My beauty, my gorgeous little daughter, is slumbering more or less peacefully down the hall. She is finally sleeping better weeks after her mother left, although the custody changes are still jarring for her. Her mother -- my soon-to-be ex-wife of 17 years -- lives now only a few blocks away, but for my daughter -- Elaine, I shall call her, though it isn't her real name -- it might as well be a continent. Elaine is not yet four, at that age when cognition is newly-awakened, but reason lies still a few seasons in the future. She knows that Mommy no longer lives with Daddy, but does not understand why. At intervals of a few hours, this terrible knowledge obtrudes on whatever peaceful visions she might be enjoying, and sends her stumbling down the hall half awake in search of Daddy (if he's nowhere nearby), or causes her to sit bolt upright in bed, requiring a father's embrace to settle down again. Sometime during this writing, she will probably come looking for me, a tiny girl whose world has been torn apart by things she cannot comprehend.
Until Elaine comes looking, let me introduce myself. I am forty-four, at an age nowadays still considered youthful but (as someone once pointed out) finally old enough to get some respect. I hold a PhD in linguistics from an Ivy League university, have a beautiful three year old daughter, and have more hobbies than a respectable middle-aged male is supposed to have: I enjoy hiking, birdwatching, beetle collecting, weightlifting, and the five-string banjo. I spend entirely too much time reading (a pursuit with no remunerative rewards, and hence held in low esteem in this pragmatic modern age). I also do a fair amount of free-lance writing, which does earn me a tidy extra income beyond my salary as a Spanish teacher at a small northeastern college. I am a faithful, temple-worthy member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also known as the Mitt Romney Church). And, oh yes, in less than three months, I'll be divorced.
To those who read this without an insider's perspcctive on LDS culture: a divorced LDS male is a pariah of sorts. When divorces occur between people married in an LDS temple (supposedly for all eternity) it is almost universally assumed to be the man's fault -- he must have found someone else, or perhaps he has a problem with pornography, or maybe there's abuse. Women, we are told, in an interesting cultural volte-face from generations past, are wiser, more spiritual, and altogether superior to their husbands. Of this we LDS men we are frequently reminded, by implication and by overt statement, in our priesthood meetings and church conferences. In married couples, goes one popular refrain, husbands are usually the theologians, but wives are the Christians. Scarcely a General Priesthood meeting goes by without discussion of the evils of pornography, infidelity, abuse, and other kindred evils. Men, it is assumed, are the universal perpetrators, while women are the long-suffering saints.
The truth, at least based on my experience, is that both men and women are capable of good and evil, of sound and of shoddy judgment. I am still having trouble figuring out why our own marriage failed, but I know this: It was not because of pornography, infidelity, abuse, apostasy, or any of the other usual suspects. What I do know is that, soon after my wife and I got married, she withdrew into a shell from which she has never emerged. She has never, in all our years of marriage, expressed her love or appreciation for me publicly (in a testimony meeting, for instance). She has always disliked physical contact intensely, and, starting about ten years ago, began conveying the impression that she could not stand to be around me. A few years after that, she stopped going to the temple with me more than once every couple of years. More or less concommitantly, she developed a strong interest in alternative medicine (EFT in particular), and stopped going to the doctor for treatment of her thyroid problem. Three and a half years ago, shortly after the birth of our daughter, she discontinued intimacy altogether. Her pregnancy, during which she refused medical attention except for the ministrations of a midwife, was nightmarish for both of us. She gained a lot of weight, understandably enough, but continued to gain more and more after Elaine was born. Her health declined, but she refused to do anything about it. I tried everything I could think of -- counseling with church authorities and with a Church professional counselor chief among them -- but nothing made any difference. Being encumbered with male ego, I had a difficult time accepting that my wife simply did not want to be married any longer -- after all, I've always tried to keep in shape by exercising with weights, have always been responsible with money, have been as faithful as a black Lab, and we've never had a fight.
But in the end, after many solo trips to the D.C. temple and long months of careful prayer and reflection, I asked her last summer what she wanted. Her answer: a divorce. I am not a good listener, she said, and many other things besides, all of which I'd heard before and done my best (admittedly, a far less than perfect attempt) to rectify. Do you love me? I asked. No, was her reply, except as a fellow child of God.
That was it, then. I was raised to believe that if you are faithful, kind, reponsible, a peacemaker, and a communicator, you will have a successful marriage. Certainly my parents have built a lasting relationship with that formula. My later conversion to the LDS Church added another dimension: Keep your covenants, especially your temple covenants, and the Lord will consecrate your union forever. I've seen time and again how other temple marriages have foundered on that shoal: the husband develops "worthiness" problems, or an affair or some other such crisis rears its ugly head, and temple vows are set on their ear. Yet none of the foregoing apply here. In the end, I can only wonder: Is it I, Lord?
