Broken Home Child

2004-01-31 - 2:39 a.m.

I was talking with my parents on the phone the other day. They're divorced, and have been for years and years, pretty much since I was 8 years old or something.

Up until I dropped out of university, I was bucking the "single parent" trend that you hear about - the one that says that products of broken households are more likely to fail at school, commit crime, and become addicted to illicit, mind-altering substances. Even after dropping out of university, smoking too much pot, and realizing that I drank far, far too much I still think that my younger brother and I have done pretty well for ourselves. I, frankly, think that the studies that talk about how challenging life is for the single-parent-child are missing the point. Those studies usually don't take into account economic status, for example, not to mention the billions of other factors that are involved in creating criminals, drop-outs, and addicts.

I think I'm better off that my parents are divorced. I have very hazy memories of my parents fighting a lot when they were together, and I know, from personal experience, that growing up in a quiet house where the two most important people in your life aren't yelling at each other day and night is a hell of a lot better than living in a noisy house where they are. Both of my parents have done a pretty good job at letting me and and my brother know that we are loved.

When my brother and I were living at home (with our mom, mostly, and every second weekend or so spent at Dad's), our parents saw a lot of each other, and for the most part got along. In the crazy few minutes while my brother and I would do our last-minute packing for the weekend, they would exchange pleasantries, ask about each other's lives, and try to catch each other up on the parenting game. Sometimes, if Mom was feeling a little low, she would confess to me that she still cared about Dad quite a lot.

Now, with me living two provinces away (or maybe 3 - there are two provinces between Ontario and Nova Scotia, so is that two away or three away?) and with my brother living with his girlfriend, they don't see each other very much at all. Even when I visit home, any shuttling between my mom's house and my dad's just involves a car driving up to the front walk. They don't even see each other.

When I was talking with my parents - seperately, obviously - to give them my new phone number, both of them told me that it had been over a year since they had seen each other. My dad asked me if I thought it would be a good idea for him to call my mom. I told him it would, so long as Mom was in a good mood. I know that she misses him.

They'll see each other a few more times in the future, I'm sure. My brother will one day get married, I probably will too(or whatever they'll call what it is gay boys do when they go white-picket-fence shopping), and when there are grandkids involved, I think my folks will see each other quite a bit. Maybe not as often as when my brother and I were kids, but probably a lot.

It makes me sad to think about my parents sometimes, about how there are so many feelings that both of them have, so many things that never got said, so many hurtful and unkind things that have been said. I know that they're both good people, though I can clearly see the major reasons why they broke up (Mom: somewhat unstable, prone to shortness of temper, Dad: closed off and quiet, difficult to engage in anything), but I can also see how little they have in common, how unlikely any courtship between them would be if they had met just now instead of thirty years ago. I'm also realizing, as I write this, that they've now been seperated or divorced a LOT longer than they were married or dating. Their lives after each other are now longer than their lives together.

I'd like my parents to be friends, though I think that's hugely unrealistic, which is an even greater tragedy, because I'm pretty sure that my parents would like to be friends, too.

I've come to realise, though, that my parents will always have a connection, through my brother and I, and I'm thankful for that role. I think it's hugely important for us to be connectors between people, to know that my brother and I bring out what's best in our parents, and that we've helped them to see the best in each other. I think that, because of my parent's having been divorced, I have a greater appreciation for the connections that bind people together. I know that I value friendships, even when they're not my friendships, just for the simple fact that relationships can be beautiful, special, and fragile things, but also that they can't be destroyed very easily. My parents could suddenly come to hate each other, could never speak with each other again, but they will always have something holding them together. They each have a piece of the other in them, and they're both richer for it.

Cheers,

The Magus

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