We Missed our Train

As we sprinted up the last of several consecutive escalators moving travelers from the subterranean interchange between the Gare Montparnasse Train Station and the Paris Metro system to the elevated train platforms serving all points west of Paris, I quickly scanned the large digital schedule boards.  My rapid glance had the goal of, at best, discovering at which track our Rennes-bound high-speed train was waiting or, at a minimum, gaining an update on the time.  Upon acquiring the bare minimum of knowledge sought, 7:55, my heart rate slowed a little and we were able to downshift from a sprint to a run.  “We are not going to miss our train,” I confidently announced. 

The first time the remote possibility that we might miss our train began gnawing at the back of my mind was as we were pleasantly strolling along Rue Mouffetard, vainly trying to take in all that the oldest and most sumptuous street in Paris was offering up that sun-soaked July morning.  As the search for our metro station become more prolonged than expected, I realized I wasn’t exactly sure how long the trip from Place Monge to Montparnasse-Bienvenue, with its corresponding line changes, would actually take.  I started to wonder whether we might actually begin the first day of our honeymoon in Paris by missing the train to Mont Saint-Michel, the one part of our trip which my Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology-holding wife was in the highest anticipation. 

After switching from line 7 to the touristy line 6, my panic become both visible and urgent enough that I informed my wife I was worried we might miss our train, a train for which I’d bought non-transferable tickets months in advance, so as to save a couple hundred euro.  The bewildering disappointment which immediately crossed her face was painful to observe, knowing it was my nonchalant approach to our morning commute which had placed us in this stressful situation.  The nonchalance transformed into desperate intensity as we exited the subway and began pushing, spinning and dodging our way through what felt like a mile’s length of crowded, twisting underground corridors which would eventually spill out at the above mentioned escalators. 

It’s important to note that I’d never missed a train.  Not during the year of living in Paris nor the semester of taking college students all around Europe.  I’d been close, for sure, often too close for comfort.  The closest was that day in Budapest in which our group was scheduled to end the day of sightseeing by sleeping on an overnight train to Sighisoara, Romania.  For some reason, likely because we’d caught a different train at a similar time, I’d had it in my mind we were supposed to board that train at 9 PM.  As we were casually riding on the metro to another site, all of our luggage safely stored at our hostel, my conscious thought drug from my memory the realization that our overnight train was actually scheduled to leave not at 9 PM but rather 7 PM..  Fortunately, we still had plenty of time to board that train.  Unfortunately, the two of our group members who weren’t with us were still operating under the 9 PM time schedule and were unreachable due to our spotty cell service.  Fortunately, we never had to implement the plan in which the rest of the group went ahead as scheduled while I stayed behind with remaining two students, taking the next day’s night train, because they had both randomly checked messages in a wifi-equiped café, prompting them to return to the hostel with enough time to board the train with the rest of the group.  Other than Dawson throwing up on our luggage in the middle of the night, the rest of our train ride to Romania was uneventful.  Now the bedbugs we picked up while in Romania certainly created some uncomfortable complications.  That’s, however, a whole different story…

While you could argue I lucked out that day in Budapest, as we were sprinting up the Gare Montparnasse escalator, I was still the owner of an unblemished train-catching record.  Upon seeing we still had five minutes before our train left the station, I breathed a sigh of relief and wondered whether this story would top the Budapest story in the list of train near-misses.  As the title of this blog entry foreshadows, this day would end by topping the short-list of train actual-misses. 

Those five minutes remaining before our train’s scheduled departure were sufficient for locating and arriving at the correct track.  The surprise kick-in-the-gut, however occurred when the SNCF employee stationed at the track’s entrance explained to us, while simultaneously closing the gate, that the high-speed TGV trains close their doors to passengers two minutes before their scheduled departure.  She then directed us toward the ticketing office where we could, at a premium price, purchase tickets for the next TGV train which would take us to Rennes, where we could hop on a shuttle to Mont Saint-Michel.   

We bought the tickets.  We arrived only an hour later than the original plan.  We had a great day walking around the beach and the medieval abbey.  My wife didn’t hold my lack of thoughtful preparation against me.  Sarah also experienced her first encounter with the reason one always leaves margin for the unexpected in their schedule and budget when travelling internationally; the unexpected is guaranteed to occur in one form or another.  Missing a train scheduled three months in advance, though is something I never thought would actually happen to me.  I had worked too long to organize our trip and I am too savvy of an international traveler to make such an obvious mistake.

