Tales of the Crazy Read online

  What had I just heard? A woman wanted to come over and help butcher my deer? That was unheard of. Most women I had known over the years would have run away from this, the thought of butchering a deer gross to them. Some even thought I was savage for killing a deer, though they chowed down on other meats. That sure was hypocritical, and I never even considered dating those types.

  Jess had a very tender heart and was a bit uncomfortable seeing the deer hanging with the hide on. It reminded her of Bambi. After I skinned and quartered it, she dived right in and helped cut up the quarters in the kitchen. I showed her what cuts were good for steak, stew meat, or burger, and she expertly helped carve up the meat. She was far more meticulous than I was and saved a lot for burger that normally would be discarded. She cut up all sorts of different internal organs for Thai food that I wouldn’t have even considered saving.

  Jess told me how her family would buy whole animals at the Thai market and butcher them at home. During her first trip to the United States, she was surprised to see there was no option to get a whole animal other than a chicken. There were only shrink-wrapped individual cuts of meat at the grocery store. She said that many good parts of an animal’s internal organs, which gave foods the unique flavors they enjoyed in Thailand, were missing in the United States.

  Many of the Thai dishes she made with venison had a vastly different flavor from anything I had tasted, but they were incredible. I was well-known for making great food for potluck dinners with friends, but when people experienced Jess’s unique talent for blending Thai cuisine with my cooking, they were blown away at how good it was. Jess was surprised that people here bought the bland gunk at deli counters to share at others’ homes. She would have been embarrassed to serve wretched stuff like that. When we passed the deli counter at grocery stores, she would comment on how horrible the containers of prepared food and party platters must taste.

  There was a bad side to her Thai food that I always joked about with her. While Americans don’t eat fish with a really strong fishy smell, many native Asians do. To most people in the United States, it’s putrid-smelling stuff that can clear a room. Jess frequently bought fish called “preserved mud fish.” I can only describe the smell as being what one would expect if someone set a carp out on a dirt road for a couple of hot summer days; let some cars dripping oil run over the fish while it rotted; and then put the rotted, smelly carcass in a jar of salty, spiced vinegar. It smelled that bad, but she loved it.

  We were sitting on the couch when she cracked open a jar of mud fish for the first time. Foolishly, I leaned over to get a whiff of it before I knew what it was. I started having dry heaves and almost threw up. I was extremely concerned that it was not safe to eat due to the smell. To me, anything that smelled that bad was rotten and had to be thrown in the garbage. Jess gave me a what’s-your-problem look and said I didn’t know what I was missing. She dived right in. I could not understand how she could eat it, but mud fish was one of her go-to foods during PMS cravings. Sometimes she mixed it with hot sauce and lemon juice, which made the rotten smell even stronger.

  Another food she loved to eat was durian. I discovered this new stench after we were married. Durian is truly awful and smells like rotten onions. It’s so bad and strong smelling that many hotels in Asia have signs banning it. She agreed not to open it up in the house, as the stench would linger for hours. I tried to prove to her how bad it was by showing her a few episodes of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. We saw some of the truly horrific stuff he ate, and she commented on how bad it must be. Then I showed her the episode of Andrew trying to eat durian. He had been able to stomach all that freaky, nasty stuff, but durian was his downfall. He was almost puking as he tried to eat it. Her response was that once you get past the smell, it tastes good. I just laughed. One time I gave some of it to my niece Victoria. She took a bite without knowing what it was, and the look on her face was pure disgust. It was hilarious—hey, that’s what uncles do.

  The day after Jess helped me butcher the deer, she came over to my house, and we talked about where our relationship was heading. We were both deeply in love, and as we talked of our future, the topic of marriage came up. We took the plunge right there and got engaged on October 4, 2000. It was completely unplanned on my part, and it was a mutual let’s-do-it decision instead of a formal proposal. Just a few days earlier, I had told my dad we were taking it slow. We all laughed about that.

