On the Wings of Geese

Carol Hendrickson

On the Wings of Geese

I have always hated to exercise. I would happily work my butt off pulling weeds, planting a garden, hiking a hill, participating in a 5K Walk for the Cure, or dancing a cross-step waltz for a few hours, but setting out with the intention of walking 30 minutes a day on the dreaded treadmill would never last for more than 14 consecutive days. One distraction was all it would take and I’d be out of there in a heartbeat. Until, that is, the next time I would vow to try it once more. Why did I keep doing this to myself? I felt like such a failure when I failed to meet my own halfhearted weight-loss goals.

Approaching my 62nd birthday after 26 years of a sit-down job, cocktail hour followed by a late evening meal, and an increasingly intolerable marriage, I vowed once again to try to do something to feel better about myself. To hell with the dreaded treadmill and its inevitable, predictable boredom; this time I would hit the streets in my own two Nike-clad feet, pound the pavement, ponder my dead-end marital situation, and possibly save myself from drowning in a sea of self-pity. I couldn’t sleep well anyway. Why not put those excess early morning hours to better use?

Beginning in mid-February, I began to creep out of the house at 5:30 a.m. bundled in my mismatched layered look, an insulated coffee mug in one gloved hand and often an umbrella in the other. I’d walk with determined purpose around the entire Stonewater condominium complex, down the woodsy trail, across the dry creek bed, into the new construction area, north through the Synopsys parking lot and then west along Cornell Road to the Starbuck’s at Orenco Station Parkway. There I would stop for a bathroom break, and out of guilt for using their facilities, buy a chai tea or a cup of overly strong coffee that I would eventually pour out. Then I would continue south on 231st to Cherry Drive and east back to Stonewater. After forty minutes I would return home in time to read The Oregonian before getting ready for work.

After the first week I was pleasantly surprised to realize that it no longer felt like exercise. I actually looked forward to the time for long, private conversations between me and me, time to think, time to get out and really stretch my legs – to take long, fast strides like I was being followed by someone who I didn’t want to catch up to me. I provided me ample time to face the truth about the seriously crippled condition of my marriage.

My alcohol-dependent, retired high-tech executive husband was by then sleeping in the guest room of our new townhouse. Night after night six to eight empty Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve long-necks would accumulate under his bed, occasionally joined by a solitary wine bottle. The same guy proudly bragged about attending three AA meetings a week. Only I knew the reality of the double life he was leading and the serious degree of his addiction.

Five months earlier we had mutually, finally, and firmly decided to end our 28-year marriage-turned-financial-partnership, but we agreed that before going our separate ways we would pay off our mutual debts by selling our sweet little vacation home on the banks of the Priest River in Northern Idaho. Biding our time, seldom communicating with each other, we both despised the financial necessity of living under the same roof. The Idaho property had been listed since the previous October, but 4 to 8-foot winter snows prevented it from being shown. April or May would be the soonest that any potential buyers could even drive there to view it.

On a Saturday in early March, HE made an appointment to have a “serious talk” with ME after my morning writing class. Handing me a 6-page handwritten proposed property settlement, he confidently announced that he wanted to move forward with the divorce immediately. It was, he said, time for him to “get a life!” I was stunned, but secretly relieved. After all, I was the one who for years had been encouraging him to Get a Life! I had seen a divorce attorney twice in the previous two years and once even had legal separation documents drawn up when my husband stayed at the Hazelden rehab facility in neighboring town for only four days of the required (and very expensive pre-paid) thirty days of addiction treatment. I had put those documents aside when he admitted that he finally understood that he was alcoholic and promised to join AA. This time however, the divorce was his idea and I didn’t want to waste a minute getting it behind me or risk having him change his mind.

He said if I agreed with the property settlement, he would begin to look for a place to live.

I took my walk the next morning, and then I saw the divorce attorney.

He packed his belongings.

I took my walk again the following morning.

He finally admitted his sense of urgency. He was involved with a woman 20 years his junior from his AA group. I hadn’t seen him look so pleased with himself in a long, long while. He was grinning widely, exposing that mouth full of recently-crowned teeth that we had spent another $20,000 to have restored. Our dentist had told him that it was totally unnecessary as he had perfectly healthy teeth. His response? “I don’t want to see my Mother looking back at me in the mirror.”

I had an emotional, screaming fit and told him, “You better have a place to move to right now because I want you out of here!” I walked the next morning. He moved in with his younger lady friend two days later, leaving a note on the kitchen counter with his new address and newly-acquired cell phone number.

