Therapeutic Misadventures: A Narrative Memoir

By Martha Schaefer

In 1978, Martha Schaefer set off on a four-year adventure around the world with her new husband, a rising oilfield executive. As an expatriate corporate wife, Marthas main responsibilities were to find happiness and be supportive of her husbands career. But as the couple traveled and made homes in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, Martha chaffed against traditional roles and began to pursue her own definition of purpose.

In her memoir, Martha chronicles a unique journey through letters, photos, and journal entries that poignantly illustrate her struggles to find happiness amid the demands of her husbands career and the increasing fragility of her marriage. As she details her eagerness to immerse herself in new cultures, nurture her thirst for adventure, and build a professional career, Martha presents a realistic, intimate view into a daily life intertwined with not only episodes of terror and the sorrow of a disintegrating marriage, but also ancient beauty and cultures that taught her to believe in the enduring goodness of humanity and the strength of self.

Therapeutic Misadventures shares the unforgettable story of one womans journey through love, dreams, and delusions as she learns valuable life lessons and uncovers her true identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Aug 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781480801707

Martha Schaefer

Martha Schaefer shares her New Hampshire home and surrounding woods with her Chinese shar-peis, cats, horses, and an abundance of wildlife. Inspired by her bookshelves full of journals, she currently blogs about life after fifty. This is Martha’s first book. Visit her online at marthaschaefer.com.

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Therapeutic

Misadventures

A NARRATIVE MEMOIR

Martha Schaefer

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Copyright © 2013 Martha Schaefer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

1-(888)-242-5904

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

All photos are property of and in most cases were taken by, the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0169-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0168-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0170-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013912795

Archway Publishing rev. date: 7/30/2013

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1   This Will Take Some Getting Used To …

Chapter 2   Life As An Expat

Chapter 3   Life At The Racetrack

Chapter 4   Relocation—It’s A Moving Experience!

Chapter 5   A Tale Of Horse And Home

Chapter 6   To Bali And Beyond

Chapter 7   Wira Perkasa

Chapter 8   You Asked For It!

Chapter 9   A Visit From Home

Chapter 10   Trains Across Java

Chapter 11   Travels And Travails

Chapter 12   A Step Toward Healing

Chapter 13   Head Back, Look Ahead

Epilogue

PREFACE

As I wrote the end of this memoir, I was surprised at how emotional I became. Here I was, in the same predicament thirty years later, starting life over.

I started this journey several years ago. It had always been in the back of my mind to write. There are references in the letters to and from my mom, as well as in my journal entries, to saving the letters and becoming a writer someday. The format originally was daunting, as I came to believe one novel could never cover forty years of journal entries and life.

When I finally sat down with the letters and journals, I realized that this would take more than one book and would speak to women (and maybe a few men) at different ages and stages of life. I concentrated on the first segment: my twenties and my perceptions of life as I literally moved through the world with my first husband. I wanted to capture the time for my daughters so they might know me better. I also wanted to acknowledge the universal struggles and joys in making peace with one’s situation and knowing that change can be painful as well as magical.

The voices that flooded back to me through the entries were painful at times, but because hindsight is so forgiving, they ultimately brought peace in knowing they are not forever silenced. My mother is gone now. We struggled to find the love and rekindle the amazing bond we shared before I left my marriage and came home to start over. I can now forgive us both for our egos and shortsightedness.

The letters and journal entries are all real. They have been edited for clarity (I hope) and cohesion. But the events are all true, and although they are portrayed as I saw them, I doubt much would change had anyone else given their perspective. 

I never set out to hurt anyone or expose any secrets. The people in this book, living and deceased, are portrayed as best as I could.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing about myself in a past life brought back memories of people who helped shape that life. But it was those who are with me now or recently lost who provided the encouragement, and support to make this memoir actually happen.

My dearest doppelganger, Stephanie Sheridan sent me a copy of EAT, PRAY LOVE and said, You should write your story.

My beautiful daughters, Lexie and Hannah, read early drafts and pushed me to continue, if only for myself.

In late 2012, my sister, Zanne, moved in with me for several months and flooded my life with love, encouragement and resources. She fed my fragile ego with her pride in my project.

Tom Krapf, brought me lunches, left at the door, on days I was so deeply immersed in the process, I could not be disturbed.

Lauren Garofalo Riccio listened to my incessant whining and self doubts. She and her mare, Blessing, provided the respite in trail rides that allowed me to go back to work on the days I felt most lost.

Steph Brann shyly told me she would love to edit for me and would only accept the loan of my horse trailer for payment.

