Happy endings

I wouldn't ordinarily put a smiley-face into one of my posts, but I really am happy over something, so there you have it. A happy daisy.

Our Head of Reference demonstrated, at a staff meeting this week, how he uses a certain database to track people down through public records (all nice and legal!). So ... I tried it.

you see, at the tender age of 20, I got married for the first time. What was I thinking? I wasn't. The marriage lasted just short of three years, though we didn't live together quite that long. Our divorce became final in January of 1977. I did hear from my ex twice after that, in the summer of 1977, and again in the summer of 1978, as we both moved on with our lives. I moved to Philadelphia, and he went to work abroad.

But I always wondered, you know. And I felt more than a little guilty, because the source of unhappiness in the marriage was me, all me. I went through that marriage like a dose of epsom salts, and emerged pretty much unscathed, I don't think my ex was quite as unscathed as I was, since he really was the injured party. As the years passed, and I finally grew up, I felt the burden of this more and more, especially since my own second marriage has been very happy.

So, over the years, I have resorted to Google, without much in the way of results. My ex was, and is, a very private person, and he seems to have managed to steer clear of the internet. Likewise Facebook -- he's just not there.

So I tried this public records source, and got a nice surprise.

Not only is my ex alive and well, but he has been married for quite a while to a woman who teaches drama in high school. She is on Facebook. And, from what I can tell (no, I did not friend her; I am curious but not totally crass), she seems like a thoroughly nice woman.

So the moral of this story is that lives can have happy endings, even when I have pretty much screwed them up. So it's a smiley-face day indeed.

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