my careless contagion

I wish my parents had divorced. That may seem like a strange statement, I admit.  This month, my parents marked their 50th wedding anniversary. That's quite a milestone, especially for a relationship so fraught with difficulties.  One thing parents do for their kids is teaching them how something is done. How do you live your life? Chances are you learned most of it from your parents. Parents think their words carry more weight with their children, but the most effective way they teach their kids is by their example.   I don't want to spend a lot of time dwelling on the psychology of why my parents got together in the first place, but I do need to sketch some things out. My parents met in college on a blind date. My dad was a jerk, but he called my mom later and was a different person so she gave him another chance. She thought, erroneously, that because my father was not good enough for her he would treat her well. That seems like a poor dynamic for any re...

Their names are A and B. A is a girl, 13; B is a boy, 8. It's been almost a year and a half since their parents separated. I recall A's mom telling me she overheard her daughter playing and saying something about being from a broken home. This was before the separation. Those words are haunting, and they also foreshadowed the coming sadness.  I don't know the full effect on these children of the separation and divorce of their parents. Surely there had to be signs along the way, clues that they can make sense of now. It's hard for me to try to extrapolate how they're feeling from what little I know about them. What I do know: it's not my world they live in, and I have no right to feel anything toward them. But I feel dead inside when I think of what they've had to go through and what they continue to go through.  There aren't words for what I want to say to them, but I'll try. I know they'll never read this. They'll never know the thous...