to her ambition and I had better get out of the way.
I didn't say anything for a few moments; taking a couple of pulls on my near empty beer as I thought about the implications of this conversation. My wife Joanne was being given an enormous opportunity for advancement. She had only gone back to work six years ago when our daughter was firmly ensconced in school at age nine. She had risen rapidly in the local office and was earning almost as much annually as my insurance agency was generating for me. We had no money worries at all. We had paid off the mortgage, had a substantial college fund for our two children and we were able to take wonderful vacations. In short, we had what I would have described as the perfect life.
Jo and I were still sexually active. We were in our mid forties, but both of us had maintained a reasonable level of fitness and to be honest, Jo was still a very attractive woman as I was constantly reminded when we were out with other people. We had, I thought, a great marriage and it went without saying that I thought each of us was deeply in love with the other. Jo's last remark about her decision and my need to make up my mind hit me like a punch to the solar plexus.
"Jo, don't you have it backwards?" I replied carefully. "This isn't my decision, it's yours. I wasn't offered the job, you were."
"Fine." she said abruptly. "I've decided to accept the job."
There was a long silence in the kitchen. Finally, I said: "Do you care what I think?"
"Of course I do. You're my husband. We always make decisions together ..." Her voice had trailed off as she realized what she had said.
"Jo, my agency isn't portable. It's based on referral business and my twenty years of associations and relationships in this town. That's not something I can just put in a briefcase and take to Chicago. It would mean having to start all over again. Do you remember how hard that was?" I asked seriously.
"Yes, I remember. But you don't have to do that anymore. You don't even have to work if you don't want to. My salary will look after us all with no loss in family income." She had convinced herself that my business was not an obstacle. "You can sell your agency. You can do something else. You don't have to sell insurance for the rest of your life."
"Did it ever occur to you that I like what I do? Have you forgotten that all that work in past was rewarded with loyal clients and many good friends. Are they that easy to dismiss?"
"Don't start laying a guilt trip on me, Mark." She had raised her voice for the first time. I could tell she was getting frustrated that I wasn't going along with her grand plan as easily as she had hoped. "I'm going to go have a shower. I suggest we go out to dinner tonight. I don't feel like cooking." With that she turned and, I want to say, almost stomped out of the kitchen.
I needed time to think. She didn't have to give them an answer until Monday, but it was now becoming clear she had already made up her mind. My mind was reeling. I couldn't come to terms with what the implications for our family, our marriage, our life together might be. This was a bigger crisis than I had ever faced before. I really didn't know what to do. I really needed time to think.
-0-
I had been an aimless youth when I enrolled as a freshman at the University of Minnesota, but somewhere along the line I had been bitten by the Business Administration bug and by the second year, I knew what I wanted to study. I was also a virgin when I graduated from High School; not something I was likely to brag about. I lost my virgin status that first year at U.M. with a somewhat plain young lady who had chosen me at a social mixer and had decided that she badly needed sex that particular evening. She was not a virgin, although I wouldn't have known the difference. She had earlier consumed copious amounts of punch and somehow had selected me to be her personal erection of the evening. She dragged me to her aging automobile (I suspect this truly was her father's Oldsmobile) and we consummated our brief romance in the back seat. It was done and over with in a matter of a couple of minutes and she promptly fell asleep. I did the gentlemanly thing and rearranged her clothes, laid her in a more comfortable position and left, locking the doors behind me. I have no recollection of her name whatsoever. And such was my introduction to Sex and the University; Chapter One.
During the next four years, I was considerably more socially active. I found my studies to be largely unchallenging and I had no trouble maintaining an acceptable grade in my courses. That left me a good deal of free time to take advantage of the social opportunities with the many attractive young females on campus. I took this responsibility quite seriously and had a very happy and comprehensive sex education during that period.
I met Joanne Thorlakson shortly after I had graduated from the University of Minnesota. My hometown was Eden Prairie and she was from nearby Apple Valley, a few miles to the south-east. Both were smaller, more countrified suburbs of Minneapolis and the experience of going to University in the big city was both enlightening and, for me, somewhat intimidating. Joanne was pure Nordic beauty; flaxen haired blonde, cornflower blue eyes, lightly freckled fair complexion and a sturdy, if not voluptuous 5 foot 7 inch frame. To me, she was dazzling and I set about capturing her from the moment I first saw her.
I was a junior clerk at a national insurance agency in Bloomington, barely a year into my first job and she worked as a secretary in an office building just down the street. I first saw her in the small diner I frequented at lunch as well as on the occasional coffee break and I knew I wanted to meet her. When I saw her alone at a small table one morning, I sucked up my courage and walked over and said hello and introduced myself. She had one of those killer smiles that can reduce a guy to silly putty in half a second and I must have sounded like a compete idiot for a few seconds until I recovered from our first encounter. The girl obviously either didn't notice or didn't care and within a few minutes we were chatting away about our hometowns and school experiences and our jobs. I learned that she ate lunch a half hour after I did, so I arranged to switch with another junior to get a later lunch. We seemed to hit if off and when I asked her for a date, she readily agreed and thus began my courtship of my future wife.
It didn't happen quite that quickly, mind you. The salary of a junior in the insurance agency was pitiful and it wasn't until I had a territory and was earning some commissions as a sales representative that I was able to feel somewhat financially secure. I discovered I liked selling insurance. Yes, I know, somebody has to like it or no one would do it; but somehow, I enjoyed the job and as a result, I did quite well. As my career progressed, so did my relationship with Joanne. We had been 'going steady' for a couple of years and had finally progressed to where we were having sex once in a while. For a guy who had feasted on a steady diet during my college years, the past three years had been a massive drought! Joanne was very innocent and yet willing and our sex life progressed through the usual back seat stages to more adventuresome weekends at my tiny bed-sitting room. I never had the sense that she wanted to date anyone else and despite the fact that I had virtually given up sexual relations in order to be with her, I didn't even consider dating anyone else. It seemed we were destined to be together.
At the end of my second year of sales I received a very nice bonus for hitting all my targets and exceeding a few as well. I sucked up my courage, bought a ring and asked Joanna to marry me. I was delighted when she said yes without a second's hesitation. I was 26 years old and she a year younger. I was on top of the world and I knew it could only get better and I was right. Within two years we had saved enough money for a down payment on a lovely older home in Eden Prairie and we set about fixing it up in our spare time and on the weekends. Both of us continued to work until a year later when Jo became pregnant with our first child. Our son, Peter, was born the day before our fourth anniversary and our daughter Lindsay, two and a half years later. My career continued to progress steadily and Jo was able to quit her job and be home with the children. We were living the American Dream; a house in the suburbs, two kids, two cars; we had it all.
When Peter entered Junior High School, Jo said she wanted to go back to work; specifically to work in an advertising agency that was setting up a branch office in Bloomington. She had studied Advertising, Marketing and Promotion in Junior College and there was a junior position available to her. We discussed the work roles around the household and it was agreed that with some changes in our routine, Jo would try this new career. She was just approaching her fortieth birthday and she was, in my opinion, even more beautiful than when I married her. She had kept herself in shape with exercise and discipline and with her renewed self confidence, I was sure she could succeed in this new venture, and of course, I was right. She more than succeeded; she rocketed to the top of her group in the Bloomington office and several times was offered a transfer to a larger office. She turned them all down, stating her commitment to the family as the reason. In the meantime, my clientele had matured and my income began to stabilize. I was earning more than we needed to live on and with Jo's salary, we had been able to fix up the old house to an almost fully restored state, put money away for the kids' education and live very comfortably. And then, Jo decided to go for the big brass ring!
