And I Sort of Wish I Did

The trope of divorced parents has become almost banal, to the point that I think the sensation of it has lost its edge. Growing up in a more or less traditional American family, the increasing commonality of spousal separation was the kind of thing my grandma would mention with pursed lips and a disappointed shake of the head. A sign of social decline. Maybe that’s why I never really expected to join that demographic, until the reality of it was staring me right in the face.

One thing that gave my experience some redeeming flair of originality was that the separation happened abnormally late in my life—right at the crest into adulthood. It helped, of course, being able to better understand what was happening. But it also meant that I was supposed to have developed views on the matter. I was, at some level, a participant in the business, and not merely the unfortunate collateral damage of circumstances.

The summer before the news broke, we were all together with my dad’s family in Louisiana—Nichols family vacations were a staple of my whole childhood. We were at Mazen’s, the restaurant that very reasonably passes for fine dining in the tiny town of Lake Charles. My seat was between my mom and brother. Dad must have been sitting apart from us, with his brothers, maybe. Over our grilled quails, my mom addressed me in her confidential whisper, and began to relate the dissatisfaction she’d been feeling at home recently. She asked how I would feel if she separated from my dad. I said, without so much as flinching, that I would fully support her if she made that decision.

I don’t know if I subconsciously papered over the significance of that conversation, but somehow, it didn’t seem to register for me at all what my mom was really saying. My response had been honest, and I wasn’t oblivious: I recognized and sympathized greatly with her grievances regarding my dad. But that notion—divorce—felt like something out of a dream. Maybe this was in part because it happened on vacation; I think that sometimes you leave a part of yourself behind in those faraway places. But, for whatever reason, it wasn’t until about a month later, when she told me in more certain terms that she was considering divorce, that it really hit me.

I don’t quite know why I wasn’t more upset—or significantly affected—that my parents were divorcing. The decision was officially announced to me and my brother that winter, and not long after, we left with our dad on another family trip, while our mom stayed behind to begin moving out. Nobody said anything about her absence for most of the trip, but I could just feel the adults’ eyes on me. On the last day, as we were saying our goodbyes, my eldest uncle, who was always the big jokester of the family, took a moment to be serious and try to share some words of comfort. He still wouldn’t actually acknowledge it out loud. Maybe it’s wrong, but I resented all of them a little, their pity. They acted like she was leaving me, when she wasn’t—it was just Dad.

My concern is, if I don’t care about my parents divorcing—them splitting our family in two, them not loving each other the way two parents are supposed to—it feels a little as though I don’t care much about them. My indifference is suspicious; I sometimes believe that I must be subconsciously lying to myself, suppressing my real feelings. 

On the other hand, in the years since they’ve split, I’ve gotten to understand and feel better about my relationship with both of my parents. We talk, now, and face each other more than we used to. I am often alarmed to find that I struggle to remember any interaction I had with them in those last few years. That time was COVID lockdown, Grandpa’s death, love troubles, finals. It was a void of time and memory. But still, were we really so distant in our daily lives? I don’t even remember having dinner together, even though I know that we did. So maybe it’s not that I don’t care. Maybe the threads of our family had deteriorated such that at that point I couldn’t care, serving as all the more confirmation that their separation was what needed to happen. I care now, and things are better.