Every
Saturday morning the three of us (mom, dad, and child) sit together in a coffee
house and discuss the previous week’s events. During these times I often
look around me and notice other families enjoying each other’s company.
I smile at their joy but I also feel a pang of regret.My family is not what I hoped it would be. We don’t arrive at the coffee house together because we live in different houses; my son bridges the gap between the two, spending weekends with his dad and weekdays with me. Our weekly meeting, although amiable, marks my son's transfer from one household to the other.
This is not what I imagined when I planned on having a child. Did it really have to be this way? With our divorce having been final for more than three years now, that question reverberates in my mind—a little less often than before, but I still hear it.
People often want to know what happened to cause the breakup of a marriage, especially one lasting fifteen years. No one would like to understand the "why" of our divorce more than me, but months upon months of ruminating on it has brought few answers. Although the causes are still mysterious to me, it was clear that we were destroying each other and for the sake of the individuals we had to sacrifice the family.
It was a sacrifice I never thought I’d be willing to make. I hated everything about it, including the sense of failure and the loss of my longtime partner. Most of all I hated hurting my son. In my logical moments I realized it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to a child and that many families are “broken” in some way, even if it is not as obvious as divorce.
It is said that we live in the age of divorce. And when we talk about this circumstance it’s not with acceptance but with shame. One morning as I listened to an NPR report on marriage incentives for welfare recipients, it dawned on me that some in our government viewed my single parenthood as part of a cultural epidemic that needed fixing. And I realized that my own self-recrimination was not the only thing I had to overcome. I had lost my familiar place in society and suddenly had a life that was being judged by others.
My life required explanation to new people I met. Newly divorced, I felt that my personal life was suddenly on public view. One of my friendships stems from the sheer desire of another single mom to meet someone in the same situation. This woman called me up out of the blue after learning that I was divorced. It was a relief to know someone who didn’t require explanations and who wouldn’t pass judgment.
By becoming a broken family I found that we’d fallen into a category that some people felt was easily defined. I cannot help but wonder what my son’s kindergarten teacher may have meant by her concerns of his “home life" interfering with his ability to focus at school. What did she presume to know about his home life?
Just as there are many ways to be married there are many ways to be divorced, yet some people assume it has to be contentious and miserable for the children who live in households that reflect the aftermath of divorce. If I could have thought of an appropriate way to enlighten his teacher I would have. Instead, I just bit my tongue and called my ex-husband to commiserate.
With first grade now under my son’s belt, his father and I happily gloat together over his straight As. And when I look at my son I see one of the finest people I know and I think we have done okay so far—or rather he has done okay so far—despite our perceived failures. And really, that’s all that matters.
Rachel Robertson is a research specialist in the psychology department at Emory and also writes freelance articles for the Emory Report.