Millions of songs and books have been written about breaking up and there are a million more yet to come. Breaking up is never fun, especially when it is a marriage and involves kids. If loving someone is an example of man at his best, then divorce must be an example of man at his worst. Our divorce was unique, at least to us, but at the same time it was not really that much different than any other. All it takes is for one person to start thinking it’s time to move on. At that point, you can’t save it. It took me several years to get past it; to get to a point where I stopped playing “what if” and “yes, but” games with myself. It’s always easier being the leaver.
The hardest part for me was the timing. She was back in California with the kids and I was stuck on an island near the end of the Aleutians. This was before PCs, DVDs, cell phones, video games, satellite TV or anything like that, so there were few diversions. We got two 5 minute phone calls home a week and mail was delivered on Tuesdays and Fridays. Other than that, there was nothing. We could have called more often if we wanted to pay $5 or $6 a minute. My salary wasn’t enough to cover that.
I was only there for a year, but it was a very long year, so at times, you had to hold on to whatever you felt was solid just to keep your sanity. For me, that was my wife and kids. So while she was deciding to move on, I was holding on as tightly as I could. It wasn’t a time to “hold on loosely” as .38 Special would say. So, when it was time to come home, there was little to come home to. I was being reassigned to Arkansas, and we were split again because she wanted to stay in California, with the kids.
I don’t blame her for how things worked out. I did at first, mostly because I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t holding onto me as tightly as I was holding onto her, but I slowly came to realize that there was nothing I could do to change it. We half heartedly tried again later that summer when I was going to school, but by the time school was over even I could see it was useless to try any more.
That’s when my little man stepped in. After the attempt that summer, we all went back to Arkansas while she made plans to go back to California. Then one day out of the blue she said, “Douglas wants to stay with you, is that okay?” Was it okay? You could have knocked me over with a feather. Almost immediately I started thinking things like, “what do I know about raising a 5 year old by myself”, but just as quickly I brushed those thoughts aside. Sure he can stay!
If you asked him how I was at raising him, I hope he would tell you I did at least okay, but I’m not so sure. Some days it was debatable about who was actually raising who. I made more than my share of boo-boos, but I always tried to put his wants and needs before mine, and I hope he knew he could come and talk to me about anything, no matter what.
For the next 7+ years it was just us guys. We were a team. .
1 comment:
These posts are great Doug. Keep on writing.
Post a Comment