Episode 03:  Blooming Love

 [Intro music]

Carolynn: Episode two left us dancing with the music of our budding romance surrounding us, even with some sour notes surfacing we managed to keep the beat.   Waiting the three months to meet Dave seemed like an eternity --after over 100 letters-- and calls almost every day, we fell in love again. The meeting was just frosting on the cake. We made so many memories and it’s a good thing because I would have another long wait. In a tape to Dave I said:

[Insert from cassette tape June/July where I said: “Did you ever wonder…] 

Carolynn:  I was sending tapes to Dave every week and we talked almost every night but we never ran out of things to say. We were teenagers again.

 Dave even sent me his class ring. Of course, we were both still legally married so I wore it on a chain underneath my shirt. It wouldn’t be the last time I wore his ring around my neck. When he sent it, he enclosed a note with the ring that said, “Will you go steady with me?”

After my August visit I realized that I was thirty years closer to the grave. I was anxious to be with Dave and afraid something would happen to one of us before that could happen.

Dave’s best friend at work helped provide cover so Dave could get away to see me. They were closer than brothers and he knew how unhappy Dave was. He was surprised when on New Year’s Eve the previous December Dave said that he just knew he was going to have a great year. As I recorded this in my diary on Aug 19th, 1994 I added a note that Jack told him at the time that he thought he was nuts. Dave wasn’t thinking about me then, but he had already decided he had to change his life—he was turning 50 and he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in his current toxic marriage.

[tic tock music]

Carolynn:  In letters we exchanged, I expressed to Jack that “I didn’t want to be a home wrecker,” but Jack assured me I was not. He wanted his friend to be happy and I was making him happy—he said that the marriage had been in trouble for a long time.

 I was making up for the letters I didn’t get to send to Dave in Vietnam with all the letters I was writing now. On August 23rd I wrote in my diary “I’m longing for the day when we won’t have to rely on the postal service to be in touch with each other.”

“Everyone in Michigan is anxious to meet you,” I noted in my diary later. “Everyone I tell our story to is moved. Everyone loves a love story but no one more than you and I, I told Dave. No one more than the lovers themselves!”

[Barbershop tag Falling In Love]

Carolynn:  Our phone calls didn’t always go smoothly. We both had our alternate lives. He a wife and two adult step-children at home and I had a husband circling our issues while we went to therapy. At home, I had my adult daughter, her husband and her baby living with me, as well as my youngest son who was a junior in high school.

Some days I felt that I was just Dave’s mid-life crush and he would move on. He seemed unwilling to ask for a divorce—the time wasn’t right he said. In actuality, his fear of violence and hatred of conflict tortured him whenever he thought about leaving. He felt everyone they knew and his co-workers would have to take sides he told me on Aug. 25th-- a clean break looked like the only solution. That day I received a card from Dave that said:

Male Voice: “I wish we could be together, it would take my mind off missing you.”

Carolynn:  On August 25th I wrote to Dave “Is there ever going to be a good day, when no one is hurt and you come out the good guy? I don’t want to wait for an ugly twist of fate to keep us apart. We don’t know for sure that we have another 30 years. I worry about you like you were in a combat zone, well, being in LA you are actually,” I joked.

Male Voice: “I’ve noticed a change in my health since you were here. I have developed an actual, physical body ache when I think about you that I thought only existed in corny love songs. I’ll bet it’s something that will go away once I have you in my arms again. Let’s find out.”

Carolynn:  One day on the phone he assured me he would never cheat on me-- that was not what this was about. He’d had opportunities in the past and never acted on them. This is about ME he said, His girl from home.

 But he was afraid the mail clerk would spot an affair in progress with all my letters arriving in the newsroom AND HE DIDN’T KNOW HOW HE WAS GOING TO EXPLAIN THEM if someone asked.

[music clip from Carnival by Pete Zorn]

Carolynn:  In one phone call he said he felt his son, from his first marriage, would be glad to see him get divorced. He admitted his step-kids got most of his attention during this marriage and he was distant from his own son.

In a letter to me his friend said “I’ve never really seen Dave get the respect he deserved as a husband and a father figure, from either his wife or her children. I know what kind of man he is, and trust me when I say that I’m proud to be his friend and often wish I could attain some of the strengths of character I’ve seen him display. He’s one of the most loyal, kind, trustworthy, compassionate, and genuinely friendly people I’ve ever met. Loyalty has kept him in his relationship. I think he has finally come to the end of his deep reserve of patience with the lack of return he’s gotten on his emotional investment. If it were me, I’d have bolted along ago. That you walked back into his life at this point seems to be a miracle of timing. However it turns out, he’s already much the better for having found you again.”