I’ve been mulling over this blog entry for months, stuck on how to seamlessly morph the above story into the larger point of this post.  Since I still haven’t been able to land the transition I’m going to have to make do with [insert choppy transition here].

As is quite well documented on this blog, several years ago I experienced something I never thought would happen to me, a divorce resulting from the death of a marriage.  Sarah has experienced the same thing as well.  Though this likely doesn’t make us unique among those who have gone through a divorce, neither of us had any thought that our first marriages would end by any means other than death.  That is, after all, the vow we both made and the commitment which our families have modeled for us.  I’m not completely sure how much of a role the mindset of “this could never happen to us” actually played in our respective divorces but I’m confident it was a contributing factor.  Similar to how the first tiny and almost insignificant moment of pre-panic, “we might not make our train” entered my mind while walking along Rue Mouffetard that first morning of our honeymoon, there was a similar moment during my previous marriage in which the wildly fearful thought of “we might not make it” first burrowed into the back of my mind.  I’m not sure whether the eventually divorce could’ve been avoided by that point but I’m confident I should’ve given stronger consideration to the fear which was likely trying to prevent shipwreck of a marriage which had entered some dangerous waters. 

As is also quite well documented on this blog, I’ve survived that unexpected life event and have come out much stronger on the other side.  I’m finally a few months away from fulfilling a goal I’ve had for the better part of a decade (more on that in a different post).  A little over a year after abruptly mashing them together into a new blended family, our kids are demonstrating the comfort, acceptance and significance that comes from the (relatively) healthy family unit Sarah and I have worked incredibly hard to foster.  Last, and possibly the opposite of least, Sarah and I are experiencing a unity and satisfaction in our marriage that neither of us dared  dream was even a possibility just a few years ago.  It’s in no way an oversell to share that I’ve never been in as good of a place in my life as I am right now.  Neither is it an overstatement to claim that I’ve done a LOT of work to get to this place.  On the flip side, admitting that I might have lucked into snagging an incredible life partner who is a tad bit out of my league could surely be deemed an understatement.

For this reason, it’s easy to understand why I’m committed to never again missing the train.  The false confidence of “it could never happen to us” will be thoroughly unwelcome in our marriage.  Experience has provided some painful lessons regarding what’s worth fighting about having fair but passionate debates about and what needs to be immediately dropped.  Our previous marriages have revealed the heart-wrenching reality of where a relationship could find itself if foundational aspects of what makes a marriage work are ignored or taken for granted.  We are currently experiencing the relational ride of our lives but we are painfully aware of the need to diligently stay on schedule because we’ve missed the train in the past.

In order to ride this metaphor to the end of the line, I’ll wrap up this post by reluctantly detailing how the day-trip to Mont Saint Michel which kicked off our honeymoon ended.  Due to my misreading of the shuttle schedule, we missed our return train to Paris.  So yeah, I was two for two in missing trains that day.  While the second mistake didn’t cost us as much money as the morning’s mishap, thanks in part to a friendly family from Minnesota who gave us two unused shuttle tickets, we did end up returning to Paris a couple hours later than planned, causing us to postpone the planned boat ride on the Seine to a different evening.  Apparently, it’s just as dangerous to assume it could never happen in the first place as to assume it could never happen a second time.  By now, I think those of you following along at home can make your own metaphorical connection.  I think you can also understand why, for the rest of the trip, my wife had me double-check and, occasionally triple-check, our remaining train schedule and flight schedule and cabaret show time and photo-shoot schedule and….  Fortunately, we were on time for everything else during the remainder of our honeymoon.  Hopefully, the rest of our honeymoon established a life-long trend.

The Fairy Tale that didn't get rained out

When I woke up at 3:58 in the morning last Saturday, I knew there was no way I was getting back to sleep.  I was confident of this unfortunate reality not only because the nervous energy resulting from the realization that I’d be getting married in just over 12 hours had already started coursing through my body but also because I couldn’t stop watching the periodic lighting strikes which, though a long way away, were already lighting up the early morning darkness.  

