Staying True

by Jenny Sanford

  At the time, though, I thought his honesty was brave and sweet, and I suppose I also thought it was a classic case of prewedding cold feet. But I took his concern seriously. I told him that I had unshakable faith in him and thought that his values and moral principles matched up—and would continue to match up—with his actions in the world. As often as I have replayed this moment from our young relationship in my memory, I can’t see it any other way. Being unfaithful was not inevitable. I know that many men doubt that they can remain faithful to their wives for life, but I believed that Mark was among those who would be able to do so.

  Nonetheless, he had raised the issue and we needed to talk it through. I explained to Mark that I believed marriage was so much more than words spoken in a vow and that I was marrying him because I was deeply in love with him as a whole and even flawed human being. More than that, it seemed fundamental to a happy marriage that one would have a partner who had unwavering faith in you and thought better of you than you thought of yourself. To me marriage was a lifetime commitment made to one another in front of God, family, and friends. The specifics of what we said weren’t important to me, but rather the spirit of the ceremony. And I pointed out that fidelity was implied no matter how we phrased it—it was one of the fundamental commandments!

  I tried to explain to Mark that I felt that marriage was in many ways a leap of faith. I put my faith in his goodness more than anything else, and he needed to do the same with me. We would be two people holding hands and leaping into an uncertain future. How could we know what that future would hold for us? We had to trust that we could make it together no matter what fate threw our way. So long as our commitment remained our priority, I told him I knew we could weather any storm. I can see now how this might sound like I was convincing Mark to be faithful to me, but that’s not how the conversation unfolded. Instead, my clear conviction about what marriage meant and my faith in his ability to live up to it seemed to calm him. He said he wholeheartedly agreed.

  In Fr. Leo’s homily at the ceremony he spoke of the privilege family and friends felt to be present as “You begin the journey of lives shared together completely. Perhaps the notion of journey, or pilgrimage, is as fitting an image as we can find for human life in general—and certainly for marriage.” He also said, “I can promise you that what you will discover about each other will amaze and comfort and, yes, perhaps occasionally trouble you. The joy of it is that you set off on the journey together…. Jesus is united to us as a symbol of God’s everlasting covenant, and the marriage of this young man and woman symbolizes that union for us. It is in each other’s faces that they will see God and show God to us. It is in their goodness to the men and women around them, but above all in their goodness to each other that they will learn how the love of neighbor is indeed a single commandment with the love of God.” He concluded, “If you ever doubt that you are the face of God for each other, remember that we today, with enormous joy and confidence, see God radiant in both of you.”

  THREE

  I CAN ONLY BEST DESCRIBE OUR NEWLY MARRIED LIFE AS BLISSFUL. We were young and healthy (or soon to be in his case—he battled a serious case of mono when we returned from our honeymoon and for many weeks he could do little more than sleep). We were deeply in love and had a world of possibilities in front of us both. We were beginning the satisfying and happy work of building a life together.

  Mark moved into my Manhattan apartment and I continued working while he tried to get a new real estate company off the ground, one with a goal of investing in properties in the Southeast. I knew his heart wouldn’t stay engaged in New York City living as long as his focus continued to point south, and I knew all along that a move was in order.

  During one of Mark’s business trips south, he found an historic house—called a tenement because it shared a wall with the house next door—on Wentworth Street, in downtown Charleston. It had lost its roof in the big hurricane of 1989, Hugo. The extensive repairs the house needed made it affordable for us, and it was in the heart of Charleston, which promised activity for me and an office for Mark within walking distance of our home. Another advantage was that we would be only about an hour from Coosaw.

  I can still remember seeing the house for the first time. Even in all its disrepair, it was charming; it would be ours. The original builder had brought his maritime experience to bear on the entrance: The entrances to both sides of the building were flanked with lights—red and green—like the ones marking the channel into the Charleston harbor. The exterior was old brick and the inside had high ceilings and random-width heart-of-pine floors, quite common in old Charleston homes, but exotic to me at the time.

