Dateline: San Antonio River Walk Patio Branch Office. Jennifer Lopez stood on the nearby bridge during the making of Selena.
If you are new the story of Mr. and Mrs. Travis, Catch up with Episode One, Episode Two, and Episode Three. When the next football season came around, Mrs. Travis was the one with symptoms. She’d gained thirty pounds in the past year, had trouble sleeping, and was short-tempered with the children. Mr. Travis didn’t know what was wrong with his wife.
The cell phone in the garage and weekend depressions returned. Five days before Mrs. Travis came into my office, she had discovered a second mortgage had been taken out on their house without her knowledge and a piece of lake property had been sold. The phone rang all day with people either hanging up when she answered or demanding to speak with Mr. Travis. The mailbox was stuffed with gambling tip sheets for sale.
At the time of her appointment, Mr. Travis had been in Los Angeles for a week for continuing education and was due back in three days.
Mrs. Travis asked what she should do. I looked up at the stars. We put a family diagram together including three generations. As it turned out Mrs. Travis, one of four children, had grown up next door to her maternal grandparents, an important detail. When Mrs. Travis was around ten, her father landed an incredible job opportunity tripling the family income. After several years with extra money, the family had a chance to move from the cramped and falling down house they’d bought from the wife’s parents. Everyone was excited and when an ideal house was found, the family bubbled with plans. Then, Mrs. Travis’s mother told her parents about the plan.
Mrs. Travis, then a young teen, did not know what was said at her grandparents’ house, but heard the all night discussion of her parents. Mrs. Travis’s position was that she couldn’t move away from her parents, that her mother had been hysterical and crying with the “good” news. Her father was angry and said he felt trapped, that the little house was supposed to be temporary and, by the way, he wanted out from under the thumb of his mother-in-law. Mother countered with crying and desperation, admitting she also wanted to move. Her father pleaded with her to “for one time in her life” stand up to her mother and stick with the plan to move. She didn’t and the family was never quite the same. Her father died of lung cancer several years later. While Mrs. Travis didn’t know if the stress of staying under her grandmother’s thumb contributed to the cancer, but she did know that his last months were unpleasant and sad with his mother-in-law constantly butting in to his treatment. Mrs. Travis remembered her father saying, “Your grandmother finally gets what she wants. She has her little girl back one hundred percent.”
When asked what might have turned out differently if her mother had been able to tell her mother “no,” Mrs. Travis let out a long sigh. “I’ve got some things to do,” she said, and left.
Having a Self and Stress
Here’s what she did, all her own plan. The next day she halved all assets and debts the family had in all accounts, including retirement funds. She called the mortgage company and arranged a re-finance for the next week. She applied for and landed a job as a manager of a pizza franchise blocks from the house.
She met Mr. Travis at the airport and suggested a drink in the airport bar to hear about his trip. She wasn’t angry at all. She was calm and greatly empowered by letting go of her crusade to get her husband to change. In fact, as she told Mr. Travis, from here on out she wasn’t going to interfere with his freedom at all. He could gamble or not, not her business anymore. She wasn’t anxious because she’d taken care of herself. She told him what she’d done with their accounts and that she would be paying the mortgage, leaving him responsible for the mortgage. She told him she had a full time job, but knowing she needed some money to start, she had accepted the penalties and withdrawn several thousand dollars from her IRA.
Mr. Travis spoke up angrily with the IRA news. He said, “That was a horrible financial decision. Paying early withdrawal fees is throwing money away!”
Mrs. Travis simply stared quietly until he picked up on the irony. She explained she still loved him and hoped they would be back together some day, but, for now, he was not welcome in the house. Mrs. Travis said, it was not personal, but she did not want to live with someone who did not tell the truth.
Maybe he would one day be a man true to his word, maybe not. Up to him.
She closed saying Mr. Travis would have to make do with what was in his luggage for tonight. He could collect whatever else he needed tomorrow. Mr. Travis said, “Hey! How am I supposed to get home?” She told him again how much she loved him and that she was sure he could figure out a way.
Mrs. Travis kissed her husband, smiled, and was gone. She wasn’t alone though. She had her “self” back.
