What I was wearing...this British winter.

Chapter 8

...What I was wearing this British winter were sweaters over sweaters, ancient leggings and a pair of thick black socks.

Technically, the socks belong to my wasband but for some reason they failed to leave when he did.

As socks go, they’re warm, have kept their shape and are long enough to reach my knees although I tend to wear them bunched around my ankles, disco style. I don’t know what they’re made of – something synthetic that’s indestructible and crackles a little when I pull them on. We’re talking a highly serviceable pair of socks and what adds, enormously, to their value in my eyes is the category to which I can assign them: the wasband category.

Wasband means ex-husband, though you’ve probably worked that out for yourself.

I’m very fond of this word. I wish I could take credit for it but that has to go to my friend Pam who introduced it to me when I visited her recently. This was in New York so maybe it’s a New York thing and I can at least take credit for bringing it over to Britain. We were sitting around talking and Pam mentioned something about the man she’d divorced a while back and as soon as she said it, called him ‘the wasband,’ I thought: Of course. It was like exhaling after holding your breath for a long time, that’s how light I felt, because it was the exact word, the exact concept, I’d been looking for without realizing I was looking for it, which is how the best solutions always present themselves.

Ex-husband is a loaded word. It’s a constant reminder of this person as an entity in your life, and the ‘ex’ prefix only seems to give it more weight. ‘Ex’ stands for former but that message is diluted by the sheer impact of X. Because X, however you use it, is a strong element. It has impact, it calls attention to itself and attached to husband, it gives the compound far too much power.

Wasband neuters the whole business, dissolving -- without malice -- what should have been dissolved when you signed the decree absolute in the first place. Eliminating the ex factor helps take the sting out of failed marriage. Wasband renders the situation (and, admittedly, him) harmless, passé and distantly endearing, on the level of one of those pet rocks you might have invested in a while back. The kind of thing that, coming upon it a few years later, causes you to shake your head and ask yourself, indulgently: What on earth was I thinking?