When Everything Changed
The thing we never saw coming, my brother and I, was our parents’ divorce. It was in 1955. I was 15. My little brother was 11.
They called me into my brother’s bedroom where he was playing, and said they had something to tell us both. We sat down on my brother’s bed, mystified at the sudden air of solemnity.
It’s hard now to remember that room. It was the new house they’d built, not the one we grew up in. (‘When a marriage is breaking apart,’ someone told me years later, ‘People try and glue it back together with a new baby or a new house. It never works.’) There must have been chairs; I see them sitting across from us while Dad explained that people don’t always stay married and it didn’t mean they didn’t love us any more.
Mum would move out, and live with ‘Uncle Jack’, a family friend, after he too got divorced. We could spend as much time as we liked with both parents.
I don’t remember us crying, or even asking questions. We went numb, I think.
I do remember feeling a surge of protectiveness towards my brother – genuine, but also in a strange, ‘this is what Good Girls do’ kind of way: a role I could take on, because I didn’t know how else to react. I always wanted to do what I thought was expected of me, what was right and good behaviour in my parents’ and the world’s eyes. I worked to be seen as normal, not the oddity I secretly feared I was.
But I didn’t know what would be expected of a normal girl in this situation. Being the protective big sister (whether he actually wanted that or not) was something I could get right.
Also it was a way of quietly punishing my parents, who were doing this dreadful, disrupting thing to us. ‘You are failing your duty,’ my secret self told them silently. ‘What you’ve abandoned is my job now; I won’t fail.’
I did, though.
Dad, rebounding, suddenly married a widow from interstate, where we went to live during school terms – our real-life Wicked Stepmother, against whom, at 15, I had little power.
Written for Weekly Scribblings #80: Sudden Moments, at Poets and Storytellers United.
You are telling it like it is, Rosemary, and nicely. When my first wife and I divorced, our kids were 15 (twins), 13, and 11. I lived with them for a year as the ex married before the waiting time after her second divorce in Texas. During that year they attached to Mrs. Jim and actually think of her more of a mother than they do the ex.
ReplyDeleteI knew, actually hoped, the divorce was coming as love had died.
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I'm glad you gave your kids a nice stepmother! I have stepchildren myself, though I didn't acquire them until they were already adults. We get on very well.
DeleteRosemary, I am glad your stepmothering went well also, some just don't.
DeleteThank you for your help with my ditty. I took all reference to 'the guy' by name. All that I had detracted, now he is 'Johnny' made smaller and left with no name or reference on the page.
Oh, I went and had another look. I think it does work better now, and was fun to read.
DeleteI wonder if it good for children to be shielded from their parents' crumbling marriage? What a terrible shock when a divorce is suddenly announced. The parents knew for a long time it was over, and hid it well.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that they hid it all that well. It's just that divorce was a rare thing in those days, even in bad marriages. By the time my kids were schoolboys, divorce was so common amongst their friends' parents that they asked for assurances their Dad and I would stay together. Which we gave, and were able to honour until they were grown up.
DeleteBreakups are confusing for all parties involved, tis true
ReplyDeleteStay Safe
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much love...
You're so right!
DeleteYou too.
Divorces are easy on no one; and 60-something years ago, I suspect it was even more difficult (especially on children). You had such good instincts. I think most kids put on this situation would panic (if the whole thing was unexpected, and somehow this sort of thing is too often a surprised for those closest to the devastation).
ReplyDeleteI think it is hard on the children in any era. I also think I was panicking quietly, privately – trying to cover it up even from myself.
DeleteDivorce provides such troubled waters for youngsters to navigate. No matter how "mom and dad" try to portray it, their world is turned upside down, and it changes the adults they will become.
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right. One's security is shattered.
DeleteSuch a true account, and I do think truth has its own rewards, and hurts.
ReplyDeleteMy parents and step-parents and step-siblings are all dead now, and the 'little brother' and I are senior citizens – the only people in the world who share the personal knowledge of what happened to us. Our recollections match. I'm not going to open cans of worms by telling the truth now, and to do so so is freeing.
DeleteIt is sad that some parents don't think of their children first when they need them most. Curiously my parents split up many years after us two boys had long made good lives of our own.
ReplyDeleteAfter my own experiences, there was no way I would get divorced or separated while my boys were young. So any rough patches their father and I went through, we worked to resolve. We did eventually divorce, but not until they were grown men.
DeleteExcellent write. ... very moving and sad to think you still bear the scars after all these years
ReplyDeleteThank you. Scars yes, but no longer open wounds.
DeleteDivorce was only starting to get more common when I was little, so I can imagine how shocking this was. Even though it does have an hefty emotional toll, I'm glad more people have it as an option to get out of abusive situations. Though it looks like the next part of this story is going to have it's own emotional pain too.
ReplyDeleteSadly, some marriages are even worse than divorce. I rather agree with whoever suggested that, instead of being made easier to get out of, they should be made harder to get into!
DeleteAnd yes, well spotted: there will be a 'next part' to this story.
My poem was about my parents' divorce as well! I was only 6, but I clearly remember thinking about my little brother and sister and what I could do to protect them. I was quite angry for many years, and spent my days passive-aggressively trying to punish my parents for divorcing. I find it fascinating how are feelings were nearly identical, but how we handled them were quite a bit different.
ReplyDeleteOh, I hadn't yet seen this when I commented on yours. Fascinating indeed! Particularly considering how young you were. And even 15 is young to take on such a level of responsibility. I was explaining only recently to my brother that it is part of the territory of being the eldest child – in my case the oldest of the extended family of cousins too, and the oldest of all the kids in the immediate neighbourhood. I seemed always to be hearing from the adults, from an early age, 'YOU should have known better; YOU'RE the oldest.'
DeleteThat is a lot of change for kids to go through, especially if they think they are now in charge.
ReplyDeleteYes, especially as divorce was a great deal less common back then.
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