Mom and Dad’s marriage

I don’t remember my parents being married or acting like a married couple. But I didn’t understand they were divorced, either. No one told me then, thinking I was too young to understand. One of the earliest memories I have, though, is of Dad sleeping downstairs in our family room. I was about five years old. I remember it well because I thought what great fun it must have been to sleep anywhere you wanted. I didn’t understand what that meant, of course. They officially divorced when I was eight.

I didn’t fully understand that they were divorced or what divorce even meant for two reasons. First, I didn’t have any other divorced parents to compare to. None of my friend’s parents were divorced. Secondly, my Dad was always at the house. Dad came home from work every day and had dinner with us. After dinner, he would sit in his living room chair with the Hartford Times and do the crossword puzzle. Sometimes, he would come downstairs to the family room to watch TV with us kids. Sometimes, Mom would be there watching too. Then, at 9 p.m., he would go home to his own place, about 15 minutes away.

Mom is the one who wanted the divorce. She was not happy, she said to me, years later. There was no talk between my biological father and Mom that they would leave their spouses to be together. Mom knew my father was used to being taken care of like most men were in those days. He went from his mother to the military to my mother. He didn’t know how to cook anything except eggs and didn’t know how to do his own laundry. She helped him learn both. He was also a guy who had a lot of acquaintances but no close friends. We kids were his world. So Mom was as gentle about it all as she could be and let him come and go as he pleased.

As I got older, I realized that my mother was judged passive-aggressively by some of the other mothers in the neighborhood. I recall that clearly. Maybe they all suspected that I wasn’t my Dad’s child. Most of them shopped at *Joe’s market. Did they witness one of those kisses in the parking lot between them? Was there gossip? Was I actually a big secret drama in our community? Regardless, there were a few moms who seemed cool and distant to Mom for no outward reason I could see, and in retrospect, they kept their husbands locked up and my mother at arm’s length.

Mom waited until her own father passed away before she filed for divorce, and Dad moved out. I think that was a deliberate decision. She knew her Dad would be disappointed in her, and she adored him. Her mother certainly was disappointed in her, and voiced that often. I think Mom worked very hard to show people that we could still be a family. Dad still mowed the lawn. He still took us places. We still did things as a family. For whatever reason, it worked for everyone involved. It was when I was about nine that my older sister explained to me that they were divorced. Why my mother didn’t explain it to me, I don’t know. With the setup we had, it honestly made no difference to me. I didn’t realize how unusual the situation was, and I didn’t know any other way of life.

I finally realized it was weird when I had a friend sleeping over one Friday night when I was ten. We were playing in the living room, and Dad came over to me, rumpled my hair, and said goodnight. He then walked out the door. My friend Jayme asked, “Where is your Daddy going?” Without missing a beat, I said, “To his house.” She looked at me, confused. I suddenly got it that it wasn’t typical for daddies to live somewhere else. That was the first time I felt really different from my friends.

The photo above of Dad and me has always been my absolute favorite. If you’ve known me for more than five minutes, you have seen it before because I’ve shared it many times on various platforms. My sister took it with her brand-new Brownie camera. Dad came home from work, crouched down, put his arms around me, and held me still while my sister took the photo. He told me to say “cheese.” When the reality of my DNA discovery was staring me in the face, I looked at this photo so much. I studied my Dad’s face to see if there was any sign that he knew. I have no idea what I was even looking for. But it hurt my heart to look at it. Looking at it, I was such a happy, dumb kid who had no idea she did not come from this sweet man. And my Dad has his arms around me protectively, so calm and steady.

*pseudonym

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