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Excerpt 4 -- From chapter Say Aww "What can you do?" Simpson's friend asks with resignation in her voice. In response, she writes: It is true; we cannot redo our childhoods.
We cannot undo the tapestry of our lives, re-stitching those sections
where unforeseen risks marred the innocence.
But for us – divorce’s offspring, divorce’s witnesses -- there are
things it is not too late to do. We who struggled can take the task of bettering ourselves at hand, take
it seriously, and take responsibility. We
can begin by talking. When we meet a
sympathetic other, we can stop changing the subject so quickly. We can stop
laughing at things that aren’t funny, stop covering when we wish to connect.
We can begin by grieving; we can begin with gentle efforts to provide for
ourselves the sanctuary we deserve. We who witness can begin to listen, we can begin to ‘go there’ when
someone lets slip of a distant relationship to a non-custodial father, when they
begin to tell us how hard it is to believe in love and commitment having parents
who lost both, when they begin to tell us they felt responsible for siblings, or
that they felt like a burden. What can you do? You can say, “Awww.” If you are one of the chosen people in whom a ACOD chooses to confide, whether you were also one yourself or not, weather you think your life was somehow worse, or that the person’s situation is somehow removed from you and your experience, weather it has been two weeks or thirty years during which they have lived in the fallout, listen. Listen closely, for we may be testing the waters, trying to see if you are part of that sympathetic underground resistance. Listen for the ways we voice our truth. Listen for the moment we first mention that we are “all fucked up.” Listen for the reversals – when we talk of a sibling as if she were a parent, or as if he were our own to raise, or when we mention a mother who needs our help to do her taxes or sort out her marital problems. Listen for the missing hole our fathers never occupied and all the haunting questions that filled it instead. Listen carefully because we don’t all express ourselves the same way. We do not fortify ourselves with the same armor. The message may be cloaked in a witty, self-deprecating remark; it may be tucked behind a smokescreen of contempt for the easy target our stepparents sometimes make (and the long folkloric tradition of evil stepparents); it may be masked in bravado and the boy-scout-troop-leader voice of false cheer, as we focus on how “it made me strong”, slipping quickly past the “it” and the feelings therein; it may come out hard and matter-of-fact, or quiet and halting; it may be that cigarette of cruel futility that we snub out almost as we speak the words, then leave on the way to our next fix; it may be our art, our beauty and the dark side of our passions; or it may be the plain straightforward disclosure that, “my past was a big deal, and it still hurts.” When you hear us testing, hold tight to your suggestions, your solutions, your other-side-of-the-story perspective, your inquiries about what should have been or might have been, and your temptation to redirect, even though you mean it in a helpful way. Breathe in, breathe out, think for a beat or two and say “Awww.” Say it soft. Say it with a
grunt. Say it as if you never had a
preconceived idea about how significant or insignificant our experiences might
have been. Say it with tenderness.
Say, “Awww.” Say it because sometimes the most important thing to communicate is an
opening. Say, “Awww” no matter how big, bold, confident, competent, together,
kick-ass, angry, sad, disconnected, confused, sarcastic or strong we seem.
Say, “Awww.” Say, “Awww” and be a part of the solution; be part of a more
compassionate world. Be part of honesty and progress and authenticity. Say “Awww,” and when we brush it off, backtracking in some fashion,
squirming as if we were suddenly wearing clothes three sizes too small, say it
one more time, a little softer. Awww. That must have made you angry Awww. I didn’t know it was like that for you. And if you find that your “Awww” has opened some long forgotten door into some soft part within, if your ACOD should break your gaze, staring past you, talking in a soft stream of unbroken thought, if you see the head droop and some tender vulnerability of long buried hardship, stay still. Approach with care; treat the moment with the understated reverence of one who has entered the heartbeat of a private sanctuary. Awww.
That must have been hard. Awww that must have
been sad. And how great, that
after all of that, you came out as well as you did.
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