Lucky, Lucky, Lucky
Fern: Happy Anniversary. Wow! Fifty-five years goes by quickly.
Joe: Fifty-five years? As of this June, we’ve been married only thirty-five years.
Fern: I’m counting my first marriage, plus twenty years with my first husband.
Joe: Then you may as well add in my first marriage of eleven years.
But don’t count the seven years I was alone with kids and dating. Dating in your 40’s, there was a nightmare.
Fern: When my marriage ended I was forty-two. Forty-two years old! That seems young now. Then I thought I was middle-aged.
Joe: You were. If we’re really talking about the middle of a life-span.
Fern: And I wasn’t teaching when I got divorced; I was writing a novel and some columns and making less than 10,000 dollars a year. I didn’t have my own health insurance.
My ex assured me as he was walking out the door that I would be fine. He added: ”You might even see one day that this might be the best thing that ever happened to you."
Turns out, he was right.
Joe: When we were in the same writers group you used to fix me up with your single friends. Remember one said that I was “too short?”
But I always had a secret crush on you. When we were at the same parties we gravitated together to talk. When our writers group meeting was at my house (you were still married then), I had cleaned the living room all morning before the group met. It was to impress you.
Fern: I don’t at all recall being impressed by your housekeeping.
Joe: You have higher standards than I do.
Fern: I remember that day because there was a get-well card on your mantle. When I asked about it, you said that it was a card for Katie who had had the chicken pox. When I asked, you admitted that she had chicken pox three months before!
I thought: This is a sentimental guy who doesn’t throw anything out. Turns out to be true.
Joe: I went out with two or three of the women you set me up with. Good thing for us none of the match-making took.
Fern: We went out for the first time to a Chinese restaurant and you were agreeable to sharing. I loved that. My first husband hated to share.
I thought: A woman left you? A man who enjoys sharing food, who is kind, has a great sense of humor and loves to cook?
Sometimes I don’t think women have very smart judgment with regards to men. I used to be one of them.
Joe: Men don’t have the best sense with women, either. I almost married after my divorce because I was dating someone who made great fried chicken and had long, blonde hair. She also had a shop-lifting problem. Whew!
Fern: When I told you that I was seeing a therapist you offered to tell me everything you had learned in therapy . . .
Joe: So I could save you the money!
Fern: Yeah. You were always funny.
And when my teen-age daughter asked if I were going out on a date that night, I might have told her that we were just friends. But in my head, I thought: I’m going to marry him.
Joe: I had no idea.
Fern: For all of those years when you were single . . . then suddenly I was, too. We both read the same books. We made each other laugh.
I appreciate that you don’t have a temper. Especially when you drive. Which, by the way, is often too slow.
Joe: Also, I can take criticism about my driving.
Fern: Remember when we went on a trip together and we got lost in Kansas City? I gave you the wrong directions and we were driving way out of our way. Immediately, I felt myself tense up. My first husband would have been screaming: Didn’t you call the hotel to get the goddamned directions? Where the fuck are we?
But you were so calm. You said: “Hey, we got money in our pockets and we speak the language.”
As if: why would getting lost upset anyone?
Joe: But when we where first married, I got upset whenever you came home later than I expected. It stirred up memories from my first marriage. I thought your not coming home on time might mean that you didn’t want to come home at all.
Fern: Because in a second marriage, the ex’s are still hanging around for a while. Ghosts. Invisible third wheels.
Joe: We used to talk about what would have happened to us if we had met when we were young. I’ve always had close women friends, but often when there was someone I was attracted to and available, I was often too shy to ask her out.
Fern: I was engaged when I was in college. That was way too young.
But I could picture us in college, drinking coffee together in the student union, cutting classes because we were having fun in each other’s company. Going to foreign films and then talking about how pretentious they were. You would have been a good friend, there for me always, a comfortable shoulder to cry on when the boy I was with -- a boy like my ex-husband -- behaved badly.
When I was young, I wasn’t ready for the kind of man you are.
Thirty-five years ago with no pre-nups but promises. Buying a house together. Raising girls through tempestuous teen-hoods. Putting all the kids through college.
Now not a day that goes by that we don’t acknowledge gratitude, looking out for each other’s welfare. Bright buoys on the stormy sea of life.
Joe: Lucky, lucky, lucky. At eighty years old, I am grateful every day.
Fern: I am also grateful you never voted for Trump.
Joe: Now that would’ve been a deal breaker.
The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative
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Happy Anniversary! To think I first met you (in 1991) you were almost newlyweds! I love this piece.
And this:
“Hey, we got money in our pockets and we speak the language.”
I must remember this next time I get lost!!!
Tearing up. I love your love for each other. And the laughter.