Divorce and Protest

An in-depth look at the sadness and humor of an amicable divorce. I also do the voice over here, recorded by yours truly. Please like, comment and share if you enjoy!

My parents had a rule that they stuck to with dogmatic consistency: don’t fight in front of the kids. Growing up, I never actually saw my parents argue, because every time they needed to argue with one another, my dad would say, “Me and your mother need to go fix something in the house--you and your sister go play outside.” Then I’d be in the yard, trying to use a toy shovel to dig to the center of the earth while listening to the commotion inside. I didn’t think they were arguing, I thought that was just part of handy work. Because of this, up into adulthood, I've considered yelling and screaming to be a necessary part of basic home repair. Every time I fix something in my apartment, the job doesn’t feel done until I yell something like “You just don’t understand me!” or “It's gone Lynn! The spark is gone!” This strategy of hiding their disputes from us worked. As my sister and I played in the big back yard in Marion, Massachusetts, where there were trees to be climbed and a trampoline to be injured on, my parents waged their own secret battles with one another. Even when their relationship was strained to the point of breaking, I never suspected anything was wrong, I just thought, wow, if the house needs this many repairs I hope the ceiling doesn’t cave in on me.

My mom and dad were wonderful people, but just because two people are wonderful, doesn’t mean they can or should make their marriage work. My mom was a bricklayer-turned-construction-supplies-saleswoman, and my father was a yoga teacher and a part-time carpenter. Part of why I think their marriage didn’t work is because they were both so deeply competent and independent; I think marriage for them was just a fun activity rather than a basic necessity of their lives. I might be wrong, but I have internalized this and remain wildly incompetent in order to one day find a lasting relationship. They started to drift apart when I was in the third grade, but I can't say I was perceptive of this change. I don't remember my parents showing affection for one another, ever, but I had friends whose parents would scream at each other and throw coffee mugs across the kitchen to accentuate a point while we were upstairs, trying to have a “sleep-over” that was turning into a “stay awake and create negative fundamental memories-over.” Surely if the Hinkle couple could stay together, my parents, who were constantly bonding over home repairs, could figure it out? 20 years later, my mom remarried, my dad passed away, and the Hinkles are still together. There is simply no predicting these things.

Before I start talking about the details of the divorce, there’s something that I feel like I need to address. The topic of divorce has been so thoroughly covered that I've been reluctant to write about it. What compelled me to do so was an event at an open mic (if you didn’t know, I’m a three bit stand up comedian as well as a two bit writer.) I was up next, and the host of the mic was talking about how “people who are obsessed with their parents divorce just haven’t had any real struggle in their lives” and “everyone's parents are divorced, it doesn’t matter.” I don't bring this up as a way to criticize her; a big part of me agrees with the sentiment. The subject of divorce isn’t just deeply banal, it’s also become the fundamental struggle of the white upper middle class. Whenever I hear a rich kid try to justify that they’ve struggled enough in life to get into standup comedy, the subject of their parents' marriage is almost always soon to follow.

Personally, I’m weary of the idea you need to have a terrible life to do comedy. I know tons of funny people who’ve had great lives (Jon Rudnitsky was the first headlining comedian to take me on the road. He had a comfortable upbringing and I don’t know if anyone has ever made me laugh harder.) There are also people who had awful lives who aren’t funny at all. I think the thing that makes you funny isn’t the degree of struggle, but how you absorb and process the struggles you do have. I wish it wasn’t that way--I wish funny was something that was bestowed upon those who had less in life and skipped those who had more. I also wish every guy who was under five foot five was well endowed to make up for it. It's just not a fair world.

What got me thinking about the statement “everyone's parents are divorced, so it doesn’t matter?” Was the core idea that, because something happens to a lot of people, that means it doesn’t matter? I think this idea pops up in a lot of people's minds when it comes to processing things that have happened to them, and I think it's wrong. I got on stage and started talking about the idea, and what I said sort of got to the core of my feeling. I said, “just because everyone's parents get divorced doesn't mean you can't be sad about it. Imagine telling someone ‘yeah, the people who made me don’t love each other anymore’ and they go ‘shut up dumbass, that’s happened to everyone.’” I'm not saying my parents’ divorce was a deep tragedy, but there are a lot of feelings that I have connected to it--and the idea of divorce in general--and as I look back on it, I think the reaction my sister and I had to our parents’ divorce was equal parts funny and sad.

For reasons unknown to me, my parents gathered my sister and I in the little office in our basement to tell us their marriage was through. They did everything right, totally by the book. They hit every note of the little song titled “Your Mother and I Want You to Know it's not Your Fault.”

