2025 began on a foreboding note: my wife didn't make Hoppin' John.
Divorce has brought about many unexpected things.
By the numbers:
5: days it took me to mourn the end of my marriage.
10: days it took me to stop checking that my wedding band was still on my finger.
My divorce is nothing at all like the break-ups I've had with girlfriends. While I still have a long row to hoe, I have been able to put certain things behind me with amazing rapidity.
I've noticed that it is getting progressively more difficult to recall the smell of my wife's skin. In fact, I am not sure that my memory of it today bears any relation to reality. I used to love to smell her neck and breathe in the alluring musky sweetness that was her. These days a miasma of what smells like coconut-scented lotions and potions follows her everywhere.
By contrast, I can recall the smell of a particular girlfriend's skin instantly and it's been 30 years.
Divorce has brought about many unexpected things.
I wrote not long ago that sometimes little things mean a lot. Such has been the case over the past few days.
Over the weekend I was at the supermarket where I had gone to procure some pumpkin for a pie now that I have been instructed on how to make pie crust. This was the fancy organic stuff and, after snatching a can and doing a 180, I was looking at the organic junk food. I began perusing the shelves for any novel salt & vinegar snacks. Had I, for example, missed the S&V chick pea chips, perhaps? As I was scanning for the Precious, someone pushed their cart past me. Upon looking up at the interloper, I found that it was a lovely woman roughly my age. She smiled at me and I was pleased to find that my natural reflex to smile back kicked in immediately instead of my brain intervening and having its usual conversation with itself about what to do and coming to the conclusion that I should smile back only after the woman was halfway down the aisle.
I felt like I was 12 again and a cute girl in my class had smiled at me. What a lovely feeling! It's one I haven't felt in ages.
And then one morning earlier this week on the bus as my stop approached, I made my way to the door and a woman, again roughly my age, flashed a highly winsome smile at me before quickly looking away. A fantastic way to begin the last leg of my journey into the office.
A couple more friends that deserve mention.
One is a fellow film devotee and I am grateful for the trips we take to the theater. Not only do I get to enjoy some fine cinema but I also get out of the house and away from the scene of some of the worst memories of my life. Plus the company is good. Younger generations receive a thorough excoriation in our conversations, I can tell you.
And his texts often come at just the right time - when I am feeling alone or ruminating. It is almost a preternatural ability.
The other is someone I've known since kindergarten. Cast your minds back, oh, 5 or 6 weeks. I am at work with a mere 5 minutes left on the clock when my personal phone rings and it is him. What an unexpected joy!
We were best friends for 13 years before I moved away from Chicago, where he still resides, to Wisconsin. After that we carried on our relationship in spurts. We'd trade calls and later emails for a stretch and then lose touch. And then we'd regain it. Repeat.
I asked him what prompted his call and he replied that he'd been meaning to call me for months to thank me for the cards.
During lockdown I began sending out cards to family and friends since face-to-face contact was verboten. As my list of recipients grew from a small coterie to 30ish people and the lockdowns ended, I scaled back my mailings to just the equinoxes and solstices.
I was taken by surprise and quite humbled^. It didn't take long for us to fall back into our easy rapport. We chatted as I finished up a couple tasks, made my way to the elevator, walked to the BRT platform, and rode a bus to my first destination. As my second bus approached, I pledged to call him later in the week when I wasn't in media res of a commute.
That conversation lasted for nearly 2 hours. We caught up on one another's lives and reminisced quite a bit. It was exhilarating! Our next conversation lasted just as long.
While we don't see one another, though I am planning a visit, and we don't chat with great frequency, bringing this friendship back to life has been a very meaningful contrast to the end of my marriage.
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That's all I want to say about the divorce. For now, anyway.
Divorce has brought about many unexpected things.
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