35 yo :Parksville, Marijuania, Homesteading, Chickens, Near death

We met on a boat.  A beautiful young Persian girl who was her friend invited me to a party on a large harbour boat.  I was delighted to go. A lot of the staff were there from the hospital, especially the young staff. In retrospect I believe that this beautiful young sophisticated woman had her eye on me. However the moment my future wife arrived she barged into the conversation and was monopolizing me. She’d definitely been partying before she arrived and some there. She was all lit up.  I liked this boat business bccause all the women were in bathing suits and bikini’s.  I was just in shorts and a T-shirt. I don’t even remember if the boat actually left the dock.  I was surrounded by truly beautiful young women and quite in heaven.  There were a few years there when I felt at times like I was steak and the dogs were circling. The women were mostly in their mid to late 30’s when the biological clock was ticking and there were only a couple of us single doctors left. We were obviously ‘left’ for a reason but there was that ‘beggars can’t be choosey’ element in the air with a lot of desperation as people searched for a bargain.  I considered myself a bad man then, damaged goods, and certainly not wanting to shit in the living room.  A little tipsy I decided to escape.  She was very drunk and followed me down the gangplank to my Vanagon.

I remember peeking to see she had breasts.  I’d mostly gone out with big breasted girls and voluptuous girls but she was rather flat and I remember being satisfied that she was sufficiently endowed. I was also thinking that after the nurse and the series of failed relationships on the island, all truly beautiful voluptuous women, perhaps I should date a more intelligent crazy lady who was less endowed.  She had great ass and legs. A real beauty in her own right. 

She climbed into the back of the Vanagoand proceeded to vomit on my shoes. She thought I was great to just clean up her mess and think nothing of it. I ‘ve always been efficient and practical.  I  didn’t see the metaphor or test at the time.

I had to clean up shoes and the floor and then offered her a joint. I was thinking I wanted one, hoped she shared, and generally thought it would help settle her stomach. She was ecstactic. Turned out she loved dope.  Always had it. Smoked it constantly. I was in heaven. Another woman who shared my vices.  

She was also interested in sex immediately and followed me to my bed. Frankly I can’t remember where we first had sex only that I thought this was really a good thing, a drunk doctor who liked dope and wanted to bed me immediately.  

She was very bright and when we were having coffee the next day  I loved her little girlishness. I’m a sucker for the girl next door. I put it down to not having a sister and having had friends who were girls I’d grown up playing with when I wasn’t doing sports and  brawling with the guys.  She really was sweet.

I met her father and loved him.  Her mother was insane.  A lady who spoke with an affected British accent and dressed like she was in a play. The father was ex military. He was a scientist and geologist and helped develop the Canadian flame thrower. We shared tales of the north as we’d both spent a lot of time flying up there. He’d developed mines in the Yukon and loved that I loved the outdoors.  His wife meanwhile was competing with her daughter for my attention dancing about the house like one of those 1930’ types, everyone drinking and the whole party having the quality of depression with a last fling.  

Her brother had committed suicide.  “No one ever got over it,” she said.  

She had a black friend who seemed more than a friend but was her drug dealer. I met him with her party girl friend. and I really liked that she had her own supply though I wondered about this fellow.  She had a party girl friend who did drugs with her, a shop girl who knew the black guy.  Odd situation. My dealer was a doctor and she liked that.  As with everything she was soon using and taking over my stuff and best relationships. 

We smoked dope, drank and screwed.  

Not a bad life. 

She wanted a family and children.  She told me she really wanted children.  I wanted children.  So I proposed.

We’d known each other a week but we’d been in the woods and she loved to hike and camp, She skied , cycled  and canoed.  She loved animals. Shinto my dog loved her. We smoked dope, drank and screwed. What more could one want in a wife. Admittedly I’d grown a bit jaded. Everyone seemed to be divorcing and no one I knew had a particularly good relationship. 

