The Johnson Family: June 2014

This blog is a Memoir I wrote for an English class a few years ago. It speaks of both the dysfunction and adventure that comprised our first years of marriage. I hope you are more inclined to relate than to judge; relationships can be difficult. Enjoy.

I can’t approach him. I can’t even look him in the eye. He’s so mad there are tears in his eyes. He picks up the jack and the remnants of the blown tire. The kids are calm by now; I nurse Sam and get Addi settled back in her car seat. Our dog, Tok, runs up out of nowhere and jumps back in the truck. I squeak out a shameful, “I’m sorry.” I know my presence is not welcome yet, so I turn and get back in the car and wait.

When we had exited the restaurant two hours previously, I was livid. “I’m riding with my Dad. You can drive the kids by yourself. Sam’s been fed, and Addi needs a nap.” Not waiting for his response, I close the passenger side door to our truck and get in the car with my Dad. He is driving my Isuzu Rodeo down the Alaska Highway for me. We are moving from Alaska back to the Lower 48.

We had stopped for lunch about 300 miles north of Whitehorse, in the Yukon Territory. We would spend the night in Whitehorse, and that day was supposed to be our easiest day of driving. The Alaska Highway, on that stretch, would be at sea level; winding and beautiful, devoid of snow and ice. In late October, this was the only stretch of the Highway where we would be driving on bare cement. We had spent the majority of our lunch break arguing in our car in the parking lot. Mostly I cried, while my husband stared at me with a hardened, unsympathetic look on his face.

We used to love each other. On our way to up Alaska, four years ago, we loved each other. In a few days we would arrive at Cache Creek, British Columbia, where we spent the first night of our trip in early October 2003. I remember we had driven about 18 hours that day and arrived at our hotel room exhausted and travel weary. Back then we could laugh about the ways in which we failed each other. That evening at the hotel, Jeremy had discovered that the entirety of his rear-end felt slimy to the touch for some odd reason. I remembered, and then confessed, that I had sprinkled detergent on a load of clothes and neglected to start the washing machine earlier that day. I gently folded the dirty clothes and placed them back into our bags, as though no one would notice. My unsuspecting husband then chose the detergent-soaked boxers to wear the morning of our trip. He had laughed about sliding around on the toilet seat at a rest stop; I laughed too.

I get in my Rodeo with my Dad. I let him drive. We take off and my eyes continually glance in the side-view mirror at the white GMC pick-up that is carrying everything that really matters in my life, one husband and two children ages 2 1/2 years and 5 months, and dragging behind it a small U-Haul trailer with everything we owned.

Our time in Alaska, aside from making a few close friends, had been mostly a disaster. We moved there straight out of college to embark on a business venture spurred by my husband’s business-savvy family members. My husband’s dad, grandpa and great-uncle wanted to put Jeremy’s brand new business management degree to use and wondered if we would be willing to move to Alaska for five years to run a gas station/convenient store. We could manage it together, so they thought, be part owners with them, and in five years sell it and go home with cash in our pockets and a step up in life. Phrases like “put your time in early” and “work hard now, relax later” were thrown around. Without much debate, we said yes: Jeremy in an attempt to prove to his dad he wasn’t a failure, and me because I was pretending to be submissive. So with a chip on my shoulder and a weight on my husband’s back, we moved to Wasilla, Alaska. We had been married for one year.

The Superstore, as it was called, contained many surprises in and of itself. Within the first week of owning it, there was a false attempted armed robbery. False because the guy was using a paint ball gun. It only took two weeks for me to realize that there would be no “working together”… not if we were planning on staying married. My husband’s surely talented and a very hard worker, but he has his own way of doing things. One day, he decided it was time to start remodeling the kitchen. He ripped out the counter tops and sink all in one afternoon, chucking the old hardware on the front porch, where it stayed for the next 4+ weeks. We then found out the new sink and counter tops were on back order, 3 weeks out at least. So for the remainder of the time I washed all of our dishes in the bathtub when showering, and made meals on top of open drawers, while toting around my first very large pregnant belly.

So we made an agreement in regards to running the business: I would help out by doing the “deposits”. I counted the revenue from the Big Lake Superstore every day, and deposited it at the bank. Some days, I couldn’t do the deposits, like on the days I was giving birth. On this day, Jeremy brought the deposits to the hospital and counted thousands of dollars on the small coffee table in our birthing room, while I sat adjacent to him, rocking and moaning in pain, preparing to give birth to our second child. It was comical and awkward and I think the nurses thought he was a drug-dealer.

My husband worked practically around the clock. With seven employees, the superstore wasn’t large enough to warrant hiring an assistant manager. So he filled the role of owner, manager, human resources personnel, payroll/bookkeeper, and handyman. His job was exhausting and his ears became attune to the sound of the phone ringing late at night. Sometimes he’d work a full day and then end up working the night shift when an employee would call in last minute. He had to fire two employees for stealing money out of the vault, and another for stealing food. He also had to come home to a wife who was unsympathetic to his work schedule, frustrated when he came home late for dinner and angry when he didn’t answer his phone, or help out enough with the kids.