Megan Rushford labored over my drafts and left me smiley faces and encouragement and never showed how frustrated she must have become with my poor punctuation skills.

Emmy Palange, young enough to be my daughter, not what I thought of as my target audience, but she read the very first draft and re-read it until it was dog-eared.

And finally, my mother. Without her love of letters and stories I would not have grown up loving the written word; nor would half of the letters in this novel exist.

December 13, 1978

Dear Marth,

I am saving my letters from you so when you are an old, well-traveled lady you can sit in your rocker in New Hampshire and re-read them.

INTRODUCTION

My story has been fifty-seven years in the making. The middle child between my older brother Duncan and my younger sister Susanne, I grew up in the tiny town of Byfield, Massachusetts. I received my first pony at ten years old, and my childhood was an idyllic mix of 4-H shows at county fairs and rural life. I took what is now known as a gap year between high school and college. My mom and I spent my college loan on a trip to Spain, and then my parents, and consequently we kids, began the long process of divorce.

College was two years in New London, New Hampshire, where I met Roger. His family was the poor country cousins of landed gentry. They owned and operated Twin Lake Villa, an old-fashioned resort on the shores of Little Lake Sunapee. The main hotel was cavernous and ancient, and the cottages were massive Victorian houses nestled in the pines. I fell in love with his quintessential Yankee good looks, his childish sense of wonder and adventure, and his amazing work ethic. Though five years my senior, Roger and I were best friends first and lovers by coincidence. We married in June 1977 with our reception at the Villa. The next day, we packed a U-Haul with a meager amount of furniture and our Datsun car with our shaggy dog, Mr. Mac.

The first year of our marriage was spent in the oil fields of southern Illinois. Roger sold chemicals to the oil rigs, and I sold insurance door-to-door to the farmers. We spent every weekend and every extra penny we had at auctions. As the farmers aged, their farms were sold to the oil companies and their belongings were auctioned off. I drove treasure troves of old-fashioned furniture, quilts, heavy pickle crocks, and all sorts of antique tin toys (Roger’s personal passion) back to New England for storage and resale. We hoarded the earnings from these sales along with our meager salaries to buy stock in petroleum service companies that Roger felt were safe and growing.

My parents had divorced by this time. My dad was living in Houston, as was my older brother, Duncan. My mom was still in New England, and my sister, Susanne, was moving between the two places, searching for her own destiny as we all do in our twenties.

So here I am, an empty nester living in the woods of New Hampshire. My parents and brother have left this world, and I have raised two incredible women who live on the opposite coast. All my life, I have been driven to write my life down in letters and journals.

My story begins with Roger’s and my move from the heartland of America, Olney, Illinois, to the Caribbean island of Trinidad. As an expatriate corporate wife, my main responsibility was to find happiness and be supportive of my husband’s career. Not a bad assignment, and one that took me around the world as I pursued my own definition of purpose. Roger’s career led us on adventures around the world but ultimately became the downfall of our relationship.

This is the story of marriages, divorces, dreams, and delusions—and all the lessons they bestow upon us.

The parallels and coincidences I am able to see as I reread my journals and letters are astonishing. So when I read of my frustration and depressions, my enthusiasm and blind hope, it reminds me that belief in myself has supported me in life.

If you were to ask me the key to eternal life and happiness, I would suggest a life well lived and well written.

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My tropical paradise!

CHAPTER 1

This Will Take Some Getting Used To …

11/30/78

San Fernando, Trinidad

Dear Mom,

You are the first on my long list of letters to write. Now, where to begin? I was so excited to finally get here Tuesday night after a disastrous flight that left me stranded in Puerto Rico for a day. Though I was totally sleep deprived my first night here, I just kept wandering around the house, amazed that I had made it to Trinidad at last.

The smells are so strange: spicy, burning garbage and rotting vegetation. My initial picture of what our house would be on a tropical island was far from reality. We live in a city on the side of a hill overlooking a neighborhood of similar houses. The highway is off to the left, and the downtown is below on the right. That first night, I arrived after dark, and the ride from the airport was hair-raising, to say the least. Cars and trucks know no speed limits here, and there are no lights on the highway, which winds through the sugar cane fields. It’s a little scary here. We are definitely in the minority; I would say only about 2 percent of the population is white. Also, there is quite a bit of crime. We have all kinds of gates, locks, and bars on the windows. Roger keeps a monstrous machete under the bed, though I’m not convinced it’s not just a little bit for affect. Chances are no one would really hurt anyone, but they would steal the gold from your teeth if they thought they could.

