This is the third year in a row that I’ve run this piece. Usually I put it up on February 3rd but I missed the day. Only seven days late. I wrote it in honor of my parent’s anniversary. They’ve been divorced for more than 30 years but February 3rd still feels like their day.  I wrote it when a guy in Yugoslavia asked me to be a guest blogger. I liked it and posted it on  Third Street as well. 

 Today is the anniversary of Smartmom’s parents. February 3rd. The date
is etched in her mind. She and her sister would go to the same gift
shop year after year to buy an anniversary gift for them. West Town
House smelled of bath soap and sachet. It was just a block and a half
from the Riverside Drive apartment. They’d browse for an hour or more.
And with only four dollars, they’d find something to buy: a stone paper
weight or a letter opener, which the owner would gift wrap in green
paper and a black ribbon bow.

Smartom’s parents aren’t married
anymore. They’ve been separated since 1976. But February 3rd still
stops her short. And while they’ve been separated for longer than they
were together, February 3rd means only one thing: the beginning of
something that later came to an end.

Manhattan Granny showed
OSFO her wedding album a few weeks ago. A large, white, leather-bound
book, the black and white photographs present Smartmom’s parents on
their ceremonial day. In a simple and elegant, calf-length gown, Groovy
Grandma looks like Audrey Hepburn; her hair is close-cropped like
Hepburn’s too.

Groovy Grandpa, with no trace of the beard that
would later define him, looks pleased with himself and his bride. Their
parents gather around them – mythical parents, they are all dead now.
They look happy for this union, for this coming together.

Later,
OSFO said, "Grandma doesn’t look like herself," Maybe she didn’t
recognize her 78-year old grandmother as a beautiful young bride. Maybe
she was surprised to see her grandparents together; she never seen them
that way. It probably seemed strange; a little out of whack.

The
separation came as a surprise, dramatic as it was. The rupture was
sudden: suitcases packed; black garbage bags, filled with clothing —
tossed. All traces of him were banished from the apartment;
an anguished wife’s ill-fated attempt at an exorcism.

Smartmom
was only seventeen, a senior in high school, on the cusp of going away.
It was awful to see her family bifurcated. She was in the throes of
first love, first sex, high school. Now this?

Like an ostrich,
Smartmom buried her head in her own sandy concerns while her mother
grieved and her father sublet a studio on the other side of town.

And
when her first love decided he didn’t love her after all, she
bifurcated too. “Don’t leave me,” she cried pathetically for days.
"It’s gonna take a miracle to make me love someone new cause I’m crazy
for you,” Laura Nyro sang, the song played over and over on the record
player in the living room.

But he left anyway.

February
3rd is just another day. But for someone whose family doesn’t exist
anymore, Smartmom will always honor the beginning of something that
later came to an end.