I see the bubble pop up in the right hand corner of my screen. I have a new message.
Probably the press wondering where the newspaper is. I’d better check it.
I minimize my window and open my email. One unread message, but it’s not for work.
I open the message. I am instantly sweating. Flushed. Confused. In shock. Speechless. Motionless. Questioning realty.
I pick my jaw up off my desk and exit out of my email.
I don’t have time for this. We’re past deadline, the press will be calling any minute. I’ve got to get my work done. Why would he email me that? At work, of all times. To my work email. Is this some sort of joke?
I need to focus.
Just finish the paper and then you can figure this out.
What an asshole.
Focus.
As I diligently try to maintain enough mindfulness to make it to press, the message keeps flashing through my mind over and over and over.
As I’m fixated on the words, the phone startles me. I pick it up. It’s the press shop confirming final file receipt. Next thing I know I’m putting the phone back down.
I hope I responded… I can’t remember. I think I did. Oh well.. I’ve got to get to my parents.
I grab all my things and make a mad dash for the door. As I exit the office the summer heat slaps me in the face. I fumble my keys and finally get into my car and start the ignition.
Suddenly I’m in the driveway realizing, for the first time, it is shaped like a Y. His jeep is parked 50 yards away on my right at the pole barn and her car is parked in front of the house to my left. As I drive up the stem I can feel the V tear away at my heart.
Who do I go to first?
I feel myself yank the wheel sharply to the left at the last minute. I throw it in park and race into the house.
There’s Mom. Sitting on the couch. Alone. She looks up at me as I walk in the room and I instantly feel our roles reverse. I sit next to her and hold her, rocking her, calming her, comforting her best I can.
She confirms the news.
Once my brothers have arrived I head out to the shop.
There he is, bourbon in one hand, Copenhagen in lip. Sitting, pathetically, in a lawn chair with a fan blowing directly at him. Feet up on a cooler.
As if he’s camping.
He shoots me that timid smirk he gives when he is checking the temperature of the situation. The kind of smirk you silently toss towards your best friend while sharing an inside joke in public.
Again, I begin to sweat, flushed, confused… as the message flashes before my eyes.
“I’ve asked your mom for a divorce. I’ll be staying in the shop until I figure something else out. Thought you should know.”
My mom met the man I called my step-dad when I was nine years old. They married when I was 10. Almost exactly 13 years later he surprised her, and the rest of the family, with a divorce.
Growing up, I was close to him. Due to some of the things I went through as a kid… and being a teenage girl for a period of time… meant my mom and I butted heads fairly frequently.
My step-dad was never a disciplinarian and rarely involved himself in the actual disagreements my mom and I had over the years, but after Mom went to bed he would always stay up late and pretend everything was ok, which made me feel like it was too.
The way timing worked out, I was the kid who lived within that marriage for the most amount of time. I witnessed every fight. Every act of love and kindness. I watched him drink bourbon after bourbon and her stress over whether his car was in a ditch or if he was still just bellied up to the bar. Witnessed gift exchanges and hugs and kisses. I listened to her vent about his messiness and him whine about not getting enough attention from her. And, I walked on eggshells for a good portion of eight years.
To say I was surprised he thought about or considered divorce wouldn’t be accurate, but when he actually asked for it, I was.
Raised by a woman who believed, with every ounce of her being, that marriage is forever. Engraining in each of her kids that you be sure to choose the right person, because that will have a big impact on how much work your marriage will be. Not, how quickly it will end. How hard you will work to make it last.
That’s why their divorce actually happening was never on my radar.
I was 23 when my parents separated, 25 when the divorce was finalized. And let me tell you, divorce sucks at any age. Going through it as an adult, I honestly don’t understand how children survive it.
It was ugly. Trust was lost. Relationships shattered. My family, at times, felt like it was hanging from a raw thread.
But, today, we are better for it. My mom, my brothers, my sister, we’re all better for it. Not that we don’t have scars or that some wounds aren’t still healing. But, better because we survived another blow. Better because we’ve been reminded, again, no matter what life throws at us, no matter how much we disagree or how different we feel and see things… we’re still together. When the goin gets tough we still choose each other, over and over.