Five Minute Experience

My mother knelt down, took my hands, and gently looked into my eyes.  “Your father won’t be living with us anymore’, she said.  And there in the entry way of our house my whole world changed.

My parents were the first to get divorced from all of my friends.  I was an only child, at the tender age of six, and it was a lonely place to be for a six-year-old.  Alone in the great abyss of divorce.

First came the changing of my routine.

I now was going to be spending Tuesday nights and weekends at my dad’s new duplex, twenty minutes away from home.  A sofa and a small dining table with two chairs, attached to the other houses around it, it was the most foreign place I had ever been.

Second came my dad’s new girlfriend and my mom’s many boyfriends.

This was the hardest part of divorce.  I hated it.  I hated it even though I liked his girlfriend and her daughter Astrid.

Astrid had bunkbeds and whenever my dad and I would visit their house, Astrid would invite me into her room, and let me play on the top bunk.  She was older, but never made me feel younger, and this was comforting.

My mom only ever had one boyfriend I liked, Terry.  Terry was terrific.  He was happy and kind and funny and warm.  He had a very hairy chest.  Not like my dad, who has so few hairs on his chest you could actually count them one by one.

I remember when I would sit on his lap, on one of the shiny metal armed chairs in the living room, and he’d tickle my belly until I turned bright red.

I was devastated when they broke up.  When my mom broke the news, she said he didn’t want kids.  It was hard for me to understand this then.  If Terry didn’t want kids, why was he her only boyfriend, who was actually great with kids?  Perhaps that’s why, he knew in his heart it was only temporary.

Years later he passed away and if I had had the chance, I would have thanked him for the laughs and the tickles and told him they were some of my best memories from growing up.

My dad and his new girlfriend broke up after a few years and he didn’t have another one until I was six-teen.  In between girlfriends he had bought a house on Ridgecrest Road, four bedrooms, a back yard and in a neighborhood where I had friends.

No real furniture.  Not even a refrigerator.  I suppose this could be called eccentric, but the truth is he didn’t know how to cook and preferred to eat out, so why have a refrigerator he thought.  His bedroom, the only furnished room in the house, a bed, two nightstands and an armoire.

On the nights I was with my dad, we stayed with my grandmother on the lake, in her beautiful red brick house, with white trim, two front doors, and a circular rock driveway that wrapped around her rose garden.

After dinner, usually her famous lemon pepper chicken wings and English peas, we’d head upstairs to the blue room, blue flowered bedspreads, blue pillows, and blue walls.  We’d sleep in twin beds and watch Hart to Hart.

Saturday nights we’d have dinner at the Lewis’s, who lived off College Avenue.  Dr. Lewis was a dentist and he and his wife, from Italian descent, would make her family’s recipe of spaghetti and meatballs.  It became our tradition.

After dinner, Monica, Blake and Ben and I would play in their partly unfinished basement on the trapeze.  Two, gymnasium style trapeze’s hanging from the ceiling, taking turns, running and jumping, swinging and attempting tricks.  No one had a trapeze in their basement and these times were memorable.

My mom’s last boyfriend whom she later married, had thick, sandy red hair, played the guitar, spoke Spanish from living in Costa Rica, and worked at a Camera store near the college campus in town.

The neighborhood had the only arcade in town. The arcade wasn’t far from his store and we’d often go to play Pacman, which had just captured the world.

My mom was obsessed and even bought the paperback on how to beat Pacman and become a high scoring player.  She kept it in the car, in the console by the emergency brake.

I preferred Miss Pacman, but I also loved Centipede and Turbo Racer, which was almost as fun as go-cart racing.

Doug was alright in my mind, not great, but not terrible either.  I suppose he would have been considered cool back then.  Afterall, he did introduce me to John Prine.

I don’t remember much of those days except going to the arcade and out to eat with the two of them.

We’d often go to the Ever-Open diner and sit at the counter.  I always ordered a grilled cheese and a Shirley Temple with extra cherries.  And to the Cow Pie just down the road.  The Cow Pie was an old western looking saloon with wooden booths and dimmed lights.  Always crowded, they served burgers in a waffle basket with crispy potatoes that resembled cow patties instead of fries.

At the counter three was a crowd, in the booth, three was a round number.

We’d drive home in my mom’s white, two-door BMW and Doug would play John Prine’s Storm Windows in the cassette player.  We’d sit in the garage until the tape ended, singing along, rewinding and rewinding until we got all the words right.

Decades later, these memories are fixed, as are the taste of those potato patties.

Third came fifth grade.

In Fifth grade we had our first sexual educational class, sex-ed.  I was half excited and half nervous when they opened up the big accordion doors that divided the three classrooms.  It was a big deal when the three rooms opened into one.

The presentation started and the science teacher asked if anyone’s parents were divorced, “Raise your hands”, she said.  I surveyed the room with clear yet hesitant eyes to count the number of hands up.  Not one hand, not a one.

The teacher asked again, “Does anyone have parents who are divorced?”  I was a pretty honest kid and when I saw one hand go up and then another, I slowly raised my hand too.

Only three kid’s parents were divorced.  Three.  I was one of three.

Doors opened, three classrooms, three kids.  On this eventful, unforgettable day I realized something.

I realized I was different; I didn’t belong.

Cue that song, the Sesame Street one, singing to that tune, “One of these things … is not like the others.  One of these things … doesn’t belong.  Can you tell which thing is not like the other … by the time I finish this song?”

By seventh grade everyone’s parents were getting a divorce and Sesame Street was long forgotten.

When a few parents get divorced it paves the way for everyone else, or so it seemed.

Having divorced parents never became easy and that feeling of being different lingered.  But now I had friends I could relate to; they could relate to me; we shared the divorced parent’s bond.

A bond, with whom ever I meet, we continue to share.  “Oh yah, how old were you when your parents divorced?  Oh really, mine too.”

I think of those first years when I was the only one, one of three, and in some ways it feels special.  Not happy special, but radical special.

I came to realize divorce is something you never get over, it’s something you learn to live with and accept.

Divorce, for better or worse, has become the norm, and when you hear those whose parents are still married, it almost sounds like a surprise.

Divorce was a heavy word in those days.  It’s not as heavy of a word today, but I imagine the journey is still just as hard.