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GH: ...where do we go from here? What are we confronting now? And we began to think about that and I think we talked quite a while, and then when we came home, we must've talked quite a bit, you know 'cause we're driving twelve hours or something, so we're talking. And when I got home with her, we stayed and talked, I mean I say we stayed, I got home earlier than usual than my office expected. I usually tell them when I'm returning. And so we just spent a long weekend at home where nobody knew we were there among the relatives. And we just continued talking. And we ended up, we ended up that maybe we should go our separate ways. We have some picture in terms of our initial picture, initial objectives, and we have some attitude about, on other things, not just marriage, other things. We have certain goals, and that if we can't, if we can't satisfactorily live those, we ought to think about whether we're doing the right thing, or changing paths. And that kind of thing came up.

Just like during the war, things came up and I said, "Well gee, I can't do that." Until then I was doing it. I was going ahead with curfew. And then, gee, facing it like that, I can't do it. And so a clarified position comes out. And, and we're talking two days, just like long hours, 'cause all that driving time was hours of discussion, and searching, and what's meaningful to us. So we're just looking ahead at how do we live? And what's in the picture? And I think it must have been in our pictures, when you think about it. We have, we don't necessarily have to be in each other's shadows. We have adult kids, and soon to expect grandchildren. There's a lot of new experiences we're gonna confront. And some of those we can confront whether we're together or not. And so with this kind of feeling, we just explored other things, including going our own paths, whether on separate ways, or divorce where we cut one tie. I, in one sense, I didn't want this legal separation. That just tied me up. It was too negative to me. She was for that, because it gave her protection. But it was still exploring on her own, little more freedom going on her own. And I could see that it's not easy to explore on your own unless there is, unless you move out. [Laughs] So it was a difficult, that was a kind of a difficult thing to work out. But we sort of kicked this around. And then, it was in the aftermath of all this discussion, it, I've forgotten now how long it took. I think it took maybe upwards to a half a year for our getting to legal separation.

TI: But it was this two-day period where you just really...

GH: Yeah, well we...

TI: ...confronted the issue...

GH: ...yeah, and two day, two nights almost, and long trip home. Particularly, well, I guess we were going into all sorts of things, and then we had this overnight at, outside of Glacier National Park, and then for all day coming home, and then the long weekend where nobody expected us home, so we weren't getting any calls, we were home.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.