I also thought,  I’d spent a year courting my ex wife and that marriage had failed despite, doing it all ‘by the book’ and ‘with due diligence’ , so why not ‘just go for it.’  She was late 30’s , if we were going to have a child we’d have to get on with it.  I wanted to move back to the country. She’d lived a year or two in the country with the ex husband and said she loved it and wanted the same. I believed her. She was a doctor. Doctors told the truth.

It was a while before she told me “women just tell men what they want to hear while they making plans to do what they really want.”

She had her internal medicine exams to complete but had done all the courses so had no more clinical work, just the exam.  This gets hazy because it later became clear that she wasn’t quite truthful about her academic situation.  I’d suggested we could open a practice and she said she could too but it turned out that she’d failed a lot of her studies. Indeed her father had given an endowment to the university for her to continue and she’d had sex with her supervisors as well. She told me “ I gave him what he wanted and I got what I needed. We both had fun””.”

It bothered me that last bit. Her having sex with her staff men , given it became clear she not only wasn’t that good a student but she wasn’t that good a doctor. She had ‘academic’ knowledge but clinically she was really mostly internship level. I felt badly because the whole issue of my having been bedded by my supervisor and being at the time the golden boy of the university, whereas it seemed she’d not have got this far if she hadn’t had sex.  It really was what was going on in my mind. As well I was wondering why God had me mirrored this way and what was I to learn.

I truly believed in karma and the law of attraction blaming myself for all the bad that happened to me and being perplexed that things went awry. Life didn’t make sense. Here I was a psychiatrist and had been a yogi and intellectual but nothing seemed to make sense. 

When it became apparent she’d always say ‘I never said that” I’d write out our agreements and get her to sign them. She lied so much I’d not know if it was the drugs or intention. When I’d confront her with the written agreement she’d just say “so what”.

It came to a head when I helped her pass her written by setting up a study regimen and literally keeping her to it. I’d done the same with my ex , and felt ominously like I’d married two different girls who were the same, party girls who only needed me to Beth them through school. I was the tutor with extras. The ex though had a great intuitive sense, loved children and was a great doctor.  

I didn’t know with my present wife because she had these odd quirks of superiority and ‘status’ and ‘class’ and treated waitresses poorly. Nothing would have been a deal breaker but I’d invested all my money in a house and moved to the country near friends.  Her only friends were party girls at the time, she said, though I’d learn later she’d had more friends but burnt bridges. Indeed she had these great friends in Kelowna and we visitted there with the intention of moving there. One of those, if only we had ,  life would have been better.  These doctors from early days were salt of the earth but we were trapped for 6 hours in a freak blizzard on the way back to Vancouver so the idea of being so isolated despite the Coquahalla lost it’s appeal since she wanted to stay in touch with the university. The alternative was the island which I liked because my friend Marion was surrounded with women and children and everyone there was having children. We had to get on with this if she was going to make the biological cut off.  I though surrounded by small children and families would be the way to go since the city was singles and gay. 

There was this pressure.  Only she didn’t pass her exams. I set up  a clinic and had a full practice working daily with lots of money coming in. She by contrast had arranged to work for free with one of her previous lovers and while I was in the country working she was living with her mother and preparing for her oral exam having now passed her written once she actually studied. She failed her oral. I was shocked.  

The plan had been for her to be a consultant like me in the country but now she was a glorified GP .  We’d diverted my money to building her a consulting office.  Now we had this consulting office which she never saw one patient in.Beautiful office. I’d renovated a large 2 car garage  two offices with waiting room and a whole separate plumbing for her examining office with sinks etc. My psychotherapy office didn’t need any additional plumbing. The fellow had a washroom in this building already but we had to do the plumbing division of the building etc for her costly office.  Now she never used it.  

I was in the country alone weeks at a time. She was in the city with her ex lovers doing more internal medicine. It turned out when I met her she’d been at Riverview doing geriatrics but had been passed over by the geriatrics supervisor who she hated and was jealous of. Her competitor a down to earth girl who just did the work she thought lacked class.No drama. My ex and her mother were into drama.  

