Stumbling around through the heat this afternoon — without a car now, I have to walk to every local destination — I happened to think back on my parents, and on how much they loathed and detested my college boyfriend.
This guy was more than a boyfriend. We seriously intended to marry. And our relationship comprised all the features of married life, with the exception of the spoken vow, “…I thee wed.”
Why they hated Paul…well…that’s something that’s always flummoxed me to some degree.
I believe it was his ethnicity: he was Eastern European. And as far as my parents were concerned, anyone who wasn’t Us wasn’t quite human. The prospect of my marrying him and supporting him through a career (he became an academic administrator at the University of California, a highly successful line of work) and bearing his quasi-Asian children…well…that was more than they could bear.
They regarded our relationship with horror, and they made that horror as clear as they could.
Our love affair was going hot and heavy when I made the decision to break it off. Paul was shattered. I felt utterly hideous at having faced him down and told him, as he wept, to go away, that we were finished. But…that was what I had to do.
§ § §
I was my parents’ only child. And the knowledge that if I continued with Paul, I would never see my parents again…well…that was more than I could cope with.
It might have been a different matter if they hadn’t done everything a human being could do to love their child, to support her, to guide her to academic and economic success. But it wasn’t a different matter. And abandoning them — which is what I would have been doing — was simply too ugly a prospect to contemplate.
So…instead of saying good-bye to my parents, I said good-bye to Paul.
And…away I went, into the Southern Arizona dust.
Eventually I came north, got a job with a Phoenix law firm, and married a very promising young lawyer. That match lasted a couple of decades and produced an excellent son. Then I wandered off into the sunset again.
Heh! I do rather more wandering than I should, evidently….
But again, things have worked out. I’m dwelling safely and in reasonable comfort. Own my home outright. Have had an entertaining and productive career. Published several books. Nothing to complain about there.
I guess. But…
What about the part where he regarded cheating on a pregnant partner totally acceptable? Don’t you think its far more likely that your parents recognized what starry-eyed you couldn’t – that he was a scumbag?
Ohhhh yeah! I forgot about THAT episode!!!
Yes…there was the time, as we cuddled in bed, when he started to go on about how his buddy’s wife was too far advanced in late-term pregnancy to accommodate him. So said buddy picked up a barmaid and diddled her, just to get his rocks off.
That PJP didn’t disapprove of this episode…well. Yeah: it did demonstrate that he was NOT a desirable life mate!