Living Happily Ever After
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Real

Date: April 5, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Being a Brady comes with it’s pleasures and its baggage. I’m not one given to a lack of privacy and invasion.” (Christopher Knight)

I know I’ve said I don’t want or need to be like The Brady Bunch, but it’s nice to know I can look to them for inspiration. And to know they feel my pain. Lol.

Despite the commercials, signs and other things that left me feeling unsettled that day in the marriage license office, I didn’t run. Instead, I calmly accepted the clipboard #5 handed me and proceeded to fill out my part of the information. However, as I did that, I realized something. Again.

You lose something in divorce.

Some degree of privacy.

And it seems like it lasts the rest of your life, or at least as long as you have children. Really, the divorce decree only grants you partial freedom; because former spouses, by necessity, are in your business all too often. For example, when you go on vacation or leave town, legally, you have to inform the other parent of your plans and whereabouts. Not to mention the fact that you need to inform them when you have special plans so they don’t make their own special plans that conflict with yours. I confess, sometimes it bothers me. During our over 9-month engagement occasionally I’d think, “Just once, I’d like to make a plan and carry out that plan on my own, in privacy, without having to tell anyone else or involve anyone else in my private business.” I don’t have anything to hide, never have had, but sometimes I feel like “the exes” know our business ALMOST as quickly as we do!

And then not only did the get-married-quick scheme involve informing the former spouses of the plan so that we could have all of our children with us, there I am, applying for a license to marry #5, and even that couldn’t be just about us. The application required we list previous marriages and spouses and other similar information. Although I am not hostile to my ex-husband or #5′s ex-wife, I did have a flash of the thought, “For goodness sake! Can’t we even get a marriage license without having to bring up the previous spouses?”

Such is remarriage, I guess. I never knew to expect that. But we filled out the application and turned it in. One good thing about that flash of frustration, though. It cleared my mind of all fear and enabled me to answer the questions, check the paperwork for accuracy (the only mistake: the clerk listed my birthday for his birthday–or something like that! Since only our birth years are different, it can cause a little confusion in the paperwork occasionally.) We paid our $50 and walked out of the office with…a MARRIAGE LICENSE!

It was getting very real. And about to become totally real…in days.

“Everything you can imagine is real.” (Pablo Picasso)

And VERY exciting, if I do say so myself.

No Refunds, No Exchanges, No Returns

Date: April 4, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“The good Lord gave me a brain that works so fast that in one moment I can worry as much as it would take others a whole year to achieve.” (Unknown)

As I drove to get a marriage license, I didn’t plan to think. But there I was, in the car, driving down the highway…it’s kind of where most of my thinking has taken place since entering my unexpected life. I just can’t seem to help myself. And wouldn’t you know it? I had some unexpected thoughts. They came, unbidden, to my mind.

First I thought, “This is kind of weird. I am driving to the very office I drove to the last time I married.” Try as I might, as focused as I attempt to be on the future and moving forward, I couldn’t help but reflect on the past experience and everything I remember about it. I remembered what I was wearing that day. I recalled how relieved I was I didn’t have to get poked with any needles (Utah doesn’t require blood tests; one of my roommates, who got married in California, said she had to get a blood test to get a marriage license and in the 1980s, that didn’t thrill me–I still had an aversion to needles back then!) I remembered how hot it was (I married in August the last time.) I recalled how nervous I was about the whole  marriage thing back then. And I remembered that I’d thought I was way too young to get married (I completed my fourth year of college, turned 22 and got married the same month–my parents had married when they were 25; one set of grandparents had married when they were 25; and the other set of grandparents had gotten married when they were in their 30s. So I was a lot younger than my family members had been.)

And then as I drove, I looked at the snow covered mountains, remembered how cold it was outside, and thought, “Everything is different this time. Last time it was hot. This time it is cold. Last time I was nervous. This time I’m not. Last time I was so young, this time I’m not. I have so much life experience behind me now, too. This is a whole different experience. Let’s not think about the past, Andrea, let’s keep pressing forward.”

To save myself from my thoughts, I turned the radio on. I never listen to the radio. But I couldn’t believe what I heard.

First up? A commercial. For…DIVORCE INSURANCE! I didn’t even know there was such a thing, but there I was, heading to get a marriage license, listening to everything I never wanted to know about divorce insurance and how it can help you when wedlock goes awry. The commercial even touted that divorce insurance will pay all of your attorney fees AND the deposit on a new place to live when you’re newly single again!

What are the odds I’d hear a commercial for that on the way to doing what I was going to do? So despite my best efforts, I arrived at my destination, thanks to my thoughts and the commercials I heard, a little…unsettled. But least it didn’t show. Or so I thought.

However, you have to love #5. He took one look at me as I stepped out of my car to greet him and asked me if I was ok. It freaks me out how in tune he is with what I think and feel without me ever having to say a thing. I told him I was fine. He searched my eyes and asked again, “Are you sure?” I assured him I was fine (and attempted to keep breathing and not think about what I was doing) as we rode the elevator up to the third floor.

But instead, I thought, “Am I REALLY doing this? Is this really real? I sure hope I know what I’m doing. Why didn’t I worry about all of this before–the previous 9 months?” Suddenly, I was scared. I considered turning. And running. Yet then I’d look over at #5 and realize I couldn’t do that. I was looking at the only man who has ever made me throw up (and more than once!) I was looking at the only man I’d ever thought I couldn’t live without. And my children loved him, too.

We stepped out of the elevator and walked into the office to obtain a marriage license.

And there it was.

Staring me in the face.

A lovely sign, prominently displayed, and the first thing you see when you walk into the office: “No refunds. No exchanges. No warranties.”

That’s when I  knew I had to get out of there. Maybe the state of Utah finds their sign funny, or maybe it is simply a way to legally protect themselves from frivilous lawsuits, but I wasn’t laughing. I was getting more and more nervous, bordering on terrified, and struggling to breathe.

“I have the right to breathe; everything else is a bonus.” (Unknown)

Wedding License

Date: April 3, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Only one marriage I regret. I remember after I got that marriage license I went across from the license bureau to a bar for a drink. The bartender said, ‘What will you have, sir?’ I said, ‘A glass of hemlock.’” (Ernest Hemingway)

The night we got our letters in the mail, #5 began planning our marriage in earnest.

“We’ve got to get a wedding license!” he reminded.

“We have five business days to get one. I’m fine if we just pop over and get it the day before we get married,” I calmly replied.

He looked at me like I was from another planet. (Sometimes, in planning ahead, compared to him, I probably am.) “I am NOT comfortable with that at ALL,” he emphasized. “There is absolutely no way we’re waiting to get something that important until the day before! What if something goes wrong? That is NOT the way I do things, I will never wait until the day before.” He shook his head at me.

I assured him nothing would happen, that we really could wait until the day before, but #5 wasn’t having any of my planning, or lack of it. We arranged for us to meet before work 2 business days later to get our wedding license. (And thankfully, #5 is a “planner.” Turns out, the office was closed the day I suggested we get our license. Had I been in charge, we would have been in trouble!)

I drove to the office on the appointed morning. While I rarely listen to the radio in the morning, for some reason, that day I did. And I couldn’t believe what I heard.

“He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.” (Bertolt Brecht)