(
I wrote this quite a few years ago. I run it every February 3rd.)

Today is the day Groovy Grandpa and Manhattan Granny got married in 1957.

February 3rd. The date
is etched in Smartmom's mind. She and her sister would go to the same gift
shop on West 86th Street 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 their 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 apart 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, there are black and white photographs of Smartmom's parents on their ceremonial day. In a simple and
elegant, calf-length gown, Manhattan Granny 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, "Manhattan Granny 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's 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: black garbage bags filled with men's
clothing tossed in the garbage. 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, her future. 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. She listened to Laura Nryo and Labelle over and over on the turntable in the living room.  "It's gonna take a miracle to make me love someone new cause I'm crazy
for you."

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.