Children of Divorce, Holla.

A blogstress I've recently felt a kindredness with is a single mother in Canada. Her blog "Better Now" is essentially dedicated to making life so (much better now) after she and her baby daddy split. Her most recent post addresses the fears she has about raising a son without a father close-by, and how she polled her friends who were children of divorce on their experiences. She concludes that most every family is different, and the experience of divorce is, therefore, experienced differently throughout a lifetime.

And that's the part that caused my child of divorce heart to resound with a loud HOLLA! Because I have never ever gotten over my parents' divorce. And I do not intend to. It's not that I want to live my life bitterly, and to continue to analyze why one Christmas all of our presents were under the tree together, and why the next Christmas my father brought a sack of presents with him as a visitor, and why several Christmases later, he had a new wife with whom to celebrate. I know, to an extent that I feel comfortable, What Went Wrong. But I do not want to get over What Was Learned.

Sure, I've probably spent nearly a hundred hours sitting sluggishly in assorted therapists' leather couches, squinting my eyes, trying to see what it was that the therapists were depicting about my family that I must have been missing all these years. I've sought counsel, both from this world and Above, about how to heal from something that I saw coming from miles away, that a part of me almost wanted to happen so that we did not have to live our lives as a farce. Send in the clowns.

But whether or not children of divorce experienced it as babies, or as angsty teenagers, or as adults, I would contend that the legacy that they inherited as a child whose parents did not stay together has changed them irreversibly. And there is a beauty in learning from how this has changed us. And I never ever want to lose that knowledge.

I experienced the separation of my parents on several different levels, and most concretely as a senior in high school where I spent many weeks sitting in homeroom, listening as my other classmates lifted up prayer intentions that they'd get in to Notre Dame. I don't recommend trying to relate to those classmates. Their parents still lived together. They would not have understood.

I'm much more cynical about relationships, about men, about the capacity people have to reconcile their differences, about people's ability to truly overcome their addictions and vices. I listen very closely to the sermons on divorce and wonder if those delivering them have ever watched their father clear out a whole closet of suits, leaving it a wide open empty hole with the hangers still swinging on the rack.

But, as the Canadian blogstress writes, she's better now. And I'm much better now for knowing the pain of divorce and for having an even heightened awareness in my own marriage so that divorce is a mere impossibility.

I'll never forget what I have learned about my parents, about their humanity, and, ultimately, about their love for their children which was and is sometimes so great, it kept them together for longer than was probably healthy. I love my parents very much and I hope each and every day that they're better now.

Dessert, anyone? Anyone?

Fievel Mousekewitz and friends have inhabited Home Sweet Home for roughly one month. They generally only appear when I am home alone. You would think that since I was basically raised by a single mother, I'd go all Rosie the Riveter on their spindley tails, rolling up my sleeves and flailing around with broom, "Git on out my house!" But no. I've been stranding myself on the Island of Futon, quaking and crying until Lovey Loverpants returns and gives me safe passage downstairs where I will run with bare feet like I am dodging hot lava to the Island of Bed where I will sleep uncomfortably, awakened by paranoid thoughts and the need to pee and the sound of mice scampering up and down the chutes of our walls. This morning, I awoke to the sound of my alarm and immediately I heard another sound. It was the desperate screeches of a mouse surely caught in a sticky trap. After weeks of leaving a strategic trails of these inhumane mats of death, I had always awoken disappointed, having hoped for a veritable mouse triage in the morning, and finding nothing. These ghetto mice were too smart. Until. Until Lovey changed the arrangement of the mouse minefield. Pullin' the ol' switcheroo.

I nudged Lovey, "Hey, do you hear that screeching? I think you caught a mouse."

::Listens::

"Oh."

He starts to unravel himself from the sheets. "Time to go make a meat popsicle out of this mouse."

"Lovey, use gloves!" I cry.

Several minutes later, he returns to bed.

"No Coldstone for you," he says, after placing the mouse, still attached to the trap, into our freezer.

Lately...

I have a special appreciation for:- State troopers. But only because they're handsome in their flat-front pants and top hats with wide brims. - Those who can spell definitely correctly. It has never been spelled with an "a." But the slack spellers among us insist... - The "free" section of Craigslist. Every sofa looks like it's endured one too many weekends of half-baked couch surfers that hadn't showered in weeks and/or has been the emory board for a dozen seizing cats. - Chiropractics. My toochis no longer goes sore, then numb. Thanks, Dr. Dan. - The Cleveland Indians. Clinching their division with the help of the recently-returned Kenny Lofton, my favorite Indian of all time. Even though their mascot is still so unapologetically un-PC. Go Tribe.

I have no time for: - Runless nylons. In fact, almost everyday, I arrive to work with a nice ladder up the side of my leg (the side that is most visible to passers-by). I feel as though I should get credit, in my ever-expanding phase, for wearing anything with a tight elastic waistband. - Drama. Just because I'm gonna be someone's mama, doesn't mean you need to save it for me.

I'm quite mystified by: - The sharp little boxing gloves that remind me in the early morning and late at night that something fairly phenomenal is happening inside of me. And he/she does not yet have a name.

I've been wanting to: - Re-do college as someone who didn't care so much what her parents thought of her decisions. - Submit my writing to various publications. And this time, I'm motivated by more than bylines. I really want to feel like my voice is a part of a chorus, with a small solo carved out for me. - Re-read Jane Austen.

I've been thinking a lot about: - Grade school, and the way that I'm still never surprised at the way my grade schoolies are living their present lives. I like to think that something about spending eight years in the same school with the same people crystallizes the characters of those people, and no matter what those people do, we'll never be entirely surprised by them. - If I can survive another five years living in the finest ghetto. - If I can survive becoming a mother, one with baby weight, while attending a Korean church. My instincts tell me no freakin' way no. - My powerlessness in becoming my parents in so many ways.

- Heather B. Armstrong's reflection on her distaste for traveling with her child, and the guilt that accompanies that distaste.

I like to end on a happy note: - Because I'm a little bit Polyanna/Anne Frank sometimes. - Because I spend too much time being introspective, and I don't like others to know that my introspection is often a very dark place. - Because no one would ever comment on my blog if every entry ended with All is bleak.