Does anyone remember the time they were told that their parents were divorcing?
I sort of liken it to one of those times you will always remember where you were and what you were doing. Some life changing event that rocked your soul to its’ core and upended you. It shook you around uncontrollably, then threw you against the wall at 100 mph. That shaking and rocking and eventual slam back to reality hurt you so bad you couldn’t do anything but cry and run. Run away from that place that caused you so much pain. Run far, run hard and cry. Cry and try to tell yourself this wasn’t happening. That this wasn’t real, that this event your parents just told you was a joke. That all the fighting they had done was just what parents do. The spankings, the food throwing, the leaving one spouse behind at a restaurant to walk home was all normal. It was all normal watching your father yell at you in public for not swinging correctly at a ball. It was normal for your mom to come up to your room and console you after your father just ripped your ass raw with a leather belt.
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was 24 years ago though.
I was sitting in the family room of our all brick Chesapeake style 4 bedroom, 2 car garage, fenced in yard home. I was sitting on our ugly green and yellow couch that was pushed up against the wallpapered wall. The couch faced towards the large window that looked across the street to the O’Donnell’s. A horrible print of some ballerinas that I believe was from Monet rested above the couch. A blue lazy boy recliner on the other side of the room about a leg away from the the brick fireplace that had one of those brass firewood holding type things holding 3 pieces of wood. You entered the room to the right of the front door. So if you are facing the house the room is on the right hand side.
The room on the other side of the family room was the dining room. I remember watching the garbage man load up the truck each week. I remember the tubular trash truck with the blue paint. I also remember the one trash man that had a black braided pony tail that came down to his waist. He was the first man I had ever seen with hair that was as long as my mother’s. It was odd to me and that guy was definitely different. When I was little and home from school my mom would call me. Come see the trash truck! I would race from where ever I was to see that man heft the aluminum can into the barrel. Sometimes If I was lucky I would get to see him compact it. Oh those were the days!
I have managed to almost forget what the family room looked like over the years. My brain seems to want to focus in like an old black and white movie that changes scenes with that black tunnel looking thing. I am only focused in on the people sitting on the couch. Everything else around me is black now. It is just my sister, my brother and I. 3 children, 12, 10 and 8 Just sitting there in total befuddlement. Nothing else is around us. It almost feels like we are a picture that I can leaf threw in the photo album that is my memory. We have no idea what is going on. My parents, my dad more specifically said he wanted to tell us something. We all marched into the room completely oblivious to what was about to happen. We had no idea. NONE. (oooooooo weeeeeee ohhhhhhhhh dududuuuuduh, ooooooweeeeeeohhhhhhh)
What the hell was going on. This was the room that we opened our Christmas gifts in every year. Mom would put up the cool silver fake Christmas tree around Thanksgiving time. I remember my dad would play “Monster” with us. He would take off his coke bottle glasses and get on his hands and knees, wrestle around with us and tickle us till we peed our pants. I don’t remember how many times we did it, but that was the room we were in. Bad news didn’t happen in hear. No news happened here in our lives. It was the room the adults hung out in at First Communions, birthdays and adult party’s that we had to stay up in our room and spy on from the top of the steps.
I forgot how I had to run up to my room one time and brace myself between my door and my chest of drawers. I had to push myself straight legged up against that chest of drawers. While he lowered his shoulder into the draw. OPEN UP THIS DOOR!
No!
Donviti! I’m telling you RIGHT NOW. OPEN Up THIS DOOR!
NO!
BOOOOOM, BOOOOM! (splintering noise)
My legs were like posts puthing as hard as they could against the bureau. My back pressed up against the door. I could hear the door cracking. BOOM! OPEN
UP
THIS
DOOR
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
BOOOOM!
It seemed like it went on forever. Me a 10 year old kid, my legs braced against that bureau for dear life. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was opening up that god damned door.
So, there we were back in the room. The family room. The adult room. The place we had no place being in but a few times a year. The 3 of us. Sitting there. Looking at our parents wondering what the fuck was going on. Wondering what the big deal was….
Your mom and I are getting a divorce.
Pause. The world stopped. I forgot about the countless spankings I had. I forgot how I was yelled at for spilling milk. Which in the end, I would spill because I was scared to death that I would get yelled at for spilling the milk. I forgot about how I had wished my father dead. How I wanted to pound the living shit out of him when I got older. I forgot how I was chased around the house in my underwear with a belt.
I took off like a bolt of lighting to go cry my eyes out. My parents were getting a divorce. My world was over. What was I going to do. Life would never be the same. Life as I knew it, was over. It was dead. I was dead and I had to try and find a way to muck through it as a zombie.
24 years later, life isn’t the same, but, really what do I have to compare an actual “normal” life too? The movies? Silver Spoons? Different Strokes?