The Misadventure of Divorce

My wife left me twenty-four years ago today, and it is hardly an endorsement of the phenomenon to submit that it was one of the best things that ever happened to me -- eventually. That being said ...

You can find any number of television dramas that paint a picture of divorce as a sort of dark-comedy type of adventure, where one approaches middle age with a reprise of adolescent discovery, only knowing now what you wish you knew then. To enter the world of the post-marital meltdown is to descend into a sort of parallel universe, one that operates in the same physical space as the world of well-tailored soccer moms and well-manicured cul-de-sacs, with the latter demographic taking no notice of the former (and to a certain extent, vice versa). One can occupy this world for the rest of one's life -- the equally-wayward friends, the late-night parties, the torrid liaisons -- or, if one is fortunate, and with adequate recourse to Divine Grace, one can eventually evolve beyond the "need" for such diversion, the illusion that there is an escape from the consequences of one's past.

On a day like this, two articles are worth mentioning. One is my own, written for this occasion just four years ago.

It was twenty years ago today, that I came home from work, and found a note in the place of my wife and son. If you want to know the extent of the damage that divorce can cause, you can read this piece ... or I can tell you what it cost me.

The other is a piece by Austin Ruse for Crisis magazine, entitled “The True Face of ‘Happy Divorce’ is Quite Ugly.” He describes a recently released movie, The Way Way Back, the story of a teenaged boy who spends the summer at a beach house with his divorced mother and a coterie of equally-dysfuntional adults of a certain age.

There’s lots of drinking and some pot smoking and silly cavorting on the beach. All the adults act like adolescents while the real adolescents are disgusted. They are disgusted not simply in the way adolescents might always be disgusted. They have a reason for their disgust, which is the way the adults are.

Liam James stars as Duncan, the boy lost in his mother's faux-fantasy, and who is taken under the wing of a water-park operator named Owen, played by Sam Rockwell with just the right amount of attitude. According to the Catholic News Service (CNS), the movie “is to be commended for portraying the friendship between Owen and Duncan as natural and innocent, a surrogate father-son bond that is mutually beneficial. It is devoid of the sordid sexual content one half-expects from Hollywood these days.” The film earned a percentile rating of 87 from Rotten Tomatoes after its premiere one year ago this month, and last fall became available on DVD and Blu-ray. All told, it should serve as an effective cautionary tale for those who would glamorize life in what was once called a "broken home."

The CNS classification is A-III (adults), and the MPAA rating is PG-13 (parents strongly cautioned -- Duh.)
 

Not Dead Yet!

With six or more inches of snow on the ground, a sheet of ice on every road, and federal buildings closed in the DC area, it gives a man time to think. That's when I put the regular feature for today on hold, and also when I came across this:

At age 90, Ralph Hall is the oldest sitting member of the House of Representatives in U.S. history — a World War II veteran who exercises regularly, drives himself to campaign events and has voted in sync with his conservative Texas constituents for 33 years.

But as Hall enters the final stretch of what he says will be his last campaign, whether he makes it back to Congress could boil down to one question: Is 18 terms too many?

John Ratcliffe, his lead opponent in Tuesday’s GOP primary, believes voters will agree that Hall has been in Washington long enough ...

Yeah, that's possible, but that could also be said about damn near everybody on the Hill that's been there for more than two or three terms. They come to Washington for the first time, wanting to be the next Mister Smith. They arrive at National Airport, with that free parking spot, a ten-minute limousine drive to the office, free haircuts at the office, the ability to tear up parking tickets in an officer's face, and let's not forget that private bowling alley ...

But this isn't about that.

Unless you're rich and/or famous, divorce affects most of us financially. Go through it once, and you spend the rest of your life paying for it, especially if children are involved (which there was), and especially if the former ball-and-chain gets half of your pension upon retirement (which she won't). The way I've figured it out, the earliest I can leave is at the end of the year of Our Lord 2020, with forty years of service, when I will have just turned sixty-six. But I may stick around for four more years, in which case I would retire at seventy. Now, just saying that seems shocking. Why would anyone want to work until they're seventy?

Here's my answer: Why would the same people not ask the same thing of a public figure who is pushing ninety?

Oh, sure, there are people saying that, including this John Ratcliffe guy who wants the old man's job. But if you thought the Gentleman from Texas was one of your heroes, you'd just as soon keep him there until he turned one hundred, no questions asked. Keep fighting the good fight, pops. But we don't do that right off the bat. And we assume that everybody who retires is just like the couples in those commercials for financial companies who want to help you plan your retirement. There's a few people like that, but most would rather stay home and tend to their garden, or enjoy their grandchildren.

Me, I'll probably keep writing, or maybe play more guitar. Maybe get paid for it. Or something.

