Forever is a Long Time, Part 2: My Grandmother, Marianne

My grandmother never sent presents for birthdays or holidays, and didn't expect us to either. She seemed to resist anything that felt like authority, convention and tradition; which is why it's so strange that she was once married to my grandfather — a Harvard-educated lawyer.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey there. It's me, Gavin Crawford, host of the CBC podcast Because News, a weekly show where I question my silliest friends on some of the most serious headlines. This week, we'll be finding out why British Columbia suddenly went blue. We'll talk about how AI voices are getting a little too real and check out some of the most insane things a sitting president could say on a campaign trail. I'm joined by comedians Emma Hunter, Martha Chavez, and the return of Tom Howell. Subscribe to Because News on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you download podcasts for free.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  This is a CBC Podcast.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  My name is Ian Coss, and you're listening to Forever is a Long Time on CBC's Personally. This show is a collection of songs and conversations about every marriage in my family that ended in divorce, which, as of this recording, does not include mine.

• 0:56Speaker 03

  Tojo wants to sit with me.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  That's fine.

• 0:58Speaker 03

  You can try. You can try. Come on.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  My wife's name is Kelsey. The dog's name is Chacha.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  You can do it.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  The three of us live in a little house on the edge of Boston.

• 1:10Speaker 03

  You gotta lay down. Yeah.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Okay. When I started this project a little over a year ago, I made a point of not talking to Kelsey about it. I would call up my relatives on days when I knew she'd be out of the house and then be sure to close out any documents or mixes I was working on before we watched TV together on my computer. Do you hear me now?

• 1:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  At the time, I told myself that, as a producer, I wanted to make sure I was recording when I did finally share what I'd learned. But if I'm honest, I think there was a little shame involved. Like, just to have these questions about myself and my family was a sign that our own marriage was somehow failing. And at that time, at the time of our wedding, it occurred to me at some point later on that every single member of my family, every living member of my family, rather, who had ever been married, had also been divorced.

• 2:10Speaker 03

  I think that occurred to you before our wedding.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay. So it was something-- I don't have a clear memory.

• 2:17Speaker 03

  I remember talking to you about this when we were talking about whether we should get married.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  I remember you being like, well, every one of my family's been divorced. So like, man, marriage is scary, kind of thing.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Right. Fortunately, Kelsey is really good at keeping me honest and probing for things that I wouldn't normally share. That's probably the reason we've stayed married as long as we have. So what I've decided to do, as you know, is interview all those people.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  And see what I can learn.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  Why now?

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Why now?

• 2:59Speaker 02

  I guess there was a point in our relationship where like, we'd been married for a few years. And I guess it kind of like became real or it like dawned on me that like, that we are now working on a very long-term project together. And that little choices and little deceits and little feelings would only be amplified over time. And that there was like a different kind of care and attention, even though I didn't feel like a lot changed when we got married. It wasn't like we woke up the next day and it felt like everything was different.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  But something in those next few years, it did sort of dawn on me that I had to take a different kind of care to follow through on that promise.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  And one of the reasons is my peers getting divorced. And there were a few in the last few years. And that also kind of shook me in a way because I like to think that we had as a generation, you know, millennials, like we grew up in that world where divorce was ubiquitous. And I think broadly speaking, went about it differently than our parents. And maybe I had always taken a certain amount of comfort in that.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Until seeing inevitably that some of our peers, their marriages didn't last. Maybe that made me start to think more about, well, what are the models that I have for what it means for two people to be life partners? And to what extent am I bound to simply replay those things? And to what extent can I pick and choose and transcend those things?

• 5:02Speaker 03

  Do you mean like, the way you say bound to makes it sound like you feel like you will, it's like your destiny, you will do it whether or not you step back and think about it?

• 5:12Speaker 02

  No, I don't believe in, I believe in free will.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  But I also believe that we all become our parents and grandparents and ancestors in ways that we're not always aware of.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  So is this like, an attempt to be aware of those ways that your ancestors are in hopes of, I guess in this case, not replaying them?

• 5:45Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Forever is a long time. Part two, my grandmother, Mary Ann.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  You're of course, the oldest living member of my family.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  But you're also the first person in my family, at least that I know of, who got a divorce.

• 6:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  At a time.

• 6:21Speaker 04

  Yeah. My mother divorced my father.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 6:26Speaker 04

  Yes. And both my grandmothers, I think, were illegitimate children. So.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  So the family tradition, I guess, goes back even farther than I knew.

