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ISSUES: Marriage
Chapter 2: Divorce
made me feel I’d lost something
important that everyone else had.
Instead I focused on Dr Phil and
CNN, especially reports about
natural disasters. That seemed
more
relevant.
Watching
and
rewatching all the plane crashes on
Seconds From Disaster
was oddly
comforting to me. But that’s how
I manage things. I go toward the
wreckage. I examine it. How do
feel about the way your dad and I
handled the divorce?
Your divorce was laid with a calm
presence. “Your father left me,
not you,” is what I remember you
emphasising. You always encouraged
me to see him when I could.
He took me to restaurants and movies,
subtly revealing the things men
should like (Dijon mustard; Halle Berry;
a simple brown baseball cap was “a
hat with guts”). I came to see my dad
as one might view a loving uncle who
visits pretty often. I picked up on you
two acting like friends for my sake, but
didn’t mind.
Indeed. We both refrained from
venting our spleens in front of you.
Because it would splatter you. Plus,
your father is half of you; that’s a
biological fact. I can’t condemn that
half. Still, it was horrifying when
it all came crashing down like a
cheap house of cards. I wanted to
die, which was out of the question
because I had you. I had you and
that saved me. What was the worst
part for you?
A lot of kids with divorced parents feel
like pawns in an ongoing skirmish to
see who is the better parent. I usually
didn’t feel this way. But I do remember
being put on the phone with my father
while you argued. You were driving
me to school and begging him to visit.
You passed the phone to me and told
me to say how much I missed him, and
thrust your argument into my hands.
I also want to say my father is a man I
deeply love, who is irreplaceable, who
I’ve taken and accepted despite his
leaving, who calls whether I pick up or
not. I need to say that before I say he
has also acted like a careless runaway.
Having to be in the middle of it, to
request a visit I hardly wanted and to
hear shame in his voice, that was the
worst part.
Wow. I come off really bad in this,
as does he. I know he missed you
dreadfully. Sometimes I would
waive child support so he could
buy a ticket to come see you, as he
moved from one distant place to
another more distant place. It was
like some hideous game of keep-
away. What do you wish I had done
differently?
Nothing. If a Freudian analyst had been
around, he might have jotted down:
“Mother projects anger toward ex-
husband on to son” – but, I don’t know.
I’m trying to think of a lastingly hurtful
choice you made. But all that’s coming
to mind is you making me tacos, the
smell of the sizzling beef. You used
to roll me up in a blanket and call me
burrito boy, pretending to sprinkle
cheese on me. That’s all I can think of.
There are definitely things I’d have
done differently. I wouldn’t have
started secretly smoking that first
year, because I am a bad smoker and
late at night a lot of nice comforters
were ruined. I would have started
dating sooner. Five years was too
long. But I had you to raise, and I
got to have every minute of that,
unadulterated. What was the most
challenging part for you?
Not hurting either of you. Like, I couldn’t
just say to my father that I didn’t miss
him so much, because I loved him too.
And I couldn’t tell you I’d begun turning
to him to discuss things that were too
uncomfortable to talk over with you. It
was sort of like being a double agent.
This conversation has been a
revelation. As a mother, seeing how
you turned out is all that matters to
me. I literally can’t imagine my life
without the divorce. While it was
harrowing and painful, I also feel like
it was a lucky break, a kind of drastic
intervention that saved us.
Suzanne Finnamore is the bestselling
author of
Split: A Memoir of Divorce. Her
forthcoming novel, The Ghost Husband
,
is deep in the works. Pablo Finnamore
is studying English literature at North
Carolina State University in Raleigh. He
also writes poetry.
13 October 2016
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