I wasn’t sure about the house.  It was close to the beach, it had a second floor wrap around porch that lent a great view of the ocean.

  It had a ground level bedroom for guests.  But there were faults.  The rooms were small and musty and paneled with dark wood.  The kitchen wasn’t the least bit modern.  There was no dishwasher.  The clothing dryer was old.  Would the landlord call someone to fix it if it broke down?  I didn’t have much time to find a place to live, and rentals were sparse on our island, affordable rentals were more so.  I felt compelled to jump on anything that seemed borderline satisfactory.  I was feeling hasty but not so much that I didn’t value a second set of eyes.

I called B.

B. came down that night with pizza.  He met the kids and me at the store.  We agreed he’d follow me in his car to the rental house and without conversation, the children hopped into the back seat of his pick up.

They loved riding in his car.

B. walked through the rental house slowly and thoughtfully, checking switches and opening cabinets and running his hands up and down walls.  He walked around the perimeter of the yard and pointed to the grass in the back.

“It hasn’t been mowed in a while,” he said.

“I’ll have to find someone to take care of it for me,” I replied.  The owner of the house mentioned that lawn upkeep was the tenant’s responsibility.

We poked and prodded and chatted and continued the discussion about the house that night over pizza.

Later, when I tucked the kids to bed, my son said to me, “Mom, when you and B. get married, he can mow that lawn for you.”

“B and I can’t get married,” I replied.

Which left my son, who is crazy for B., in astonishment.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m still married to your father.”

For this, he sat up in bed.  “Well then why don’t you still live with him?”

Thus began my “eight year old friendly” version of why I’m still legally married to a man that I left two years ago.

In the State of New Jersey, where I lived when I separated from S, you don’t have to have a separation for any amount of time before filing for divorce.  S. and I could have filed for divorce on the very day that we decided we no longer wanted to be married.  But at that time, for me, there was a mighty large line between no longer being married and getting divorced.   I had other things on my mind, like figuring out how to take care of my children without a spouse, reconfiguring finances, and contemplating the changes I would need to make in order to give my children a good life as a single mother.  Not to mention, I was angry at my estranged husband, and I knew I was angry,  I was so angry at him for so many things that had I gone to court for a divorce two years ago, I would have fought hard and scrappy.

I would have been spiteful.

I would have “gone for the jugular” to try to right what I saw as being a litany of wrongs he had performed against me.

So I put the divorce on the shelf.

Which means I’m still married.  Legally, anyway.

Will S. and I ever live as husband and wife again?  No.  However, we do share three children together, and that in itself means that we will always, despite our very separate lives, be a family.

Will we one day put a legal end to our marriage?  Probably.  But I doubt it will be the mud slinging fest that it might have been for me two years ago.  There are things I could not accept about our marriage when we lived under the same roof, and for the most part, they are the same things that I have difficulty accepting now.  However, my anger has subsided.  And I know that a large settlement through the court or a different division of assets will never, in itself, right the wrongs I felt.

In the meantime, there’s B. who won’t be able to become my husband so long as S. is still my husband.  But even without the title of “husband,” he fills my life with so many good things.

I didn’t take that rental house that B. looked at me that night.  I found another house, much more suitable, and modern for me and the children.  Like the other house, yard maintenance is the tenant’s responsibility.

Even though we’re not married, B. does, in fact, mow my lawn for me.

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