Maybe you've been far and away from your spouse for extended periods. We have. A long distance relationship occasioned by work or family necessities while married isn't that unusual. We've had both, so maybe my story isn't so unusual or difficult to understand.
We're from a big Midwestern land grant public university. One of those where the students number in the tens of thousands but the local jobs upon graduation? The fields of corn don't always match the fields of our degrees. Jobs and projects frequently call from elsewhere and we export our well-educated talent just like our corn is one of our nation's few sources of cash in our nation's trade accounts.
But I went to school in-state not just for the tuition, but for the tradition -- school traditions of our families and our family traditions. My undergraduate school was essentially genetic. My parents went there and exited with doctorates, a veterinarian and a food scientist. My brothers went there to feed the demand for engineers. I didn't even think of going elsewhere. Didn't know I had a choice. If you ask my Dad, maybe I didn't. Well maybe if I'd gone to an Academy, he would have permitted that. One poor school counselor encouraged me to consider her small liberal arts alma mater since I was a National Merit Scholar. She didn't stand a chance in her cause. My feet were on the rails of destiny. Plus, land grant U was only two hours from home and a similar span to the home place, the farm where my grandparents still lived. I was ready to get away to college and career but I wanted
some
space not to leave everything behind.
My wife I met at land grant U. She was a bit different in motivation and destiny. Her generation would be the first off the farm, not the second like I and my brothers. She'd grown-up milking cows and walking bean fields. If you've never done either or lived on a farm it's hard to imagine the long hours dictated by the needs of animals or driven by available sunlight and short days within which certain tasks must be completed. Her high school homework still had to be completed but it was in the dark hours of night after chores came first. She was ready to leave the land and school was her way up and out. The state university was affordable or nearly so if she worked enough part time jobs. And she did. She'd say she was a hard worker and disciplined, more than naturally brilliant or smart. I'd say she was brighter than she gives herself credit for, but disadvantaged by a high school preparation that wasn't as rigorous as my suburban, college prep focused school. In any case, she worked her way through college, with strong grades in a technical field of construction and design. She wanted away from cold, freezing barns and was driven partly by the need to prove wrong a high school counselor that figured she could maybe be a secretary. I swear she later got her MBA just to prove that she could and that that counselor was wrong. But her ties to home and family were stronger than you'd think. A big Catholic farm family, with a multitude of cousins, was a strong anchor with mandatory family events a regular magnet.
We ended up with nice professional degrees that weren't always in demand in-state. We also found we still had strong ties to extended families and the local area. We worked on the farm when home on the weekends. Our first jobs were both in the capital city of a rural state. But the career ladder, especially for Lori lay beyond.
She started traveling for construction projects out-of-state. The building developments went where the money was. Wealthy, high-growth cities of the coasts and Sunbelt were her typical destinations. Some fun places too. Boston, Connecticut, Annapolis, Hilton Head, Wilmington, Miami, Las Vegas and more. She supervised construction on multi-million dollar projects working for a developer based out of the Midwest but which had grown in recent years through both projects and mergers to be national player.
Given her line of work, almost all her peers were men. She was frequently the only woman on the trip and the only woman on the job site. She was and is still a very attractive woman. Lori is model tall at 5' 10' with sleek, slender lines, perfect curves, high breasts, and a Nordic blonde complexion. Her bright blue grey eyes flame from a finely sculpted face. That face always reminded me of a 1940s film star, with high cheek bones, long straight, slender nose and full lips. Her Viking origins are betrayed by the milk pale coloring of skin and hair, but the angles also revealed some interesting family history. Lori's frontier Revolutionary ancestors included two Native American wives. A favorite movie is Michael Mann's masterpiece, "The Last of the Mohicans." It always reminds me of Lori's origins. You can see the Indian features in the curve of her full lips or the high brow and angle of her cheek bones. She's striking, not just pretty. Yes she looks great in jeans, but her face commands attention even given a great body.
I shouldn't be surprised that other men look. And they often express interest in more. She wears a wedding ring. That didn't stop anyone from looking. It didn't stop many from chatting her up and suggesting more.