  Later, during our marriage, I joked that any woman who would butcher my deer was a keeper and that’s why we had gotten engaged the next day. Men were genuinely surprised she had done this, and they would look at their own wives, agreeing and laughing. But the women thought it was gross, gave their husbands the no-way look, and said they would never do such a thing.

  The next day after we got engaged, we went to a funeral for the mother of my longtime friend, Janet. Janet and her mom were also members of our congregation. I hadn’t had the chance to tell anyone at church about getting engaged, except for my family. We went up to pay our respects, and a woman I had dated seven years earlier, Betty, came up to us. I introduced Jess as my fiancée. Betty’s face went blank; she was shocked and couldn’t say much. I thought her reaction was funny, but Jess…not so much. Betty and I had dated for only two months, she dumped me, and I hadn’t thought to tell Jess about her. After all, it had been seven years.

  We went to greet others, and then Jess pulled me aside and gave me the look of a jealous woman. She asked, “Who was that?”

  Her eyes were piercing into my soul. I was on the spot. It was very uncomfortable, and Jess knew from Betty’s reaction that something was up. I told Jess about the two-month relationship that had happened seven years earlier. Jess said, “Seven years ago, and she reacted like that? She must still like you.”

  She asked if I had any feelings for Betty, and I said, “No, it’s been over seven years.”

  That was the truth. I also told Jess that because she was in my hometown, she was bound to run into women I knew. I joked that it was not fair that I couldn’t be in her hometown to run into her ex-boyfriends and make her uncomfortable. Jess smiled and said, “Good.” We both laughed about the run-in with Betty and the look on her face for many years to come.

  We came back to my house, and Jess left for the evening. I checked my e-mail, and there were a bunch of messages congratulating me on getting engaged. One person, Leo, wrote, “The bluebird of happiness told me the good news!” I was surprised how fast the news had spread in just a few hours. At church the next morning, almost everyone knew about the engagement. People were hugging both Jess and me, and everyone was extremely happy for us. It was a great day with such an outpouring of love. With Jess by my side, I had never felt such joy before.

  We scheduled the wedding at St. Paul for next year in February. A few weeks later, I got a frantic call from Jess while I was at work. She was still staying at John’s home in Livonia, and she had told him she was engaged. John got very angry, and she was scared and distraught and didn’t know what to do. I thought John must have fallen for her, though he was in his late sixties. I told Jess there was no way she could stay there safely and that we had to find a place for her until we got married. This was in November, and the wedding was three months away. All the apartments wanted at least a six-month commitment. We didn’t want to live together outside of marriage, so we scheduled a quick civil ceremony at the courthouse. Three days later we were married.

  I asked Jess why she had waited a couple of weeks to tell John we were engaged, but she only gave excuses, saying that she did not want to tell him about me. I couldn’t help but think, Why would she not say anything? This did not compute to me—I was overjoyed and wanted to tell everyone about this incredible woman with whom I planned to spend the rest of my life. I didn’t push for an answer, thinking she must have a good reason and that it did not matter now.

  Little did I know that her evasive pattern of withholding and hiding important information would become far worse. T
he things she withheld weren’t minor; they were major issues, especially with finances. This behavior eventually became one of the reasons our marriage fell apart. She convinced herself that not telling me about issues was OK. Other times she thought it best to tell me only a partial truth, believing the whole truth was too bad to take in all at once. She rationalized that it was better for me not to know while she secretly tried to fix problems she had caused.

  There are two types of lies: those of commission and those of omission. A lie of commission is an outright falsehood. It’s like a child saying he didn’t take a cookie out of the cookie jar when he really did. A lie of omission would be the child eating all the cookies but replying when asked where the cookies went that he’d had a few. That’s true…but it’s not the whole truth. Another type of omission would be if he heard his parents question his sister about the missing cookies, knew they thought she’d taken them, and stayed silent to hide the truth.