Unfortunately, my parents were victims of their own great parenting. When you never fight in front of your children, then get divorced, it puts you in a difficult spot. If I could articulate my reaction, it would be “come on, why be so hasty--you guys have a good thing going here.” At the time, I was 8, so that sentiment came out with kicking and screaming and somehow making tactical maneuvers that resulted in my sister and I locking ourselves in the office and yelling “we're not going to come out until you get back together.” I’m not an expert in child psychology, but I once had the brain of a child (a number of acquaintances and ex girlfriends would say that I still do,) so I have a theory on how children know how to react this way to their parents’ divorces. I don’t think it's so much that they’re invested in the marriage. Kids don't have as much of a stake in the game when it comes to the institution of marriage, unless they're watching a lot of ‘Tucker Carlson for Kids’--in which case, god help their souls. I think kids get so upset because they know divorce spells change, and children have a big incentive to avoid change. When a child grows, they want as much stability as possible in order to ensure safety. Change means risk, and risk means less safety. I say that because the sentimental part of me feels really bad about my reaction. Now that I’m an adult, I realise how difficult the decision must have been for my parents. Before they told me and my sister, there must have already been a flood of tears, and phone calls to trusted friends, and Google searches of, “Can my husband take half my stuff” or “can I get half of my wife’s stuff.”

After the announcement, they stood outside the office door, with two children that I’m sure they were hoping would go “well, this upsets us, but we understand half of all marriages end in divorce,” and I'm sure they were disappointed when instead our reaction was “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” They pleaded with us from beyond the door, knowing the only thing keeping them locked out was a small piece of bent metal, no bigger than a nail, that was inserted into a small metal loop on the door frame. My dad, the tank that he was, could have knocked open the door with his toe, but he didn't want to because of the moral victory at stake. If they could get us to unlock that door, in a way, it would mean they’d gotten us to accept the divorce. It was unfortunate for them that, while I was underperforming at school, I could annoy adults at a 12th grade level. I yelled from inside the office, “You can't get divorced! You've made so many recent home repairs together! You need to stick together to keep buying me things.” The stand-off raged on: my sister started to photocopy her face, while I started drawing on all the walls with a permanent marker. The knocks on the door got louder, until finally, reluctantly, my dad's shoulder checked the door and the flimsy lock flew open. We met him with a chorus of screams, but the end of this skirmish, of kids vs. divorcing parents, did not mean the war was over.

My mom and dad stayed in the same house while they figured out a living situation. My mom slept in the guest bedroom, while my dad stayed in the empty master. You might be rolling your eyes at my father for taking the master bedroom, but that's because you don't know my mom. I am positive that she would not allow my dad to stay in the guest room. My entire life, if there was ever a situation where my mom was given a choice to have more and leave someone else with less, she would always insist on giving herself less. If you were sharing a pizza, she would insist on the small slices. If you were taking a car ride, she would always curl herself into a small ball and ride in the spare tire holder over taking shotgun. If you were staying at a hotel with a queen bed and a king bed, my mom would choose to sleep in a giant pit of venomous snakes. I don't know why she wouldn't just take the queen bed, but I’ve learned to not question my mom.

While they were upstairs in the master bedroom, still hashing out the details of the divorce, my sister and I plotted in our little playroom. Our grandma was one of the most politically left people I have ever known. She deplored war, and when she watched my sister and I, she would put on documentaries about the anti-war effort that surrounded Vietnam. Images of young people with signs that said “end all war” and “Johnson is a Nazi” were burned into our young brains. This education gave my sister an idea. We got crayons and construction paper, and began a project that, while being on a slightly smaller scale than the Vietnam war protests, would be just as futile.

I assume my parents were talking about dividing up assets when it happened. The crushing bureaucracy of a separation that gives a numb, dead feeling to the pain you're already experiencing. They were in the master bedroom, both feeling tired and defeated. They had no idea how bad it was about to get. I like picturing this event in slow motion, from their perspective. One second they were talking about who gets the Winnebago and the next second the door bursts open, and their two children march in with handmade crayon signs that say “Don't Get Devorsed” (that's how I would have spelled it.) We stomped around the room, holding the signs high in defiance of love’s tendency to wither and die. As my dad tried to usher us out of the room, we began to chant in unison “Don't get divorced, don't get divorced!” My mother’s hands rose to her face, and she began to cry. Some people can't stand the idea of a grassroots people’s movement.

The process of having your parents divorce always goes something like this: you feel bad for yourself, then you feel bad for your parents, and finally, you feel good for your parents. They knew what they were doing was best for us. You can only keep a failing marriage together for so long until it starts affecting your children. I wish there was a way to make children understand this at a young age, but it's one of those truths that requires other truths that are sort of above children’s heads. You can't really tell a seven year old, “yes, your mom and dad are getting divorced, but that's kind of a good thing because it means they can move on with their lives. They will most likely do better on their own, and it's likely that one and possibly both of them really want to sleep with other people, so that might chill them out. Anyway, let's get you some Pokemon cards.

When they stopped living with each other, my dad moved less than a mile away from my mom. This was great for me because I was shaping up into a vindictive preteen who could now expertly play both parents against each other. I could now go “Okay dad, so you don't think I clean up after myself enough? Well, guess who's walking to moms.” They also had no scheduled visitation. We moved completely freely between both houses, creating a strange free-market economy for my parents' affection that may have caused more problems than good.

That will be covered in part 2. Subscribe to the paid tier now to get that post next week!