Our ceremony took place in a ravine (aka “the clearing”) at the far end of my parents’ farm.  Sarah chose that place not only for the natural beauty but also because it was there, on the back of a four-wheeler, that I first told Sarah I loved her.  As we watched the photographer posing Sarah on a bridge over ravine’s creek, my sister turned to me and stated, “she looks like a fairy and I mean that in a good way.”  It was at that moment that Sarah’s “vision” (as she kept referring to it) for our wedding ceremony finally made sense in my mind.  The arch, decorations, dress and even the wreath crown she was wearing all worked in unison to create a fairy-tale like aura to our ceremony.  The vision came together despite the fact that just a few hours earlier, we were quite concerned it was never going to happen.

In order to get back to “the clearing”, one must drive across a freshly plowed field.  After just a bit of rain, this field becomes impassable to anything heavier than a four-wheeler.  Eventually, the lightning which I had been watching at four in the morning brought along a downpour lasting almost an hour.  At 6:07 AM, my dad declared “the clearing” dead.  It appeared we’d be relocating the ceremony to the back-up spot, a shaded area on the bank of our farm pond.  While the back-up spot was an idyllic farm setting, it didn’t quite have the ambiance Sarah was going for.  By 6:08 AM, it seemed the only question we had left was whether the four-wheeler would be able to get through the mud and back to “the clearing” so we could pick up the arch frame we’d left there the night before.  

As my dad was driving back to “the clearing” to answer that question, he noticed the ground becoming less muddy, even turning to dust, as he drove further from the house and closer to “the clearing”.  In a surprising turn of events, “the clearing” had been resuscitated.  While we’d received over half an inch of rain at the house, “the clearing” (about a half mile away) had gotten just enough rain to settle the dust, which is the exact amount my dad had been hoping for (despite that “just enough to settle the dust” was usually a derogatory description of a rain shower when used by a famer).  As the ceremony began at about 4:45 PM, with the line of cars that had driven through the field parked along the top of the ravine, the weather was a perfect 82 degrees, partly sunny and with a gentle breeze.  While that breeze would eventually blow in a near tornado just as we were wrapping up the post-ceremony meal we’d shared back up at the house, at the moment our ceremony began, I was giddy with how we’d managed to pull off the perfect weather for an outdoor wedding.  

After a processional consisting of our elder niece carrying our younger niece, our daughter as a flower girl and our oldest son picking up and carrying our youngest son after he couldn’t convince him to walk, Sarah hugged her dad just as the medley playing in the background changed to “Bless the Broken Road.”  At that moment, my giddiness was overcome by tears of joy.  The real-time image of this beautiful woman, reddish-brown hair falling down onto a stunning white dress while flashing a smile lighting up everything in its sight, walking down the aisle with the intent of becoming my bride was, in my mind, juxtaposed along with the images of the “broken road” that had brought us to this point.  For a few minutes, the emotion was a bit too intense to keep inside, so it found an escape route through my tear ducts.  

Really, that “broken road” has been a large theme of my writing on this blog over the past couple of years.  Similarly, the theme of the homily given by my friend who officiated the wedding was “beauty from ashes.”  The time I spent in Breakthrough, four years ago this month as well as the therapist sessions before and after that intense month of counseling were, in a large part, focused on helping me acquire what I found formalized on my wedding day, a primary relationship that is healthy, fulfilling and mutually complimentary.   When I started that journey toward a healthy relationship, I had no idea what was coming at me.  On the other side of that journey, though I’m so thankful for how the pain of the past has contributed to the joy of the present.  Of course, now real life with Sarah (kids, bills, careers, annoying each other) begins continues.  I know enough about myself and my wife to know that this new journey, while not always easy, is going to be successful and fun and maybe even provide a few more moments which bring tears to my eyes.

In one of those weird twists to a story, two of my best friends who were both supposed to be groomsmen in my first wedding 19 years ago but, for various reasons, were unable to be in attendance, ended up being a part of this wedding celebration.  Michael, mentioned above, drove from California to Iowa to officiate the ceremony.  While I can’t state how grateful I am that he made it a priority to be a part of the wedding, I’m not quite convinced that his long drive gave him the right to declare “that’s enough” as I was enjoying kissing my new bride.  My other friend, Jason, came down from Omaha for the “before they say I do” party Sarah’s parents threw for us back in May.  Now that I’ve ensured that all my long-time friends have been able to participate in either my first or second wedding, I’m officially retiring from the wedding business… and continuing my life with one of the most beautiful and intelligent women this world has ever seen.