Monday, May 29, 2017

The Oppenheimer Report 5/29/17

Today is the 23rd anniversary of the day Shauna and I wed. We were married at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto and it was a big, beautiful wedding. Friends and family were in attendance from near and far, and I think most of the guests had a blast. While I don’t remember every detail of our wedding, I remember parts of it very clearly. I distinctly remember being extremely sleep-deprived and sitting in a room next to the hall where we were about to be married, waiting for the ceremony to begin. As we were about to sign the ketubah, or the Jewish wedding contract, I noticed a bizarre spectacle through the open door. There was a line of ten or twenty men dressed up as Beefeaters, about to march, and this was practically concurrent with our imminent wedding ceremony. How anyone running that hotel could have missed this possible conflict was beyond me, and all I could imagine was that all our wedding guests were going to think that we were pompous assholes. It looked Kardashian-ian.

Every year on our anniversary, I reflect on what being married to Shauna has meant to me. I was a diehard bachelor, well into my 30s when we met, and the odds were against us entering into a lasting relationship. She lived in Toronto and I was firmly entrenched in Buffalo life, but we shared a passion for music and songwriting. After an extended, long distance relationship, communicating only through letters, faxes, and telephone conversations, we finally met face-to-face for dinner at Niagara-On-The-Lake, months after we first spoke. The first time she visited Buffalo was to surprise me on my birthday. She walked into our real estate office on Delaware Avenue dressed in a gorilla costume, carrying a string of balloons. My best friend (and Best Man) Bob was in on the gag. I think he rented the costume for her, which was, by the way, waaay too big on her. It was hilarious. I remember Bob saying something like “Someone went to a LOT of trouble to pull this off.” Little did she know what she was getting herself into.

We’ve been together for about 24 years now, and it hasn’t always been easy. No relationship is perfect, and anyone who tells you otherwise probably hasn’t been in a long-term relationship. If, as we are approaching, we make it to the ninth round of a marriage, we will be part of an ever-shrinking minority. Some couples stay together because of their kids, some are simply trapped in their dysfunction and cannot bear the thought of being alone. Shauna and I have had great, well-adjusted parents who provided good role models for a healthy relationship. I try not to over-analyze my relationship with Shauna, because we are only part way along our journey. I can honestly say that no other person has ever been as attractive to me as she is, on every level. I think people are becoming less and less equipped to commit to monogamous relationships for whatever reason. In this ever-changing world, it might have something to do with the erosion of our patience and attention spans. Perhaps this is a byproduct of the rise of the computer and cell phone, I don’t know. As the years pass, I think what acts as the glue for us is respect, humor, and a rich, shared history. Shauna knows just about everything there is to know about me; the darkness and the light. She knows me better than I know myself, and accepts me for who I am. This is a comforting notion in a world that is becoming ever more divisive and unloving. Happy 23rd Boo, I still love you madly and I think you're wonderful. Let’s order a pizza and watch some crappy TV.


-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2017 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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