Ever after (happily)

My daughter met her brother’s mother for the first time last week. At age 39, he was getting married for the first time and it seemed an opportune time to get the families together. We don’t live far apart, only a 10-minute walk in the city. But, except for the children my husband and she share, we have no connection.

That exception, of course, is a huge part of our life as a family. Jeff was 13 when I met his father, who had been separated from his mother for eight years by then. He was a bright, funny boy with a mop of blond hair and a soft, pudgy face. He and his younger brother Jeremy played, laughed and battled each other with equal enthusiasm.

I could tell Jeff liked me soon after we met. But he never liked the idea of his father and mother’s divorce. And, as the eldest son, he seemed to shoulder a self-imposed responsibility for his mother’s happiness.

It’s not unusual for children of divorce to fear commitment on the level of marriage, nor for their marriages to end prematurely. Marriage is a delicate undertaking with complex rules. It is a road that requires lots of yielding along the way. Having a model to learn from can help, but is no guarantee. On the road map of marriage, “Watch For Falling Rocks” is a recurring sign, as are “Yield” and “No Shoulder.”

It took years for me to know that my mother’s second marriage had been a business deal intended to secure our future. When the way out of a miserable marriage, for her, was divorce without alimony or child support, she took it. People make strange bargains in life.

If I learned anything from that example, it was the kind of family life I did not want. I had to look elsewhere for examples of marriages I wanted to follow. Some were those of family friends, an aunt, a mentor. But none would prepare me for the peculiar turns in the road my own marriage would take. For that, I had to rely on my own stubbornness and my husband’s ability to put up with practically anything.

When we got married, I was determined that it was forever. That was my stubborn side. Somewhere in the next decade, it occurred to me that divorce was an option, even for bullish Taureans like me, but the option was never preferable to the present day.

As friends succumbed to the seven-year-itch, we kept going, through battles with my depression and his cancer, and our triumphs over both.

I don’t feel triumphant about our marriage. Friends whose unions did not survive the rings of fire are thriving and happy as often as not. But I do feel satisfied that we have each other, and the family we have raised and blended, now and (dare I say it?) forever.

Jeff and his new wife, Valentina, have few illusions about happily-ever-after. Her parents separated after enduring a two-year work stint in Siberia, enforced clean-up duties at Chernobyl and the uncertainties of emigration and assimilation in a foreign culture. Next to those, depression and cancer seem like ice-fishing—cold and uncomfortable, but recreation nonetheless.

Their wedding at City Hall in Manhattan was as unceremonious as a ceremony can be. A steady rain dampened any hopes of a successful coiffure and meant a half-mile walk in new leather shoes for lack of a taxi. As we waited in the hallway of the municipal building for our tribe to be ushered in to the “wedding chapel,” a loudspeaker crackled with an announcement that an alarm had been sounded on the 13th floor and was being investigated. We were ordered to stay put.

When the all-clear was given, the wedding proceeded and was over in a matter of minutes. The blended families cheered and joined in a once-in-a-lifetime meal together at a local restaurant. My daughter sat across from her brother’s mother. They chatted like old friends.

May we all live happily ever after.