As of yet, I can’t understand anyone here, though it’s supposed to be English they are speaking. It is a musical bird-like sound all run together with a heavy British accent and lots of local slang. My favorite sign is the oh-so-common, spray-painted NO LIMING outside of shops and stores—the equivalent of Don’t Loiter. It is a strange sign in a society where liming is the national pastime of every male.

Some things are strange compared to home. We went grocery shopping in a filthy, dark cave of a shop. Milk and orange juice are scarce and come in paper and foil box-like packages. If you find some, you buy lots and hoard it, as you may not see it again for weeks. Butter comes in a round tin like a sardine can, and sugar (on an island covered with sugar cane) is prized like gold and difficult to find.

Rog is a manager and has to work a lot harder than in the States. He drives to the southern end of the island to visit the offshore oil rigs or spends long hours at the office in town. I hope to have a car soon so I am not so housebound, though driving is terrifying here. Not only do I have to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road from the passenger side of the car, but it also seems there are no rules of courtesy on these tiny, choked roads.

This will all take some getting used to …

Love and miss you,

M.

12/9/78

San Fernando, Trinidad

Dear Mom,

Every day down here is better than the one before, and I learn something new each minute. Yesterday, Rog called all excited from the office to say we had lots of mail. We sat around for hours reading and rereading a letter from you, two from Susanne, one from Nana and Grampa, and one from Rog’s parents, Marge and Rich. News from home is precious, and hearing about winter when the thermometer never dips below seventy degrees here is so strange.

I borrowed Roger’s car and ventured alone downtown yesterday for the first time. It’s a great confidence builder! People are a lot friendlier than I thought, and I found that I was the only one who even took notice of skin color. It’s hard not to when I only see two white faces all day, but that is just my Yankee upbringing coming out.

It’s not the right-hand drive that bothers me; it’s the way people drive. The streets are incredibly narrow, and if someone decides to stop, they just get out and leave the car running in the middle of the road. No one seems to notice all the dogs, goats, and kids on the sides of the road. I guess they just figure they will get out of the way in time.

We drove south to Galeotta Point yesterday where Rog takes the boat to the offshore rigs. It is only forty-three miles, but the drive takes over two hours. The road winds through cane fields and villages and is bumpier than a New Hampshire road full of potholes in the spring. There isn’t ten feet of straight road the whole way.

We arrived at the Amoco compound where Rog had a meeting. What a strange scene! I spent the afternoon with the wife of a coworker, and we went to a Christmas tea—thirty American and Canadian wives sitting around eating cucumber sandwiches and getting plastered on champagne punch while their maids were home taking care of the kids. Three quarters of them were pregnant, the other national pastime here. Talk focused on problems with domestic help, their last trip home, and what a hard life they all were living. I had a really tough time relating to the conversation, as I am still intrigued and fascinated by the culture and the place I find myself in.

Tonight we are off to the Baroid company Christmas Fete in Port of Spain. I can’t get used to the fact that it is December and I am sitting around in a bathing suit—no snow, no smell of Christmas pine.

Can’t wait for you to visit; I have so much to show you. Oh, by the way, be sure to get a yellow fever shot. All expat families are getting them next week. A dead monkey tested positive for the fever here two days ago.

Love and miss you so very much,

M.

12/12/78

Dear Marth,

Finally, three letters from you last night: November 30 and December 3 and 5. That Trinidad postal service is very strange. What do they do, save all the mail until someone says, Hey, this is in the way, and send it all at once?

But what great letters! It all sounds so intriguing and foreign. Imagine coconuts and avocados right in your front yard … we are paying fifty cents for them now, and that’s very cheap. And the sun and the humidity; bet your hair curls like a poodle!

Your house sounds positively huge. Hope your air shipment from the States arrives soon so you can make it feel more like home. Be sure to send some pictures for us all to pass around back here in Dullsville.

I am saving my letters from you so when you are an old, well-traveled lady you can sit in your rocker in New Hampshire and reread them.

Looking out on a gray and white world, all cloudy and barren, it is fun to think of you in a tropical green, hot scene. Miss you lots but are comforted by thoughts of your new world to explore and enjoy.

Mom

12/15/78

Dear Mom,

Well, happy birthday, Duncan. Do I really have a brother who is twenty-six??

I will try to place a call to Dad’s later, hoping to catch him there. Try is the key word … I thought calling here from the States was bad … it’s easy next to this phone system. We actually have a scheme set up with some folks here who have a ham radio. If anyone of us has an emergency, we call the ham operator who will relay the info to someone in the States who will then call our families. How primitive is that in 1978?

