Marty and Me, Me and Marty
by Epithalamion Leigh
May, 1969. David F Friesen invites me to bring my guitar to Red Rock Lake Bible Camp to be music leader for a group of 18 year olds having a young peoples meeting/conference/spiritual experience at the camp. I am older by 4 years than the others, except for Friesen. All goes well. I meet Marty. We Rendezvous at the lakeshore late afternoon and canoe to Turtle Island. We walk, we hold hands (me trembling, melting, everything otherworldly), I notice her wonderful green sweater, covering a small body, and that (along with something I haven’t put my finger on yet) altogether pleases me greatly.
On the ride home I sit in the front seat next to her. My arm touches her arm the entire way home for two hours. This is completely new territory for me. I’ve never sat so close to a female for such a period of time ever before.
I am in love but can’t bring myself to believe that it can be so. Of course I’m not, because I haven’t known her long enough. My sister Gwen asks me if I intend to call her. This is a few days later. Right then I have almost forgotten Marty. Survival mode. I cannot believe that I would be of interest to her more than for a day or two, because I have never (tear jerker time) believed in my worth. So there you have it, I have always felt rather worthless. But have by now brilliantly succeeded in reversing this debilitation over three quarters of a century. Just kidding.
Mustering courage, I call her. She lives in Portage la Prairie. She teaches primary school there. It is her first year on the job as a teacher. We talk, we agree to meet at Island Park for a picnic. I bring my guitar and sing for her; “I Dreamed I saw Saint Augustine.” And “House of the Rising Sun.” And “You’re as Fine as Fine can Be.” She wears a wide-skirted, turquoise summer dress she’s made herself, and on her slight frame she appears delicate and fragile to me. Her face dazzles me. I feel lucky I’m short-sighted! I get that wrong about her too. When we embrace it feels like I’ve got hardly anything in my arms.
That year I live in Winnipeg’s north end, on Dominion Street, at my brother Jim’s and my sister-in-law Marg’s place. Close to the Armory. During the next year, Marty and I bus back-and-forth between Winnipeg and Portage la Prairie every weekend. (Jim: “Doug, you and Marty can’t sleep together if you’re going to stay at our house.”) I have a small room upstairs with a child-size desk where I try to do my first year university English literature assignments. Being with Marty is so much more fun than writing essays for Robert Green, for Professor Robert Green. I get an F on my first essay and suggest to him in his office that I should probably pack it in. He tells me, in that unfamiliar-to-me British accent of his, not to be so hasty; that I am essentially a good writer, but a verbose one. I continue, I make some writing/thinking changes towards plain style, I get a C+ on my next essay and I end up near the top of the class by the end of the year.
I drink wine as I study. My nascent habit should have suggested to me by now (and did, sort of) the detour I will take in the next three decades. I start making homemade wine at the age of 15, I intermittently (too often) drink too much for 30 years, I have my very Last Drink on the way home from the cottage in my 1966 Mazda B 2200. I’m alone and stop outside of the pub in the west end of Kenora. (Ontario, Northwestern Ontario, if you are not familiar with Kenora.) It’s a couple of glasses of draft beer. I have tried to quit many times before with varied success, in Thompson, in Grand Rapids, in Winnipeg, in Winkler. This time it sticks. I leave half a glass of beer on the Formica. I get up and get out of there and drive the rest of the way home in my truck.
July,1970. We marry and move to Grand Rapids, Manitoba. We teach there for two years, then enrol at the University of Manitoba for another two years before excepting work in Thompson, Manitoba. The process of getting that job proves to be quite exciting because of a strange case of mistaken identity. The seven years that we spend in Thompson are fraught with experience, some of which, not all of which, is destined to see a retelling on these pages. In subsequent stories.
In 1981, Marty and I return to Winnipeg where for a number of years, while living in a side-by-side in Fort Richmond, a suburb in the southern part of the city, Marty kindly takes care of the three children that we by this time have somehow acquired. I enter an MA, and eventually a doctoral, program. So, to review, I switch from teaching primary school in Grand Rapids to high school in Thompson and, in this final stage, for the next 25 years, to lecturing at the University of Manitoba. Marty studies too and her area of specialty is psychology. The only course of hers that I recall us discussing is Statistics with a Dr. Kesselman who, not so popular with his charges, passes only a small percentage of the students in his classes.
When I finish my MA degree and Marty receives her baccalaureate (1983), we struggle to decide what to do for the next number of years. Whether fortunately or not, we choose to move to Winkler, MB where I take a job in high school English and Marty stays home with the children. My career in winkler lasts approximately three months. Well, actually not that long; two months, more like. At this point (blessed with a cavernous bout of clinical depression), I begin to write fiction and eventually (1990) enroll in graduate school for my doctorate. In 1995 I become Dr. Reimer. In November Marty remarkably dives into a teaching job while I recover at home.