Ironically she could be a very good doctor when she applied herself. I saw this later. When was surrounded by really good staff and she was amazing. I saw her rise to the occasion and save lives. She was just not reliable. On her own she slid down but with other good people she rose and competed with the best.  She certainly had the skill set, had great teachers.  and under the right conditions shone.  The drugs in retrospect really were a problem because she was so intermittent.  She’d spend weeks in bed.  Nothing would get done. She’d read and stare.  She insisted she wasn’t depressed. I asked her to get help. She’d drink abottle of wine and smoke a joint and nex minute be flying a mile a minute.

With the failures and her not working and me having to work all the time to pay the expenses the whole having a baby thing seemed to be put back a year.  She also wasn’t changing her drug use pattern.  I wasn’t either. We were doing mushrooms and smoking dope and drinking daily when together. We were  a great ‘drug buddy’ team. When she was high she was flying.  When she was n’t high we both were irritable.  But we loved the dog and the country and had long walks. She failed her orals.

I was shocked because I’d been doing practice orals with her for weeks and knew she knew all the material. She said the examiner didn’t like her.  She told me the examiner was a family friend. It turned out that she’d approached this examiner on a first name basis reminding her of the party her father had thrown for her family. That explained clearly why that person failed her. Anxos she pulled the Who we both know card where that card brought failure, bit like offering a bribe to the wrong policeman. She certainly had her skills and knowledge but she had tried to pull ‘who we know’ card in a place where we all pride ourselves on ‘what we know’. 

The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in contrast to medical school at the time  was still above influence peddling . This was before University of Toronto sold medical degrees if you came with a lawyer. The leaders of the College of Physicians and Surgeons  in the field protected us from this. Meritocracy and excellence with the name of the game. This was before ‘inclusivity’ and ‘tokenism’ when the club was very much exclusive and elite.   If she’d just gone in and not done her ‘mother’s’ thing but rather trusted her knowledge and skills I’m convinced she would have passed.  I was upset. Here we were another a year, no baby, in the country, and her commuting back and forth and me alone weeks at a time, still principally my single income supporting  and always more and more patients and more and more work. I’d be the principle financial provider for those 2 years and most of the rest of the marriage. She was unable to work or didn’t work.  I always worked..  

She had to wait for another year to try her exams again. That was the system.  

She didn’t want to do general practice andeventually  instead got a gp job at the mental health through our mutual friend who was sincerely embarrassed because. “She refuses to see patients.’

It turned out that she sat in her office for 5 months and didn’t see any patients. That was my wife. She was amazing.  She had done this at our office. No patient. Didn’t contact the gp. Didn’t set up appointments just sat in the office reading books. She did the same here.  I learned she’d done the same at Riverview.

“She didn’t like seeing patients. She liked being in her office. Would be there for days. Never came out. Everyone wondered what she was doing.”

Weirdest thing.  I was a psychiatrist and wondered if it was a fugue state or something.  She would try to stay in bed but I’d simply not allow that. Get the dog to bounce on her until she laughed, bring her coffee and breakfast in bed , then get her walking. I was in my first year of marriage and felt like I had a patient, a dependent depressive patient, or a borderline. One bizarre behaviour after another. I can be weird but she  was way off the charts. 

I didn’t know. I did know. I went to work. I did my chores. I socialized and I was kind and generous to her but I did object to her ‘male friend’.  I just don’t like being cuckolded and it was obvious early that was an issue. I’d meet doctors at parties and they’d act strangely to me. I’d confront her and she’d say yes they’d been lovers. I insisted that she let me know first because it was a bit difficult when the other guy knows he’s fucked your wife and you don’t know but he’s doing all this dominance attitude stuff.  It was always bizarre.

 She’d move things too. Always moving my guns and computer. And my keys.   I’d have my gun at the door because the raccoons went after the chickens, a cougar attacked the neighbours and we had bears in the yard.  I’d follow the dog downstairs in the dark grab my shot gun from the hall closet and go out with a flash light to follow the dog who was chasing whatever off the homestead property.  I was really quite furious when the bear almost mauled my dog because I only had a broom because she’d moved the gun to the bedroom closet.

