Tag: divorce
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Legally or Illegally
After I left, for the better part of a year, my ex-husband told me he was going to kill me. Not in a heated, one-time, people-say-things way. Repeatedly. To my face. He would ask me when the cancer was going to finish the job. When it was going to come back and kill me —…
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Late to Dinner
It was Mother’s Day, and we were supposed to be at my mom’s. My grandmother was there, in poor health by then, and we were going for dinner, the kind of ordinary family Mother’s Day you don’t think twice about until later, when you learn it was the last one. Instead, I spent that Mother’s…
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Funeral Director OR Accountant
When I was a little girl, in the early eighties, I believed women could be three things. Secretaries, nurses, or teachers. That was the whole list, as far as I knew. Then one day my grandparents took me along to their accountant’s office. I don’t remember why I was with them or what the visit…
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I See
The paperwork said it was an emergency. It said I was self-medicating my cancer. I have never tried pot or any non-prescription medication. I have never had a drinking problem. And at the time he filed it, I wasn’t taking anything at all — I was in remission. It was a lie so total that…
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Each Other
They had just turned ten and eleven, and the oldest had just turned fourteen, the day I think of when I picture the three of them together. We were at Point Lobos, down past Carmel, where the big rocks meet the ocean, and my three were up on them, climbing, all three hanging on to…
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From the Back Seat
I was in the back seat with the baby. That’s where this memory starts and, in a way, where it stays, because the whole thing happened to me from the back seat, buckled in next to a car seat, watching something unfold that I had no power to stop. I don’t remember exactly where we…
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French Manicure
I only get French manicures. Soft pink, white tips, nothing loud. I’ve done it that way for as long as I can remember, and if you asked me why, I’d probably tell you it’s just what I like, that it’s classic, that it goes with everything. And that’s true, as far as it goes. When…
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Handled
My son felt he was given too much responsibility as a kid. That he had to watch his sisters, that too much was put on him too young. When I found out, I wasn’t angry the way I might have expected to be. I was blindsided. Because the whole time, I thought I had it…
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What They Wanted Me to Do
By the time we got engaged, I was already trying to find my way out. I didn’t intend to go through with it. I could see him clearly enough by then, the controlling streak, the way the temperature of a room changed around him, and something in me knew. But we were already living together,…
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A Span of Values
My ex filed against me about once a month on average I would say. Filing was the weapon. Every time he filed, I had to respond, and responding cost money and energy, and money and energy were the point. He could reach into my life on a monthly schedule and make it more expensive and…