  Lies of omission can be far more destructive in a close relationship, because the person is intentionally withholding information in an attempt to make the situation look better than it really is. It’s scheming to keep a loved one unaware of serious problems, allowing a misconception to continue or even creating or strengthening a misconception. The person feels justified in creating this lie because it can be partly based on truth.

  The next two months of preparing for the formal wedding at St. Paul were wonderful. We both were happy, but there was a little tension over the size of the wedding. We wanted a small wedding, maybe sixty people maximum, but then the mothers got involved. My mom wanted all her friends and relatives invited, but this made Jess very uncomfortable, because most of her family was in Thailand and could not come. Only her mother; sister; and longtime friend, Churai, were traveling from Thailand for the wedding, and about ten of her stepdad’s relatives were coming. There was a huge disparity between my friends and family and hers, but Jess did not want to upset my mom, and we ended up with three hundred guests.

  Jess was late for the prewedding dinner with family and the bridal party due to some last-minute stuff at the reception hall. She came in but didn’t greet my sister, Jane. Jess had not met her before, because Jane had just arrived for the wedding from Kansas. I didn’t know this happened, and my sister didn’t tell me about it until a few years later. Jane said she felt snubbed and didn’t know why Jess wouldn’t say hi. Someone else had to introduce the two.

  The wedding day finally arrived on February 17, 2001. My parents’ wedding anniversary was on the eighteenth, so my anniversary would be easy to remember. Jess joked that I was responsible now for remembering two wedding anniversaries: the civil ceremony and the formal church wedding. She said it was “twice the joy.”

  Before the wedding started, I thought that because we were already married, this ceremony wouldn’t make me too emotional. That’s the logical engineer in me talking, and that guy would be proved wrong many, many times.

  Everything was just fine and calm as I stood at the altar and watched the bridesmaids, the mothers, and finally the flower girls walk in. My father was going to walk Jess down the aisle because both of her dads had passed away.

  Then I saw her on my dad’s arm. My heart jumped, and I could feel and hear the pounding in my chest. I started getting tears in my eyes and had to tell myself to keep it together. I was shaking with emotion for this incredible woman whom I deeply loved. She joined me at the altar, and the service started.

  Pastor Booth did the ceremony. Just a short while into the ceremony, I heard a loud bang followed by a couple of women screaming. My best man and best friend, Chris Bailey, had passed out and fallen face-first onto the steps of the altar. Chris had been very sick the past two days and still was not feeling well. Pastor Booth was incredibly calm and reassured everyone that everything was fine and Chris was being taken care of. Chris lay down on one of the pews for most of the service.

  What’s really funny is that in many of the wedding pictures, Chris’s feet are sticking out from the pew into the center aisle. Some people think events like this are horrible during a wedding, but later on, it’s these glitches and mistakes that everyone has fond memories of and laughs about. The screw-ups become the cherished highlights.

  The reception was great, and everyone had a good time. We had a smoking ban inside the reception hall, but because it was February in Michigan, it was very cold, and some smokers complained about going outside. I thought it was funny watching them shiver outside just because they could not go for a few hours without a cigarette. The tobacco companies have them all by the short hairs.

  The next morning, when I was sitting on the couch, Jess got down on her knees, bowed before me, and said, “You are my god.” Wow, that took me by surprise. She said it was part of her culture to give respect to her husband.

  I gently stopped her, saying that I understood the sentiment but must never be referred to as a god. I told her that there was only one God and that I was just a lowly, sinful man saved by the grace of Christ. I told her, “The farther up you put me on a pedestal, the farther I will fall.” We talked a bit about growing in our faith together, the way that I viewed her as my equal, and that we were now one flesh before God as man and wife.

  We waited a few weeks to go on our honeymoon, because her mother, sister, and Churai were still visiting from Thailand. They were staying at my parents’ house. It had taken thirty-two hours for the women to reach Michigan. This was before Northwest Airlines built their international terminal at Detroit Metro Airport, so to get here from Thailand, they first had layovers in Tokyo and California. With the new terminal, the flight from Tokyo to Detroit is direct and cuts six hours from the trip.

