Here We Go Again: The Promise Of Second Chances

“It could be like starting over” — John Lennon, Starting Over

I’m getting married today. In fact, I am getting married in four hours and ten minutes so the last thing on this earth I should be doing is writing this, but such is my style. My fiancé is in a feverish frenzy of preening while I tickle the keyboard keys. Ah the difference between us.

We’ve both been married before and will soon stand before the Mayor of a medium-sized “outer-rim” suburb of Detroit and swear to forsake all others I assume promise to vote for this mayor in perpetuity.

My financé Amy, and I have both been married before and I have been divorced for over 30 years. I cooked dinner for her on our first date and we spent the evening telling each other — in sordid, ugly, painstaking detail — why we should flee in panic, terror, and relief from any sort of mutual relationship. After that evening I was fairly certain I would never see her again. When she agreed to a second date (I’ve made it a rule to give a woman three dates to reject or ghost me) I was convinced she was crazy, she was and is and so am I. But to quote Deadpool my crazy lines up with her crazy.

Divorced life is a weird existence. Between friends trying to “fix you up” with a rummage sale reject of a friend of theirs to the ubiquitous “why didn’t you ever get married again?” can turn the simplest conversation into a screaming rant (I get like that). I hate the concept of “fixing up” a single person in its entirety, I…