Skipping My First Marriage

I used to say, when people asked why I had waited so long to get married, that I had simply decided to skip my first marriage and go right to the happy one.

Who knew?

My family grew up renting a cottage every summer in a small beach town that most of the world still has yet to discover. My sister and I grew like trees over long, luscious summers there; I still think of those years as the happy ones . When I was 37 I eloped, and my husband and I (of one day) bought a house in the same town, on a whim, inspired, each unsure the other wouldn't call all of it off at some point. A weekend-long game of chicken.

Much of my living has taken place in this beach town. When I was twelve and my parents were divorcing, my father had a nervous breakdown. After spending a few years downward-spiraling, he was ultimately diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. He has been out of my life, thankfully, since I was in my early teens.

Before any of this happened, though, there was the beach. As such, there was a day every summer that was the Last Day at the beach. We would pack up two cars with pets and sheets and the accumulations of a summer, and drive home to the suburb where I grew up. Spent cold winters waiting impatiently for the time around the Fourth of July (firecrackers, barbecues). Then the suitcases would get pulled out and the packing would begin, and it would be time to go back to the beach.

When my father lost it all, my mother didn't so much lose her center as become her center. The dark hole of rage and frustration that she had quieted in the business of raising a suburban family 1970's-style disintegrated. She fell into a well of rageful, bitter despair that lasts to this day. Our lives--hers, my sister's and mine--became chaos. For example: In the kitchen ceiling of our house, we had a leak. What started as a leaking upstairs bathtub pipe had, over years, enlarged into a gaping hole. Plaster dripped from ragged exposed pipes. If you ran a bath or, eventually, took longer than a 15-minute shower, white water would run onto the kitchen floor, forming a pool on the linoleum next to the stove.

My mother kept order by keeping the floor mopped.

But before this there was this beach, and peaceful long summers, and growing up.

Because this suummer place meant so much, when my sister and I were old enough to drive the first overnight trips we planned were with each other, back to the beach. We'd recruit another girlfriend, rent a motel room in a bunch of pine trees on Route 1 and spend a short weekend soaking up a place we loved that had loved us back. I remember these weekends as being more painful than anything, but we both felt the powerful urge to return, return.

Through all of these visits, it never failed, still there was always a Last Day at the beach.

I should point out that the Last Day has a distinctive look. The sky is always impeccably blue. The water matches. It is very dry. Though there is a cool wind, it is not strong. The sunlight makes everything glow. It is late, late in summer. It is all so beautiful, and you are leaving for another dose of forever. Your heart aches.

So here I am in my first marriage, which isn't really my first marriage because I'm skipping my first marriage by going right to the happy one, and fast-forward 25 years.

Last weekend, my husband and I went surfing for what turned out to be the last ride of the season. It was obvious when we stepped off our boards into the shoreline froth that by as soon as the next day, the water beneath us would be too cold to fall into. I should mention that we are pulling apart, my husband and I. Coming carefully, gently, hardly at all chaotically, unglued. Undone at the hinges. For that reason especially, last weekend really felt like The Last Day at the beach.

At the end of a long rides I crossed the hazy, sunny, Last Day parking lot with my surf board balnced on my head. A thought srruck me suddenly: Please, I thought: On my last day on earth, may I please remember this moment.

Heat on my face, wind starting to chill on my thighs. Rough pebbly parking lot under my feet, sun going down on the horizon. He is at my side. Husband. Wife. We.

There is so much to be let go of, yet the heart wants to cling.

Please, let me remember forever that one day, I was here like this with him.

This is what I'm here to tell you: I don't believe there is such a thing as skipping your first marriage. Your first is always your first. You have things to learn about yourself--terrible, wonderful, disappointing things--that will make you who you are going to be for the rest of your life. Your first marriage is the only way you can learn them.

I hope I remember that day until my last day on this earth.