Many years ago, I got married around this time of year to my first husband. It was close to my parents’ anniversary, which is also around the July 4th holiday. I can’t remember now why exactly he and I chose the date we did, but I can imagine I probably thought my parents’ own wedding date might bring us some luck.
Not that I consciously thought we needed luck.
I’ve written much about our marriage—a young one that now, through the lens of many years, feels glossed with naiveté and wishful thinking. We decided to split just after Thanksgiving a few years later, he moved out soon after Christmas, and we officially divorced at the beginning of spring. By summer, the pain was still raw, and I knew our looming wedding anniversary would be tough.
So I did what I had been trying to do with other aspects of my life: to take control of it and make it my own. I had already moved around furniture to where I wanted it in our-old-place-now-my-place. I had already taken the book I’d made for him—that he’d left behind—of a few poems I had written for him (the intent was to add to it over our many years of marriage), and I had ripped out those poetry pages and made the book, instead, my recipe book (a book I still have to this day, and I rarely remember it once held a handful of love poems—now it holds mint pasta and yogurt berry pie dreams).
To take control of it, for our anniversary, so close to July 4th, I decided to throw myself an “Independence Day Party.”
I wish now I could remember the details of the party. I think there was swimming and potluck dishes—likely a loaf of bread and a bowl of homemade hummus, which everyone always seemed to bring to potlucks—and I know for sure there were friends, new friends I had made since the divorce, old ones I held dear.
What I remember most about that party and that time, though, is me: I remember the young woman I was then, who was grieving but determined, and that determination would be the thing that would carry me through the years ahead, years I imagined as easier but that would present me with more losses: three strong friendships of mine would wither soon after, one more painful than all the others because I depended on that one to lead me through my crises.
Maybe the lesson was to depend on no one. Or maybe the lesson was that I had to find my own way, just like the title of the party I threw for myself.
And I did, not without scrapes and knocks and heartache and tough lessons and some tears dampening my pillow, but I did.
For that determination I had all those years ago, I am proud. If I had known what lay ahead, I might not have been so determined. Perhaps not knowing what lay ahead allowed me to find strength I also never knew I had. And for that, and so many other things, I am grateful.
(Photo by Levi Guzman from Unsplash)
‘Til Divorce Do Us Part
Speaking of marriage and divorce...
I was recently asked to do a reading for Get Lit Boone on Instagram Live. I chose a chapter from my memoir, The Going and Goodbye. The chapter is titled "Til Divorce Do Us Part." If you want to have a listen, here it is:
