Forty-five years

Stories! Any writer gorges on real-life stories, and I've had a banquet lately. Jeanne has allowed me to tell hers.

The moment I saw Jeanne this summer, I knew something was up. She was widowed two years ago. We met at the end of the first year, when she was mourning, and spoke at length about her husband Will, an ebullient, brilliant and deeply generous man. She was subdued, still hollowed-out from a harrowing last year.

By this summer, she was brimming with life. She had divested nearly everything she and Will owned, sold the big suburban house, found a pied-a-terre in Denver. She was a sought-after partner on the competitive bridge circuit, traveling to tournaments.

Jeanne has a son in Montréal, and another who lives with his family on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, a locale famous for its natural beauty, a sailor's paradise.

While visiting that son, she learned that her first husband, Stewart, whom she'd married at 21 and divorced seven years later, lived there too. At loose ends during the day ("only so much farmers' market I can take"), she decided to look him up, after forty-five years without contact. Stewart was divorced again, and had an adult daughter. At the first coffee meeting, their past bond floated up; they talked for three hours.

After several visits and introductions to one another's children, Jeanne and Stewart dined one evening at the town's one posh restaurant, and afterward, she did not return to her son's home. They resumed what was disrupted nearly a half-century ago.

What happened in the early '70s?  She had a brief affair; they were not at that point able to work through the crisis. "He was always my best friend", she said, "and I felt such guilt that I had hurt him—so I left." They moved apart rapidly, carried by swift currents into others' lives.

When she reconnected, the years seemed to fall away, but now both brought the broader perspectives granted by time, other loves, and the wisdom they lacked in their twenties. After caring for Will for years, Jeanne lives in the present. "Talk to me about Willie any time",  Stewart said, "I want to know him though you."

Her story reminded me of  Stan Rogers' love song to his wife Ariel, "Forty-Five Years", especially the lines,
You say you've been twice a wife and you're through with life
Ah, but honey, what the hell's it for?

Jeanne won't settle permanently in that oceanside town, but will visit soon—Stewart bought a queen-sized bed and is purging stacks of single-guy stuff. She is travelling extensively in the coming year; he will join her at Christmastime. Her children say, "Go for it, Mom."

To my delight, she bought a condo in Montréal for use during the summers; her son will live there the rest of the year. She hopes Stewart will visit; they were newlyweds here, so poor that a night out was a round trip on the métro. I can't wait to meet the man who makes my friend's eyes dance. "Isn't he handsome?" she asked, producing the wedding photo she carries in her wallet:

During her month here, they were in constant touch, connected this time like Venn circles, overlapping, but not fully eclipsing the other. Stewart has lived contentedly in his cabin for many years; Jeanne yearns to be out in the world, from Singapore to New York.

But her heart is home again, in an old, familiar port.