Better Late Than Never

Nearly 33 years after a tortuous breakup, at 67 and 69 we’re getting married, partly thanks to Netflix.

Photo by Flash Rosenberg

Apparently, I am one of the few people on the planet, if not the solar galaxy, who missed David Nicholls’ global 2009 bestseller One Day and the 2011 four-hankie movie version starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess as “best friends” Emma Morley and Dex Mayhew. In both incarnations Emma and Dex frustrate millions of fans by spending nearly two decades (1988 to 2007) dancing away from the obvious truth of what they really mean to one another.

My entrée into the One Day cult began with 2024’s 14-episode Netflix adaptation which amassed 5.3 million views in its first four days. This is Going to Hurt’s Ambika Mod and White Lotus season two bad boy Leo Woodall bring vulnerability, heat and aching authenticity to their portrayals of the beloved aspiring nerdy writer and born-into-privilege spoiled hot boy. Each episode takes place on the same day each year – July 15^th - except the wrenching finale, which leapfrogs ahead three years.

In episode one, Emma and Dex forge a surprising and ineradicable connection during their graduation party from Scotland’s Edinburgh University. They spend the night emotionally combusting over their mostly opposing viewpoints, spilling secrets and making out — stopping short of having sex. Come July 16^th they set out to follow wildly different paths.   

As I feverishly binged the 6 hour, 40 minute runtime I knew nothing of what lay ahead for Emma and Dex. My heart ricocheted between a kaleidoscope of emotions as I watched them continually derail an obvious once-in-a-lifetime cosmic connection with tragically withheld emotions, generous heaps of self-sabotage, clashing goals, and terrible timing.

The One Day pair’s winding, tortuous path to what seemed like episode 13’s inevitable happily-ever-after closely resembled my own, circuitous love journey. 

The pair’s winding, tortuous path to what seemed like episode 13’s inevitable happily-ever-after closely resembled my own, circuitous love journey.  On July 24^th, I am marrying the man who first made my soul sizzle at a 1987 Ides of March party when he removed a corkscrew I’d hopelessly mired in a wine bottle.

Paul was 32 to my 29, like me divorced and childless, and possessed mad tech skills —a bonus for someone whose talents in this area started and stopped with screwing in a lightbulb at eye level. Behind the tortoiseshell glasses of this transplanted Michigander, I sensed (correctly!) the gaze of someone whose arms would provide a haven. This was catnip to a woman who’d endured nearly four years of marriage to a man who’d never met a truth he couldn’t spin into a lie.

Mindful that my parents, both Holocaust Survivors, would view my romance with an Irish Catholic man as betrayal, during our first weeks together I repeatedly cautioned Paul to protect his heart. Yes, sex was a Holy Experience, and even activities like dodging Gelatin-filled ‘bullets’ during a Paintball competition or accidentally sinking new white sneakers into muddy terrain became fun when we mucked through as a team. But we were for now, not forever.

Acquiescing to my boundaries didn’t preclude my Irish boyfriend’s frequent declarations of devotion. Eight months in, this hard-boiled New Yorker who wielded sarcasm to divert from expressing scary emotions woke to the brewed coffee and onion bagel laden with a schmear Paul had picked up on his way back from Sunday Mass and felt a seismic inner jolt: “Damn it, I love this guy.”

Each time I expressed remorse that I wasn’t ready to bring him to an Amatenstein Shabbat dinner, Paul reiterated the only thing that upset him was how bad I felt. In the ongoing Jewish Guilt versus Catholic Guilt match-up, the outcome was reliably lose/lose.

Yes, sex was a Holy Experience, and even activities like dodging Gelatin-filled ‘bullets’ during a Paintball competition or accidentally sinking new white sneakers into muddy terrain became fun when we mucked through as a team. But we were for now, not forever.

For nearly four years I dragged male Jewish friends as beards to family functions — repeatedly assuring my mother she’d be first to know when I had romantic news to report. That news didn’t include my accompanying Paul to Detroit for his sister Cheryl’s wedding, and being touched that the siblings’ mom jotted down my phone number in her address book.

My parents’ implosion when I could no longer contain what filled my heart (Bernice Amatenstein shouted: “You’re giving your father a heart’s attack!”) led to several emergency shrink visits.

Sherry and Paul’s wedding invitation.

Still, what caused the decisive severing in our Romeo and Juliet romance (for us, only the Capulets were a barrier) was a Sunday morning conversation in the box-littered den of the three-story country condo Paul had recently purchased with the hope we’d share it. We’d just had agonizing conversation # 999 about our inability to resolve how to raise kids in an interfaith household. “I love you, but….” should have been printed on matching t-shirts.

Stores didn’t carry enough Kleenex boxes to handle all the ugly crying shed over the next months. Just as with Emma and Dex, Paul and I stayed in touch. When Facebook launched, he was my first “friend.”  

Entrants in the Bad Timing Derby: When Paul executed an exploratory romantic gesture three years after our split I was in the rose-tinted glasses phase of a two-year relationship that lasted 18 months past its expiration date. A few months after I wiggled my way to freedom, Paul called. Before I could say, “I’m game to try if you are,” he announced his impending nuptials.   

Paul’s marriage turned into an 18-year ordeal with a woman so vile his family dubbed her “She who shall not be named.” 

Paul’s Irish Guilt kept him from bailing until his 61^st birthday on October 25^th, 2015. As he said: “If I’d stayed longer, I wouldn’t have made it to 62.”

We’d been dating a few months when his 87-year-old mother lapsed into a coma. I flew to Michigan to join Paul’s vigil at her deathbed. Among Shirley Kelly’s belongings was the address book with my name and number still listed.

On July 24^th, I am marrying the man who first made my soul sizzle at a 1987 Ides of March party when he removed a corkscrew I’d hopelessly mired in a wine bottle.

Paul officially moved in with me in March, 2020, when, simultaneous with COVID shutting down New York City, I was diagnosed with Estrogen Receptor-Positive Breast cancer. I felt mom cheering from heaven as he shuttled me to and from approximately 80 medical appointments during the eight months of my ultimately successful treatment. My Irish Catholic sweetheart and I have been cohabiting with my terrier mix Shea ever since.

In our decades apart, neither of us had children. At this stage — well past the family-building years! — there seems no point in giving our death-do-us-part commitment a legal title. Perhaps that’s precisely the point of our recent decision to exchange “I Do’s” in a beachfront ceremony officiated not by a Rabbi or Priest, but my platonic female soulmate. Sloan knew Paul and me back when tomorrows seemed unending. My sister Barbara will “give me away,” my beloved nieces will serve as bridesmaids, and my two grand-nieces will scatter flowers down the aisle.

I wish I could time-travel back to the early 1990s. From the vantage point of time, compound griefs, and a bottomless hole of regrets over opportunities spurned, I’d advise younger Paul and Sherry: “Think five, ten years into the future when the immediate crisis is over. What will your lives look like if you give up now?”

Watching Emma and Dex’s wedding planning be interrupted by a catastrophic event (not gonna be the spoiler for the few who haven’t binged One Day) cracked me open faster than a lightning strike. And it gave me the perfect wedding vow to say to my groom: “No matter what hurdles come at us we will jump them together!”