My life has become more wonderful because of the birth of my grandson, EJ.
My daughter's life has fallen apart, and she has picked up the pieces to carry on, because her marriage has ended. The fairy tale and the romance are finished. Her husband has shown his true colors.
Cathie said she fell in love again with her childhood sweetheart. Yet he couldn't maintain the fantasy world he created for too long. Eventually, the wedges he tried to drive between her and friends and other family members gave way. Her heart broke down the barriers until she finally saw the truth.
The girl Ian had dated before Cathie was pregnant. He led us to believe that this girl had become pregnant before she became involved with him, and that he had found her out and broken off their relationship. Since I worked with her, her mother, and her grandmother at Kentucky Downs, it became a rather sticky situation, or at least an uncomfortable work atmosphere for me. I couldn't freely talk about my daughter's marriage. Then I couldn't openly share the news that she was expecting. We felt like spies, hiding from the KGB or the CIA or something, watching over our shoulders for the people who were out to get us.
I started seeing signs that Amanda (the other young lady in question) wanted to make peace. But Ian filled Cathie's mind with fear and prejudice, at least as much as a spouse could do. Cathie wanted to trust and support him. She believed in him.
My younger brother has a girlfriend, a young single mother with adorable children I happen to be very attached to. Ian told us (both Cathie and me) this woman was dealing drugs, and that he had her on videotape. According to him, her arrest was imminent. Likewise, Cathie's brother Paul was involved in all manner of shady business, along with his girlfriend. Ian told Cathie that Paul's girlfriend -- another young single parent -- had tried to seduce him (Ian), and that she had announced her intentions to either break up his marriage or cause him to lose his job.
Cathie took on Ian's problems. She took over paying the mortgage and the other bills, many of which he said were left over from his first marriage. He'd told Cathie his first wife had maxed out his credit cards and run off with another man. Now Amanda was suing Ian for child support, too. But Cathie was confident that they could handle the financial burdens together.
Unbeknownst to the rest of her loved ones, Ian had blown up at Cathie over their continued problems while her pregnancy progressed. She was still working at her army base, where she is an E5. Even we knew that she had developed nausea and depression. She had trouble keeping food down. Ian told her he needed space, and he refused to actively participate in what should have been a loving, bonding experience for them as expectant parents.
On Christmas day, Cathie called me to tell me she couldn't come over because she was sick. Just more of the same, she assured me. She couldn't keep food on her stomach, so the prospect of holiday dinner with the family was daunting.
We went to my older brother's house, though I wished Cathie could have come along. Cathie had also developed gestational diabetics (which has since gone away), and she was required to test her blood sugar at intervals throughout the day. She's a medic with a calm attitude about needles and blood, so at least she was handling that part well.
The birth of the baby in January was both wonderful and sad. I wasn't present for the birth, as I had hoped to be, because I was having trouble getting on base to the hospital. Likewise, Ian was also absent. We were told that it was because he was in court with Amanda over their daughter Maddie's child support and custody.
EJ was three weeks early. Just as they were preparing Cathie for a C-section, EJ decided to come naturally. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck, but he was still healthy, if tiny, at 5 lbs and 10 oz.
A few weeks later, I was gravely concerned about Cathie's emotional health and the state of her relationships. She had been trying, since December or so, to find and talk to Amanda about Maddie and Ian. She wanted to make peace, even though Ian did not want her talking to Amanda or any of her friends and relatives.
I had managed to help her get back on speaking terms with Paul, and he gave Cathie's cell phone number to Amanda.
That's when things began to get interesting....
Cathie told me she and Amanda had gotten along fine, and the babies were so cute together. Amanda agreed to let Ian see Maddie, even though the hearing had determined that Ian would not get formal visitation for a year.
Cathie also told me she was beginning to doubt some of the things her husband had told her. I was already taking some of it with a grain of salt. After all, wives of cops don't have to be cloaked in complete secrecy. I was married to a state trooper for years, and my older brother has been in law enforcement of some kind ever since he became a police dispatcher at the age of 18. I had thought Ian just needed to learn to be more laid-back about things.
Cathie had been fighting against rumors she had been hearing, only a few of which I'd heard too. Rumors that he'd had an affair with Paul's girlfriend before she started dating Paul, that he'd been caught having sex with a girl in the WalMart parking lot in the back seat of Cathie's extended cab pickup truck, and that he was currently dating a teenaged girl named Heather. We actually drove around town looking for his car.
