Sixteen years later…

Today I’ve been married for sixteen years. Here’s the card my husband greeted me with this morning. Isn’t it cute? He’s pretty funny, that one.

I’ve been thinking about writing a short memoir-y piece about these sixteen years.  You might not guess, but most of them I’ve been what’s called a “military wife.” And I had a fiction writing instructor tell me I should write about it—that this was “my material.”

Is he right? Is this my material? 

I didn’t intend to marry into that kind of life.  In the 1980s, long before we met, my husband was signing on to protect democracy, and I was writing term papers slamming American policy in Latin America. It was my job (at twenty) to prove how bad our government was, how war-mongering, how imperialistically arrogant.  I’d grown up in that kind of family, you see, the daughter of left-leaning teachers and do-gooders.    

My husband’s story was different. The first thing I learned about him—way after college was over—was that he shared my love of literature.  After that, I noticed  he was cute, and had really nice legs. Soon after that I learned that his father had been a prisoner of war for six years in Vietnam. I was intrigued.  In that sort of icky way that makes you want to look at pictures of a natural disaster. I think it was the fiction writer, the historian, in me.  If nothing else, his life was different than mine, and I always loved a challenge. 

He was different, and it wasn’t just his history.  On our second or maybe third date he told me more of his story. His mother had had affairs when his father was in prison—with very high-ranking government men who made decisions that affected his father.  When his father came home, broken, his mother divorced him. My husband had seen his father taken away from home in a straitjacket. And other things a young boy shouldn’t see.

He’d been six years old when his father’s airplane was shot down.  He was twelve when his father returned. The youngest of three children, he was the only boy, and expected to be the “man” of the family at age six. When the father came home, his children barely recognized the changed, frightening person he’d become. 

Many years later, shortly before I met him, my husband’s mother died of brain cancer. Long divorced from my father-in-law, she never remarried. She loved the arts, fine food, nice hotels, liberal politics. I feel an affinity to her even though I never met her. I think, uncomfortably, that we are also similar in temperament. I think my husband married his mother.

But this was all to come. When he told me about her death, over pizza one night, he said, “I’d wake up sometimes at night and my pillow would be damp. I told myself that was probably normal. Probably part of loss.”  I sat rooted on the vinyl seat wondering how he could so understood the human psyche when I’d spent enough to finance a small country on self-help books and therapy to learn what he’d just said. He was unlike anyone I’d ever met.

 

 

seventeen

years

ago

 

 

His military career nagged at me, but in those days, nearly thirty and biological clock ticking, I looked for what I wanted to see.  I found the crucial things: deep integrity; values; kindness.

Being a pilot seemed, at least, adventurous. He’d traveled the corners of the world (and he had the t-shirts to prove it). It mattered that he wasn’t the kind of pilot who bombs or shoots, but rather carried cargo—humanitarian as well as military. 

I constructed an imaginary limbo-wire under which I slid him because he was this kind of military guy, and not that kind of military guy.  It was a very naive test to use, and I came to regret it.  I had no idea what marriage to any service member would be like.  

Still, much later, after years of tears and anguish over issues of war and peace, and living rather miserably on an Air Force base, and having a baby there, and after two years’ separation for a war—after all that, I came to believe that if my country has to have an armed force, I would like people like my husband to run it.

If I’d known then what we were going to go through in sixteen years, I might well have faltered.  But I’m sincerely glad I didn’t.  If I wanted adventure, I got it.  If I wanted to grow and mature, I got that opportunity too.   Did I say I wanted a challenge?  I got it.   And I got love.  We suffered a lot.  But I think, maybe, that’s what love requires.   

Benjamin Spence, or Finding Family at the Musee d’Orsay

My grandmother came from a family that homesteaded in northern Montana in the very early 1900s.  Their name was Spence. 

I grew up hearing wonderful stories about the Spences of old.  For instance, my great-grandfather Harry Spence was born in Scotland, at the Duke of Argyll’s hunting lodge. 

