Somewhere in a parallel universe:
It’s April 19, 2024, and another Michael Paul Rappaport is celebrating his 49th wedding anniversary. We’re still one year away from the big one, and if we live another year, we will become the third consecutive generation in my family to make it to 50 years together.
It’s not like it was easy. My grandparents, Paul and Florence Kindinger, made it to 65 years before death did them part, and my parents, Norman and Yvonne Rappaport, were about a month away from No. 52 when my dad died. Both of those couples knew the only way they wouldn’t be together was if one of them died.
Our course didn’t run that smoothly. We separated twice in the late seventies and early eighties, but we didn’t take it as far as divorce and both times, we decided to try try again. After the second time, we made it work. For one thing, I finally finished college and got a good job. That made it possible for my wife to take time off and have a baby.
Our first child, a lovely little girl, was born in 1982. We named her Michele after my wife’s younger sister, and being parents was the biggest step in becoming real adults. Another girl, Amanda, came along three years later.
By then I was doing well enough at work that we could afford to buy a house in Fauquier County, a long commute for me but wonderful open spaces and a good-sized home for our family. I didn’t know it when we bought the house, but I wasn’t going to be commuting for more than another year or so.
I had been writing at night for years, hoping to be a successful novelist, and in 1986, I sold my first novel. People were still reading books back then, and I was lucky enough to get a good advance for my college novel.
I put a lot of time and effort into promoting it, and was pleased to see it got good reviews, wound up briefly on best-seller lists and actually was purchased by Hollywood and made into a movie.
That made it easy for us to make the decision that I could quit my job and write full time.
I collaborated with my lifelong friend Bill Madden on a comic novel about professional football, and it sold even better than the first one.
Our two girls grew up beautiful and happy and both went through college, got good jobs and eventually found husbands that even I found worthy of them. My wife and I grew old together and became grandparents for the first time in 2007. As we celebrate our 49th anniversary together, we have three grandsons and two granddaughters.
Life has been good and both of us are proud that we worked through our two separations and stayed together.
It was worth it.
***
All right, a couple of explanations needed. Marriage-wise, this story is not the life I wanted. My second wife Nicole, who I met and married in 1992, is the love of my life, and the two children who came along with her have both been a joy to me.
But …
Failing at my first marriage was one of the greatest disappointments of my life, and I am proud that Nicole and I have worked through various problems and still love each other very much in our mid 70s.
You may have noticed I never mentioned my first wife’s name.
Would you believe I forgot it?