Such things are a novelty in my (non-LDS) family; there has never been a divorce in any of my direct lineages, as far as anyone knows. Divorce is something visited upon uncles and aunts and a few friends, but it hasn't been a family matter, until now. In my wife's family -- all LDS or former LDS -- things are different. Two of her five siblings have already had a total of three divorces between them, and a third sibling once filed for divorce but ultimately forged a shaky reconciliation that lasts to this day. Still another is in a nightmarish relationship with a spouse who has lots of "issues," as we say.
But however it has happened, I find myself on the cusp of middle age looking to start life all over again, where none but those who know me very well are likely to believe that it wasn't somehow entirely my fault.
But enough of that. Elaine slumbers still, so I'll hazard a few more biographical details. I love languages. I've studied as many as the late Brother Nibley, but my area of expertise lies to the east of his. My languages include Sanskrit, Pali, Avestan, Pali, and Sinhala, but I don't qualify as an LDS scholar because I know little Hebrew and will never be employed at "the Y" or contribute to Sunstone Magazine. Also, FARMS will never be interested in my scholarship, which has involved decipherment and translation of obscure South Asian texts that presumably lie outside the realm of LDS scholarly interest. No spite there: I just decided a long time ago that the Church has more than enough Middle Eastern scholars, Mayanists (my own advisor at BYU, where I did my Master's was one), and Classicists. No, I wanted to be a bona fide Orientalist, to lisp the chaste tongues of South Asia and unravel the pagan mysteries of their unspeakably ancient societies. But my publishing record is scanty, and academic demand for Orientalists is scantier, so I earn my bread teaching Spanish and writing articles on history and current events for a reasonably well-known "conservative" biweekly magazine.
For years, my fascination with, well, just about everything, seemed a tremendous liability, but no longer. It's now my lifeline. I exercise compulsively with weights, and also swim laps at least once a week and slog on the treadmill as well, in pursuit of those oh-so-elusive flat abs. I've never completely overcome my adolescent obsession with fitness and muscle definition, I'm afraid.
And as balm for my sorrows, there is always the woods, the rich Eastern woodlands of my birth and youth, where I've returned to live out my days (or so I hope). I know every birdsong, every mammal, every tree, and a goodly portion of the insects and other lesser creatures our woods harbor. I never miss a chance to be out in the woods, observing, enjoying. Just the other day, on the eve of deer season, I went eyeball to eyeball with a strangely confiding six point buck. A few days before that, I showed Elaine a porcupine in a black locust tree. And this afternoon a swamp sparrow mingled with the usual host of juncos and house finches at my parents' bird feeder. Life is never dull nor God far distant for those with a love of nature and the outdoors in their hearts.
I also have my books, hundreds of them. History has been my addiction of late, primarily Classical, Byzantine, and Medieval. I've read almost every book in the English language on Byzantine History (not a difficult feat, actually, for such a neglected field), and nearly everything of the classical historians, from Herodotus and Thucydides through Ammianus and Procopius. At the moment, I'm reading a history of American banking (I went on an economics binge a decade ago, and like to revisit that area from time to time). I even have a small collection of rare books, including a first American addition of Millot's Elements of History (the Founding Fathers' favorite "universal history") in five volumes, from the printing press of Isaiah Thomas himself. Of all the commandments of the Almighty to the Latter-Day Saints, I love most the injunction to study, learn, and "seek out of the best books." It's even in my Patriarchal Blessing, if memory serves.
Finally, there is my faith. In spite of what has happened, I remain true to my religion, to what we Latter-Day Saints call my "testimony," that ineffable conviction of the truth of the Gospel as propounded by Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. I gained that testimony years ago as a high school exchange student in South America, and have never deviated from it, although there have been times I have wished for a return to what sometimes seems to be the bliss of ignorance. But like that great Hollywood metaphor of the red pill, there can be no turning back from a testimony; once that threshold is crossed, one leaves the embrace of ignorance forever. I cannot un-know what I have learned, nor deny truth that is deeply rooted in my soul.
What is the purpose of this blog? I don't really know. I have been told by my brother, a minor celebrity in one corner of the blogsphere, that blogging is therapeutic, whereas I've always regarded it as little more than self-promotion. Be that as it may, I suppose this will be a flash in the pan, an anonymous reaching outward at a time of crisis, a sharing both of ideas and the matrix of feelings that begot them, a testimony of faith, a hankering after understanding. I suppose that my creativity and enthusiasm for such a project will expire in due course, and have no illusions that any but Almighty God, who hears every prayer of the heart, will ever pay these musings the slightest attention. But nevertheless, to the extent that I can anticipate the direction this enterprise may take, I offer these words to the broken-hearted, to all inquirers after truth, to lovers of liberty, to those who are children at heart, and to anyone who can appreciate the ineffable wonder of the night sky or the minute architecture of an insect's wings. In me you have a kindred spirit.
My little one still sleeps. All is well.
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