Kings and Queens; or, Discarding my Victim Cards

My folks’ marriage lasted ten years and produced two children. They’d been high school sweethearts; Pop the quarterback of a small town football team, Mom the pretty cheerleader. My father went to Ole Miss, the same as his father, and my mother went to The Mississippi State College for Women, not because she cared anything about schooling (not much was required of women educationally in those days, and all she really wanted, or so she says, was to be “Mrs. Bubba Morris”), but she went because her mother wanted her to go, and because Bubba had not yet asked for her hand. Anyways, their marriage came immediately after college, then came a daughter, then a son, creating the perfect little family.

I have heard rumors of infidelity. I don’t know if they are true or not. Neither parent has said so, though both my mother and older sister have hinted at it. True or not, he didn’t want the divorce. He fought it, just as he fought for the custody of his children, though he never stood a chance in this legal system of ours, whether he had cheated or not.

My dad, though mostly good natured and agreeable, was somewhat controlling (alpha’s usually are). This I know. And though some of my parents’ arguments seemed silly at the time, those issues make more sense to me now that I am grown, and understand life a little better. It was a long time ago, but I still recall a huge blow-up caused when Mom died her hair blonde without telling Dad her plans. She’d been a nervous wreck all day, waiting for him to come home from work, afraid he wouldn’t like it. In my innocence I remember thinking her new hair was pretty, although she didn’t look like my mom anymore. Well, she’d been right to be nervous. Pop didn’t like it. Not a bit. He didn’t want to be married to Marylin Monroe. There’d been a lot of yelling, and a lot of crying. The hair change was, of course, not “the reason”, but then not much time passed afterward before they finally sat me and my sister down and explained to us what divorce means, though it turned out they really didn’t know any more about divorce than we did, and were wrong in most everything they told us. The only part, in fact, that they’d gotten right was that, “Daddy will be moving out.” Making the only correct part of the conversation also the most painful part.

I’ll tell you what divorce really means for kids, at least what it meant in my home. What it really means is something no parent is ever going to admit to themselves, much less explain to their children. Divorce means the disappearance of discipline in the home. All semblance of it leaves with the man. It means a single parent in the home who cries a lot, which undermines the feeling of stability that a “home” should offer its children. It makes for a mother who craves her kids’ approval so much that she tries to be their friend, rather than their parent. She gives in too much. She is too soft on punishment. She leaves them alone too much partly because she has no choice (latch-key kids was the popular term back in my day), and partly because she is trying to build herself a new life. So she invites strange men into the house, each one of these strangers proving traumatic for her children for many different reasons, no matter the manner of man that they are.

And worst of all the mother will use the child’s infrequent visitations with his father as threats. “When you go to your father’s next weekend you’ll have to explain all of this!”

And I would have to explain it, too, which only served to make me dread seeing my father instead of looking forward to our rare visits. The real conversation should have been: “Why not now, Mother? Why don’t you just handle it yourself? Why push it off on him? Did this bad thing I did not happen on your watch?” But of course, the child is too young to begin such a conversation. And to be sure, the things I did that might have made her appear to be a bad mother somehow never got communicated to him, though he had to have seen them; the smoking at fourteen, the drinking and weed at fifteen, the long hair, the falling grades, etc. But hell, he didn’t want to be the bad guy when he only dealt with me about twice a year, I guess. So it never got mentioned, leaving me free to roam as I would, with whomever I would.

As I am writing this an uncomfortable, but familiar tightness has balled up my stomach, a forgotten feeling left-over from those days which has crept back in from the depths where it has laid hidden all these years. I do not miss this old feeling, which is causing my leg to bounce beneath the table, an ugly response to uncontrollable situations that has remained with me since childhood. So then, the old angsts are not gone, are they? And are quick to return alongside the distressing memories, blast them all!

It could be worse, of course. It could actually have been way worse. I know that. I really have little to complain about. I could have lost my parents, as many unfortunates have. Or I could have had a mother who didn’t try as hard as mine did, or care as much. I could have ended up with two Mom’s in the house instead of a step-father… or worse, two Dads! Hell, I could have been aborted at the start. So at least I had a chance, and I am eternally grateful for that. Life is good.

I am satisfied with the man I am, and my parents deserve the credit for it more than anyone else, but it might have been better too… with a bit more discipline and a tad less freedom? I might have stuck with school, cultivated better friends, and partied less. Who knows what might have been, had the right man come home through the front door every night at quitting time, sitting down to table with a healthy curiosity about my day; sharing his experience, expounding his logic, and demonstrating his strength? What kind of difference might that have made in my life, and in my sisters’?

My mother tried, bless her heart. She really did. She was just incapable of being two parents. Many people are incapable of that, in fact, believe that truth or not. The family unit evolved as it did over centuries for many reasons. It worked, too. Rather, it works still, when given the chance.

It is just a damned shame that those chances happen so rarely these days.

And that it is the kid who is left to harbor the grudge. What an ungracious little shit.