  From New York we supervised repairs to make the home safe and comfortable. Mark hired an old friend who was a contractor to put up new Sheetrock on the damaged walls and replace broken glass, as well as make some minor upgrades in the kitchen and bathrooms. Mark questioned his friend about every expenditure and negotiated ways to bring the work in at the price he wanted to pay. Miraculously, everything got done without them coming to blows.

  Although we were both committed to this move, when we talked about Charleston, Mark worried out loud that I would miss the fast pace of the big city.

  I knew he was wrong about that. Truth be told I could hardly wait to begin our life there.

  As it happened, on one of my last days at Lazard, I shared an elevator with the formidable head of the firm, Michel David-Weill, a diminutive man who reportedly earned about $50 million each year. Ruddy-faced and white-haired, Michel looked up at me over his spectacles and asked in his thick French accent, “But Jen-ni-fer, what weel you do in zeez South Caroliiiina? Who weel you talk to?”

  I didn’t worry about having people to talk with. South Carolina had a tremendous amount to offer and fascinating people. I hoped we would be blessed with children, and I knew that investment banking did not mix well with having a family. Michel was right about one thing, though. I would need to keep my mind busy and remain involved in something that would balance time with the kids, should we be lucky enough to have them. But beyond that, I knew I wanted to be home for our children as much as I could be while they were young. I had no confidence whatsoever that I would get the child-rearing right. Time would be the judge of that. I did know that I had only one real chance—while they were young—to make a mark on their lives and I took that seriously.

  Before we moved to Charleston in early December we had the old floors refinished. The weather was so damp, however, that the floors took longer than expected to dry. We redirected the moving truck to Coosaw for an extra few days. Mark convinced the drivers not to charge us for the delay in exchange for giving them a cabin to stay in at Coosaw and plenty of time to spend with a gun in a deer stand. There is no doubt a lot of backroom negotiating and compromise involved in getting things done in New York and in many other places in this country, too, but this particular barter system—move us in tomorrow and welcome yourself to some hunting on my land while you wait—struck me as wonderfully southern.

  Of course, there were many “we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto” moments in those early days in Charleston. Ever used to walking briskly down New York City’s streets with my eyes down, tightly clutching my purse, I loved the pleasant greetings we received from strangers as we walked the streets of this genteel and more relaxed city, my purse swinging freely and my head and shoulders focused happily ahead.

  Homemaking was also a revelation. Mark and I decided we could make the cosmetic improvements on the house ourselves. I painted some of the rooms and the kitchen floor, made curtains, and even learned to hang wallpaper by myself. We didn’t have a dining table, so Mark dragged a musty drop-leaf one out of the barn at Coosaw, along with a few old chairs, which I cleaned and then covered with fresh fabric. He also found a set of twin beds for the guest bedroom that I painted so they wouldn’t look so dingy. There was no telling what had lived in the mattresses he found in the barn to put on those beds, but we used them anyway.


  It was in living together in a space new to both of us—sharing my apartment had still been sharing my apartment—that we began to rub up against each other and start to work out a complementary way to be. Living together for the first time was one thing: Getting used to someone’s habits and quirks can test your patience. But for us, it was the traditions and expectations that we had each inherited from our families that started to highlight our differences. I know this is common—I think I must have known this even then—and see now that this is the real task of the beginning of a shared life. Discovering these things about another person and learning to love and honor the differences were our next tasks.

  While living in our house on Wentworth, however, I quickly learned firsthand of Mark’s frugality and how it would now impact my every move. After getting a South Carolina driver’s license, I wanted a car so I would not have to depend on Mark if I needed to go somewhere outside the neighborhood. He was against buying a new car so he went with his friend Ozzie, a used-car dealer, to an auction to make sure he got the most for his money. I didn’t gripe—I needed a mode of transportation, not a seat of luxury—but Mark’s frugality quickly showed itself to be his badge of honor and something I had to get used to.

