Three Wife Day

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On this Mother’s Day I find myself remembering one of the strangest days of my life–not a Mother’s Day, exactly, but a Three Wife Day.

It happened about a decade ago. Two weeks previously, my first wife, Gail, who remarried and lives in Seattle, emailed me to say that she was coming back to Vermont with her husband and two children to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their wedding. It would be a classic Vermont early-summer garden party volleyball in the yard and early tomatoes off the vine, beer and barbecue and morning glories and clematis climbing the south wall of the old farmhouse. Would I like to come along to the party? And would I like to bring my (current) family?

It wasn’t such a bizarre request. On a brief return visit Gail had met my older daughter Zoe (the child of Rebecca, my second wife) but she hadn’t met my younger daughter Maddy or my third–and last wife, as Barbara insists on being called. And Gail and I were on excellent terms, and still are: she and her family stay with my younger sister Jennie when they visit London. These days we’re more like cousins, Gail and I: it’s the physical distance between us, rather than divorce, that keeps us apart.

The party fell on a weekend when Barbara was off playing a flute concert and I had Zoe, then 11, and Maddy, then 4. I’ll take the girls along, I thought. By chance, though, Gail called when I was out, and had a long chat with Barbara, who then insisted that she wanted to come too, after she got back from her concert.

This all may sound very New Age Familyish, full of sunshine and love and forgiveness, but deeper forces were stirring beneath the sparkling surface. When Barbara told her friends she was going to a party with my ex-wife, they were more skeptical. You’re a saint, said one. You’re nuts, said another.

Zoe, too, was aware that something out of the usual was happening: “Whose party are we going to?” she asked, and when I told her she gave me a hard look and raised an eyebrow.

In the event, things went pretty well. The weather was fine, everyone was friendly and courteous. At one point, though, I sensed things were moving out of my control when Gail said, “Nobody ever made me as mad as Tim.” Wife number one and wife number three exchanged meaningful glances, as as they went off together to talk I took a deep breath and headed for the carrot cake.

Maddy chased after Gail’s son, giggling delightedly. Zoe played soccer with Gail’s daughter as the sun set over wave upon wave of the Green Mountains, and we might have stayed longer except that I had to hold together this brief, whirling galaxy of families and get Zoe back on time to wife number two.

It was hard to tear everyone away. A fusion had taken place over time and across family lines, and one of those Vermont hippy evenings was shaping up, a relic of dreams of making the whole world into one large family. For me, though, everything had shrunk down to the need to break that happy union, pull those connections apart and get Zoe back to wife number two by 6 p.m. or there would be hell to pay.

The wives and daughters finally said their goodbyes. I dragged my current family away, packed them into the car and began bumping under the trees down the overgrown driveway toward the road.

At that point I was heaving a sigh of relief, thinking that I’d actually pulled it off, this Blended Family miracle, this three wife day, but of course I was underestimating just how strong the uxorial force can be, and how much stronger when three wifely planets are in alignment. The driveway emerged from the trees, and I pulled up at the Monkton-Vergennes road. I looked left and right, and then realized that, even though by then I had lived in this country for nineteen years I suddenly couldn’t remember which side of the road to drive on.