  Jess had told her mother not to pack sandals because there was a foot of snow on the ground. She said we would buy her some full-foot slippers for the house and warm boots to wear in the snow. This did not sink in with her, and she brought multiple pairs of sandals anyway. The weather she was accustomed to in Thailand was so warm that, during one of our trips there, I noticed that many cars didn’t have a heater core to warm the inside of the vehicle or defrost the windshield. Because it doesn’t get cold, drivers don’t need heaters. I tell people that Thailand has two temperatures: hot and hotter. Jess’s mother had never been in weather colder than sixty-five degrees before this trip, and the bitter cold of Michigan in February was a complete shock to her.

  Jess’s sister and Churai left in a few days, but her mother stayed for a few weeks. After her mother went home, we went to Disney World and Universal Studios in Orlando for our honeymoon. We had a blast, and she loved the extreme roller coasters and other rides, like I did.

  At one point, as we walked around Universal Studios trying to decide which ride to take next, we saw a teenage girl being partially carried by two guys. She was completely freaked out from riding the roller coaster, and her legs wobbled and shook under her weight. Her eyes rolled at the horizon, unable to focus.

  Jess saw her reaction, looked at me, and said, “This one must be really good; let’s go!”

  I looked at her and said, “I love you!”

  Halfway through the honeymoon, Jess told me she felt that she might be pregnant. We’d been married almost four months since the civil marriage and were not using birth control. I was thirty-eight, and she was thirty-six. We both wanted children. I got her a pregnancy test kit from the drugstore, but the test was negative. She took another one the next day. It was also negative, but she still insisted that she might be pregnant. We avoided all the extreme rides for the rest of the honeymoon. I told her we’d already hit all the good ones anyway and could just relax and enjoy our trip.

  For the rest of the trip, her behavior and eating were really out of control, and she was snapping at me for little things. When we got home, she had her period, so she was not pregnant. She went off on me for not caring enough and possibly hurting her pregnancy. That really took me by surprise, and it was completely unjustified and unfair. I tried talking with
her and reminded her of all I had done after she thought she was pregnant, but nothing I said mattered. I was a target to vent her emotions on. Looking back all these years later, this was the first of many attacks where she claimed I didn’t take care of her.

  Other than the false-pregnancy incident, our marriage was great. We loved cooking new foods together. We grew many fresh Thai herbs at home, and it made the food taste much better than anything we got in restaurants. People at work were very envious of the Thai food I brought in for lunch, and when some asked me where to go for Thai food, I gave them my address. They gave me strange looks, and I replied, “My house.” This was true though—Jess and I went to only two Thai restaurants together during our marriage. We were not impressed. Going out to eat was a very rare event, because we could usually make something far better at home.

  I was eager to try creating different meals for Jess. I baked many different types of breads, and one day I came up with the idea of using garlic flowers from the garden in a soft pretzel. Our home was filled with the wonderful, soft smell of fresh-baked garlic bread. Jess was eager to try one of them. We each took a bite, but a harsh and bitter taste filled my mouth. It was absolutely horrible. The garlic flowers had ruined all the pretzels.

  I was very disappointed, knowing something I had made for Jess had turned out so bad. Jess told me she loved it and kept eating it. I told her she didn’t have to say that—I knew it was bad. She looked at me with those loving eyes and said, “Everything you make is wonderful.”

  I threw my pretzel in the trash and left the room to brush my teeth and get the nasty taste out of my mouth. I changed my mind, turned around, and headed back into the kitchen to toss the rest of the pretzels out. There was Jess, bending over the trash can, spitting out the rest of the pretzel! She was shocked and embarrassed that I’d caught her in the act. I laughed at her for not admitting it was that bad. This was a wonderful quality Jess had: she always wanted to make me happy, even when I messed up.