  As careful as he was with our money, however, it was a little ironic that he wasn’t terrific at keeping track of things, at least in any way that another person could make sense of. Mark wrote down on scraps of paper important transactions such as swapping a tract of land with one of his brothers. Later, even though he remembered to the letter the deal they’d made, he’d struggle to find the note that backed it up. It wasn’t long before I took over the family checkbook. Mark agreed happily because he knew that I could tend to the minutiae, but would always keep him informed of the bigger picture. I made a balance sheet with our overall financial position, marital assets combined, and he seemed to breathe easier. Still he wanted to watch and approve every dime I spent, which drove me mad. Eventually I learned we could peacefully coexist if I kept overall expenses to an agreed-upon level, but was free to choose where to save or to spend. This arrangement helped us both avoid petty disagreements.

  Little did I realize as a young woman in love that there would be many moments when these same qualities, particularly his frugality, would cost me. I remember the first birthday I celebrated after we moved south. Mark gave me a hand-made birthday card with a picture of him holding birthday balloons on the front. I thought it was sweet that he drew a picture for me himself. But inside the card, strangely, was a picture of half a bike. I didn’t quite understand the picture. Mark explained I would get the other half in the future. Well, that Christmas he drew me a picture of the other half of the bike, and months later, he delivered the gift to me, a used purple bike he had purchased for $25! My reaction at first was disbelief; he had given me nicer gifts while engaged. In time, however, I came to know this was just part of who he was. And I could play along: A few years ago, we were trying to put aside some money for repairs on a small cottage at Coosaw, so for Christmas I drew Mark a picture of half a house!

  In addition to the more common compromises on finances and blending our faith traditions, our marriage brought unexpected challenges as I grew to know more deeply what made Mark tick. If one of the primary tasks in a young marriage is for both of the new partners to separate completely from their families so that they can form traditions of their own, that first Thanksgiving, less than four weeks into our married life, I saw how difficult that task would be for Mark.

  When all of the Sanford siblings arrived at the farm for the holiday weekend, Mark promptly took our bags upstairs where there are two bedrooms and one shared bathroom. Mark’s mother’s bedroom was on the first floor and traditionally one of the rooms upstairs had always been his sister Sarah’s. The other large bedroom (with bunk beds, trundles, desks, and even surfboards hanging from the ceiling) was for Mark and his brothers. I was confused. Were we displacing Sarah? I thought surely we’d be sleeping in one of the small cabins, perhaps even the one I’d stayed in alone when I first came here for New Year’s Eve. Instead, Mark explained, I would be sleeping with his sister while he slept across the hall with his brothers.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” I said.

  “I’ve always slept with my brothers and I don’t see why that has to change now that we’re married,” he replied matter-of-factly. This was no big deal for him—it just was what it was. I thought it was absurd. In the end, we didn’t have to stand in that hall (that oddly doubles as a closet) disagreeing for long. Mark had just been diagnosed with mono and that made him an undesirable bunkmate. His brothers voted him out. We stayed in one of the small cottages after all.

  It was also in our first year of our marriage that my sweet grandfather closed his eyes, thinking he was off to join his wife, who he was sure had died in the next room. When the news of his death came to me I relayed it tearfully to Mark and told him I’d set about making reservations for us to fly to Chicago for the funeral. Mark, however, said he wouldn’t be going. He explained that he had hardly known my grandfather. Having only met him a handful of times, he didn’t think he needed to be at the funeral.

  I was hurt, even angry, and I cried then for both my grandfather and Mark’s lack of sensitivity. This seemed so out of character for his thoughtful and gentle nature. I explained that I wanted Mark to travel to Chicago to support me in mourning for a person I had adored. I explained how it was something I needed, and that it was expected of him; my family might also feel hurt by his absence. But Mark held firm that he didn’t need to go with me to the funeral.

