WE’RE GIVEN LICENSE
TO LET GO OF THE PAST

He drove. I sat in the seat next to him, the evidence of our past failures piled on my lap.

The poker-faced guard told us we were in the wrong building. My own face crumpled like a used coffee filter.

“Just kidding, just kidding,” the guard said, grinning. I rolled up the documents in my hand and smacked him.

“Good luck, guys,” he said, still chuckling as we walked through the electronic scanner and then across the shiny marble floors of the echoing atrium.

A court official had told us that, because it was Friday, we probably would be in for a wait. “Everyone rushes to get it done before the weekend,” he said.

There was no line at all, though, on this afternoon. The three clerks at the counter—Brenda, Barbara, and Anne—smiled at us.

“What can I do for you?” Barbara said. As if she didn’t know.

We told her anyway. She nodded her head, grabbed a form, and began the rite of passage that millions of Americans perform every year.

“Name?”

We told her. Mine, then his.

“Have you been married before?”

We both nodded our heads.

“How many times?”

“Once,” he said. “Once each.”

“I’ll need to see your decrees.”

I plopped the pile of papers in front of her, drew a deep breath. It isn’t often you have to prove you failed before you are allowed to try again.

I winced as she flip-flip-flipped through the pages. Such a little stack for so great a burden. His divorce is sixteen years old. Mine is eight, and the paper trail of my marital demise is curled and dog-eared from years of worried use.

Child custody, support and visitation were further ordered, adjudged and decreed on page 2. (Exhibit B)

Divisions of property were further ordered, adjudged and decreed on page 7. (Exhibit D)

On page 9, the judge further ordered, adjudged, and decreed that I be “restored” to my former birth name. “Restored,” as if my previous self were within reach. Or would be ever again.

I was divorced in this same building. Three floors up, the wooden benches are smooth from decades of cradling the anxious and the angry, the frightened and the ferocious. I know those benches well, particularly the one outside courtroom 1-A. There I sat, through pretrial this and pretrial that, as attorneys duked it out in the judge’s chambers.

Most of my memories of that time have melded into one enduring image: I sit alone, wedged against the left arm rail, my stomach in knots and my right hand curled around wooden prayer beads. One bead, two beads, three beads—round and round, praying to keep the panic at bay.

Once, a husband and wife fought two feet away. He screamed at her, but she could only sputter between sobs. “You disgust me,” he hissed, stomping off.

She turned to me, and, with tears streaming down her face, she asked about my beads.

“They’re Buddhist prayer beads,” I said. “A gift from a friend.”

She stared at my moving fingers. “Would you say a prayer for me?”

“I already have,” I said. She thanked me and walked away.

If walls could talk, they say. I imagine those at 1 Lakeside Avenue in Cleveland would wail.

And yet, here we were, on the first floor, full of hope that makes us giddy and new promises we intend to keep. I expected to dread being in this building where so much fell apart, but I found myself grateful for the reminder. If we can’t remember the wrong turns, we’re bound to get lost again.

Anne, fresh out of college and full of her own dreams, typed our driver’s license information into the computer. She smiled when we told her our children will walk us down the aisle. “This is yours,” she said, handing us a white envelope labeled MARRIAGE LICENSE in bold, fancy letters.

We walked back through the atrium, we joked with the guard, then we headed for our car.

He drove. I sat in the seat next to him.

I threw the evidence of our failures into the backseat.

The marriage license rested on my lap all the way home.