It must be the age of love.

Sam is curious as we drive the few blocks to our destination. It's been a little over a year since we began our reconciliation. Boomerang and Amazing Grace tell the short story of what happened to us and our marriage. How I Got My Ex Back (Parts 1 and 2) describe why we examined our own divorce, and how that lead to the start of our reconciliation. Now we're together again, although we have not been definitive about getting remarried. Yet...

We arrive at the courthouse. It is the very same courthouse in which we signed our divorce papers almost two years earlier. I park. Sam has no idea what I'm about to do.

Getting out, I circle the car to open the passenger-side door, still marveling in the bright sunlight. The last time I stood in this parking lot I had just signed divorce papers, staving off a panic attack. Sam had been grim and hard, but inside the courthouse, waiting for the judge, we'd had a powerful conversation about our intentions for staying connected as a family after our divorce. We were going to do our divorce "well." And so we did.

But after 8 months of "good divorce" (an oxymoron for us, I might add), life went upside down again. And now, during the last year, we'd been deep in the emotional netherworld of the incredibly intense, painful, joyous, and deeply satisfying experience of reconciliation.

The work of our reconciliation is the best thing we've ever done together... besides our children.

 

I open Sam's door and take his hand. He extricates himself from the car, smiling, still very curious. He holds my hand, trusting me, as I lead him to the stairs going into the courthouse. We retrace the exact route by which we left almost two years ago. We are returning to the scene of a kind of crime. But this time we have Cupid's darts on our side...

We go into the clerk's office. A few days earlier the clerk behind the desk had planned this with me over the phone.

Yes, she'd said, Bring him here first so you can sign the marriage certificate, then you can go see Judge Judge at 2 o'clock to get married.

(I kid you not. His name really is Judge Judge).

Now, I take a deep breath, and stand for a heartbeat with Sam in the clerk's office; he is still in the dark.

Quietly, with the two women behind the counter watching us, agape (they know the short story and are suitably stunned), I remove my scarf from Sam's eyes. He immediately recognizes where we are. And I have definitely surprised him.

I smile up at him. As his arms go around me he already knows what I'll say.

Will you marry me?

 

 

Out in the hall, at the very same table we'd had our "good divorce" talk two years ago, we discuss whether to get married today...now...here...this very hour.

Sam is reluctant.

Rachel, he says, Yes, Yes! You know I want to marry you, AND I want to look forward to it with you. I want to plan it with you...to create a ceremony together that we will both savor and commemorate after everything we've been through.

And, he hugs me, thank you for this wonderful surprise...I'll never forget this day.

We go to Judge Judge and tell him we will reschedule our union for a near future date. It is the first time we have met him. We tell him our story. He starts blinking.

He wipes his eyes, staring at us. Then he becomes the sun. It is like getting into a tanning bed and ratcheting up the light.

He stares at us for another moment, then his floodgates burst:

Do you two have any idea how many times I officiate for people getting divorces? So many of them just don't know what they are getting into or what they are getting their children into. A lot of these people don't really need divorces, they just need more information and support.

I try to talk to them and ask questions. But it's always the same. They believe they are unique and need a divorce. Those are my worst days. I always feel so sad and helpless with those cases.

There's no way I can tell you how happy I am to hear you two are getting back together. It gives me hope, and a great story I can share with people who come in here, who I counsel before they divorce.

Maybe your story will give them pause...

Our black-robed judge is jubilant.

 

 

A month later on the Spring Equinox, Sam and I declare ourselves in a Native American joining ceremony under a snow-cloaked tree flanked by our two boys, my mother, and a Sioux brother who leads our ceremony; celebrating an intertwining between us that had been there all along.

We follow this ritual a day later with the necessary legal moments in the courthouse. And when Judge Judge officiates for us--there in a courtroom beneath a small skylight--far more than the sun is shining in.

It is a perfect alignment.