  Somewhere in the tears (mine) and the stoicism (his), I realized that Mark and I had never talked about funerals in relation to our respective faiths and traditions. I took a deep breath and asked Mark to tell me of the services he had been to in his life and to describe what funerals meant to him. I learned then that Mark had only been to one funeral in his life: his father’s.

  Dr. Sanford had died surrounded by his family on Thanksgiving Day in 1982. Mark and a family friend built a cypress casket, and then brothers Billy and John dug a deep grave beneath their Dad’s favorite oak tree with a backhoe. After a service at church in Beaufort the family drove to the gravesite on Coosaw with a very small group of friends. There was a short burial blessing and then the few guests and Peg departed, followed by Sarah, who wanted to walk home alone along the river. Then Mark and his brothers used three shovels to carefully cover their Dad’s coffin with dirt, working until the top was made smooth and neat again. This was his experience with the end of life and with marking someone’s passing. It started to make sense to me that he didn’t feel it would be appropriate to be part of the service for my grandfather. To him, a funeral was a deeply personal and private affair. My pleading and my explanation that my tradition was very different—my grandfather’s funeral would be a big Irish Catholic Celebration of Life—didn’t change Mark’s mind. I traveled to Chicago alone.

  As disappointing as it was to not have Mark’s support, learning the full story of his father’s funeral helped me understand my husband better. A father’s death is a huge event in any life, but Mark’s father’s was extraordinary in the way it shaped Mark’s worldview.

  When his father fell ill, Mark felt responsible to his father and his family. In a way, from the moment that his father was diagnosed, Mark’s youth ended. After his father died, the tough decisions Mark had to make to save Coosaw made him the embodiment of someone who had lived through an experience like the Great Depression, almost like someone from another time. This was at the heart of his deep-seated frugality and his constant sense of his own mortality. I knew he would always wonder what he missed out on in life because of taking on so much at a young age.

  In understanding this, I learned not to take personally Mark’s thrifty ways, but I also started to appreciate in a deeper way the different loads we each carried into our shared emotional space. It became clear why Mark had asked me to have that d
iscussion about goals, and why his many different goals had to be listed on pages and pages. He needed to accomplish as much as he could in whatever time God granted him. This also helps explain why Mark could be restless and impulsive.

  After we finished renovating our house, Mark began agitating for the next big project. Our house came with an adjacent vacant lot. After less than a year, we sold the house we renovated and rented a house nearby so that we could design and build a new home on that vacant lot. We wanted our new home to be one we would own forever and yet one that was uncomplicated and easy to leave for weekends spent at Coosaw or for longer breaks in the summer. City living was fine for Mark, but he was adamant that he never wanted to feel closed in, so we made having a view of the harbor an important part of the design.

  Building a house from the ground up is exhilarating. You watch your ideas, your creation, your hopes and dreams start to blossom with each new wall put up and floor laid down. But I don’t recommend it for the faint of heart. Even the best of teams have faltered under the pressure of so many large and so many petty decisions. And the way money seems to hemorrhage, even the most careful accounting can make your head spin.

  I had, of course, learned with our first home renovation how important sticking to a budget was for Mark. I also learned how much I disliked having his fingers in every little decision I made. Unless we divided our areas of decision making, I knew we’d end up arguing about the cost of doorknobs, and I didn’t want him micromanaging the nonfinancial decisions such as paint color either. We avoided conflict in our second home the same way we had over our checkbook. We came up with an overall budget and design for the house and then split responsibilities, with each of us having complete control of specific areas with attached budgets.

  Mark dealt with the outside of the house and the garage, yard, roof, and deck, while I dealt with all details of the interior. If I wanted expensive curtains, then I would need to skimp on cabinets or vice versa. I trusted him with the choice of brick or with shutters and he trusted my choice of paint colors and fabrics, all within the original boundaries we had agreed to. This turned out to be an incredibly effective way to survive the project, and I’m not a little proud to be able to look back at that time and see that two controlling personalities (one who was also a penny-pincher, and the other who realized she was pregnant) worked as a real team through it all.