La ironía

This event I'm about to narrate happened last week, the night of the day of my last post, but I still think it's funny and so I'm going to share it anyway.

We had yet another event to celebrate here in the sótano last week: my friend La Rusa's divorce was finalized, finally. She's been trying to two long years to sever her life from that of her shiftless, cheating, alcoholic, paranoid-schiz now-ex-husband, and he's been fighting her on it all the way. Normally I'm a proponent of marriage, but not when it mires the involved parties in misery. Now she's free to move on with her life and find someone who treats her right, appreciates her mind and spirit and loves her completely (she's a catch). As my suegro observes, "There are things in life worse than death, and things in marriage worse than divorce".

Anyway, having been at her side these last two years of heartache and bank-breaking legal battle, I thought we should celebrate the occasion and so on Wednesday we went out to happy hour at a nice tapas bar down the hill. We ate too much and laughed like adolescent girls for a couple of hours, but afterward we both had to head back up to our offices in the sótano to attend to piles of ungraded exams. On the way back we ran into a colleague leaving the building, and she asked what we were so happy about. I told her we'd been out celebrating. She asked what the occasion was, and La Rusa laughed and said, "her anniversary and my divorce".

How's that for opposite ends of the celebratory spectrum?

Funny thing is, I don't feel like one is all that far removed from the other, at least in our cases. We were celebrating shared life with a wonderful man, and her now wide-open opportunity to find one for herself, more wisely this time. Call me cursi, but in their own ways, each situation is pinned to the hope of life-long companionship with someone who'll help us become better people, rather than damning our progress.

Lola is grateful for her marriage, and wishes her friends the same happiness.