Probably the most memorable moment in which I experience the success I have achieved happens the day I pass my orals. I tell the class of 50 first year literature students (Eng. 4.120) that I’ve just become Dr. Reimer! A student raises her hand and asked whether from now on they have to call me Dr. Reimer. I say, no, that’s fine, you can call me Mr. Reimer. Another person asks whether it’s OK if they call me Reimer. Yep, I concede, with a pretended reluctance. Another enters what is quickly becoming a game and asks if they can call me Douglas. I say, sure, no problem! A student in the back row shouts, Can we call you Dougie? And I say, happy at the fact of life in these kids, Absolutely not! I draw the line at Dougie. And, of course, lots of laughter.
Outside of continuing to learn to live together, the rest of our married life is unremarkable. Well, not entirely, I suppose. If I thought that our earlier married life occasionally went off the rails and was most difficult and that all would get easier, then what I think now is that the mature period of our cohabitation has had us encountering more difficulties than ever. Life does not get easier as you get older, especially if experiences before this in the years preceding have meant that you are not overly judgemental nor overly worried about following conventions and conforming to social proprieties. Maybe for the better, maybe not, living in Thompson taught us that, if it taught us anything. It taught us to think about our life less in terms of how we might best benefit the community, let’s say of Winkler, than it taught us how to navigate an imagination and a life of excitement. It goaded us into attempting to walk shoulder to shoulder instead of face to face through everything the world offers. Ideas became unscary to us. Homosexuality, alcoholism and addictions, death and dying, friends who seemed not to understand and were judgemental and yet we stayed friends, the absence of family, the end of the familiar, both of people close to you and those far away, and many, many other ideas that often cause anxiety in us humans somehow didn’t overwhelm us.
Music suddenly became big in our family life. In ‘78 I bought a ‘73 Martin D28 acoustic guitar. It was, next to family, my great love. Daughter Jess and I formed a bluegrass band, “The Doug and Jess Band.” We sang at numerous festivals over the years. The band became my focus that, to a degree (a fairly big one), wrenched my stranglehold attention from philosophy to it. How exciting vanning it up to Smithers and Missouri Valley, or flying to Toronto, Ottowa and Nova Scotia, to sing at their venues and festivals. Little grandkids, Marty and us, the four-piece band, doing what we loved more than anything else.
One other thing that strikes me at the moment as worth narrating, or intruding as a point in this narration, is the fact that together Marty and I built a cabin in the northwestern Ontario woods near a lake, classic in its coniferous forest, deep blue waters, trout, muskellunge and even bears trying to get in at the door now and then. The cabin was and is very beautiful and it sits within a stone‘s throw of the edge of the lake. That is about all I have to say just now except that in the process of the last 20 years of our married life Marty has become an excellent writer and I have to come to make very attractive diamond willow walking sticks.
by Epithalamion Leigh
May, 1969. David F Friesen invites me to bring my guitar to Red Rock Lake Bible Camp to be music leader for a group of 18 year olds having a young peoples meeting/conference/spiritual experience at the camp. I am older by 4 years than the others, except for Friesen. All goes well. I meet Marty. We Rendezvous at the lakeshore late afternoon and canoe to Turtle Island. We walk, we hold hands (me trembling, melting, everything otherworldly), I notice her wonderful green sweater, covering a small body, and that (along with something I haven’t put my finger on yet) altogether pleases me greatly.
On the ride home I sit in the front seat next to her. My arm touches her arm the entire way home for two hours. This is completely new territory for me. I’ve never sat so close to a female for such a period of time ever before.
I am in love but can’t bring myself to believe that it can be so. Of course I’m not, because I haven’t known her long enough. My sister Gwen asks me if I intend to call her. This is a few days later. Right then I have almost forgotten Marty. Survival mode. I cannot believe that I would be of interest to her more than for a day or two, because I have never (tear jerker time) believed in my worth. So there you have it, I have always felt rather worthless. But have by now brilliantly succeeded in reversing this debilitation over three quarters of a century. Just kidding.
Mustering courage, I call her. She lives in Portage la Prairie. She teaches primary school there. It is her first year on the job as a teacher. We talk, we agree to meet at Island Park for a picnic. I bring my guitar and sing for her; “I Dreamed I saw Saint Augustine.” And “House of the Rising Sun.” And “You’re as Fine as Fine can Be.” She wears a wide-skirted, turquoise summer dress she’s made herself, and on her slight frame she appears delicate and fragile to me. Her face dazzles me. I feel lucky I’m short-sighted! I get that wrong about her too. When we embrace it feels like I’ve got hardly anything in my arms.
That year I live in Winnipeg’s north end, on Dominion Street, at my brother Jim’s and my sister-in-law Marg’s place. Close to the Armory. During the next year, Marty and I bus back-and-forth between Winnipeg and Portage la Prairie every weekend. (Jim: “Doug, you and Marty can’t sleep together if you’re going to stay at our house.”) I have a small room upstairs with a child-size desk where I try to do my first year university English literature assignments. Being with Marty is so much more fun than writing essays for Robert Green, for Professor Robert Green. I get an F on my first essay and suggest to him in his office that I should probably pack it in. He tells me, in that unfamiliar-to-me British accent of his, not to be so hasty; that I am essentially a good writer, but a verbose one. I continue, I make some writing/thinking changes towards plain style, I get a C+ on my next essay and I end up near the top of the class by the end of the year.
