Not long after returning to Washington DC, Martha and I returned to our regular routine without hardly skipping a beat. She enthusiastically told me about the trip she was planning to Gloucester, Massachusetts around the Labor Day holiday. But before that could happen, she and I both had to endure another situation. Inspired in part by Martha’s international travels and overseas studies, I took my first international trip in April just a month before the trip to Atlanta. I spent two weeks and my 29th birthday in Spain. While there I met a young Spanish girl who became a tour guide of sorts. I promised I would do the same for her if she ever came to the States. Unexpectedly, she decided to come just a few months later that summer. Martha tried to keep an open mind as that was the modus operandi of the well-traveled and cultured, but her jealousy got the best of her. The Spanish girl was not too fond of Martha either. This episode kept the summer interesting as the time for the Gloucester trip quickly approached.
Martha’s father picked us up at Boston’s Logan International Airport in the late afternoon. The cool crisp New England air greeted us with a touch of warmth from the sunshine. This was not my first trip to New England. I had a work colleague from Connecticut who had become a close friend. He invited me up to New Hampshire several times to stay at the cottage owned by his family. His family got a kick out of my Texas accent. Hence, they called me “Tex.” I had become familiar with their dry humor, but this trip to Massachusetts provided new challenges. Martha lived in Gloucester, but you could walk a short distance down the road to Rockport. As her father pulled into the narrow road that led to their house, he stopped at the corner to check the mailbox for mail. I looked at the mailbox on the other side of the road that said Updikes. Martha smiled and said that’s where the author John Updike lived. I had read a few books from Updike’s “Rabbit Run” series. I couldn’t help but be impressed. I realize now that those books by Updike influenced my own thinking and writing.
Her palatial home not immediately visible, I enjoyed the short drive with the beautiful scenery along the way. As the home came into view you could see a vast expanse of water that must have been a bay or inlet. The backyard, if you want to call it that, included a quarry of stones that bordered the water. I felt like I had just entered the Kennedy Compound. Martha and I climbed over the big rocks of the quarry and stood next to the water. She pointed at the shadow of land across the inlet and said that’s New Hampshire. I found the whole experience exhilarating. This was just the beginning of unexpected surprises. Her father cooked a special dinner that included delicious grilled meats. As Martha and I sat down for dinner with her father and mother in the dining room, her father pointed to the dining room walls lined with the wall paneling from the bedroom of English historian Arnold Toynbee. He purchased the wall paneling through an auction after the death of the historian.
During the meal, her mother mentioned that they had been invited to a wedding the next day. She asked if I didn’t mind attending with them. Their friends from their Unitarian Universalist church were getting married. Her mother then asked me if I had any religious affiliation. I told her that I had been baptized in the downtown Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. She gasped a short breath then said, “Oh, you’re southern Baptist?” She then said that she was going to ask me for the first dance at the wedding but maybe I was not allowed to dance. I told her that I rarely attend church and wasn’t a very good dancer. She then asked, “Didn’t your mother teach you how to dance?” Being naïve, I didn’t immediately catch the sleight of hand dig at my mother by her statement. Unshaken, I said “No, but she tried to teach me piano, but I was too interested in playing sports to focus on piano too.” Martha and her parents chuckled as I continued on like nothing happened. After dinner, the four of us played a spirited game of badminton in the backyard as the setting sun glistened over the waters enveloping the quarry and finally streaking across the estate. I’ll never forget that moment.
Martha would later call me a Simple Man. By her New England standards, she might have been right. I thought, if I’m simple then what do you call a person who squats down and talks to a frog? When the frog hops away she follows the frog while walking like a duck. I had been exposed at work plenty of times to this New England opinion of those from the south. I also realized that Martha and her mother had decided that some degree of retribution was in order given what had happened in Atlanta. Completely unfazed by their gestures, her mother became impressed and took a liking towards me. A true friendship began to develop between her mother and myself. I don’t know what she saw in me, but she saw something. Even after Martha and I quit seeing each other her mother still wrote beautiful letters with pictures from our time together that weekend. Her letters truly touched me as I knew that they were sincere.
The next day after the wedding Martha planned for us to go into the port city of Rockport to eat seafood and then go on a whale watch tour. While whale watching off the Massachusetts coast, an art class spread all over the grounds of her residence painting the landscape, the house, and even the laundry room located in a separate miniature cabin. Just another one of the tiny details planned by Martha and her mother. Before leaving for the whale watch, I washed a small load of clothes and put them in the dryer. After returning from the whale watch, I went to the small cabin to retrieve my clothes only to discover an aspiring artist painting inside the cabin! I apologized for interrupting her painting, but I needed to get my clothes out of the dryer! The aspiring artist apologized for being there. Both of us kept apologizing. Finally, the artist got up out of her chair and walked towards me. Then she bowed! I started to think to myself, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ She treated me like I was some sort of royalty. I was embarrassed. I grabbed my clothes out of the dryer and marched back to the main residence.
By the end of the trip, I realized that almost everything that happened had been choreographed down to the finest detail. Her parents did everything possible to show that one day this will all belong to Martha and to you too if you marry our daughter. My relationship with Martha was no longer about some unfortunate erectile dysfunction. I had to now consider what do I really want out of this life. I was 29 years old and stood on the precipice of having the world handed to me on a silver platter. If I accepted, I would never have to concern myself with financial matters again for the rest of my life. I would still have to work but probably in a far more prestigious position where admiration and honor would freely flow my way. After returning to DC, I seriously considered the idea of being grafted into the landed gentry. After much reflection, I decided that choosing this path lacked the integrity that my life deserved. How quickly would I become bored with this lifestyle? Her parents probably thought I could be properly molded because of my naïve and genial personality accompanied by my seemingly simple nature. They were mistaken. The time had come to end the relationship with Martha. The charade had gone too far.
Ironically, here I am 29 years later at the age of 58 being chased by religious myth walkers and cultural fairytale talkers with similar designs. But just as I’ve remained faithful and loyal to the carefree and spontaneous life without wife or child these past 29 years, I plan to do the same for the next 29 years! How sweet it is to divide one’s own life into thirds. You can glean so much understanding of yourself and others as you transition from one third to the next. While my life has been anything but orthodox the past 29 years, I’ve been surrounded by those who constantly exhibit those same themes of invariable conformity with the exception of a few outliers. As I transition out of the Politics and Prose series into the next phase of my journey, I will examine some of those exceptional experiences.
The Accidental Apostle 