Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven

Recently, L. added a new batch of songs to my Ipod. Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" was among them. It stirred memories of a chapter in my life that I think of only with pain and regret.

Back in the late winter of '81, long before the technological revolution, M. and I would play "Stairway to Heaven" on a record player. Every morning, as we sat in bed drinking tea, he'd reach over to the nearby player and drop Zeppelin onto the turntable. Leaning against our pillows, we'd sing along. "Stairway to Heaven" begins with gentle guitar-strumming and a soft voice, and intensifies into a ecstatic, drum-pounding wail. Singing along, we'd reach shout-level when the song reached the lines "It's a FEELing I GET, when I LOOK to the West, and my SPIRit is crying for LEAVing!" This line was significant to us because we were psyched up for moving, not to the West, but to the South---where we'd both been accepted in doctoral programs at a well-known university---and our spirits were crying for leaving! The long northern winter, with its gray, leafless panorama; the dead-endness of Maine, were weighing heavily upon us. Adventurous person that I was, I longed for the unknown of the Deep South. The magnolia trees. The warm winters. The challenge of more schooling. And truth be told, I also longed to get as far away as possible from M.'s insane ex-wife. How blind I was in those days to think that all our problems emanated from her, not from issues between the two of us! How immature and stupid of me. But at the time, I was still about a year and a half away from seeing the light.

I met M. at a party. I was newly divorced. He was very drunk, and, as a result, extremely funny and friendly. Back then, I was oblivious to my inclination as the daughter of an alcoholic to seek a substance abuser as a mate! He told me he was separated from his wife. A week later, he took me and my two sons ice-skating. As we emerged from the car on that cold January afternoon, a very tall, very angry, very red-headed woman materialized violently in my face and started screaming, "Who are you? What are you doing with my husband?" Then she shouted to him: "What are you doing with her? And I'm contesting the divorce!" Her diatribe continued, full-volume, as my sons, who had not yet emerged from the car, watched silently from the back seat, mouths agape. Her screams faded into the background as M. and I hopped back into the car and squealed away. He told me his wife had had some mental health problems in the past, and I had no trouble believing him. She'd been hospitalized for depression, he said, had even been in a catatonic state several times. They were separated, but she was living at his house right now, because she had no other place to go since her last breakdown. Six months earlier, she'd left him and taken the children with her out of state, but had had a nervous meltdown there. Thus, he'd flown the two children back to Maine to stay with him. When she was released from the out-of-state hospital, he agreed that she could return to the Northeast and stay at his house, for the sake of the children, until she got established. Okaaayyy.

In a few months, M. ended up moving in with me, partly because he wanted to be with me, but also so he wouldn't have to live with her. After our brief glowy beginning, we began to argue. It always seemed to be about his ex-wife or his kids. Everything seemed to be traceable back to them. She would call our house a lot, which would precipitate a fight between us. Why didn't he discourage these calls? Couldn't he see that she was flirting with him and trying to win him back? His children would visit and fight with my children. He would always side with his, which provoked a fight. His children misbehaved and acted bratty. He refused to discipline them, even if they were rude to me. Another fight. His children would visit and eat all the food in the house. He thought, "Isn't that sweet?" I thought, "I wish he'd contribute more money for food." More fodder for a fight. The baggage weighed heavily on our relationship.

Stupidly, I thought that our strained relationship would be revitalized in a new location. So we sang our way through the winter of '81, and despite frequent arguments, I kept focused on the long-term goal: move South, start fresh, and live happily ever after. In that sweet Southern climate, far way from the obstacles, our relationship would blossom like honeysuckle.

A year later, a year without the ex-wife, a year without the children, yet still with many arguments, the truth was beginning to penetrate: now that the previous distractions had been stripped away, I could see with fresh clarity that things about him that were deal-breakers. I won't air my grievances. Time has dulled the intensity of them, though I spent a lot of time crying and consumed with fury when we were together. I'm not saying that he was an evil person or that I was saint. Only that we were not a good match. I regretted terribly that I was unhappy enough to have to leave him, but I felt that I had to sacrifice him in order to save myself. Oh, he was hurt. He wasn't unhappy, he told the counselor. That's the way marriages were. You didn't break them up just because one of the parties was miserable. A few years later, he remarried and had a child, so I assume he regained his equilibrium, even some happiness. I hope he was able to see in retrospect how much happier he was with his new wife, not me.

As I listen to "Stairway to Heaven" now, I feel glimmers of that short-lived winter-of-'81 optimism that M. and I shared as we sang about "looking to the West." Moving South was supposed to be the stairway to Heaven of our relationship. It wasn't. But, life being the ironic experience it often is, the journey did turn out to be a positive, life-altering turning point in my life, just not at all in the way I expected. Not with him.