I suppose it started when she'd come home with the occasional stories of the latest proposition. I think she liked some of the attention but she was also sensitive to having to work in a man's field. There was a fine line for her between the complement of feeling pretty and desirable and the danger of sexual discrimination. But there were also benefits to working in a man's field. Some of the construction workers were muscular and attractive and worked in climes where baring arms or even chests was possible or even desirable under warmer suns. I'd hear about some of them. I work in an office. I'm lean like the runner I was in school. At 6' 1" I'm not short, but office work didn't leave me with chiseled deltoids or bulging guns or gleaming tanned skin. Some of her observational samples were so endowed.
Others came from among the upper level ranks of general contractors and design professionals, whom she supervised as the owner's representative. She had the power of the purse. They didn't get paid until she was satisfied. It meant they had incentive to be nice. And most of them were. The nature of the industry was such that most in these ranks were themselves well-trained and the requirements of command attracted powerful personalities, almost by necessity with a degree of charisma and charm.
I heard about these guys too, whether it was on daily phone calls at night or when she was home from travel on weekends.
Women have much more of a need to talk about their day and who did what to whom and what it all means. I don't know if guys are oblivious or if women take things too personally or if there really is something to the inclinations of both sexes. But our normal routine is Lori talks far more about her day and me not so much. Besides she has less interest in my work than I do in hers. I like construction and architecture. I fear her eyes glaze over at some of the legal and financial stuff with which I contend.
I'd hear about the architect in black, with perfectly coiffed hair and the de rigueur or obligatory designer eyewear. Architects seemed compelled to wear their design credentials on their sleeve. Yes, it makes for some attractive guys, in a metrosexual way. Mostly Lori's comments about architects were more judgmental. In her role, bang for the buck was important. Architects, especially design architects too frequently were impractical purists. Now production architects, the ones that convert the concepts into working construction documents, often had more of the practical bent that attracted Lori. They also spent more time on the job site in boots and hard hats conferring with contractors to assure that shop drawings were done on time and translated to real life. The professionals could still be distinguished from the front line contractors and subs. They might all wear boots, but the higher ups wore slacks, dress shirts or at least company branded polos. Practice varied somewhat by region and clime. But the jeans of a carpenter or electrician mostly gave way to pressed creases on those that directed the endeavor.
I heard about those too. Lori has an eye for the well-dressed man. She'd comment on someone with the well-fitted seat of dress slacks, or fabric with a nice hand or drape. She especially appreciated tropical weight, fine wool. The way she said it always left the impression she wished it was her hand on the wearer or her body draped across his. She was gifted at innuendo and double entendre with all the right words twisted by meaningful inflection.
It was, "You should have seen Dave today. We were late from the airport to the job site. He's standing there waiting for our Town Car chatting up the rental car girl. He's wearing these really gorgeous khakis. You know how tall Dave is. He must be at least 6' 4". And you know he's towering over this girl, waving his big hands in the air to illustrate his joke while she's pulling the paperwork. I think it took her twice as long cause she kept looking at him and not her computer terminal. He's got that deep commanding voice and dark curly hair. I'm sure he was more entertaining than her usual routine. . . "
Dave was part of the developer's standard team, so Dave was on almost all the trips. And because Dave was tall and well built, solid with a deep chest and broad shoulders, he stood out in a crowd. They almost always rented a Lincoln Town Car, perhaps because Dave was so big. Perhaps it was because the big Lincoln could accommodate passengers in the back seat too. Lori's one complaint about Dave was she never got to drive. Probably smart on Dave's part. Lori has zero sense of direction and can repeat the route to getting lost more than once without remembering the solution. I thought Dave was good insurance as a pilot and navigator. I was far more comfortable with having Lori travelling in strange cities with someone like Dave. Women always have to be more security conscious than men. When Lori travelled alone a breakdown or getting lost was a potential threat to personal safety. Alone, she wanted a hotel with an interior hallway and off the ground floor. With Dave, she had backup and credibly imposing backup.
Dave is handsome, in a Daniel Day Lewis sort of way. He's taller than me with narrower hips and proportionally wider shoulders. He looks like the swimmer he was in high school. His dark curls stay in place looking perpetually cute. I always hated that. My hair is fine and straight and far less disciplined. I was jealous of the hair, but not really of Dave.