“I thought you wanted it there.”  

“I didn’t move it.” 

 Always denial and lies. 

We’d organized the kitchen cupboards. “Is this where ‘we’ want them. ‘. 

‘That’s where my mother liked them.’

“I don’t care. Is this where we want them. I just want to know where things are supposed to be so I don’t have to go looking for everything’.

“Okay the cups can go there.’

I’d come back from being out with the dogs and the whole cupboard was rearranged with out any discussion with me, back to the way her mom liked it. 

“ I thought you wanted it like this”.

“I didn’t move it.”

It was a daily thing.

I now know it’s ‘gaslighting’ . She’d eventually say she never wanted move to the country but wanted me tobecause it’s passive aggressive or just insane it may have been because she was just bizarre. 

I kept thinking she was dementand encouraged her to cut hack on smoking so much dope. That sure got her angry. We also didn’t know if it would affect a baby and she was doing a lot of other drugs with a neighbour fellow she liked. I had given up early. I really didn’t know what was going on. When she was good she was great but all these other times which increased over time were insane.  I had pretty much given up on babies now she’d told me about the abortions and her PMS was so severe because she had such bad endometriosis. I never knew who she was with. The neighbours complained. My female friends worried and spoked to me about her behaviour. 

This isn’t fair and reflects the bitterness with which I look back on my marriage and this divorce. When I heard Mila Cyrus sing her perverse song “wrecking ball” I thought of this woman who literally calculated the destruction of my life.

“I knew what yo wanted was to live in Shaughnassey like Daddy and yo’d go to work and come home and I’d be like Mommy and everything would be right then. I couldn’t have the country work. I never wanted to be there. Just till you got it out of your system and like Daddy did.” This was what she told me when her father was so depressed he was suicidal and her mother was physically abusive of the old guy just like the previous ex motherlaw was to her husband. That one had attacked her husband in the ICU being pulled off by other nurses screaming, “you’re not going to die before I kill you, the poor old boy taking a lot of hits to the head and chest before three or four nurses got her off. She was a big woman and he was a little guy. The nurses tried to hush it up but the gossip mill in hospitals was nuclear powered. My ex was so mortified. The old guy lived and the near death and his wife trying to kill him and his son dead all turned him around. He either stopped drinking or cut back and was very solicitous and kindly to his wife the two having this,loving relationship in the twilight years.

Meanwhile I’ve escaped the mother in law from purgatory and now have the mother in law from hell who also hates me. She kept referring to her families accomplishments as her own. ‘ I got my medical degree”. “Really “ I’d say. “Well, my daughter got it but I did all the work. Without me she’d never have got it.”

Here my poo wife had worked all these years and her mother just owned all her accomplishments, she spoke the same way about her husband. “I found the gold mines. I told him where to look “. 

Her husband’s brother was a psychiatrist and Minister of Health. “ My mother won’t mention his name. Called her psychotic. Said she was manic depressive and should be committed. Said she was going to kill brother.”

“My father loved her”. 

“She believed he had another family in South America. Insisted I had brothers and sisters but I think it was her jealousy. She was always in these jealous rages. She wasn’t supposed to drink because of her heart but that didn’t stop her,”

My wife had take a picture of me naked because her mother wanted it. I was shocked and appalled at her asking a picture of me naked and asleep and giving it to her mother who suddenly brought this out one night screaming “ I can have yo naked if I want” 

I assumed my wife and her mother were just freaky twisted but thought it karma when we were asked to view the mother dead and there she was starkers on a gurney the attendant not even thinking to put a cover over her. I was glad my wife saw her dead. She haunted her. 

When we went through the house after her death we found hundreds of notes her mother had written to her.

“You little whore”

“My daughter is a dirty whore”

 “My daughter is a stupid bitch”

Much worse.

My wife, wearily, said, “She did that. It was her game. Hiding dirty messages where I’d just find them.”

My wife had learned the craft from the best but she didn’t deserve it. It was so sad. The doctors had tried to get the mother on antipsychotics but she’d refuse treatment and fire them.

