Page 321 - WhyAsInY

WHat’s in a naMe?
Engaged in Prayer
But I won’t make a long story very short in this case. Is that really what you expected at this point in the book?
Obviously, I will not tell the whole story of our marriage in this book now—or, you’ll be relieved to hear, ever—but it clearly was and remains an extremely important and positive part of my life. We had three wonderful children together and have managed to sustain a rea- sonably good working relationship with each other, early rocky moments aside, after we split up in 1984.
I will, however, talk about some things that stand out in connection with our betrothal, because they relate to two areas that would be the focus of concern during the fifteen years of our marriage: relatives and religion. (When I say fifteen years, I refer to the years during which we lived together as husband and wife. The actual divorces came a few years after our split. No, there is no typo in the last sentence: we had both a civil and, as one who will have read further might have expected, a “religious” divorce.)
To begin with, as you will have noted earlier on in the book, Phyllis might have been new to me when we started dating, but her parents, Sylvia and Harry, and her older brothers, Arthur and Michael, were not. My parents had been friendly with the Rebells for years, through Syl- via’s friendship with Aunt Rose. The two couples had traveled together. I knew Arthur, who had been my cousin Peter’s friend, from his summer at Anawana. I had met Michael on that unfortunate day at Irving’s candy store/soda fountain and had visited him at Poly Prep, his high school. In addition, the Rebells would come up from time to time in conversa- tion—particularly Michael, whose performance in school was a continuing subject of importance to my mother and of annoyance to me—and Aunt Rose would always talk about the Rebells with a rever- ence that I believe my mother absorbed from her.
The reverence, in the context of the people who were friends or neighbors of my parents or Aunt Rose, was not entirely undeserved. Syl-
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