We were back at their house in the baby's room where Cathie had been sleeping for weeks in an extra bed (she'd said because she kept Ian awake when he was home), when we heard a car in the driveway. Ian's mother (who lives alone next door) was dropping him off. I had long since become uncomfortable being there when Ian came home because I didn't want him to feel I was trying to be a third wheel or interfere with their relationship in any way. I told Cathie and baby EJ goodnight and went home.
A few hours later, my mother was trying to wake me to tell me Cathie's cell phone number was on the caller-ID. I was so groggy, I hadn't even heard the phone ringing. I was trying to call Cathie back when I heard her at the front door. She was on the phone with either my brother or her stepmother, EJ's carrier and the diaper bag in her arms.
Ian is a city police officer. He had been in a fight at work. His sternum had been cracked, so he'd been sent to the hospital emergency room. He had told them to call his mother. Although we thought at the time he asked that Cathie not be called, we now believe that the authorities simply were not aware that he had a wife.
After he was home, Cathie had gone into Ian's room (which was what she had been calling the master bedroom for a while) to talk to him. She asked if he wanted to hold his son. He let her lay the month-old infant on his chest and held a bottle of formula to feed him. Cathie was still doing her darnedest to create a bond there.
His cell phone, which was beside him on the night table, made a sound as a text message came through. Cathie said he got a look of panic on his face, dropped the bottle so it fell on EJ's face (causing him to cry), and reached to turn the phone over. After Ian fell asleep from his pain medication, Cathie gave in to the temptation to pick up the phone and read the message. The phone was filled with messages from Ian's 18 year old girlfriend Heather. She was upset when he hadn't shown up for their date, but she was freaked out when he had told her he had been to the emergency room. She wanted to know if he was okay now that he was home.
Heather lives in Portland, TN, not far down the road. She had met Ian at the bingo hall in Franklin, where he works security. He told Heather that Cathie and he were in the middle of a divorce, but she was waiting until the house deal was settled before signing the papers. Ian said Cathie was buying the house. He and Heather were discussing engagement rings and a cute little house in Tennessee. Heather had hinted that she might be pregnant, but she wanted him to be there when she took her test. Ironic, since the reason he had missed the birth of his son and the custody hearing about his daughter was because he'd been with Heather that afternoon.
Heather wasn't the only one. More and more of the ugly story was spilling out.
The police department was unaware that Ian was even married. Since both Ian and Cathie had cell phones, they had never bothered with a house phone. Cathie had visited the PD with Ian when they were dating last March, and that was the last time the chief had ever seen them together. I knew the two were thinking marriage then, and I felt a maternal sense of concern (okay, then, panic) because it was just too soon. But then I let him draw me in, like he does, and I learned to love him -- at least the "him" that I thought he was. The real Ian is a macho fraud, a fake, and a player. The bee sting incident had caused me to bond with him and care about him.
Cathie went to stay at her dad's for a few days. She had spent nearly a week over there just shortly before, which had caused me some concern, but it wasn't unnatural. It turns out that Cathie's stepmother had never trusted Ian and had always thought he was a conceited jerk, so it was difficult for her to restrain from the "I told you so" thing.
The truth about Christmas day was that Ian had yelled at Cathie about how bad their finances were, and how she was driving him crazy, and if she didn't leave him alone he was going to shoot himself. He also told her he wanted a divorce. He never filed for divorce, or even consulted a lawyer, because he was always broke.
I believed in Ian mostly because I loved Cathie and trusted her judgment. She was blinded by the need to be loyal to the man she loved. He was a complete sham.
Ian dated Amanda for a long time. They broke up once, after she was pregnant with his baby (a fact she never disputed, though he'd personally told me otherwise), when Amanda found out he was cheating with another girl. Amanda was crushed.
During most of her pregnancy, Amanda was working as a teller at the track, and she spent a great deal of that time feeling sick and depressed. I knew she had a boyfriend whom she said had told her he doubted the baby was his, and I thought that was just a dodge on this guy's part, but I wasn't privy to names and other details. When Cathie started dating Ian, I had no clue about the connection. Actually, it was Ian himself who explained the relationship to me. I was surprised but impressed by his standup attitude. He didn't want me to hear rumors and take it the wrong way, and his relationship with Amanda was in the past. I could see where she had probably pursued a relationship with Ian after learning she was pregnant by whichever boy had dumped her.
Or so went the story from the fantasy land of Ianworld.
In reality, when Ian met Cathie again, she had been split up from boyfriend Chris (another soldier) for several months. She had just returned from a tour in Iraq only to find out she had been extended and she would have to return.
Then she met Ian again. It was like a window opening. It made all the other things in her life make sense -- except for returning to Iraq. Here is an excerpt from a post from last year in this blog:
Cathie came home from Iraq a few months ago, only to find out she had to go right back. She tried to be optimistic about it, but she was really sad. She was also told that when she returned to the US, she'd be headed for a post in Washington state. (That's all the way over on the other side of the country, boys and girls.)
