"Why did I choose to marry a man who has so little time for me?"

An excerpt from “Trouble and Strife,” by Johanne Levesque

Tuesday, October 21^st, 1930

After my morning ritual of getting the children ready for school, I watch them leave from the living room window.  Every day I notice more and more children poorly shod and thinly clad, wan faced and ill-nourished, right here in Rosedale.

            What a pity.

            I take the handle off the iron and rest it on the kitchen stove to heat.  While it heats, I prepare a pot of stew and then return to my ironing.  I spray water lightly on Eugene’s shirt.  I take my time ironing each shirt because Eugene likes them just so.  If they do not look the way he wants them, I have to do them over again.

            The house is so empty now that the children have returned to school.  Ever since Alvin is no longer home with me, I feel lost like I’ve just been fired from a job.  I had a sense of purpose before, now all I do is wait for them to come back home.  I fill my days with laundry, sewing and tidying.  Somehow this is not the life I imagined when I married Eugene.

            By the time we married, he was already independently wealthy and I thought my life would be filled with trips around the world and exciting galas.  I thought he would be such a great companion.

            I started to date Eugene when I was sixteen.  He was employed by my father at the time, pumping gas at my parent’s general store.  Even then he was thrifty and worked long hours and I spent more time with other boys than I did with him.  If I knew then what I know now, who knows where I would be.  If I knew that I would spend the rest of my life alone with children, waiting for a grumpy husband that never stops working, I might have paid better attention to the boys who playfully flirted with me.  I don’t remember the last time Eugene smiled at me.  I feel so lonely here in this house.  I wish I had a life companion who couldn’t wait to spend time with me, who enjoyed my company.  Not a money producing machine.  His money means nothing to me, and it makes me careless.  Why did I choose to marry a man who has so little time for me?

If you liked this excerpt from Trouble and Strife, you can buy the book at any of the following links:

Austin Macauley Publishers™ (my publisher)
Amazon.ca
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Barnes & Noble
Indigo
Walmart