• 6:40Speaker 04

  Yes, yes. You know, the whole institution of marriage, it has nothing to do with love. So.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:50Speaker 04

  To me, all the papers are basically work of the devil, if you ask me, period.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  All the papers are basically work of the devil, if you ask me. Period.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Those words can tell you a lot about my last remaining grandparent, my father's mother. She is, in her own words, "an old woman and born in the old world." But she has never felt old fashioned. She was the grandmother who would arrive at our house each summer in a new-used car that she had just bought in New Hampshire so that she didn't have to get car insurance on it. The grandmother, who, when I was in high school, would let my friends and I show up at her New York City apartment at 2:00 in the morning after going to a concert and all sleep on the floor.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  She never sent presents for birthdays or holidays and didn't expect us to either. She seemed to resist anything that felt like authority, convention, and tradition. Which is why it's so strange that she was once married to my grandfather, a Harvard-educated lawyer named Robert Goldshider.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  My grandmother is almost 90 now. The story she tells me begins in the mid-1950s.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Okay, I met Robert Goldshider in Lake Placid. And I can tell you exactly the outfit I was wearing, a wide-flowing denim skirt. And I walked up the hill, and on the porch of the hotel stood Robert Goldshider. He said to me, "I told the headmaster to hire you. You have a job." Oh, I said, "Thank you."

• 9:04Speaker 04

  So then we sat down, and she said, "Oh, the owner of the hotel is giving a party tonight for the staff, and of course you are invited, and you'll be my date."

• 9:20Speaker 02

  So you'd come there to vacation?

• 9:22Speaker 04

  No, vacation, get out of here.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  You'd gone there to find a job?

• 9:27Speaker 04

  Yes, I had come there with my boyfriend, Arno. Arno already had gotten a job and I did what many young women have done in the past. I said to Arno, you know, Arno, I am so tired. You have to forgive me. I need some sleep.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  So you'd come with a boyfriend and before you can even open your mouth, this other handsome young man has not only guaranteed you a job, but then immediately asked you on a date?

• 10:01Speaker 04

  Yes, well, Arno had a 1953 crime.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  This man, Arno, is someone I've heard about my whole life, usually as a passing reference in a story about someone else. He was her first real boyfriend. They met as teenagers in Germany, right after World War II. They'd both survived the Holocaust and quickly bonded over a shared desire to get out of this country that had murdered so many people close to them. The first time they went out together, Arno took her to the theater to see an American play, Thornton Wilder's By the Skin of Our Teeth. Later, he showed her how to learn English by reading books and writing out every word she didn't know.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  He was also the one who introduced her to the foreign relief agencies that would one day help her get a scholarship to come study in America. When she arrived in New York City, he met her at the pier. What's strange is that as soon as that common goal was achieved, their lives began to diverge. Long before that night in Lake Placid, he had tried to convince her to stay in Brooklyn, to get married, to make a life together in America. Instead, she left to study at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  It was the first of many moments when she chose another way. And so in my grandmother's stories, Arno often appears as a kind of specter of the path not taken and the life not lived.

• 11:42Speaker 04

  You know, Arno and I had met when I was fifteen and he was eighteen. And, you know, his mother had been torn away from him in Auschwitz. And he had zero social graces and desperately wanted to marry me. But, you know, through the eyes of the Mount Holyoke girls, what I wanted was a Harvard man like Robert. So what happened was that night, Robert said to me this, you know what they call screwdrivers?

• 12:24Speaker 02

  I'm not sure. Oh, screw, oh, the drink.

• 12:27Speaker 04

  But you know what it is?

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Ah, I don't, I think it's very strong, probably.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  It's orange juice and vodka.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  I mean, he got me drunk.

• 12:44Speaker 04

  I see us dancing together, you know, cheek to cheek. Then we went to the ski jump and we sat on the ski jump and we kissed. And he said, you have come to the most wonderful country in the world and we will have a wonderful life together. That was the future that Robert painted for us and that I now had to look forward to.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  So is that, is that how the night ended?

• 14:02Speaker 04

  But we then went to his room. You know, there was sort of like a dormitory for the stairs. And it was a very narrow bed. Anyway, I wouldn't really calling it falling in love, you know. I mean, it was pure lust. I mean, nothing to do with love. But nevertheless, I was aware that he was exactly the type of boyfriend whom the Mount

• 14:40Speaker 04

  Holyoke girls, the biggest achievement at Mount Holyoke was a fancy engagement ring. And the girl would always get up and everybody was singing something happy, blah, blah, blah.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  And was that sort of in the back of your mind when you?

• 14:58Speaker 04

  Never, ever, no. I came from a totally different place. You know, my life had been miserable in Europe. And I have to recognize, talking to you, that you come out of a much, much happier and saner world than in which I grew up in. You know, basically, I was a total cynic. I still am a cynic. And I'm looking for some term.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  I was sort of wandering through life like an innocent beauty.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  And so is that why when, when he then ultimately did ask you to marry him, is that, I guess I'm wondering why you said yes?

