Since this post will not be of much interest to most people, humor me for a spell.
My mother married and subsequently divorced three times. And during my formative years, I was there for all of that dizzying marital discord gone full-blown marital combat.
I’m not whining, so hear me out.
Each and every time my mom divorced her husbands, I felt nothing but blessed relief. I’m still on record (Google News Archives) as a toddler saying, “I want to go to grandma’s” when the prolonged kidnapping debacle finally ended in a Florida courtroom.
When she divorced in 1971, culminating in our hurried resettlement to Wilkes-Barre with nothing more than the clothes on our backs and my Matchbox collection, I knew both the physical beatings and the mental anguish were in the rear-view mirror. A long overdue sigh of relief, if you will.
And when the final marital go-round turned into a mess when I was a teenager, I was then old enough and large enough to dish out the pain, rather than have any of us receive any more of it. I’m not proud of some of what I did, but both my brother and my sister idolized me for having done it.
While I carry some mental marring as well as the physical scars of that bygone segment of my life, one thing stands out in my memory: Divorce always led to a period of relief, readjustment and later happiness, brief as it may have been.
I’ve been married to a woman for, uh, we’re but days away from 34 years. In my spinning mind, despite my many warts and scars, I have provided for my three children the ultimate in stability and predictability. Daddy works and works some more. Mommy nurtures, coddles and occasionally freaks out.
It worked for me. It seemed to work for Wifey. And our three kids definitely had a much better go of childhood than either one of us had had before them. And it is and always has been for that reason, that model of stability and predictability, that I always pictured my kids and then their kids living life happily thereafter.
But, as fate would have it, we’re not all Mike Brady, nor are we all Donna Reed clones. As fate would have it, a common law “divorce” has not brought relief to three of my grandchildren. Quite the opposite has been afoot of late. They are in limbo, and they don’t like it none too much. And neither do I.
To be blunt as all get-out, they are pawns, they are confused, they are conflicted and they are not happy. They have become what I once was, shell-shocked refugees not quite all the way back from the marital combat zone. And if something doesn’t change and change real, real soon, I’m going to do something that some might idolize me for at some later date.
For me, this is simple. And as some of you know full well, I like simplicity.
If you’re supposedly divorced, then move on and get on with your lives. You need as much. I need as much. Wifey needs as much. Your siblings need as much. But most importantly, the vertically-challenged pawns need some relief and soon.
I’ve harkened back to my scattershot upbringing many times over by saying, “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.”
The thing is, I don’t want any of my grandkids repeating that retort if and when they grow up.
Relief.
Later
My mother married and subsequently divorced three times. And during my formative years, I was there for all of that dizzying marital discord gone full-blown marital combat.
I’m not whining, so hear me out.
Each and every time my mom divorced her husbands, I felt nothing but blessed relief. I’m still on record (Google News Archives) as a toddler saying, “I want to go to grandma’s” when the prolonged kidnapping debacle finally ended in a Florida courtroom.
When she divorced in 1971, culminating in our hurried resettlement to Wilkes-Barre with nothing more than the clothes on our backs and my Matchbox collection, I knew both the physical beatings and the mental anguish were in the rear-view mirror. A long overdue sigh of relief, if you will.
And when the final marital go-round turned into a mess when I was a teenager, I was then old enough and large enough to dish out the pain, rather than have any of us receive any more of it. I’m not proud of some of what I did, but both my brother and my sister idolized me for having done it.
While I carry some mental marring as well as the physical scars of that bygone segment of my life, one thing stands out in my memory: Divorce always led to a period of relief, readjustment and later happiness, brief as it may have been.
I’ve been married to a woman for, uh, we’re but days away from 34 years. In my spinning mind, despite my many warts and scars, I have provided for my three children the ultimate in stability and predictability. Daddy works and works some more. Mommy nurtures, coddles and occasionally freaks out.
It worked for me. It seemed to work for Wifey. And our three kids definitely had a much better go of childhood than either one of us had had before them. And it is and always has been for that reason, that model of stability and predictability, that I always pictured my kids and then their kids living life happily thereafter.
But, as fate would have it, we’re not all Mike Brady, nor are we all Donna Reed clones. As fate would have it, a common law “divorce” has not brought relief to three of my grandchildren. Quite the opposite has been afoot of late. They are in limbo, and they don’t like it none too much. And neither do I.
To be blunt as all get-out, they are pawns, they are confused, they are conflicted and they are not happy. They have become what I once was, shell-shocked refugees not quite all the way back from the marital combat zone. And if something doesn’t change and change real, real soon, I’m going to do something that some might idolize me for at some later date.
For me, this is simple. And as some of you know full well, I like simplicity.
If you’re supposedly divorced, then move on and get on with your lives. You need as much. I need as much. Wifey needs as much. Your siblings need as much. But most importantly, the vertically-challenged pawns need some relief and soon.
I’ve harkened back to my scattershot upbringing many times over by saying, “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.”
The thing is, I don’t want any of my grandkids repeating that retort if and when they grow up.
Relief.
Later
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