Ian said not to worry. He said he could get a job there so they could still be together.
What a guy, what a guy! They were already talking marriage within days. (That's just his style.) She thought she'd found the love of her life after once losing him when they were kids, when his family had moved away.
Cathie's stay was extended by a paperwork snafu, and she rented a car to come back home from Fort Bragg (NC), but she spent most of her time with Ian. I was not sold on him yet, because Cathie and I hadn't even discussed Chris yet, and my brain was sending up red flags and fireworks. (Red sparks, Hagrid! Someone's in trouble!)
When Cathie returned to Iraq, Ian made up with Amanda. They resumed their engagement. Then Cathie told him (during one of their daily phone conversations) that she was pregnant. The army wouldn't keep her in Iraq , so she would be sent back to Fort Bragg. She and Ian decided to get married when she returned to the US.
Last year, March signaled the beginning of change at the track, with a new group planning to purchase the controlling shares the company. There were significant changes at CafePress that impacted them as well. Even their Google ranking dropped like a rock for some time.
I had doubts about both of my jobs. I was at a phase in my participation in the Vanderbilt study on depression where I was kind of winging it, going solo, like Dumbo when he finds out he doesn't have a magic feather in his cap anymore. (Oh, you know, the cartoon. If you have never seen it, you are deprived. Go rent it.)
All this stuff sent me into a dark place for a while. I needed a flashlight to find my way out. And then I found my wand to guide me. Lumos. But it took several more months before I really felt better. Life did change at the track when it changed hands. For one thing, my brother no longer worked there. For another, Paul worked in Bobby's place, though not for the same pay. My hours changed, getting worse, then better, partly because several other tellers began to leave.
I also quit doing the Kentucky Downs gear through Horses-Around on CafePress. The wife of one of our new owners was an Equine Artist (because they are apparently superior to the rest of us peons), so the track is now filled with her work. There's a monochromatic screen printed t-shirt and sweatshirt now on sale, replacing my designs and t-shirts. I rescued my stuff from the cabinet where they had been stashed and took them home. Even though I had legal signed permission to use the KYD name and facilities to sell merchandise, I decided it would useless to complain. All I would likely do is endanger my job as a teller.
Amanda and Ian had a disagreement on June 25, no doubt engineered by him. Cathie returned home on July 3. She and Ian married on July 5. I think when it came down to the wire, Cathie just had a better paying job than Amanda. Also, the fact that she could be deployed to other countries or other bases in US made it very convenient for his accustomed lifestyle. She wouldn't be there to catch him cheating.
When the truth came out about Ian, it enabled me to redirect the distrust I had felt toward several other tellers to the real owner of all the trouble, Ian, and it was great. A sense of relief and freedom accompanied the new anger, so it empowered me. Finding out her husband had been cheating on her since day one did the same for my daughter. She was nothing but courageous, changing from the remorseful hermit I had worried about, hiding in her house across town, to a woman with a purpose, a single mother with an innocent child.
Cathie and EJ spent the night at different family homes over the next several days. Ian, his mother, and his estranged father changed the locks on the door to the house and refused to let Cathie return for clothing, her computer, an extra set of car keys, and baby formula and supplies. Ian threatened to have her arrested for messing with the information on the Iphone. He neglected to own two facts -- that he was, indeed, cheating on her, and that he had withdrawn $500 from Cathie's checking account, causing checks she had written for household bills to bounce.
Cathie located the girl who had been exchanging the latest text messages with Ian. She lived in Portland, where she had graduated high school in 2007. She was using her grandmother's cell phone most of the time, though she occasionally used her sister's or her best friend's. Cathie spoke to her grandmother, explaining how Ian had fooled this girl. Heather thought Ian had filed (and paid) for a divorce, and that all that remained was for Cathie to sign the papers and leave the house. Then the story had changed to Cathie buying the house. Makes me wonder why Ian had not just moved out, since Cathie had actually planned to buy the house, before she left him. Hmm. Hey, maybe that was another lie on his part.
Heather expressed the desire not to see him again and assured Cathie that it was definitely over. Oddly enough, we have since heard that she is now living in the house with Ian. I don't drive by to see if the for sale sign is still in the yard, since I would be accused of stalking or harassing them. If the foreclosure hasn't gone through, I'm guessing that perhaps Heather has the financial resources to help pay the bills. Odd that she didn't have a cell phone of her own....
Ian has lost his job. Ah, but that requires a lot more explanation. I promise I'll be back to finish the story later.
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