• 15:59Speaker 04

  We met in a cafe on Sixth Avenue, near Dunkin' Square Park. And he said, will you marry me? I was leaning back and saying, oh, God, marriage really doesn't mean a thing to me. But there is divorce. I think we'll divorce pretty soon. And my mother had written to me, it doesn't matter that you don't love Robert, but once you are married to him, love will come. Well, she was wrong.

• 16:59Speaker 05

  When you lose someone you love, it's a complicated process, going through their things, settling their affairs, and figuring out what to do with the hole in your life that they have left. But you've got to imagine it's more complicated when that person that you love was beloved by millions around the world. Adam Cohen, the son of the late legendary Canadian poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen, sat down with us in Montreal to talk about his dad. And he talked about learning his dad's songs for the first time and then singing them together with his own son. You can hear that conversation now on Q with Tom Power, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  I still don't understand why she married Robert. It's like, it feels like she did it because it was like the cool thing to do amongst her, like, Mount Holyoke friends, but she still doesn't quite want to admit it. That's what it sounds like in that interview.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  But I don't know, there's... What she said at some point about like, sort of drifting through life. I don't know, like, she really, I think in some ways, just like, didn't care. Or not that she didn't care, but it's like she'd already given up on herself or on life or the world and some small part of herself. And so she just like, went with it. I don't know.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  It's, it's like, she remembers a lot of what happened.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  But it's all just, it happened and she was there for it, rather than she caused anything to happen.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  But don't you think that is true of a lot of marriages? A lot of like troubled marriages? Is like, one or both parties simply like, went along with it without really choosing?

• 18:47Speaker 03

  Well, as you know, because we've discussed it at length, that is like, part of the reason that I wanted to get married when we did, is that I wanted to like, make the choice to, to choose our relationship intentionally.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Whereas in my grandmother's story,

• 19:09Speaker 02

  that somehow, even though there is that kind of decision point, it doesn't feel like a decision.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Could I, so...

• 19:22Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  I'm so fascinated by this idea that you got married already expecting to get divorced.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Now, at that time in 1956, I mean, divorce meant something very, very different in the culture in general, right? I mean, the idea of getting divorced was not just something you did lightly in 1956, right?

• 19:45Speaker 04

  Well, people used to have, basically to find proof that one partner had been committing adultery. And so they hired spies and got photographs and whatnot. But in the 60s, all my, all my friends were getting divorced.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  We married in the 50s. All of us got divorced in the 60s. Because none of us was really happy with our marriages.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Within a few years of getting married, whatever physical chemistry had existed in Lake Placid had dissipated.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  My grandfather had gone from a broke law student to an established lawyer, and my grandmother had become a well-off housewife with two small children. A life she never dreamed of and really didn't want.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  She started a graduate program in sociology, hoping to find a sense of purpose and independence, only to end up having an affair with one of her professors. This was not a first for either of them, but it somehow brought all the simmering discontent out into the open. They decided that some time apart would be healthy. And so, in February 1965, my grandmother boarded a ship back to Europe, alone.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  There's a series of letters that my grandparents wrote to each other during that month or so they spent apart.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  In the first letter, my grandmother writes from the boat.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  "Let us admit to ourselves that we are human. Let us admit that we acted foolishly. And let us now, in view of the children, try to settle things decently and in human fashion. All dishonesty eventually brings suffering, whether we admit it to ourselves or not."

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Reading these letters, I cheer for my grandmother instinctively. I've always admired her independent and often defiant spirit. But it's also a little hard to see how she talks about her own children, my father and uncle, who at this point are the only thing holding her back. She writes about the importance of placing her own needs first, and in one moment of anger says to Robert, "You can keep your luxurious apartment, you can keep your children that I bore for you and raised for you, you can keep every single damn penny that you earn."

• 22:52Speaker 02

  My grandfather, who is caring for the children during this time, speaks constantly of them and how much they miss their mother. In some of these moments, he feels to me empathetic and even open to change. But at the same time, he is absolutely ruthless in his attempts to pressure and shame his wife into coming back to him. He writes, "Do you want to resign yourself to the types of men who are available to a 32-year-old woman? Do you want to throw away your real potential for happiness as the focal love object of your husband and sons for the fantasy of a Hollywood plot?

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Come to me, and you can have everything within my powers to give you, to share with you my whole heart. Spurn it, and the price will best be known to you alone." Of course, these attempts to control his wife only drive her away. She ends her final letter by saying, "I am here in a strange city, in a dubious hotel, in a room that is not heated. I have not spoken to anybody in three days. I really could be as miserable as one can get. Yet, I am more determined than ever that I want an honest and meaningful life, that

• 24:18Speaker 02

  I want to read and write and study and live with a man with whom I want to live only because of the sort of person he is, not because of anything he has to offer me."