That’s a pretty good story.  But where was this lodge?  At Inverarry Castle?  That part of the story remains unknown. 

Harry’s father, John, was a stained-glass artist who worked for the Duke.  John later moved his family to Montreal, from whence Harry, my great grandfather, eventually came to Montana. 

Here’s a picture of John that I found from a museum in Montreal, and which I don’t think we’ve ever seen before. 

In addition to being a stained glass artist himself, John came from an artistic family.  He was the son of the sculptor William Spence of Liverpool—one of the founders of the Liverpool Academy. 

But John’s brother Benjamin is the subject of my post today.  I also grew up hearing the rudiments of his story—which, thanks to modern technology, we descendants are filling in today. 

Benjamin Spence was a sculptor who achieved some real recognition in his day.  He worked with some of the most accomplished living sculptors, and secured commissions from Buckingham Palace. 

Born in Liverpool in 1822, he traveled to Rome at the age of twenty-four, where he became a protege of John Gibson.  Gibson had been a colleague of William Spence, Benjamin’s father, and at the peak of his career was considered the greatest living sculptor.

Below is a picture of the Palm House at Sefton Park in Liverpool.  The building houses versions of two Spence works which he left to the city upon his death. 

One of those sculptures was the “Highland Mary,” below.  In 2005 vandals apparently seriously damaged this sculpture, but here it is in a recent photograph.  I’m in process of contacting the Liverpool Historical Society to learn more about how it was restored.   

Highland Mary, Benjamin Spence, ca. 1852

Benjamin Spence used literary sources for many of his subjects.  The “Highland Mary” comes from a Robert Burns poem of the same name, about a young woman whom Burns loved and who died young (photo and information by Jacqueline Banerjee). 

In 1854 Prince Albert commissioned another “Highland Mary” for Queen Victoria’s birthday.  Many years later, the Queen commissioned another Spence work, “The Lady of the Lake,” as a companion for the “Highland Mary.”  Both works are, to my knowledge, still at Balmoral.  Though we don’t have photos of them, here’s a photo of a steel-cut engraving that was made in 1863 after the Queen’s “Lady of the Lake.”   

The Lady of the Lake, artist: Spence; engraver:  Stodart, 1863

Another well-known Spence work was “The Angel’s Whisper.”  This piece too was inspired by poetry—in this case a poem by Samuel Lover using as its subject an Irish belief that when a child smiles in its sleep, it’s because an angel is whispering to it. 

The Musee d’Orsay—the post-1800 branch of the Louvre--accessioned this piece in 1993, unbeknownst to the family.  Last summer my cousins stumbled on it in Paris, after having hunted down many Spence works in Liverpool.  There is also a version of “The Angel’s Whisper” at Sefton Park in Liverpool, above, but the Orsay statue is in much better condition. 

   

 

The Angel’s Whisper, Benjamin Spence, 1857

In closing, here’s what the Musee’s artist notes say about Benjamin Spence:  

“The sculptor…was an admirer of Neoclassicism. He lived in Rome and worked with the greatest English sculptor of the time, John Gibson. From Gibson he borrowed the treatment of the bodies and precisely defined volumes smoothly enveloped by the light. But he tempered the rigid aspects of his master's work with a taste for sentimentality and readily took subjects not from Greek mythology but from Shakespeare, romantic English literature…or the Bible.”

There are several other Benjamin Spence works in existence in the U.K., and I hope to visit them someday—as well as fill in the blanks about the rest of my artsy family members.  How exciting, and inspiring!

Wednesday Meme: More About the Blue Kimono

My new friend Mervat, at Is That New, has tagged me with this meme.  I’d like to invite anyone to take it up and respond, if you’d like.  “Rules” are at the end.   

i wish i had some photos in here, but the program wouldn’t load them today  :(

so here we go…

What is your current obsession?  Wardrobe refashioning.  More to come about that in a week or two. 

Good fika place? (That would be coffee to us non-Swedes)
My house.  I like a high-caffeine type that preferably was grown in good conditions for workers and the environment; with stevia and lots of evaporated milk. 