Anyway, I got my yellow fever shot today. It takes ten days to take effect, so it should be just in time for Christmas … Are you getting in the Christmas spirit yet? It is very hard to feel it here … I keep having to remind myself that it really is December. Instead of Christmas music, we have parang (steel drums), which I really do love but find it hard to associate with the season. Since I have never heard it before, it just doesn’t signify Christmas to me.

I am baking black cakes; they are a Trinidadian form of fruitcake. No one likes fruitcake at home, so why do I think it will be any different here? Doesn’t matter. It’s what us wives do at this time of the year …

The fruit is soaked in cherry wine and then mixed with a pound of flour, twelve eggs, a pound of butter, and two pounds of brown sugar. (The government seems to time the arrival of brown sugar to the season, and the prices are sky high.) After the cakes are cooked, they are soaked in rum. Sounds yummy, but the mixing!!! I never appreciated electricity until I moved down here. I sure could use my mixer, can opener, toaster oven, etc. Lynette, my maid, helped me with the mixing. I’m sure she thinks I am very spoiled considering my arms gave out partway through. I’ll let you know if it is worth my tired arms.

Last night, a couple from Galeotta, who also work for Baroid, stayed overnight with their baby. I was so proud of my meal! I cooked leg of lamb (frozen from New Zealand), fresh pumpkin (think squash), baked bananas, and frozen peas. I am starting to get the hang of my kitchen, but it sure would be nice to get our shipment and have all my pots, pans, and linens. Still feels like camping out with someone else’s stuff to me.

I am writing to you with one of my Christmas presents. Rog bought me a lovely German fountain pen today, but of course, Kid Kidder couldn’t wait for Christmas and wanted me to try it out immediately. At this rate, I’ll have nothing to open when the big day rolls around.

Lots of folks have invited us for Christmas Day, but we have decided to spend it together at the beach.

Tonight we are going to yet another Christmas Fete, our third since arriving. Olney, Illinois, was never this lively! These people really know how to party. Lots of drinking and dancing. Everybody dances; Rog and I have to loosen up and learn.

Can’t wait for you to come and visit, Mom. So much to share and talk about. I miss you daily, hourly. Well, all the time.

Give my love to all,

M.

12/18/78

Dear Mom,

Finally got to talk to you tonight! I feel like I am in another world; it’s so different here, so remote. We read about the States in the papers and think about home constantly. It’s strange, to folks here the States is the ultimate … the land of television, shopping malls, and the all-American buck $$$. It does look pretty good, I must admit.

I went shopping today with three Trinidadian women who are married to guys who work with Rog. They all have kids, which, as I’ve mentioned, seems to be the national pastime. I think it is something in the water and so will continue to boil mine! We went to the only mall on the island in the capital, Port of Spain. It is less than a third of the size of any strip mall at home. Unfortunately, between the high prices and the lack of imports, shopping is really frustrating. There is little creativity locally, though I did see some woodcarvings that looked interesting.

You wouldn’t believe the prices in the grocery stores! American products, such as Shake and Bake (which I would never buy at home) are six dollars. Cans of cake decorating stuff and frosting are four and five dollars, and canned soda (called sweet drink here) is two dollars each. The women I shopped with were searching for toys for Christmas. The cheapest tricycle we saw was $120 and so poorly made it didn’t look like it would make it out of the store, much less stand up under a four-year-old.

On the other hand, Roger is in heaven with his antique toy collection. Though they aren’t technically antiques, he has found a wealth of imported Chinese tin toys (all would be outlawed for safety reasons in the United States) and is buying stuff up to add to his collection back in New Hampshire.

But the people and the surroundings fascinate me. So many different races, religions, colors, shapes, and sizes. I think the fact that Trinidad is not geared toward tourists is a plus as long as you have someone to show you around. The markets are bustling with shoppers and full of strange sights and smells. Fruits and vegetables in odd shapes and the smells range from sickly sweet to tangy spice.

The mountains never cease to amaze me. We drove back from the beach on the North coast yesterday on a different road than we had taken before. It was the narrowest I’ve ever seen, winding through the heart of the jungles. We stopped to sample a cocoa pod—sweet but not at all like chocolate. Some of the plants were so huge they seemed like green skyscrapers. Great thick stands of bamboo, wild orange trees laden with fruit, bananas growing straight up in the air, and ferns so large you could easily sit beneath them and be sheltered in a storm. At one point, we even drove through a cloud! This beauty is balanced with a certain amount of danger and fear. We have