Holy Toledo Ed! I apologize for being so rude. I never imagined (in the world of internet article comment threads) that one should look back at the site where one posted a comment. I assumed that after you get your comment off your chest, you move on and don't look back. Who knew there would be a comment on my comment from none other than Ed the author and valkyrie the grammarian?
Ed I never meant, in my comment, to minimize the potential which second marriages have for success. I meant to maximize the potential for a marriage to be "the" marriage for an individual, not referring to it as his/her "first" marriage and certainly never referring to it by the ridiculous label of a "starter" marriage.
I will never forget the scolding I received from the Rabbi who married us, when I jokingly referred to my one and only wife of 32 years, as "my first wife". He admonished me saying, "Joke about anything else Alan; that's NOT funny."
- 1
- 2
It’s Not About the Flatware
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
I also wasn't sure how to be a middle-aged widower with a middle-aged girlfriend. Were we supposed to go to early-bird dinners? Just how lustily was I permitted to speak without crossing the line into the dirty-old-man zone? And if I playfully lifted Candy into my arms, would she tell me to mind my sciatica?
Candy had her own jealousy issues, but they weren't about my late wife. They were about my having had the sort of life she'd always wanted: a long, loving marriage, a child and the sometimes stifling but mostly comforting sense of being a we instead of an I.
Then there were what one friend dubbed "overlapping realities." Candy and I got married one year and 16 days after Jane's death. We live in the same house I lived in with Jane, and sleep in the same bed. While I never forget who and where I am, I occasionally lie awake at night, secure in my new wife's arms, and wonder: what just happened?
So we're unpacking. We're hanging the art Candy collected during her 53 years next to the art Jane and I collected and painted during our 29 years together. We've begun to make the house our own.
Recently, Candy and I were at a bank. The teller, who was in her early 20s, admired Candy's wedding ring. We said we were newly married. "Oh, I've been married for three years," she said. "You're gonna love marriage." Candy and I looked at each other and smiled. Between us, we've been married six times—yet this young woman was encouraging us as though we were two kids just getting started. The thing is, we are.
Goldman lives in Sacramento, Calif.
© 2008
- 1
- 2
Discuss