After she died my fiend and I search through the house finding a thousand of these little notes written in perfect hand writing saying the most scurrilous things about her daughter. We had to shake out every book, cook books, the bible magazines but didn’t know if we.d got them all. 

She and her mother did drugs together and drank together. She’d tell me these things and I just said, we didn’t do that in my family. But her mother thought she was superior to everyone because she’d come from Ontario and I thought that funny because my mother thought she was superior to the westerners because she came from Ontario. 

I loved my place in the country it really was a good time when she was home with me. I was sally involved in fixing up the place putting in a wonderful hardwood floor she came home to and loved. I love when my friend installed a bidet in the big bathroom. I’d shoot rabbits with my 22 pistol on the front lawn and cook up rabbit stew for the vending. I’d shoot deer and moose that year and we’d have these great barbecues and sit under the stars on the deck sipping wine after a feast and listening to the owls. We had three cats. I played guitar and sang Crosby Stills Nash and Young Our Hous. It really was idyllic. We had this great wood burning stove. We’d make love in a great bed and I’d get up and make her coffee. We’d bought both egg laying chickens and meat chickens. She,loved biology and was truly knowledgeable about the critters, studying up onmwhat we didn’t know. I loved having the ducklings in the bath with her. Cato the arthritic rooster terrorized guests. We had 4 geese guard birds. We raised turkeys and when everyone else turkeys in the valley died of disease our S live. One loved her displaying himself only for her. We’d have these wonderful times raising chickens, and ducks, geese and turkeys. 

We had the pond in back expanded and it was all just so much joy. The ducks and ducklings. I had this path around the 2 acres and ran it each day with the dog enjoy my property.  I was so fulfilled.. I lived for the chickens, enjoying cooking everything one could with eggs becoming adept at making every egg dish and even pickling eggs, 

But she was always back in the city with her mother.  I was mostly a single man for those years of our marriage.  Id wear a skirt when I was alone. I liked wearing  skirts. I’d be alone and she’d be away for weeks on end and I’d have the birds and the,dogs and cats and think it could have been idyllic and would be idyllic when she stayed. I dreamed of family and kids and yet I was alone and sad. 

The single women all younger would bring me  baking and pie. My friends were worried about me and said it wasn’t right for a woman to leave me especially since I went to work, saw patients, did good psychotherapy and saw some miraculous cures that cemented my reputation in the community. I made friends with some of the local doctors, getting together in passing, meeting in town and having real mutual admiration. Country men are competent and I was a successa as hunter and word got around I was good with a chainsaw and a wrench, I would go round and help other guys with their projects. I love when the mean old  dog in the community attacked young Shinto and Shinto came up and kicked ass chasing the brute back to his yard. He was friends with Marion’s half wolf half husky. They got up to mischief. It was a whole wonderful village world and it would have been perfect with a wife and children. It wasn’t to be. She had always had other plans and told me she didn’t want to live in the country. The incident just made it happen. She’d never been in the same book let alone on the same page.

I think the sadness skews my memory here. We’d visit with Marion and her family and friends and it was always a good time. All these kids.  I’d played guitar with these guys and sang silly children’s songs. It was a whole lot of fun.  She did’t like kids that much and spent her time talking with the husbands of the ladies. I’d be right into the melee.  It was good fun.  Marion was concerned.  Marion introduced me to Stan Rogers and Northwest Passage. We’d all sing along  acapello whenever she put the record on. 

My psychiatrist friend asked, “Is your wife schizophrenic?” 

No. I said.

It was the drugs. She was always not there. I wasn’t there myself but I was never not functional and went months without while she was always dependent, always on something.  She was older too and I’d learn she was called ‘Hoover’ when she was younger, being such a cocaine lover.  I thankfully didn’t like cocaine because I got coke jaw, everyone knew I was on coke, I couldn’t talk and all I thought about was sex but couldn’t get an erection. I tried it a few times and every time it was the same. Out with some millionaires in California when I was there I’d tried if for the first time and had that reaction. I tried it a couple of times after and always the same. Coke jaw, looked like a drooling idiot, superhorny, no erection. 

