QOD
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?
I don’t really remember much about it. I was seven years old, and my sisters were 3 and 1½. I don’t remember any fights, but, then again, I don’t remember much at all about my father. This was 1960, when divorce Just Wasn’t Done.
I remember very little about the house in California. It had roll out metal frame windows, and the casements were 90º turns in the plaster — and there’s a bite-mark on the lower left side of the casement, facing the front yard, that I apparently made from my crib. The house was stucco, with brick half way up the front. And that’s close to the extent of my memory of it.
So, what was the result? A father who saw child support as an option rather than an obligation, and whom I saw only once — when I was twenty — after the age of seven. I don’t know where he lives, and don’t even know if he is still alive.
But another result is that I would never divorce my wife, even if we did fight — which we don’t — since we have children. Our older daughter will turn 21 in a few weeks, is a student at Penn State and is in the Army Reserves; our younger daughter is a junior in high school. They have grown up with a father who loves them and cares for them, and they’ll always know that.
My parents didn’t divorce, but there were a lot of problems, none of which I am comfortable airing in public. Dana’s right, though; divorce doesn’t done in my family. It was on the same plane as murder.
When I decided I wanted to divorce my husband, it was not only a shock to the families (we didn’t know! How could we know!) but also allowed them to tell me how they’d known it would never work in the first place. That’s nice to know, 5 years in.
My daughter was just under 2 when we separated, so she doesn’t remember life when her dad & I were together, and I wouldn’t taint her rose-colored picture with the truth. I figure that when she gets old enough, she’ll figure out some of it on her own and the rest is none of her business. I have given her many pictures of us from when she was little because I know how important it is for her to know that, no matter what, she was the light of our lives.
In a nutshell, my family was awful to me. I didn’t even see my parents for 6 months because they were ashamed of me. Even after we normalized relations (a bit like the U.S. and China), things were very tenuous when my boyfriend–now husband–came around. My mother came to our wedding but my father did not because he didn’t believe in second marriages. My mother died from lung cancer 3 months after our wedding, and, more than any of the rest of it, that made me realize that life is simply too short to spend it not talking to people because they disappointed you in one way or another.
I know that, for years, my daughter wanted her dad and me to get back together, even though it would have put her little brother and sister in the same boat she was in. Ours has become a rather complicated set of consequences, all stemming from my decision to get a divorce. And while I am very happy in my marriage, I feel a lot of guilt for the cost to my daughter.
I also learned that I will never, ever make my children feel that badly if they choose to get divorced. I don’t have to approve of all of their choices, but I cannot make them feel that terrible isolation, either.
QOD from the peanut gallery:
Which is the worse threat to family values, divorce or abortion?
My parents aren’t divorced… why what have you heard???
Both are threats to general society, anon, just in different ways.
Divorce breaks up families and destroys children who grow up with a central insecurity about love and marriage. Many will not marry because they fear it will end in divorce. Or they idealize marriage into a hunt for the “perfect soul mate.”
One of the things I bought into was that divorce was preferable than children watching squabbling parents. I don’t think that’s true now. Kids may see their parents argue but they also get to see them resolve their differences. And what you learn from that–I found out later–is that marriage is more than emotions or feeling like being there. It’s about being with someone through the good stuff and the bad stuff. Divorce teaches you that your only commitment is to your own emotions and happiness.
Abortion is harmful because it devalues life and diminishes our purpose in being here. If it’s all about how I feel, why should I sacrifice my desires for the needs of a baby? I got my own life to lead! Maybe I’ll feel like it down the road.
thanks for sharing Dana and Sharon
Thanks for sharing Donviti.
I didn’t come here to cry. But since you asked…
We were not told, Mom left. Grandma came to the house to help. Mom later won custody. Goodbye friends, welcome to Delaware.
It’s all water under the bridge (or not, eh?) After 34 years I think understand why they did what they did. I am glad they got divorced, they were angry, unhealthy and miserable together. In the end we were much happier with our step parents. I hit the jackpot. I love my step-mother and step-father, they have been loving and supportive and maybe tried a little harder because they are “steps”. And I know this is an unusual.
I don’t remember telling my three year old and my one year old that we were getting divorced. But I have always been there for them and we have been 50/50 residential and joint custody since I left, despite her ongoing objections for 7 years.
I want my children to believe that marriage is a happy institution, that people love each other and support each other, and in a home we can all do that together.
So I am living with my fiancee, and will be married in a few months. I will have step sons to raise and my sons will have a step mother and older step brothers. And at every turn I ask, what would my step dad do and how could I do it better? And I look at how my soon to be wife treats my children, and I see that she treats them just like her own. And I treat hers just like my own. And we probably try a little harder, because they are all good boys. In the end it is all about raising the cubs to be successful and happy adults. Life is better as a team, but the first round draft may be a disappointment.
very well said and all valid points 1974. it’s tough being a step-parent, i learn something valuable about myself everyday. good and bad, but you’re right in the end it’s about the kids and making them into happy healthy adults.
nice 1974…sounds like you’ll be fine to me
Just one more thought. I cannot emphasize how important it is to connect with friends who support you and want good closure. Steer clear of those who want to stoke the embers of negativity or pour gasoline on the fire.
I have been very blessed, indeed, and share my experience with everyone who cares to listen, because there are certainly enough other problems in life to overcome, instead of re-playing the same problems over and over.
Best wishes to all.