The Biblio File April 2019 Essay: “Our Silly Anniversary”
OUR SILLY ANNIVERSARY
Like most married couples, Ed and I have our “stock” stories, ones we pull out and tell at parties. One of our favorites is about finding out, after five years of what we thought was married life, that our union wasn’t a legal one. My ex and I had separated in the seventies, and, as a result of a drunken $25 bid he made on a no fault divorce at an ACLU event, and the fact that the attorney failed to file the prize divorce (I know, I know, you get what you pay for), I was, in 1988—Drum roll—a real life, bona fide bigamist.
After telling everybody we knew that I was a Bigamist!, I had an attorney friend in Mississippi work with a judge to straighten things out. She said, just to be safe, it would be good idea for us to marry again. We said our vows to each other at our church, a big smile on our pastor’s face as he told our story, the congregation cracking up, and then feasted on a cake with white frosting and green letters that said “FINALLY”.
We now had two anniversaries, six months apart, October 16, when we first wed and April 17, when we re-wed. We called, (well, I called) the one in April our “Silly Anniversary”, and each year, we tried to do something silly. Ice cream at odd hours or a vacation when we needed to be working or silly dancing in the living room. But, not long ago, as we told our bigamy story at a dinner gathering, I realized that, though we’d kept celebrating the October one with a trip or a concert, we had all but forgotten to celebrate the April one, the silly one, and it had become nothing but an old story.
Our Silly Anniversary is coming up, and this year, we decided to bring it back. Well, I decided to bring it back, and I told Ed, who said he’ll bring it back with me. And then, bless him, a day or so later, he told me he’s thought of something silly for the day, and he’ll surprise me with it. He says it involves music and food, so it can’t miss.
Back in ’88, after we got that little bigamy problem taken care of, Ed and I were laughing about it, and then, in a moment of seriousness, noted that, not once during the process, did we consider the fact that this would have been a perfect time to get out of a marriage that wasn’t a legal one. Though we’d had times together so wonderful we soared to the heavens, we’d also been through agonizing times, when we felt trapped in hell. But calling quits to our union didn’t enter our minds, because the silliest thing in the world would be for us to be apart.
Happy Silly Anniversary to Us. And many more.
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