January sixth 1984

 

Yesterday, January sixth, was my 25th wedding anniversary.

We got divorced in June of 1995, so we were married 11 and a half years, but have been friends (mostly – the divorce didn’t happen in a vaccum) since we met in the summer of 1981.

The summer of 2008 was the first summer in 18 years that my former wife was not around; her father has cancer and she stayed in Japan to be with him while he’s still around.

She has come to see me in Oregon every summer since I left Japan and moved back here in 1996 – we got divorced before we hated each other, and have managed to save the friendship that led us to marry.

We did not do the typical American style of divorce.  Divorce in Japan was almost laughably easy – pay a fee to the ward office, swear we didn’t want to be married any more, get that signed by a couple of witnesses, and viola, divorced.  Clean break – no alimony, no "I’m going to take all your stuff" bs, just ended it.  We didn’t do the typical American wedding either… although we did participate in three weddings together.

Yeah, I’ve been married three times, but always to the same woman.  The "real" wedding was before a Justice of the Peace in Providence, RI, but that didn’t "feel" right, and so we got married again for our friends in the kiln room at RISD, where my former wife went to school.

When we moved to Japan in 1985, her parents wanted to see their oldest daughter married, so they threw a lavish wedding for us – a more or less "traditional" Japanese wedding, one where the bride and groom changed clothes three times for the affair.

Our first "coustumes" were traditional Japanese wedding clothes; our second change was into "traditonal" Western wedding dress and Tuxedo, and for our third change, she wore a fine dress and I wore my favorite suit, an Italian suit I bought in Rhode Island in 1985 (and which I also wore to my graduation from college in 2000.  TG men’s styles don’t change as fast or as much as women’s do).

It occured to me yesterday while I was driving my bus around Milwaukie that it was the 25th anniversary of the first wedding in Providence, the legal one, and so when I got home last night, I emailed my former wife and wished her a happy anniversary.  It was a short, curt note: "25 years ago today we got married: Happy Anniversary".

Her reply was equally short:  "Thank you for remaining my friend – Happy Anniversary".

Since I don’t see anyone even over the horizon, I doubt that I will ever marry again.  She hasn’t; she says "once was enough".  I’m not sure whether or not that’s a flattering comment… but maybe I ruined her for anyone else.

Heh.

I say/write that and LAUGH.  Who knows?

Since I don’t see me getting married again… maybe she ruined me.

Besides, there’s no one around to do that with.

25 years ago.  Wow.

*****