Susan Pohlman - Halfway to Each Other

Halfway to Each Other

ISBN-13: 978-0-8249-4828-3

Published by Guideposts
16 East 34th Street
New York, New York 10016
www.guideposts.com

Copyright 2010 by Susan Pohlman. All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Distributed by Ideals Publications, a Guideposts company
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Guideposts and Ideals are registered trademarks of Guideposts.

Acknowledgments

Lines from Train in the Distance by Paul Simon are copyright 1981 Paul Simon. Used by permission of the publisher: Paul Simon Music.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pohlman, Susan.
Halfway to each other : how a year in Italy brought our family home / Susan Pohlman.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8249-4828-3
1. Pohlman, Susan. 2. Marriage. 3. Family. 4. AmericansItalyBiography. 5. ItalyDescription and travel. I. Title.
HQ734.P735 2009
306.85092dc22
[B]

2009005770

Cover and interior design by Laura Klynstra
Cover photograph by Giuseppe Ceschi/Jupiter Images
Photographs on pages 280281 provided by Susan Pohlman
Typeset by Nancy Tardi

Printed and bound in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Tim, Katie and Matthew

Sometimes humans beg for battles to be taken away from them, not realizing that only in struggling with shadows is the Light made manifest.

W. MICHAEL GEAR

prologue

My husband Tim and I planned our wedding Mass together. He chose a couple of the readings and relatives to read them, and I did the same. Ordinary prewedding stuff, or so I thought. The only detail questioned by anyone was my choice of the Gospel. I was curiously drawn to Matthew 6:2534, a passage about reliance upon God and how he would take care of us as well as he took care of the lilies of the field and the birds in the air if we placed our trust in him. I handed the verse, neatly typed in cursive font, to the priest who took one look at it and said, This is a first. Are you sure you want this one? I nodded.

There are a lot about love to choose from.

I cant explain it, I said. I had this overpowering feeling that this one had to be the one. He adjusted his glasses, reread the passage and then shrugged, exhaling loudly.

I am sure, now, that it was a message from God. For some reason, he wanted me to place that reading permanently in my spiritual back pocket. The second message came on the morning of the big day. I awoke on October 19, 1985, to an earthquake. New Jersey never has earthquakes. I took out my little Gospel verse, looked it over and felt better. I was very much in love with my husband-to-be and had no second thoughts about marriage, so it never entered my mind that we would struggle in the years to come, but God knew.

Eighteen years and two children later, I took that Gospel verse, tattered and worn, and threw it in the garbage. I was empty, disillusioned and heartbroken that we would not be among the few couples who made it all the way through life side by side. I was sick of the lilies of the field, and the birds could fly away for all I cared. Our marriage was over and, as far as I was concerned, God had not held up his side of the bargain. I was done.

But God was not. He slyly took my discarded verse and slid it back into its place, knowing that soon I would reach for it instinctively and finally read it with open eyes. And I did. On the eve of our divorce, my husband and I made a most unexpected decision fueled by faith, grace and hope. We moved our family to Italy.

Our marital therapist called it an elaborate scheme of avoidance at best. And when she pressed for a reason, we said, We cant explain it. We had this overpowering feeling that we had to do this.

I see. Her blue eyes darted back and forth between us as the clock ticked away our final appointment. Well, you know where to find me when you get back.

People who have lived through a personal crisis often say that faith is what got them through it. I know now that God sends us messages and overpowering feelings every day but we only hear him in fits and starts, and we listen even less. I did not take Matthew 6:2534 to heart until I was an emotional train wreck and then I was all ears, listening like a child with a cup to the wall.

the background

It was the last week in May 2003. My husband, Tima highly successful radio executiveand I were hosting a six-day business trip for the clients of a local radio station in Los Angeles. Playing the role of the dutiful wife, I helped Tim ensure that approximately forty clients had the time of their lives in Florence and Portofino. Tim was a larger-than-life kind of guy whose great claim to fame, other than running radio stations, was knowing his way around a party. And I, after having been married to him for so long, was well versed in the art of schmoozing as well. Wed done quite a few of these incentive trips over the years, so other than meeting some new people, we expected business as usual: fancy hotels, fine meals and pleasant excursionsall on the company tab.

We were here to do a job, not to search for romance under the Tuscan sun. Those days were long over for us. As we explored Italy, my lawyer back home explored my strategies to exit a marriage that had ended years earlier.

We had landed at our emotional ground zero after a series of spectacular fights and discussions about who was working harder, who was ignoring the other person, who was the more invested parent, who was spending what and who just didnt care about being married anymore. We had finally looked at each other across the highly polished dining room table and admitted it. We were tired of each other. Tired of wondering what was missing. Tired of pretending that we were happy. Tired of the stresses of life together. Tired of trying to work through our differences in therapy. After more than twenty years as a couple, we had become character actors in our own lives, starring in the roles of Husband and Wife. And our two children, fourteen-year-old Katie and eleven-year-old Matt were suffering the consequences of living in an environment of silent rage. When we asked each other what we wanted to do about our marriage, we both agreed to keep going. I was lying.

In Florence, though, for the sake of developing relationships with people who could positively affect future radio budgets, and therefore my alimony checks, I pretended that none of this was happening. We worked as a team on the surface only. My heart was off limits.