Mediate Michigan

Ross Kenneth Urken is going to a wedding next week. His parents’. There aren’t many etiquette books that cover this one. And the bride and groom aren’t the only ones whose history is being rewritten with remarriage.

Happily Divorced

By Ross Kenneth Urken

My divorced parents, in a delightfully absurd twist, will remarry each other on May 23 — 28 years after their original wedding day. All told, their relationship arithmetic traces the route of an irregular cardiogram: 22 years of marriage, 4 years of divorce during which my father briefly married another woman, 2 years of dating each other again. Now this beautiful, strangely soap-operatic turn.

During a college summer I spent in France three years ago, my mother confessed to me by telephone amid gossipy gum-chewing pops that she and my father had reconnected. She whispered the news giddily as if to one of her girlfriends at lunch.

“Dad and I have started to … go out again,” she said, her voice jumping a dozen decibels.

“Citizens of Aix-en-Provence,” I wanted to scream, “my parents may be going steady!”

via When Parents Remarry Each Other – Motherlode Blog – NYTimes.com.