There was something incredibly liberating about being fifty. For so many years, she’d cared about what other people thought of her. She still cared, of course, in the ways that counted: about being good, about growing, about learning, but she no longer spent her nights lying awake, replaying verdicts, second-guessing choices. With this newfound freedom came honesty. And honesty brought her this: she’d been married four times. “Yes, four”, Instead of attempting to describe or justify it, she chose to begin at the very start.
She met her first husband in eighth grade, before texting, email, or the internet. He was in Florida: she was in Pennsylvania. The link started via a picture of him that a cousin brought to visit. The family connections were confusing, but this was for sure: he was not a cousin or a cousin once removed, and he was definitely cute. It would be six more months until she actually met him in a bowling alley in Florida during a solo trip for a visit. And yes, he was perfect.
Day one passed and they went out together along the side of a lake. As she handed him her school picture before leaving, she wrote on the reverse that she would see him one day and that they would be married. Even that seemed quite presumptuous, but that is exactly who she was at that moment.
Then came the months of letter-writing by hand, waiting at the mailbox, waiting to find the letter that contained a blurry photo. Finally, he came to visit her at the shore. And then reality did not live up to the dream. They did not really get along. In fact, they barely tolerated each other. Years went by. But then, during eleventh grade, a letter arrived. The spark was back. The letters and the phone calls on Saturdays—if she was home when he called—continued. Her parents liked the relationship. Primarily because it was a long-distance one, they had no clue about what was about to follow.
College was expected. An education was nonnegotiable. But she had other plans. When her parents suggested that she go to a women’s college, she laughed. Community college was definitely out. As graduation drew near, she invited him to come and suggested running away together.
He showed up a week before the graduation in a gold Pinto, and they were never seen apart again. That night of graduation, now eighteen, she made a decision that would change her life forever. While the family attended church the next morning, they packed the car, including the dog, en route to Florida. She left a note on the kitchen table—a note that would be regretted for the next several years to come. The note would never be seen again, except that a package would arrive later, containing a small bag of coal and the message that the note was safely stored in a deposit box.
So, the only guideline his parents gave them when they moved to Florida was that there would be no shared rooms unless they were married. That night, he proposed to her. And she thought about it a minute and agreed. They married twelve days after graduating from high school, after about three and a half weeks of dating over four years, in a small mission church with very few relatives in attendance. To their surprise, they did all right. They raised a life in a small apartment and a travel trailer on the east coast of Florida. Then, two years passed, and she became pregnant. Later, she yearned to be home, and they moved back to Pennsylvania. They had two daughters, and all seemed full and good.
But youth and marrying so young had their effects, too. He realized that he had missed out on life. Therapy helped, but it wasn’t enough. Eleven years of marriage had passed, and she realized she no longer wanted to share her husband. She asked for a divorce and became a single mother of two young girls. This broke her. However, the years that came after only strengthened her further. She learned self-respect and taught her daughters that love cannot ever be made to tolerate any form of betrayal. Her marriage was very important to her, but she knew that when love wounds and fails to heal, only the most courageous person lets go of it. That was marriage number one. The rest would come later.