Do you nap a lot?  Yes!  I get bursts of productivity at night, so typically take a nap during the day. 

Who was the last person you hugged?  My daughter. Unfortunately, my hubby is sick and he won’t be hugging me for a while. 

What’s for dinner?  Smithfield ham, cornbread and artichokes.  

What was the last thing you bought?  Some beverages for aforementioned sick hubby. 

What are you listening to right now? Nothing, and it sounds good!

What is your favourite weather? Either a multi-day snowstorm in December, or a clear, warm evening in May.  This view of the Clark Fork River taken a few blocks from my house: 

What’s on your bedside table?  A Depression-glass dish of earplugs (how enchanting; aforementioned sick hubby also snores a lot, especially when ill); a lamp, and a clock radio. 

Say something to the person/s who tagged you.  Mervat, I’m pleased to have found your blog, because I love meeting people from other countries and getting to know them this way.  Your fashion blog is lovely and well-written,and I’m enjoying your writing blog also.  I’m impressed that you’re a scientist, too.  And I wish you all the luck in the world with your writing.  

If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you want it to be?  I’ve moved back to my hometown after living elsewhere for 25 years, so I’m basically where I want to be.  There’s this house a couple blocks away, though, at the foot of the mountain and away from busy streets.  That might be it. 

Favourite vacation spot?  The Big Island of Hawaii, if I wanted to spend a lot of money.  If not, a mountain cabin in Montana, of which there are several that I love.   One of them is at the top of this post.  I also want to go back to Italy, where I traveled as a teenager.  

Name the things you can’t live without.  Besides time with loved ones, I’m loony-tunes without: places to be quiet in nature; something to write with; and something to read; and exercising.  That’s the basic list.  My computer is attached at my hip, and there are several things I’m attached to, but I could adjust to being without. 

What would you like to have in your hands right now?  A crystal ball telling me what the economic future holds. 

What is your favourite tea flavour?  Jasmine. 

What would you like to get rid of?  The occasional hobo spider in the basement, and worry.   

If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go?  A warm beach next to sharkless water, with my husband, daughter and two Westies.

What did you want to become as a child?  I think I mostly wanted to stay something: hopeful, optimistic, and interested in exploring the world.  As a teenager I wanted to be original.   

What do you miss? (This is Belette Rouge's question)  Sometimes I miss naivete. 

What are you reading right now?  The Wisdom of No Escape, by Pema Chodron. 

What do you fear the most?
Losing loved ones, which includes my sense of myself. 

What designer piece of clothing would you most like to own (new or vintage)? I would like to have Michelle Obama’s inauguration dress.  The vintage-y feel, beautiful subtle color variations, and layers are true to my aesthetic.      

More practically, I’d like for any talented designer to make me a custom two-piece outfit like those Jane Birkin is wearing in the post I did this week. 

Last question, added by Sallymandy:  How do you feel about the economy? (please feel free to respond, whether you do the whole meme or not).  I feel intimidated by it today.  That’s not all, but that’s today.  More about that another time.  :)

That’s all for me.  If you’d like to do the meme, here’s how it works. 

1. Respond and rework. Answer the questions on your blog, replace one question you dislike with a question of your own invention; add a question of your own.

2. Tag eight other un-tagged people.  (I decided to open this up to anyone.)

Thanks, Mervat.  This was fun! 

Seven Random Things About Me

Hazel at The Clever Pup tagged me to make a list of seven random things about me. I like making lists, so here goes.

1. Sallymandy is my late grandfather's nickname for me.

2. I love butternut squash enchiladas.

3. My arches are so high that lizards can run under them (it happened once in Arizona).

4. I have seasonal affective disorder.

5. I have three pairs of Doc Martens shoes and boots.

6. I've been married for fifteen years.

7. That photo over there is my favorite scarf, which was a Christmas present two years ago.

Now I'll be finding seven other people to tag...but that's for another day. Good night!