After witnessing the constant strife between my parents an idea started to grow inside me, and soon enough I was sitting on a couch sandwiched between Mom and Dad. I knew exactly what they were both patiently waiting to tell me. But it didn’t unfold the way I expected, they were so clinical about it, using words like “separate” and “different”. What they were saying to me was not making sense like the way I thought it would. I said to myself it wasn’t them that was getting separated, but we. I started to cry and instinctively both my parents reached out to me. I could feel them groping at my arms and torso as I moaned and the harder they hugged the more it hurt inside. There I was, in the center of a nuclear family, being split in half like an atomic particle.
It took a few weeks to adjust to this new idea of my parents living “separately.” The plan was for my mother to renovate the studio in the backyard where my father had his office and she would live there. My mother did a good job at cleaning the place up and it really started to feel like home. Space was limited, so we decided to keep my dresser in the main house. This meant on the weeks I was to stay at my mom’s house I would pack up a suitcase with enough clothes for the week and walk the 40 yards up the driveway to my mother’s. I was 12 years old and every other week I would walk through my backyard with a suitcase full of clothes.
The separation grew to become a permanent divorce and my parents agreed to have my mother take back the house and my father would find an apartment. This became a problem because now I had to start seriously packing. My suitcases got bigger and I found a rhythm in packing my clothes. Monday’s were moving day for me and Mom or Dad would cart me and my stuff over to the parent that had me that week. It was hard saying goodbye each week but I got used to it. The benefit to this was that Monday nights were like a celebration for my return and I was guaranteed to have a specially prepared meal. I began to spend quality time with one parent at a time and I didn’t have to deal with them fighting anymore, at least not in front of me.
When I was 13 I started feeling depressed about my social life and school. All of my friends seemed to turn on me at the same time and I stopped spending much time with them. In this period of distress I found that I shared a similar bond to both of my parents: they too were recently rejected and alone. They were just like me but without the acne and bad hair.
On the weeks with my mom we would spend time listening to music and dancing. It was something we could both enjoy doing together, as a mother and son. I was a confused eighth grader who couldn’t talk to girls and my mom was a pioneering woman freed from having to talk to her husband. Dancing was a great way for the both of us to relieve stress and it made me feel better about myself. Soon I was going to my middle school dances and would be the only guy on the dance floor, surrounded by pretty girls asking me to dance with them. My mom taught me how to dance, and although I was still that quiet kid, I earned their respect and I too learned to respect myself.
Just like Mom, Dad too was lonely. With all his free time open to spend with me my father started showing me everything he enjoyed as a young man. Most nights after I finished homework we would drive out to the nearest strip mall and rent a movie. Each night was a new movie of a different genre. I was starting to develop a vocabulary of film. From Eisenstein to Scorcese my father was slowly introducing me to an art form I grew to love. Had it not been for this quality time I spent with my father, I may never have decided to pursue an education in art.
By the time I left for college I had spent one third of my life living separately with both of my parents. Granted, I was not able to spend every minute of my adolescence with my parents together, but the time I spent with each parent individually was an experience of much higher quality. My memories are not of one parent being absent at a time but are instead filled with enjoyable moments spent with one parent at a time. Sure it was tough having to move every week but I was fortunate to have the chance to see my parents equally. Had it not been for my parents divorce I would not be as grounded and resourceful as I am today. So thanks Mom and Dad, getting divorced was a pretty good idea.