I talked him into starting our family mostly for spite, but also out of sheer boredom. A few weeks before this conversation, my mother-in-law had come up for a visit. She heard us talking about having kids and strongly suggested that we wait, since we were running the store and all. I thought she was giving unwelcome advice. Soon after that visit we got pregnant.

Turns out my mother-in-law knew what she was talking about. It is not wise to have children when you’re running a brand new business and your husband isn’t entirely ready. He even said as much when I asked him about having a baby: “No, I like our time together. I want to wait.” My naïve response was: “We’ll still have time together! Plus, a baby will make our love for each other grow!”

It didn’t help that pregnancy for me was a cry for help. I had wild fantasies of my husband running to open doors for me and swooping large bags of groceries out of my hands. Those fantasies never materialized and nine months later we had a tiny colicky baby girl with a will that was stronger than mine. She screamed at me when I didn’t feed her quick enough, woke up wailing at least three times every night for the first year of her life, spit up buckets of baby barf around the clock, and would be pacified by nothing besides pure exhaustion. She ate up all the goodness in me in no time.

Things had declined quickly for us, and now we were five years, 2 kids, and 1 dog deep into marriage, having months earlier gone through the worst turmoil of our married life thus far. Things got bad enough that we finally called a marital counselor. He told my husband he fit the ADD profile like a glove. A common diagnosis nowadays, but to us, it was surprising to hear. In a way, it was really handy having an un-medicated ADD husband around. He was a super easy target.

For example, I usually showed up to my Bible study late. Not like 10 minutes late, but like 45 minutes late. This, you see, could easily be blamed on Jeremy. He would have done something like leave for work later that I expected, and return to the house two more times for his wallet and phone before actually leaving. Therefore Addi’s breakfast and my shower were delayed, therefore I couldn’t find my pants, therefore I was late to Bible study and it was all his fault. Same thing with yoga class. Didn’t matter what time it started, I was always late and it was always his fault.

There wasn’t much, really, that anyone could prove was my fault. I had an imaginary neat and tidy file, you see, completely organized with my good deeds alphabetized from front to back. Bible read today? Check! Homemade dinner most evenings? Check! House picked up and kids cared for? Check! Smile on Sunday morning? Check! Volunteer at church? Check! I was keeping track, just in case anything ever went wrong; just in case God or anyone was wondering where to point the finger when things fell apart.

Obviously, this time, as we sat in the car and argued, it wasn’t my fault either. He hated me again for not being sympathetic. I hated him again for being weak. Once I’m riding with my Dad, I try to talk to him about our marital troubles, try to explain the type of personality my husband has: smart, definitely talented, but backwards, teetering on the edge of laziness but always getting his work done on his own time, forgetful, late.

I could've counted on two hands the number of times Jeremy had gotten a phone call from the Superstore on Tuesday morning that went something like this: “Um, Jeremy? Yeah, this is Mary. We was just wondering if you were gonna pay us today. This my only day off and I got to get to the grocery.” Jeremy: “Oh crap, is it Tuesday already? Sorry Mary, I’ll be down in a few.”

My dad is trying to understand as I explain things to him, the forgetfulness and the unpreparedness for life in general. Thank God Jeremy had me around, to hold all the loose ends together.

We are speeding along, enjoying the crystal clear Yukon sky and dry pavement. I look again in the side view mirror for the headlights of the white pick-up. Jeremy and the kids have fallen behind, but how far? When was the last time we saw him behind us? Was it 10 minutes ago or 30? We don’t remember. We drive on, but slower, expecting his headlights to come up from behind.

They don’t come.

We pull over and wait another 10 minutes. Still nothing. Did he pass us? Could he be in Whitehorse already? Or is he behind us? Or did something happen? We look at the clock and realize it has been at least 35 minutes since we saw him last. Suddenly I am nervous and feeling embarrassed about the subject of our conversation. I know that Sam will be getting hungry soon. Still we don’t know: is he ahead or behind? Our cell phones have zero reception.

We decide to flag down a passing car to ask if he has seen a white truck and trailer. Nope, nothing. In a few minutes, we flag the next passing car. He doesn’t stop. We decide to try one more. He stops. Yes, a white truck and trailer, pulled over on the side of the road, about 30 minutes back. We say thank you and drive 90 mph I the opposite direction.

I find my sweet, beloved husband. He has just finished changing the busted tire on our trailer. It had blown over an hour ago. When the tire blew it popped so loud it woke my sleeping children and they start to cry. Addi is consoled by her daddy; he has let her out of the car to help him change the flat on the side of the Alaska Highway somewhere in the Yukon Territory. Sam cries for me, no screams. Our dog, Tok, gets out to roam. He doesn’t come back. The jack we have doesn’t fit the trailer. Jeremy has to take our two year old into the woods and find a stick to leverage the trailer up high enough so the jack will fit. Sam is in the car, hysterical for me. Our dog still doesn’t come back and Jeremy sees a wolf in the road ½ mile down. There are no other cars. He puts on the spare, Addi is helping, Sam is screaming, and our Schnauzer has heard the Call of the Wild. I am not there. I did not notice he was missing. I am too busy telling my dad about my husband’s forgetfulness and ADD.