I called my doctor’s office and begged for an appointment to discuss a prescription for tranquilizers. “You don’t want to see my name in the headlines for killing my husband,” I pleaded with the doctor. Her response? “How soon can you get here?” She was so kind. She listened, and she wrote the prescription. I walked the following morning.

He hired two husky young guys to move his heavy belongings. (I hired a locksmith to change the townhouse keys while they were there.)

I walked the next morning.

He promised me he would tell me the truth about his new relationship once the divorce was final, but not sooner.

I walked the next morning. I walked every morning.

That divorce was final in 17 days (no children, no alimony, no arguments, no delay). It was the 1,245th divorce in Washington County, Oregon, since the first of the year and it was only the end of March. I telephoned and e-mailed friends and family with my news. I dreaded telling my elderly father, but even his response (surprisingly) was, “Well, it’s about goddamn time!”

Why then was I in such emotional pain? I had always assumed that we would have an amiable divorce, maybe get together once in a while in the future and talk about how our lives had changed. Somehow, I had lost track of that and was consumed with anger after hearing about the new, younger girlfriend (I myself was 13 years younger than he.) That and suddenly becoming deeply in debt as we had borrowed a large sum of money against the townhouse to invest in improvements to the Idaho vacation house. In the divorce settlement I received the townhouse along with the financially crippling debt.

I visited a counselor recommended by my lawyer’s paralegal. Among other things, the counselor challenged me to write about my feelings. I politely declined saying “I lived through it once. I don’t want to experience it again.” She suggested I listen to hemi-sync music. “It will help balance the two sides of your brain.” My brain was in need of balance. My brain was about to explode from the knowledge of his intentional deceit and from the embarrassment of having my spouse move in with a much younger woman. My brain was weighed down by the realities of my new less than idea financial situation just as I was beginning to consider retirement. Mostly, my brain was heavy with the knowledge that I had chosen to remain in that broken marriage long, long after I had initially wanted out, but I didn’t want to be seen as deserting a sick man. Yes, my brain needed to be balanced, to be calmed, to be soothed. I had long been prepared to become a widow (and if I’m honest, I had sometimes looked forward to it), but I was not prepared for the inner fury that now consumed me.

I bought a portable CD player and visited New Renaissance Book Store in Northwest Portland for “prescription” music. My early morning walking routine began to included a cheap CD player stuffed into a pocket of my yellow hooded jacket, clumsy earphones, and unfamiliar sounds of Indian drums and rattles. Other hemi-sync CDs featured drawn-out violin music with no real rhythm, tune or lyrics. I walked and I listened, and in the early dawn I watched the sky fill with huge flocks of Canadian geese arriving from several directions. Sounding like barking puppies, but looking like winged ballet dancers, they would slowly circle then gracefully drop out of the sky to land on the expansive lawn on the Synopsys property along Cornelius Pass Road. There they would gorge themselves on the lush new growth throughout the morning. They entertained me, they distracted me. I began to time my route so I wouldn’t miss the arrival of the geese.

Halfway through my early morning regimen, perhaps a week into my “brain balancing act,” I was walking along the paved pathway of the Synopsys property near the well-camouflaged duck pond. Through the haunting tones of the eerie music coming through the headphones, I recognized the familiar sound of a large flock of approaching geese. As I turned toward the coral-colored eastern sky, they were almost directly overhead – a huge flock led by two birds flying side-by-side considerably in front of the others. A good distance behind them was a single goose desperately trying to keep pace, but falling further and further behind. The remainder of the flock flew perhaps thirty yards behind the lone bird. I stood, mesmerized, as the collective wings of the entire flock, perhaps 300 geese, gracefully, but powerfully, surged forward and surrounded the lone goose, engulfing her. The two geese in the lead distanced themselves even further from the flock and turned away together.

I suddenly thought “Let them go!” I was thunderstruck by the symbolism of what I had just witnessed. I was at once overcome with serene acceptance. There they were, it seemed – my husband and his new lover – flying off together with urgent determination. And me (like the lone goose) frantically chasing after them – while everyone else in my life – my friends, my family, my flock, gently and firmly surrounded me with wings of love when I needed it most. I was flushed with relief. I smiled. I wept. I walked home. I began to let go.

In just two months I walked well over 120 miles and unwittingly accomplished two of my longest-held personal goals: I became an unmarried woman, and I lost 15 pounds. I gained valuable insight and a deep, sincere lifetime appreciation for Canadian geese.