Geographies of Divorce: Never "my
town"
In 1981, James Taylor released a song called "Her town too" (http://youtu.be/Be73MgBIhUM) in which he
expresses regret that his ex-wife is being excluded from social events
because he holds greater social capital than she does amongst the people in the
town where they once had a life together. When relationships end, it is a sad
but true fact that people take sides, assets are split, and someone, if not
both parties, must relocate. Taylor alludes to another type of collateral
damage that I'm calling Geographies of Divorce.
It's the shifting of boundaries, the renegotiation of territory, the
displacement, isolation and the staggering trauma of homelessness that
accompanies divorce.
In my case Sweet Baby James can relax. The neighborhood I shared for almost
5 years with a man whose town it always was... was never MY town. But the
geographies of divorce have tentacles that are still able to reach out and
squeeze the breath from my lungs from time to time.
Case in point:
Recently my daughter accepted an invitation from her old high school
band conductor to play at the school's spring concert with other alumni. I was
proud of her decision because she left that school -midterm - under unhappy
circumstances five years ago when my marriage to her stepfather ended. "It
will bring closure to that chapter of our lives", she told me and I
admired her for that wisdom. Indeed returning to that high school stage as a
beautiful young woman, a feminist, an activist, and a soon-to-be graduate of
the University of Toronto did symbolize a victory cry in response to the 4 1/2
excruciating years I watched her trying to make life work in that
"town". Between 2006 and 2010, we tried valiantly to blend two
families whose values and roots were as disparate as it gets. On April 1st,
2010, the decision was made for us ...and we abandoned our efforts.
Trouble is - while it was closure for my daughter, sitting in that high
school auditorium this past Friday night reopened some old wounds for me. I
was jettisoned back in time to the fall of 2005 when I attended the New Parents’ Information Session in that
same auditorium. My daughter’s acceptance at this prestigious Catholic arts
school had been a coup. I was about to remarry, pack us up and move us from our
lovely home in another city to a new home in a new city.... the city and
neighborhood where my fiancé had lived for decades and was the local
politician. It was HIS turf and his children's turf, and I was determined that
my daughter would start out on equal footing - despite having no history, no
networks, and no friends in that neighbourhood. Thus I felt it was important- and
so did she- that she attend a different high school than the one her older
stepsiblings were already attending.
But it was a Catholic high school and my lifetime involvement with my own
(Protestant) church was not enough for her to gain entry to the school, even
with her obvious musical talent. Hence we had no recourse but to ask my
soon-to-be husband to haul out his baptismal certificate-proof that he was a
Catholic, in spite of being able to count on his fingers the number of times
he'd been to Mass in the intervening 55 years. That was the beginning of the
erasure of our identities.
On that parents' night in 2005, the principal stood at the podium and
announced conspiratorially to the audience that one of the new students was the
daughter of "our local councillor" and therefore the school was in
good shape to get the traffic problems at the nearby intersection addressed.
Ten years have passed, and I can still remember seething with anger in my seat.
When did my daughter become HIS daughter? We hadn't even married yet. She
wasn't even his STEPdaughter. By availing ourselves of his baptismal
certificate, I'd apparently ceded my role as the person of greatest significance in her life. I'd been a single mother
to her since she was three years of age....juggling work and graduate studies
around what I saw as my primary purpose in life (raising my child), but all
that was vaporized when she was declared the daughter of "our
councillor". Her own biological father, although living in another
country, was a critical part of her life- but he too was rendered invisible by
the principal's words. But most importantly, my daughter's talent as a
musician, the fact that she'd aced her audition and earned her admission into
that school - suddenly even that became irrelevant. I imagined everyone in the
auditorium thinking "oh so that's how she got into this school... her
father is the local councillor."
No matter who I was, or what I did on my own strength or of my own
volition, my identity for the next five years was subsumed under his. The first
summer that we lived in the new house that we built together, I signed up
online for a tai chi course in the neighborhood park. I enrolled using my own
first and last names -the only names I've ever used, but the confirmation of my
fee payment was addressed to Mrs. HisFirstName HisLastName. I was shocked. Through some address
cross-referencing process, an office employee decided to rename me
completely...or perhaps they arbitrarily assumed I'd want to exercise some
clout with the local tai chi instructor at Parks and Rec.
Even the house itself never belonged to my daughter and me, though it
couldn't have been built without the proceeds of the sale of the lovely little
home we gave up to be there. For reasons I no longer care to call to the
surface, it was never our home. There was never enough oxygen in that house for
us to breathe, and we were visitors there, unwelcome guests for 4 1/2 years in
a home we helped to build.
I got a job up the street teaching an undergrad course at the satellite
campus of the University where I was a doctoral student. I planted a garden and
put up Christmas decorations. I brought meals weekly to an elderly neighbor
whose wife passed away. I found a church. I bicycled through the streets with
my daughter. I frequented the local corner store. I shopped at the farmers
market in the summers. I've voted in elections at the school and the church
around the corner. None of that mattered. I was invisible for those 4 1/2
years. It was never MY town.
In the five years since we've been away from that neighborhood, my
daughter and I continue to recognize and celebrate the multitude of ways in
which we practiced subversion to avoid being completely erased in that
geographical setting. When that short-lived and tragically doomed marriage came
to an end, we moved to a new neighborhood where- like bulbs brought up from the
basement and replanted in the spring - we've been able to stretch sun-ward
again. And now, with my daughter planning to travel the world before graduate
school, and with a one-year sabbatical for me beginning shortly, the time has
come to relocate again, even further away from that neighborhood, perhaps very
far away indeed.
When I remarried, 11 years after my marriage to my daughter's father
ended, I was very taken with the story that Vikings burned their ships when
they arrived on new soil to prevent them from being half-hearted about their
commitment to the new geography. Like
the Vikings, I was resolute that retreat was not an option. But life tends to choke romanticism out of our spirits, and my advice to my daughter and every
other young woman embarking upon a merging of households will be:
“If you choose to burn the ship, be sure you know how to build a raft.”
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