• 24:33Speaker 02

  I find myself relating to each of them, and at times recoiling from each of them at the things they will say and do to get what they want. It's messy. When I asked my grandmother about this period leading up to their divorce, her narrative was much more straightforward.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  Well, when finally it came to the point, you know, I had had affairs, Robert had had affairs, and I said, "Robert, let's call a spade a spade." He was so relieved. And what I suggested to him was what now is called open marriage. I had seen no reason to get married. I saw no reason to get divorced. And everything was working fine until I had a relationship. He said, "I don't really want this open marriage.

• 25:36Speaker 04

  I want to get divorced."

• 25:39Speaker 02

  This was in 1967, before the days of the no-fault divorce laws that would make ending a marriage so much easier in the 1970s. But rather than go to court and present proof of adultery, my grandparents took a simpler route, one which I had actually never heard of. They got divorced in Mexico.

• 26:01Speaker 04

  Look, I can see you need an education. Google "Mexican divorce", and you will probably find out some history.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  There's actually a song called "Mexican Divorce", from 1961, by Burt Bacharach.

• 26:21Speaker 04

  Fantastic. I'd love to hear that song. Can you sing it?

• 26:27Speaker 02

  I can't sing it, but maybe I could try and play it for you.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  One day married, next day free. Broken hearts for you and me. Takes no time at all to get a Mexican divorce.

• 26:43Speaker 04

  You see, that would be a perfect job for me.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Johnny Carson got one. Elizabeth Taylor. Marilyn Monroe. And Katherine Hepburn. So you're in good company.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  So who went to Mexico? Robert?

• 27:14Speaker 04

  Well, of course, of course. He hopped on a plane and I never read my divorce papers. I just, you know, they didn't have credit cards then. I forget what they had certain cards you could use in fancy department stores. I threw this in his face and I said, "I don't want your bloody cards anymore."

• 27:52Speaker 02

  So many of those letters my grandmother wrote are about the awful feeling of living a life you suddenly want no part of. In one, she says to my grandfather, "You want your pretty wife and her mink stole and your Rosenthal china and your well-dressed children and all emerging from 25 East 83rd, your comfort, your ease, and everybody telling you you are doing fine." That was not a person she could be anymore.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  One of those things that only became clear to me after I got married is this fact that by committing to Kelsey, I was really committing to a version of myself. The version that I am when I'm with her. The things we do, the places we live, the topics we discuss, the people we see and spend time with. It's a package. And no matter how much freedom we may grant each other, there are now boundaries around the potential lives I can lead. Boundaries that weren't there before. Sometimes I bump up against them.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  And to the extent that I have ever contemplated divorce, it was because I wanted to change something about myself. And changing my partner felt like the only way to do that. When my grandmother tore up those fancy department store cards and threw them in Robert's face, I think that's what she was doing. She was separating from him, but just as much, she was separating from the version of herself that she had been with him.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Do you ever wonder what would have happened? How your life would have been different if you just stayed with Arno?

• 30:12Speaker 04

  Of course, of course, I've thought about that. Of course, my life would have been totally different. And actually, two days later or so, like, bless it, Arno, he asked me, and I told him that I'd met Robert. And, you know, there are mountains there. We were driving in this old car, on a, you know, hairpins. And he floored the pedal.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  I knew what he wanted was to go off the road and for both of us die. So, there was nothing I could do. And suddenly, kaboom! And we were in a ditch and the tyre had blown.

• 31:22Speaker 04

  I walked up to the road and before I even reached the road, the car stopped already. And a man said, "Honey, do you need help?" And I literally ditched Arno, who forgave me and became my best friend until he died of stomach cancer.

• 31:49Speaker 04

  And to this day, I say, "He was the only man in my life who really loved me."

• 32:11Speaker 02

  In Part 3, "The marriages that lasted, some for over thirty years, only to fall apart." These are the stories of my aunts and uncles.

• 33:16Speaker 06

  Maybe you don't see that way Oh, maybe you think it doesn't mean a thing Oh, you give me that look and you give me that way What do you don't know? I got a really good thing But maybe in another life we could be Oh, maybe in another life

• 33:46Speaker 06

  Maybe in another life we could be Oh, maybe in another life

• 33:56Speaker 06

  Maybe in another life Could be we only get one life But maybe in another life

• 34:08Speaker 06

  Could be we only get one try But maybe in another life we could be I don't dare to get too close I can smell your hair and I can feel you close Yes, it happen real fast, no it happen real slow No one needs to say it, no one needs to know But maybe in another life we could be Oh, maybe in another life

• 34:48Speaker 06

  Maybe in another life we could be Oh, maybe in another life

• 34:58Speaker 06

  Maybe in another life we could be Oh, maybe in another life

• 35:08Speaker 06

  Maybe in another life we could be Oh, maybe in another life

• 35:18Speaker 06

  Maybe in another life we could be

• 36:44Speaker 01

  For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.