MAY MARRIES DECEMBER WHO IS RUNNING FOR OFFICE

Young wives of presidential candidates have caught the attention of Karen Heller, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. She notes that Fred Thompson’s wife, Jeri, is forty, almost 25 years younger; Chris Dodd, 63, has a wife, Jackie, who is 18 years younger. John McCain’s wife, Cindy, is 27 years younger. (And overlapped his first wife a bit.) Dennis Kucinich’s wife, Elizabeth, his third, is less than half his age of 61 and a “car-crackup gorgeous” redhead with a pierced tongue. Heller didn't mention Giuliani.

Turning to history, Grover Cleveland’s wife was 27 years younger, James Madison’s was 17 years younger, Woodrow Wilson’s was 16 years younger, and John Tyler’s was 30 years younger. In those days, of course, women died young giving birth so Tyler and Wilson had been widowers. Serial marriage was often about raising the children. Thomas Jefferson owned his wife’s half-sister outright and so had no need to remarry. And Heller points out that in the “old days” men quietly kept mistresses as well as their wives, while the wives, like Eleanor Roosevelt, found other friends who, as long as they were female, were invisible.

Heller’s feeling is that old husbands with young wives and possibly children look “dirty.” As a “graduate” of such a relationship (me b. 1939 and Bob Scriver b. 1914), I’d like to add some thoughts.

First, everyone assumes that such partnerships are about sex, which makes young men furious and old women jealous. Their minds, even before becoming infested by Viagra SPAM (how old is Bob Dole’s wife?), raise mirages. But sex is energy-based and an older man is not usually more energetic than he was earlier, though he may NEED a lot more energy to keep up with life in general, particularly if he’s successful, or to get back into the swing if he’s been knocked off the success trajectory. A new wife brings new energy. There’s no denying that status is boosted by a trophy spouse whether the trophy-status is about appearance or power.

So it works both ways. For a young woman, stepping into a relationship with an older successful man means jumping over a lot of learning years and the kind of hardship people endure in shared youth, including neglect, deprivation and blowups that can destroy a marriage or at least scar it badly. Maybe she doesn’t want to have to learn a lot of stuff by trial and error that could simply be taught by someone who’s been there. Back to energy, Bob wanted a companion who could jump on a horse to ride in a buffalo roundup, put on coveralls to pour molten bronze, or sharpen a knife to help skin a bear. There ARE fifty year old women who do that, but they are generally married. A friend wanted a woman to travel with him through Europe -- someone who could backpack from one hostel to another, sleep on trains, and happily subsist on bread, cheese and wine -- they don’t call ‘em “youth hostels” for nothing -- but though he really preferred older women, they wanted luxury tours.

Considering the work schedule of politicians, one can see the advantage of a young wife. Another dimension is that women of the candidates’ age were probably raising children in their young adulthood and educated in quite a different way than a woman the age of her children. Young women mesh better with young staffers. Of course, they will also probably have to raise the second batch of children alone, but there will be more money and more help. The payback comes in nursing an old man when one is still relatively vigorous.

I was a third wife of four, which I often state baldly as a way of saving time when newly introduced people begin to stumble around to try to figure out the age difference: am I Bob Scriver’s daughter or Harold Scriver’s wife or even (heaven forbid) Phil Scriver’s wife? (Phil Scriver is not relation but pretends he is.) I am the only surviving wife and was divorced in 1970 which is before many of the interested were born and before the preponderance of them came to Montana -- therefore, I am outside their mental map. Also, I’ve had my own careers as a Unitarian Universalist minister and as an animal control officer (talk about outside the mental map!) and am now often described as a retired high school teacher who writes, which is as true as any other description. It would be as true to say I was Scriver’s Boswell, that gentleman being one who traveled with Dr. Johnson, taking notes.

The more dangerous paradigm is that I never got enough fathering and Bob, whose daughter was removed by early divorce and a young death, never got enough daughtering. Father/daughter paradigms don’t mix well with marriage to a young wife in an era when some females actually celebrate incest. (Take THAT, Mom!) But it is true that Bob often sheltered and guided me in the way recommended by Moliere in his play about the man who tried to raise a young woman to be his perfect wife. That rather echoes being considered livestock, which does point to one of the problems. I once accused Bob of “using” me to further his career and so on, which meant that the reverse had to be considered: that I was using HIM to further my ends, including the writing I’d always intended to do. One of the elements of the marriage breaking down was that it finally became clear that I wouldn’t have the time and energy to write until he was dead. Worse, I wanted more education -- more than he had or considered necessary. Still worse, as I grew more competent, he began to move towards the Zane Grey model where the wife became a mom who stayed home to run the business while Zane explored the world with younger women.

I was the only wife who knew all the other wives: Alice, who married at nineteen and had two children, both of whom died of cancer as did Alice but not until after two more marriages; Jeanette, who was close to Bob’s age and married him at the end of WWII, supporting him through his transitions from music to taxidermy to sculpture, and finally escaping to the lifestyle she always wanted with a second husband in California; then myself for the decade of rising fame (I've never remarried.); and Lorraine, a common-law wife who lasted the longest -- rather like Rodin’s Rose Beuret. I’ve been cautioned not to say too much about her, for fear of sounding vindictive. There were other women, one only a few years younger than me who was briefly married to Gary Schildt. One of Bob’s worries was that "his" women would unite against him.

The cultural consensus of any time is often split between the ideal and the actual, though I would not like to imply that a lot of people -- probably the majority of people -- manage to marry in a “conventional” way that keeps property, children, and status sorted out, which is one of the secrets of secure prosperity. But some people in some circumstances and a few people in just about any circumstance, are better off inventing their own pattern. New influences like feminism, the sexual revolution allowed by effective contraception, the rising respectability of gays, the mellowing of mainstream religion, income parity between men and women, can call for new patterns. It sometimes seems to me that ambitious people just don’t have TIME for conventional marriage, can’t stay on the same page because there’s no time to talk about it.

Today’s newspaper also told the story of a 25 -year-old Nebraska school teacher who eloped to Mexico with a 13-year-old illegal immigrant boy. Figure that one out. The first thing to figure out is how he's going to get back into the US.