Category Archives: Family

A Family Explodes

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This is a very personal post.  Frankly, I’m only writing this because I think it will be therapeutic.  I’m doing it here rather than in a private journal, because for some reason this is the only place I can, or do write.  I don’t have a journal, and I never have had one.  It is what it is.

I have a cousin who is getting a divorce.  Last I checked this kind of thing happens to about 50% of married couples in the U.S., so this doesn’t qualify as big news.  Still, to me it is very painful to be in the front row watching it happen.

You see I experienced divorce as a kid, back when it was very uncommon to have a single mom.  I’m pretty sure I was the only one in my 5th grade class to have divorced parents.  Of course by 10th grade (1982) I was far from alone.

Funny thing is, the prevalence of divorce doesn’t diminish its impact on the individual or the family.  I still grapple with my parents’ divorce today.  I’m 38.  They’ve been divorced for 30 years.  I can’t imagine them married.  It sticks with me because I still have questions:

  • How could my Dad move away (about a 3 hour drive) and see me and my brother on weekends initially about once a month and eventually alot less?  This question was almost rhetorical until I had my own kids, then it became unimaginable.
  • Would I still be a Mormon if my parents stayed together?  As it happens I’ve been a utility infielder when it comes to religion, having tried out every Protestant branch until I eventually converted to Catholicism.  And let’s just say that the church’s treatment of my parents when they were going through the divorce made me question the true meaning of Christianity at a very early age.
  • How did my Mom do it?  How did she shepherd two boys through their teenage years, then through college and eventually into independent, happy adulthoods?
  • Would I be happy now if they had stayed married "for the kids", or would I be a maladjusted heroin addict living on the streets of DC?
  • Would I have worked so hard with my wife five years ago to save our marriage if my parents hadn’t gotten a divorce?

That last is the million dollar question.  Five years ago Celeste (my wife) and I were at the nadir of our marriage.  We had lost all respect for each other, had lost sight of the traits that we’d so admired in each other and talked only when it involved household business or the kids.  It got so bad that we talked to lawyers and I found an affordable apartment.  I was a week away from moving out.

But then Celeste asked the real million dollar questions (she is definitely the smart one in this house).  She asked, "Have we really TRIED to fix this?  Have we really tried everything we can to save our marriage?" The answer was a resounding "no."

I’m a typical guy.  The idea of asking anyone for help makes me want to puke.  For years Celeste had asked me to participate in marriage support groups at our church.  For years I said that kind of stuff was for New Age crystal-gazers.  Now we were looking at marriage counseling and I was ready to run for the hills.

My motivation came when I looked at our kids.  At the time they were six, five and three.  If I left, even with joint custody, I thought I’d be doing the one thing I swore I’d never do.  I would rather gaze at a thousand crystals, wear Birkenstocks and attend seances before I putting myself in the position of being a part-time Dad.  I didn’t want to be to my kids who my Dad was to me.  Whatever we did, I wanted to have no reason to say "We shoulda.."

Marriage counseling it would be.

And I give myself credit for going.  It was a big step for me.  The rest of the credit goes to Celeste, to a wonderful counselor and to a very supportive family.  Through their efforts I was able to recognize my own flaws and try to fix them; to rediscover all of Celeste’s fantastic traits and to recognize how insignificant her own flaws were in the grand scheme of things.  Basically we fell back in love.

Watching my cousin and his wife struggle through this I can’t help but think of my own experiences.  My opinion is that they haven’t tried everything yet, and I don’t think they will.  I’ve shared my story with my cousin, but I don’t think it matters.  He’s moved out.  They’re looking for lawyers and talking about how to work out the property distribution.  It isn’t too late, but it’s close.

And yes there are kids involved;  they aren’t biologically his, but he is the only father they’ve ever really known.  I’m pretty certain his wife is keeping the kids top of mind, but I’m not so sure about him.  If he were to distance himself, that would be the biggest tragedy, for him and for them.

My instinct is to feel disappointment that he hasn’t tried everything.  His wife wants to try counseling, either individually or as a couple.  He’ll have none of it.  Knowing that he and I are cut from a similar cloth I understand his aversion to therapy, but I pity his lack of courage.

That is until I remember my own cowardice.  It’s been at least seven years since I realized how deeply my Dad’s leaving affected me.  For all that time I’ve wanted to ask him "Why?" and "How?", but I’ve never had the balls. 

For my cousin’s sake and mine I hope we both grow some soon.

The Importance of Grandparents

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I just finished reading a great article in Dana Blankenhorn’s newsletter, This Week’s Clue , on the important role of granparents in our society and the "warehousing" treatment that many grandparents experience today.  He argues, accurately, that our society needs to realize the positive impact that grandparents have on our families specifically and our society generally, and that we need to come up with a better way to treat them.

Dana, as always, puts it much more eloquently and I encourage you to read the entire article, but I thought I’d excerpt it rather liberally to share what I think are his most important points:

Some 1.5 million Americans today live in nursing homes, most of them
women, many of them over 85, most of them on some sort of government
assistance. They are under increasing risk of physical abuse, and every
effort to prevent that abuse (by law or litigation) is met by an
industry demand for carte blanche. Rising insurance rates, rising costs
of meeting government requirements, means higher costs and less money
for care, they argue, often successfully…

People need people. Robots can provide for our physical needs,
computers can assure our safety and comfort, but at the end of the day
it’s the presence of other humans in our lives that makes life worth
living.

Most people in nursing homes don’t have that. Families come
rarely. The other residents are lost in their own troubles. The workers
are strangers.

Then Dana goes on to describe a new project he’s working on called Hearthstone:

And that’s where Martin’s Hearthstone idea comes in.

The idea is to treat more of us, as we age, as my siblings treat my
mom. If older people spend their days with little children, the need
for staff on both ends of the age spectrum is reduced. Why the ages are
segregated in day care is beyond me.

But beyond that, ways must be found to keep people in homes, real
homes, for much longer. There’s a chef near me who has lived for some
years with an old black lady, unrelated to him. She taught him her
recipes, she taught him how to live, and now he’s giving her dignity as
her memories fade, and as her body withers.

Legal ways should be found to enable more of this. When my mom does
pass away, I want my brother to inherit her house, free and clear. When
this old cook dies, the chef should get some of her estate.

The benefits are many-fold. The chef is a better cook, and a
better man, for serving this lady who has become his grandma. My
sister-in-law, who lost her own mother when she was young, honors my
mom as she would have liked to have honored her own, and has become
saintly in my eyes as a result.

And then there are the kids. We often have no time for our
kids. But our parents have nothing but time for them. And if our kids
grow up with grandparents around them, even someone else’s, perhaps
they will seek their counsel later, as they become teenagers and find
they can’t talk to mom or dad.

Perhaps they will serve these grandparents tea, fluff their pillows,
turn off the TV, spill out their hearts, and see smiles coming to older
faces, then listen as the wisdom of decades rains down upon them,
blessing both sides of the conversation and bringing with it the light
of hope and contentment.

I plan on keeping track of the Hearthstone project and hope to post about it regularly.