I drink wine as I study. My nascent habit should have suggested to me by now (and did, sort of) the detour I will take in the next three decades. I start making homemade wine at the age of 15, I intermittently (too often) drink too much for 30 years, I have my very Last Drink on the way home from the cottage in my 1966 Mazda B 2200. I’m alone and stop outside of the pub in the west end of Kenora. (Ontario, Northwestern Ontario, if you are not familiar with Kenora.) It’s a couple of glasses of draft beer. I have tried to quit many times before with varied success, in Thompson, in Grand Rapids, in Winnipeg, in Winkler. This time it sticks. I leave half a glass of beer on the Formica. I get up and get out of there and drive the rest of the way home in my truck.
July,1970. We marry and move to Grand Rapids, Manitoba. We teach there for two years, then enrol at the University of Manitoba for another two years before excepting work in Thompson, Manitoba. The process of getting that job proves to be quite exciting because of a strange case of mistaken identity. The seven years that we spend in Thompson are fraught with experience, some of which, not all of which, is destined to see a retelling on these pages. In subsequent stories.
In 1981, Marty and I return to Winnipeg where for a number of years, while living in a side-by-side in Fort Richmond, a suburb in the southern part of the city, Marty kindly takes care of the three children that we by this time have somehow acquired. I enter an MA, and eventually a doctoral, program. So, to review, I switch from teaching primary school in Grand Rapids to high school in Thompson and, in this final stage, for the next 25 years, to lecturing at the University of Manitoba. Marty studies too and her area of specialty is psychology. The only course of hers that I recall us discussing is Statistics with a Dr. Kesselman who, not so popular with his charges, passes only a small percentage of the students in his classes.
When I finish my MA degree and Marty receives her baccalaureate (1983), we struggle to decide what to do for the next number of years. Whether fortunately or not, we choose to move to Winkler, MB where I take a job in high school English and Marty stays home with the children. My career in winkler lasts approximately three months. Well, actually not that long; two months, more like. At this point (blessed with a cavernous bout of clinical depression), I begin to write fiction and eventually (1990) enroll in graduate school for my doctorate. In 1995 I become Dr. Reimer. In November Marty remarkably dives into a teaching job while I recover at home.
Probably the most memorable moment in which I experience the success I have achieved happens the day I pass my orals. I tell the class of 50 first year literature students (Eng. 4.120) that I’ve just become Dr. Reimer! A student raises her hand and asked whether from now on they have to call me Dr. Reimer. I say, no, that’s fine, you can call me Mr. Reimer. Another person asks whether it’s OK if they call me Reimer. Yep, I concede, with a pretended reluctance. Another enters what is quickly becoming a game and asks if they can call me Douglas. I say, sure, no problem! A student in the back row shouts, Can we call you Dougie? And I say, happy at the fact of life in these kids, Absolutely not! I draw the line at Dougie. And, of course, lots of laughter.
Outside of continuing to learn to live together, the rest of our married life is unremarkable. Well, not entirely, I suppose. If I thought that our earlier married life occasionally went off the rails and was most difficult and that all would get easier, then what I think now is that the mature period of our cohabitation has had us encountering more difficulties than ever. Life does not get easier as you get older, especially if experiences before this in the years preceding have meant that you are not overly judgemental nor overly worried about following conventions and conforming to social proprieties. Maybe for the better, maybe not, living in Thompson taught us that, if it taught us anything. It taught us to think about our life less in terms of how we might best benefit the community, let’s say of Winkler, than it taught us how to navigate an imagination and a life of excitement. It goaded us into attempting to walk shoulder to shoulder instead of face to face through everything the world offers. Ideas became unscary to us. Homosexuality, alcoholism and addictions, death and dying, friends who seemed not to understand and were judgemental and yet we stayed friends, the absence of family, the end of the familiar, both of people close to you and those far away, and many, many other ideas that often cause anxiety in us humans somehow didn’t overwhelm us.
Music suddenly became big in our family life. In ‘78 I bought a ‘73 Martin D28 acoustic guitar. It was, next to family, my great love. Daughter Jess and I formed a bluegrass band, “The Doug and Jess Band.” We sang at numerous festivals over the years. The band became my focus that, to a degree (a fairly big one), wrenched my stranglehold attention from philosophy to it. How exciting vanning it up to Smithers and Missouri Valley, or flying to Toronto, Ottowa and Nova Scotia, to sing at their venues and festivals. Little grandkids, Marty and us, the four-piece band, doing what we loved more than anything else.
One other thing that strikes me at the moment as worth narrating, or intruding as a point in this narration, is the fact that together Marty and I built a cabin in the northwestern Ontario woods near a lake, classic in its coniferous forest, deep blue waters, trout, muskellunge and even bears trying to get in at the door now and then. The cabin was and is very beautiful and it sits within a stone‘s throw of the edge of the lake. That is about all I have to say just now except that in the process of the last 20 years of our married life Marty has become an excellent writer and I have to come to make very attractive diamond willow walking sticks.
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