11/11/2005
Well, I think I got all the minor details out of the way that lead up to probably one of the biggest and most amazing events in our life. Yeah, our daughters leg was an event but I haven't quite decided what kind that would be except for a parents worst nightmare. I have been telling people that I can't have one tale without the other. Afterall, a story isn't a story without the details right? Ok then.
After our Santa Ana nightmare I left L.A. and Pat came back a week later to pack up pretty much his whole wardrobe and life. I watched and grudgingly assisted in this with tears turning on and off like a child playing with a light switch. It was tough. Him and I are connected at the hip and all these trips were really creating a whole new life for us. He was due to leave in early January of 1993 for France. We made a video tape of him talking to the girls, crammed as much as we could into those last few weeks between family and when left alone just cuddled and avoided the subject of his departure and expressed our undying love to one another.
The day came. It was just him and I and our girls at the airport that day. No one else came along. Him and I cried, hugged, cried, clung to each other. It was horrible. Horrible because we had absolutely no idea when we were going to see each other again. It could've been months...military wives, how do they do it. I am not cut out for that. No way, no how. Those husbands and wives deserve tons of credit for their strength.
The flight was a very long flight with a layover in Boston--which I have asked Pat's permission to post his story about that on my journal because it is worth the read. Please take the time to read his tale about that, it will give you a good laugh. A really good laugh.
Anyway, the girls and I watched as his plane loaded, pulled away from the hangar and proceeded to do the whole take off thing. I stayed there until that plane was but a speck in the sky crying like a baby hiding my face in the shoulder of our 1 1/2 year old daughter. I felt so terribly alone and empty.
But enough of that sad stuff. We finally left the airport and my life resumed some normalacy once we got in the vehicle. Crying, nuks, broken english from our two year old. Normal.
I had to quit my job so that I could be home with the girls at that time and we didn't really have anyone to watch them. I was so damn lost. It really is hitting me now just how lost I was back then. So much had happened in the previous months that him and I barely had time to catch up on and it was moving at such amazing speed. One big blur of activity after another.
I recieved a staticky phone call from him late that night and was relieved to learn that he had arrived safely but ran into a bunch of confusion upon arrival. Speaking very little French of course didn't help his situation and the keyboard player in the band was supposed to meet him at a totally different place than the airport. He had to hop on the trains, lug around his humungous bag of belongings as well as his duffle bag, was jet lagged and simply exasperated by the whole ordeal. He didn't sound good but at least he was there.
Now I could sleep. The next time I had heard from him was one or two weeks later. He sounded really good, was spending a lot of time with the family of the manager who sounded like wonderful people. The lived in an old hunting shack....8 bedrooms...some shack it was. It had a brick fence, and two brick buildings, one was an art studio for the son and daughter Soirees every night, dancing...and of course the first question from my mouth was, "Are the French women pretty?" Dumb, dumb, dumb!!!!! His reply was, "Even the ugly ones are pretty." and he sounded so dreamy. Dumber, dumber, dumber!
Being thousands of miles away from each other, having very very little contact on the phone, well, this just wasn't good for my esteem. I cried a lot, worried myself into sickness, and could think of nothing else but what a great time he was having without his wife and children. You know, I believed in those statistics. Band members being oogled and pawed all over, long distance relationships, that sort of thing.
I tried really hard to put aside my very fragile ego and to engage in conversation about France, what it was like there, were the people nice, what he had been doing but it was really difficult after that comment. His phone calls were very short and to the point because they were collect and extremely expensive so we struggledto say everything we could and not bicker about such silly things.
Throughout January, the calls were to keep me updated as to the tour, housing, things I would need to bring, that sort of thing. About late January the band had found a house to rent. Ohhh, what a relief that was to hear because that meant that the girls and I could leave soon. They just needed to come up with the first months rent and that would sew up the deal. Done within a week.
The house was in the country in a small town called Marsengy. 37 Rue du Beaux was the address. Funny how that is still imbedded into my memory. He said it was surrounded by fields and woods in the back yard with a fish pond and a clothes line. There were no fish in that pond but it was a fish pond all the same.
Then came the scheduling of the girls and I leaving. Done within a week. February 25 was our departure day. Only three weeks away.....ONLY! I practically hit the ceiling when I heard this I was so over joyed to have finally gotten a time frame. Gosh I missed him and wanted to be there. He would tell me every phone call how much I would love it and how everyone was so anxious to meet me. He said it was more beautiful than anything he had ever seen.
Then came the packing up of myself and our two girls...the packing up of our lives. I couldn't take any furniture of course but toys, clothes, books. Man was I overwhelmed. I needed to pack things as compact as I possibly could which was extremely difficult considering there were three of us and Pat had made requests for things that he needed. It was a nightmare that I was more than happy to live though. We were starting out fresh and after that last year, we definately needed to find ourselves again.
There were a lot of little things that were occuring in the last three weeks between the in-laws and myself. A lot of things that would never have occurred had Pat been there but I don't want to talk about that negative crap. Lets just say that once I got to France and told Pat what was going on, he was never more upset with his parents than he had been ever been in our 6 years together.
Anyway, the day for us to leave was SO SLOW in approaching. I thought it would never get there and the closer it would get the farther it seemed to be. I could not wait until that day and FINALLY, it came. We had an entourage to see us off at the airport and I was crying. Not because I would miss any one of them but because all the stress that I had been dealing with I could finally share with my one and only in just 10 hours. I was leaving our hell and moving on to a whole new world, life, existence.
So, with that, I am going to post Pat's Boston Airport Story after this and then I will resume our 'Baptism into the new world'.
Enjoy Pat's post...........
Written by louie0768 .
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