What tore us apart was displayed on a table in the courtroom — a phone. As the judge stated for the record, I was appearing for my divorce “telephonically.”
This was 17 years ago, pre-Zoom. From my home in Oakland, Calif., 2,000 miles from the Midwestern courtroom where my husband sat, I pressed the receiver to my ear and heard coughs and murmurs, chairs scraping and doors closing. The judge asked my husband for the date of our marriage. He couldn’t answer.
“Why is it always the man who forgets?” asked the judge.
Someone laughed. (I pictured a bailiff acting like the sidekick on “Judge Judy.”)
“July 19, 1998,” my husband finally said.
We had started dating eight years before that day, as young musicians in a Miami training orchestra. Everybody there had the same goal: to win a position in a permanent orchestra and make music for a living.
More than a job, music was our identity. Auditions are brutal. There are few openings, and it’s not uncommon for 100 players to try out for each. My husband and I faced this likelihood: If we got lucky and won jobs, they would probably be in different cities.
After four years in the orchestra, I won a percussion job with the San Francisco Opera. Some years later, after freelancing in New York, my husband joined an orchestra in the Midwest. Most couples in our situation would break up, but neither of us was willing to choose between job and relationship. So, for six months of every year — the length of my opera season — we committed to a long-distance relationship and eventually a long-distance marriage.