Carolynn:  I received a letter from Dave that said:

Male Voice:  “I love you like crazy. I didn’t want to wait until the end of this letter to tell you. You’ve always been the girl of my dreams; when we were dating in college, when I was in Vietnam, even when I was first married and especially during the last few years. It goes without saying that I’ve dreamed of little else but you since seeing you again. I’ve thought of little else. I get goofy thinking about my dreams coming true and our life together. I’ll celebrate every morning I wake up next to you. I love you more than life itself. We’ll be together soon for the rest of our lives and beyond.”

Carolynn:  During this time, my husband and I were separated but he was having hip surgery and I wanted to be there to help him. We had been good friends before we married. The fact that we broke our engagement several times should have predicted the eventual demise of our union. But, I was trying to at least honor the original friendship.

[typing sound]

 On September 6th 1994 Dave wrote his boss that, “his marriage was in shambles and he doubted it would survive.” He was exploring opportunities at WWJ in Detroit where he already knew the station manager. H was hoping to find a job near me. It was curious that we both told our bosses about our marriage melt-downs on the same day.

My diary reveals in September that I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. When Dave called and asked that same day, “How’s my girl?” I said do you want the real story or the one I distributed to the press? He laughed. He said he was having a good day and I could unload on him. We seemed to take turns dumping our troubles on each other—we found comfort in the safe space we shared. In a way it was our private dancing cheek to cheek moments.

Some days I struggled to go for the joy!  Besides being in pain and not sleeping because of the fibromyalgia, I felt I should keep trying to work things out with my husband even though it required a lot of energy and a lot of emotional energy.  But as he was being wheeled into surgery, I was holding his hand and  he turned his head and said  he loved me. I paused for a moment, I didn’t feel guilty—I felt sad. The cards life had dealt me were being shuffled and I didn’t know what cards would turn up next.

Later in a letter to Dave, I told him I was afraid that he would change his mind about me and on September 24th he reassured me with these words…

Male Voice:  I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I let you slip through my fingers once and I’m not going to let that happen again. I love you too much to make that mistake a second time.”

Carolynn:   It seemed with every phone call, day after day, warming us as if we were sitting by the fireplace our attraction continued to grow. What firemen might call a “slow burn.” But mixed in with our rekindled love, were ashes of grief that were yet to come down.

Our letters continued. I have three notebooks filled with the letters, cards, my diary I kept during our courtship, and twenty cassette tapes I transcribed. This material had been in a box under my bed for years and never re—visited. Until one day, when I really needed to hear Dave’s words, I remembered the blue plastic box under the bed that was there waiting for me with these treasures – just words on paper and cassette tape, but precious.

[Insert Barbershop: Love Letter Straight from Your Heart]

Carolynn:  At the end of September I wrote Dave, “I’m confused and upset. I feel like the other woman. I sit by the phone waiting for a call and that is my life now . . Waiting for you. I don’t make any future plans without considering you as part of them. When you said the other night that you were going to emcee the barbershop show in February of NEXT YEAR in Phoenix and had already made plans to drive from LA, it sounded to me like you are going on with your life as it is—even into the coming year. No Carolynn in the plans for the future? And you hinted that I would just be in the way if I joined you. Excuse me, is this the same guy who said he can’t be separated from me, wants to spend every night with me? I think I need to go on with my life and stop putting you in my plans going forward I wrote to him.  I am setting myself up for disappointment and causing myself never ending pain. Like death by a thousand cuts. This ‘someday” you keep talking about is very elusive. Fate can change the course of our lives in a heartbeat. It has once already. As I said to you, I only understand two courses of action – going after your heart’s desire or deciding not to. I don’t understand this grey area-this seemingly endless, painful, dreaming, in limbo stage we seem to be in now. Maybe this is another letter you should throw in the ocean. I think I need to stop expecting you to ask for a divorce and carry on with my life as it now exists. IF this hurts you, I am sorry, you have done nothing wrong, I guess,”  is what I wrote in the letter and I went on to say, “I will change my expectations and maybe that will make us both happier.  I have just expected too much.”

[ Insert Barbershop It Wouldn’t Hurt…]

Carolynn: I was at a low point. I felt he wasn’t serious about a future with me. My daughter and my best friend both called Dave because they were worried about me and why he was dangling me along. Dave told them he had things he had to do before he could move forward with a divorce. I found out later that he had serious issues with his step-son who had pointed a gun at him and threatened him.  He hadn’t told anyone what he really was dealing with in his domestic life which also included violence directed toward him. What man wants to admit he is being abused! Now I was worried about him.

[Insert music Tic Tock clip]

Carolynn:  Our calls and letters continued. I knew he had to arrange his life in his timing and all I could do was wait. I didn’t wait last time and it cost us both dearly. By mid-October we were talking about Thanksgiving and maybe having a few days to see each other if I went to Phoenix to visit my family and he was there to see his parents.