The men in my family tend to live a very long time. My father was eighty-six years old when he left us, and he had suffered from multiple sclerosis for the entire second half of those years. Hell, even the drunks in my family live into their eighties. So unless I get hit by a bus, the odds for me are pretty damn good.

Dad once told me that most men don't like what they do for a living. Dad worked at Procter and Gamble for twenty-four years before leaving on disability. His occupation at the world headquarters was "Sales Assistant." He was a detail man, essentially, for "Packaged Soap and Detergent" (or "PS&D"). His job was to keep track of the doings of sales guys in the field -- what they delivered, how much they delivered, how much arm-twisting they did to get a retailer to move so much product for so much of a price break per unit, stuff like that. Every eye was dotted, every tee was crossed, every jot and tittle accounted for. Dad didn't particularly like what he did for a living. He just happened to be very, very good at it.

After more than thirty years as a graphic designer, I decided that I had gone as far as I was going to go creating new varieties of landfill (publications). Five years of part-time studies in web design ended when there was a regime change at the office, and a subsequent refusal to let me finish, just short of the one requirement for getting the diploma, a requirement I later learned was dropped, thus screwing me out of a diploma -- thanks a lot, Art Institute -- seemed to spell out another dead end.

But even a curmudgeon-in-the-making can find a silver lining. I had worked with video cameras before, and had learned enough about animation software at the Art Institute, to transfer that skill to video editing software. So I did, and wowed the Powers That Be. I still wow them, and I'm happy for it, since it got me out of that black hole of an occupation I was in for so many years.

When you get a new lease on life in mid-career, you either go for it, or you're gone. I used to watch older people at the agency, hanging around with nothing to do, their jobs made obsolete by new developments or new technology, and the management just couldn't take them out and shoot them or force them to retire, much less fire them. So those geezers hung around, looking listless, and useless. I was determined to never be one of those guys.

And so, tomorrow, if there's any chance at all of going into work, that's what's gonna happen. God has been good. I love my job. It's the least I can do, don't you think?

Or don't you?
 

Merry Christmas, Catholic Girl

... is the story of a devout Catholic woman, a mother of two children from a marriage now broken after a life of alcohol and abuse. Finding little solace in a local parish reeling from a history of dysfunction and public scandal, our anti-heroine seeks shelter from the storm at a convent where the Latin Mass is celebrated on Sunday. The story begins with a brief flashback, and continues as she moves on with her life, rediscovering the stirrings of the heart.

Little man big man what's inside?
It's all in the places
Where we find our pride.
If there was a soul lost by the road,
Who'd pass by,
Who'd take it home?

(from the song "Little Man Big Man"
music and lyrics by Glen Philips
for the 1997 album "Coil" by Toad the Wet Sprocket)

Catholic magazines don't handle stories like this. Catholic magazines don't handle the issue of divorce any better than many Catholic priests, never mind other Catholic media outlets. These stories are dirty, they are tawdry, wallowing in the seamy underbelly of life, in which many suffer, often through no fault of their own, and out of which many must climb. Stories like these tell us what we don't want to hear, that marriages are not made in heaven, that grace does not always succeed where nature is found wanting. The fighting, the betrayal, the abandonment, the court hearings, the custody battles, the supervised visits, the estrangement from children -- your Catholic cable channel won't admit to such a life out there, one that is all too real for so many, whether they "experience the healing" from the panacea of an annulment or not.

This is my fourth Christmas as a divorcee.

Four Christmases ago, my so-called husband left me with a broken-down house, a five year old Chevy van, a basement full of water and an utterly empty bank account. Plus a frightened seven year old, and a very angry teenaged girl.

When he threatened us, I made several trips to the police station to beg for help. Finally, one cop took pity on my terror. He solemnly advised me to change our locks and to keep the outside lights on.

Also, never, ever, to let my ex back in the house.

“If he, ah, does something you don’t like once he’s inside,” he told me, burly arms crossed in front of him. His warm brown eyes were sympathetic. “Then our hands are tied. Because you let him in. You understand my meaning?”

For any Catholic magazine to take this story on is daring. For the same magazine to handle it well is ... epic.

Regina Magazine began this past year as the brainchild of Beverly De Soto, a veteran writer-editor of the New York City financial world, at a time when numerous print periodicals, particularly in Catholic media, have either gone digital, or under. She has gathered other creatives of like mind, so that the beauty of truth, and the truth that is found in beauty, may reach new audiences, and revitalize old ones. There are many reasons for a Catholic woman to subscribe to Regina, and probably more than one reason for a Catholic man to at least give an issue the occasional perusal.

The result is a great Christmas gift, one that would carry the spirit of the season well into the next year.