Any day now, I'm expecting to receive in the mail the sugar bowl and creamer in their pattern that I sent to Tom and Nicole on the occasion of their marriage.
I hope the china won't be chipped.
America's No. 1 glamor couple is surely busy this week with the bubble wrap, packing up and returning all those wedding gifts now that they've announced their storybook relationship is no more.
It makes me sad. I really thought those kids were going to make it, back in those heady "Days of Thunder" after Tom divorced older wife Mimi Rogers and married the more age-appropriate Nicole.
He was a budding superstar, an actor who had shown he could play everything from the cocky young guy opposite Bryan Brown in "Cocktail" to the cocky young guy opposite Paul Newman in "The Color of Money."
Tom soon became one of my favorites, and I'd smile every time he'd appear in my crossword puzzle: "Actor Tom - - - - - ."
And theirs was a match made "Far and Away" in celebrity heaven. In addition to great teeth and flawless bodies, they shared such common interests as acting, stardom and Scientology.
"We have so much in common that it's almost as if we are the same person," Nic, as I call her, once said to People magazine.
They seemed to have a love "To Die For," which I knew because every time I turned on one of those Hollywood entertainment shows, even very recently, there one or another of them was, telling everybody about the great and growing depth of their love.
"It's all just going so fast, and it's so great," Tom said last year.
The couple couldn't have professed their love more vigorously if they were being paid to do it or more frequently if it were a wise career strategy for them to project an image of marital bliss. Not for a minute did I think this might be an example of protesting too much.
And they were so passionate, too. Oh, I know some people thought they seemed to actively repel each other during the love scenes in their art-house nudie flick "Eyes Wide Shut," like two magnets put together positive to positive. But that just shows what great actors they are. They could hide their abiding passion in order to add layers of complexity to the story.
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The heat of their ardor was demonstrated when a tabloid paper reported that a sex therapist had instructed them on how to make kinky love in that movie. They sued, passionately, and won a retraction of the ugly accusation. Of course they know how to make kinky love.
Tom and Nicole were willing to fight like "Top Guns" for the relationship, and I admire that. How many of us in the ordinary world have the courage to sue those who spread malicious or even mundane gossip about us? They tackled head on all those persistent rumors about Tom, like the one that he is, for instance, always playing the cocky young guy.
And they had children together. Yes, they adopted Connor and Isabella, but that doesn't mean they weren't sleeping together. Some couples have reproductive problems, some couples are afraid their own gene pools might not be good enough, and some couples simply don't want to bring new children into the world when there are so many pre-existing children who need the nurturing of the very finest Hollywood nannies.
But despite all that, despite the love that could withstand even the reviews for such films made together as "Far and Away" and "Eyes Wide Shut," they are splitting up.
Believing this is nearly a "Mission: Impossible" for me. If I were a more skeptical person, if I didn't start each day with a positive affirmation and a glance at the TV Guide to see what big stars are appearing on the morning shows, I might begin to wonder whether you can believe anything you read about people whose business it is to be famous.