In a letter to Dave on October 24th I wrote: “My husband sent me a long letter telling me how sorry he was for the way he treated me and how he hoped we might be able to work things out.”  Dave I wrote, I don’t know what I am supposed to do with this—he destroyed my trust in him and our relationship. It is always sad to see a marriage break up but the people in them are entitled to a real life. I can’t imagine how you have stayed in your relationship for so long given what you have told me.”

When we talked the next day I told him I was going to see his parents when I went to Phoenix for Thanksgiving. I said I wouldn’t tell them about us, but I would tell them of my life and that we had been in touch and that I loved him. He said he would write them ahead of time and tell them of our feelings after being in touch again. This was a boost to me and a departure from his “someday” kind of talk. Our future together seemed closer now.  I got a card from him about that time in which he wrote:

Male Voice: “Each day we’re getting closer to being together forever. Hang in there. I’ll make it worth your while.”

Carolynn: My daughter asked me what the “worth your while” meant. I told her it was private. She said, tell him if he doesn’t come to me she would break both his legs!

I made plans to be with my family and told them about Dave and I. Of all the things I’ve asked them to accept, my divorces, now maybe another one, this is the biggest thing I have asked them to accept—because Dave and I are both still legally married.

[Insert Barbershop Autumn Leaves]

Carolynn:  November was here. Three months had passed since our meeting. I sent Dave a card that said, “I’m sending this card NOT just because It’s your birthday…licking the stamp was the closest thing to sex I’ve had in quite a while. Happy birthday!” Dave was turning 50.  He wrote to his parents thanking them for their wonderful parenting and that he would see them on his birthday and stay for Thanksgiving. In this letter he added:

Male Voice: “ P. S. and there’s a big postscript. On January 1st of this year resolved to make my 50th year the best year of my life and I wasn’t saying that just to convince myself. I really believed it. There have been many hills and valleys all year long as you know, but for the most part it’s been an extraordinary year.

 The MOST extraordinary thing that happened this summer when, through a series of coincidences, I found Carolynn Bauer. She’s living in a suburb of Detroit. We have been in touch on practically a daily basis by phone and by cards and letters. We’ve seen each other and spent time with each other in Los Angeles. We’ve gone over a lot of ground, answered a lot of questions about ourselves and made some decisions about how we want to spend the rest of our lives. Are you sitting down??? We are still in love-- with each other. We’ve decided we want to be together. We want to be married. If you want to take a break here, go ahead, I’ll wait for you until you’re ready.

[Pause]

I know there are a few big problems here. Namely, we’re both currently married to other people. Well, before Carolynn and I started talking again, I had already decided to leave my marriage and Carolynn had pretty much written off her marriage. There’s a lot more to this story that I’d prefer to tell you face to face and someday soon, I will do that. Meanwhile, Carolynn is going to be in Phoenix for Thanksgiving and she would very much like to see you both again. I’ve given her your phone number and I think she’ll call you this weekend before I get to town. I know this a lot to dump on you all at once, but sometimes life is that way. Love, Dave”

[Barbershop Just When I Thought… ]

Carolynn: I arrived in Phoenix and was staying with my mother. I phoned Dave’s “folks” and went to see them the next day. I was a little afraid of what greeting I would get. When I saw them, I teared up. I felt the same love for them I experienced thirty years ago when I was about to join the family as Dave’s wife. I shared photos of my kids with them and we talked about Dave and Vietnam. His mom teared up when she said, “They shouldn’t take such a sweet, young, innocent boy and force him into such a harsh, ugly reality.” I hugged her and said, “I will take care of him! I promise.” As I was leaving she used Dave’s wife’s name by mistake when saying good-by to me. I laughed and I said, that’s ok, I understand, but you better not call Dave’s wife Carolynn.

Dave arrived the next day, with his wife. The next morning, on Thanksgiving, which was also Dave’s birthday, he had coffee early with his mom before the rest of the family woke up. His mom whispered to him, “You know, we always did love Carolynn.” Later that SAME day . . . .

[phone ringing]

Carolynn:  As I said hello to Dave, I heard him sobbing. He said, “Mom died this morning.” 

[organ music]

Carolynn:   Happiness and sadness often occur as quickly as the changing of the seasons. Dave and I were under the falling leaves, numb to the brisk wind of the approaching chill as our marriage plans floated away.

Carolynn:  I would like to thank The Barbershop Harmony Society for the use of many tags from their website. Thank you to my friend for voicing Dave’s cards and letters. In addition, thank you the University of North Alabama where I earned a Master of Arts in Writing with the addition of these podcasts to my program there. Thank you to Dave’s brother, Bill, for allowing me to use his recording of Over There in Paradise for many spots in my podcasts. Dave’s other brother Pete’s family allowed me to use clips from the song Pete wrote and performed called, Carnival.

Carolynn: I hope you will tune in to the next episode where our saga continues. I call it, LOVE AND LOSS.

[Fade in and out, Over There In Paradise song]