No I liked a glass of red wine, maybe a bottle over a night and a mixture of pot and tobacco. I didn’t even like the strong pot but liked to smoke so mixed the shake with tobacco and stayed in this mildly ‘buzzed’ state. I’d tried benzos when I was sent a sample and “ate the mail”, but they knocked out memory so I didn’t like them. By contrast with pot and red wine I was mellow. A joint and a glass of wine was just perfect. She liked cocaine. Frankly when she was on cocaine she was alive. Her chronic depression lifted. When she wasn’t on drugs she was kind of dead, always in bed a lot,  always depressed. I don’t know where she was getting her cocaine from. She’d come back from the city happy and I’d be the same old same old’. 

“You’re so boring.” She’d say. 

We’d watch movies, go for walks, drink coffee on the porch watching the wild horses. I loved it.  I really never got over being a hippy. “Our house” 

She never wanted it. Her place was Shaughnassey. I’d learn later she divorced her ex when he tried to take her away from her mother. Her mother hated him as much ash hated me. 

I had great patients. I loved working with them . A wonderful lovely practice. I just missed my wife. I worried we’d not have children.

She didn’t like the country.  She wanted to work in the city.  

I’d have some guys point guns in my face and the police believed them over us though they were criminals and we were doctors. I was also seeing police who were saying the police were corrupt in the north, everyone was corrupted by the billions in drug money. Whole subdivisions and all the immense real estate on Islands was funded by football field grow operations. Shewas frightened and nothing was good. My cat was killed too. I was feeling unsafe. Guys were phoning threatening to kill me after the incident in the country.

 I’d get a lawyer because they claimed I threatened them , three guys all lying and them pointing guns at me. A road block in the night and I’d taken the bullets out of their rifle in the cab.  Said if you’re not coming out so I can get by and turn around I’m taking your gun. One with a 12 guage tried to jump me. Other demanded his rifle back I gave it to him and he immediately pointed it in my face and pulled the trigger.  If I’d not taken his bullets I’d be dead. He was perpendicular to my Vanagon.   Not a nice man.  The law liked him. So I shot of my 357 mag with flame retardant off into the sky, shock and awe, It went cannon ‘kaboom’ lit up the sky, and being crazy as I am, “Let’s dance motherfuckers!” I’d actually the bullet out of the chamber now because I was about to use the rifle as a club knowing they were just idiots and killers but if I shot them I’d go to jail. It’s weird being Canadian and thinking like that, a guy just pulling a trigger with a gun in your eye, lethal intent, near death and I have to think how best to defend myself with hurting them. They backed down real fast and moved their truck. They had whiskey bottles all over the road, I drove by , turned the truck around , and left. They’d blockaded the road where I’d not been able to turn about at night and wasn’t going to back out a mile in the dark on a tiny logging road with a sheer drop off the side. 

I’ve written this story in detail elsewhere. 

A swat team surrounded me in the morning. The police took my rifle and never returned it. Treated us like criminals. My wife who’d been a long way back in the truck claimed the men had pointed the gun at her.She was in a truck. They didn’t even think there was anyone but me which is why the one guy was willing to kill me. No witnesses. 

  The lawyer said that ‘her testimony has destroyed any credibility for you because you discharged your rifle even if it was in the air and no one disagrees with that but they all say they didn’t point guns at you and didn’t pull the trigger or fire at you and your wife corroborates their story.  If she’d said they were pointing a gun at you they’d go to jail but as it is there’s nothing we can do but go to court”. 

“How could you think they pointed the gun at you.?”

It was always and would be always about her. She existed in a rarefied world of her. I was an accessory to the one woman show. The recurrent rages and her almost killing us repeatedly should have caught my attention. But I was twice divorced, thought I was a loser, and figured it was always my fault because that’s what women say. It’s always the man’s fault. So I just kept trying to do better. 

