{"id":52310,"date":"2024-11-03T06:51:15","date_gmt":"2024-11-03T11:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/?p=52310"},"modified":"2026-06-24T10:28:48","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T14:28:48","slug":"husbands-dream-my-nightmare-chapter-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/le-reve-du-mari-mon-cauchemar-chapitre-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Husband's dream, my nightmare - Chapter 9"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I\u2019d been languishing away for nearly eight months at my mother-in-law\u2019s house, with no running water or electricity, in the heart of a poor village that had been deserted by its young people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The angels create an immense quilt out of suffering and beauty, hope and confusion, stitching it together with wool in the colours of humanity. People are works of art that are never quite finished. This morning, I wonder what was the hardest pill for me to swallow: my errors in judgement, my misplaced convictions or this awful wedding I\u2019d agreed to because a child was growing inside me. As a young girl, my faith in the future was inexhaustible. I remember setting traps with Grandpa Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric to catch hares for dinner. I loved our walks together in the forest! I\u2019d become the hare caught in the trap of a marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after giving birth to my youngest, I started to feel nauseated. I knew why but I didn\u2019t say a word to anyone. Then, 40 days later during my postpartum appointment, Husband had the doctor perform an abortion on me right there. I never forgave him. That man would slip into me like a small snake in a crack, smoke two or three cigarettes, get dressed and then head out for a good time. My heart was slowly dying. I was never able to oppose Husband\u2019s decisions or go beyond the family\u2019s basic needs to experience genuine happiness with the kids. I of course loved my children, I cuddled and cherished them, and they loved me like kittens in need of milk, warmth and care to survive. They kept me alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After his mother\u2019s sermon, Husband had only one thought: to pack up and leave. His mother, sister and I were surprised but delighted with his reaction. We would go back to Montreal first to find an apartment and then mother-in-law and her daughter would follow. Poor Husband. He was like an ice cube melting in life\u2019s harsh heat. It turns out not all Greek gods give birth to a sunny \u201cZorba the Greek,\u201d gyrating out his emotions on the dance floor. The movie was actually inspired by the larger-than-life character Zorba from the novel \u201cThe Life and Times of Alexis Zorba,\u201d by Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis. When Husband partied and danced until the wee hours of the morning, he probably was just as happy as the fictional character, but I was never there to witness it. In my days, Greek men chatted, went out and danced among themselves. Most of them worked in the restaurant industry and partied like the great gods of Ancient Greece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being much more realistic, it upset me to think that no one would be there to help us start over again once we were back on Quebec soil. Since Husband had gotten rid of the little furniture we had owned before setting his sights on Greece, we\u2019d have to start from scratch again. My sisters-in-law in Montreal had predicted we\u2019d quickly return to Canada. They suspected, and rightly so, that our large suitcases that followed us by boat had never been opened. Husband was going to have to return them to Montreal via the same route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worry and fear were eating me up. I was wondering if Husband would have enough money to get us home. We had to book the plane and ship the recently delivered suitcases by boat. In addition, we needed to obtain the official documents for our baby who\u2019d been born in Greece so he could leave the country. It couldn\u2019t be a baptismal record; otherwise there\u2019d be no escaping his mandatory military service. In early November, Husband visited the Canadian embassy in Athens twice and finally succeeded in adding baby Nicholas to his passport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBetween expectation and reality lies suffering, between hope and facts there is often disappointment,\u201d wrote Carlos Fuentes. I was hoping for a better life, like rain in the middle of the desert. My friend Thanassis was keeping his distance since his catastrophic trip to Cologne with Husband, and I was left with no one to talk to. Husband was waiting for his brothers to send him money to buy our plane tickets. I felt a mix of shame and fear. While I was rocking my youngest, huge tears rolled down my cheeks, falling onto the baby\u2019s thighs, and onto my life flooded with small daily misfortunes. Would we be able to find an apartment suitable for my kids and big enough to eventually welcome the in-laws? A school that would take the oldest one in January?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I felt like a spinning top that never stopped, struggling to stay upright. Fold this, give away that, sew, iron\u2026 I even forgot to salt the soup a few times. My sister-in-law tried to calm me and, once the baby had nursed sufficiently, she\u2019d throw me out of the house so I could take my mind off things. One Sunday, I seized the occasion; I borrowed my mother-in-law\u2019s scarf and went to the village church. The Greek pope welcomed me.
\u2014 \u201cKoritsi mou (or, my girl), what can I do for you? I know you have three small children, a mother-in-law and a sister-in-law.\u201d
\u2014 \u201cI also have a husband. A lazy man who thinks he was made from Jupiter\u2019s thigh.\u201d
\u2014 \u201cYour name is Cora, isn't it?\u201d
\u2014 \u201cYes. My Catholic baptismal name is Marie Antoinette Cora.\u201d
\u2014 \u201cIt sounds like the name of the queen who was guillotined in October 1793.\u201d
I wanted to tell the pope that the halter placed on me by a shotgun wedding was already pressing into my neck but abstained. After a few exchanges, the man of the cloth dipped his finger in holy water, traced a cross on my forehead and whispered, \u201cGo in peace, young woman.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where on earth was the peace promised to good women?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TO BE CONTINUED\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cora
\u2764\ufe0f<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019d been languishing away for nearly eight months at my mother-in-law\u2019s house, with no running water or electricity, in the heart of a poor village that had been deserted by its young people. The angels create an immense quilt out of suffering and beauty, hope and confusion, stitching it together with wool in the colours of humanity. People are works of art that are never quite finished. This morning, I wonder what was the hardest pill for me to swallow: my errors in judgement, my misplaced convictions or this awful wedding I\u2019d agreed to because a child was growing inside me. As a young girl, my faith in the future was inexhaustible. I remember setting traps with Grandpa Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric to catch hares for dinner. I loved our walks together in the forest! I\u2019d become the hare caught in the trap of a marriage. Shortly after giving birth to my youngest, I started to feel nauseated. I knew why but I didn\u2019t say a word to anyone. Then, 40 days later during my postpartum appointment, Husband had the doctor perform an abortion on me right there. I never forgave him. That man would slip into me like a small snake in a crack, smoke two or three cigarettes, get dressed and then head out for a good time. My heart was slowly dying. I was never able to oppose Husband\u2019s decisions or go beyond the family\u2019s basic needs to experience genuine happiness with the kids. I of course loved my children, I cuddled and cherished them, and they loved me like kittens in need of milk, warmth and care to survive. They kept me alive. After his mother\u2019s sermon, Husband had only one thought: to pack up and leave. His mother, sister and I were surprised but delighted with his reaction.\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":414,"featured_media":52311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"Chapitre 9 : depuis huit mois dans un village pauvre, sans eau courante ni chauffage, Mme Cora cherche une fa\u00e7on de s'en sortir.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"class_list":["post-52310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lettre-mme-cora"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/414"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52310"}],"curies":[{"name":"WP","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}