1979-1989: Mermaids can be awesome wives and mothers !

1982 Fully recovered from her ordeal ... and happy.

1983 - We move west, to the Rockies.

After 3 years of living near her parents, we decided it was time for a break and so off we moved from Eastern Canada to the West. Our new home was 2,500 miles away in Calgary, Alberta, Canada - right next to the awesome beauty of Banff and the Canadian Rockies. It was here that we bought our first home and were blessed with our two boys. Life was sweet!

1984 - Five years after getting married, we expand our family (Our firstborn son)

1987 - 3 years later ... Blessed again (Our youngest son)

1988 - Hawaiian fun

 1988 - Getting used to the beach

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Jennifer" is the English version of the Welsh name "Guinevere" and means "White Wave":

 So, how did Jennifer feel after 10 years of marriage ?

2 decades after we first met ...

A decade after we were married and
just 1 year before Jennifer's parents
moved back to live near us again.

If only it was that simple. It should be, but it often isn't. We we found out soon enough that not everyone in one's (old) birth-family is willing to step into the background and let two young newlyweds just simply be lovers and friends ... to let them get on with their life together. 

When Jennifer flew to Canada and was living with her parents again, her mother now had her around every day and was able to steer her emotions and play on her fears ... and did. Jennifer tells me of one of her lines was: "Just imagine Ian at University with all those young gorgeous women". Well, I was at university, and there were many gorgeous young women, but I just could not even think romantically about any of them - let alone do anything with them ... which is normal when you are pining away, almost in mourning. Now, I had never seen Jennifer display "Jealousy" - unlike other girls and young women I had dated. She seemed impervious to the usual causes and displays of Jealousy. What I did not know, till many years later, was that her mother had impressed upon Jennifer her very important requirement to successful relationships: "Never ever display any outward signs of jealousy, certainly none that your boyfriend/fiancé/husband can ever detect". 

At first, I was offended when I heard Jennifer quote her mother, because I knew her well enough to know that she was not trying to help me, but rather to get Jennifer to start believing that "maybe I was not being faithful to her". But, with hindsight, I'm glad she said so to Jennifer ... Wow, speak about a motivator! I guess her mother flunked that all important course "Jealousy 101". You see, Jennifer may have listened to her mother's advice, but found herself being quite uncomfortable with the thought of me, without her, "Alone at university - with all those nubile young women".

Sometimes the best laid plots and schemes blow up in the faces of those doing the plotting and scheming. It's amazing how many of her schemes have failed through the years, but still she tries? Somehow it's like she is forever trying to repeat her first and only "success" - getting Jennifer to leave me in South Africa and to go and live again with "Mommy", the way Jennifer's 41 year old sister often has - without her children or even a decent life of her own. What she did not realize though, is that, yes it's true, Jennifer did leave me, her sweetheart, to return and live with "Mommy" in Canada, but in so doing, she was able to break free too. In my book, she can hardly call that "Success" ... that's  a spectacular failure. On the one hand, I was willing to give up the most important person in the world (to me) - without whom I was, at best, going to live a crippled and deeply saddened life. Jennifer's mother was not willing to give up anything, but clung selfishly and unnaturally onto Jennifer way past any sensible age to do so (if ever there is such an age) and even when it meant Jennifer's future and happiness were at stake and were being sacrificed to her own selfish needs. She lost. There is a valuable lesson to be learned here ... Being selfish, controlling, manipulating and possessive does not pay in the long-run, it ends up hurting so many,  but it does not work, and really, we all lost something in the process, a loving extended family. 

By this time, it was pretty clear to me that I had come up against a Mother-in-law who not only was a strong matriarch, but had assumed the patriarch's role as well in their family. Seeing as I had not been the "hand-picked" mate chosen by her for her daughter, and since her daughter had defied her and married me anyhow, "adoption" or "acceptance" into this family was going to prove to be difficult or even impossible. Jennifer had no idea how these things worked ... yet. She was going to witness me (and later her and our children) be badly mauled by the rest of her old family, at the matriarch's urging, before she too would understand.

All the same, with Jennifer's mother (even now) still opposing our right to be a couple, we were deeply in love with each other, finally together and, after 8 years of courtship beset with many forced separations, we were married ! At long last we were a couple and we were so very very happy ! Now we went about the day to day business of being that loving couple again. Despite the ever present opposition of her mother, our love for each other just deepened and our little family was thriving ! Life was indeed great and we simply delighted in being together. Of course it helped that we moved to the other side of the American continent ... very far away from her mother. Sounds too good to last ? Well, for those of you reading this story and that have "been there ... done that", you just know her mother was not about to simply fade into the background. 

 (CONTINUE READING the next chapter)