But when she was drunk and drove the car high speed into the wall smashing my side of the car the most I might have said it was more than the booze. I just kept thinking if I could get her away from the drugs and alcohol things would be better. I kept thinking it was my fault. 

Meanwhile I didn’t think I had a problem. I didn’t think wine and pot was a problem. She was failing and dysfunctional and crazy and I was I was working, was a success really, and doing ‘my part’. She was the one never showing up, having crazy attacks and nearly getting us killed and running around.  I was plodding along doing the same old same old. Young women were wanting sex and I was refusing saying. I was married. People were coming over to my place saying, “your wife is never here, maybe just once’ and I’d say no and take the dog for a walk.  I wasn’t interested in men or adultery but felt comforted wearing skirts, usually just sarongs. 

I can only wonder how I survived.  It just got worse. At sea I’ll never forget my sailboat going off the bow of a tanker when she’d altered the radar again in the fog so we couldn’t see coming into the channel. She wanted to die but she wanted to take us all with her. That night she almost did.

Days later I said we had to separate. She begged me to stay. We once again renegotiated.  We’d go on and she’d not drink and not do drugs.  But that was all alive because from then she was plotting the end. All the while I was thinking we were getting better she was flying back and forth to Vancouver where she was using her house, unbeknownst to me, as a grow op, getting lasers and accountants to hide money and generally set things up. 

Off the Washington Coast heading south I  had the Coast Guard coming down at us out of the sun and me screaming :

 “They’re going to board us , are you sure you have no drugs.” Before we left Victoria I believed we’d had our “last joint” because the Americans could confiscate a boat with pot on it. Because she always lied and I couldn’t trust her when I saw that Coast Guard Ship heading straight out of the Dawn sun at us announcing themselves and saying they were going to board us, I had that sinking sense she had done it again. She abotaged everything to get her way but when I said

 “You are going to jail if they find any pot on this boat and if there is any they’ll find it.”

 She didn’t like the idea of going to jail and like all amateur criminals thought the police were stupid. I knew and admired the Coast Guard and had been stupid crossing a border once in my life when I was 19. I knew they were serious. My wife was generally ignorant of anything outside Shaughnassey but her grandiosity and egomania would repeatedly get us into trouble and almost cost me my life repeatedly. Like the time she began taking pictures of Mexican drug dealers doing a crime like she was a CNN reporter and she wasn’t Eve a Miss Chatelaine Cub. I had a dozen guys with machetes surrounding us that time.

Another time drunk she punched another woman and I’m talking our way out of the bar with their three husbands pushing me, all men know about the drunk woman starting fights and suddenly us poor guys are ending them. She could never be trusted on teguilla. 

Just as they Coast aGuard was coming alongside  about to board us and I was in rage screaming at her , she produced a pound of pot she had hid pen in her clothes.

This trip south in the boat was my plan to get her straight. 

We’d be at sea and wed get away from drugs and alcohol. She clearly wasn’t on the same page. 

We were minutes from having our boat confiscated and the coast guard got an emergency call and decided not to board.

But to show my own insaniety. I’d just dumped the drugs in the toilet but not flushed. I’d figured I’d only flush when they actually came along side to board. I was actually happy to see the pot and couldn’t bring myself to “waste” it unless their boat actually made contact or they unloaded their dinghy. 

We’d smoke the pot for the next two days. Great pot with just a taste of head.  I said “all’s well that ends well” . Of course it was along way from ending and would get a whole lot worse. But that didn’t change the fact that there were these great times between the wars. 

The only way I’d agreed to return to Vancouver was that if we bought a boat and lived in the harbour. I didn’t like Vancouver as a city and loved the peace and quiet and serenity of the country. In the harbour the city traffic sounds were muted and boat life was a whole wonderful world of its own.

Leaving Parksville with all that trauma behind we moved onto a boat in False Creek, not the new coastal cruiser I wanted and could manage, but rather the offshore steel sailing vessel which would eventually become my life because it would be the full time job I now had in addition to working as a doctor. She could be with her mother and I became the offshore blue water sailor.