My parents were a bad match from Day One. Honestly, I have no idea what they ever had in common. The fighting began in ernest after my brother was born. My father was never home- Never. My mother screamed, and screamed, and screamed. My mom would stand in front of the television and scream. My father would ask her to step aside so he could watch the race. My mom threw a remote control at my father's head. My dad threw her telephone out the back door and into the ditch. This scene could well characterize their entire relationship.

Both had their own ways of dealing with the problems in the marriage. My dad dealt with the stress by leaving. He raced stock cars and he spent hours and hours at the garage. The garage (my uncle's garage) had pictures of naked women all over the walls. This infuriated my mother. My father became infuriated at the fact that my mother was infuriated. So it went. He eventually moved into an apartment with another woman- but they were just roommates. My mom coped by reading religious texts and attending therapy. She asked my dad to go to therapy with her, and he refused. He became angry when she went by herself. He hated her religious texts.

My mother and my father both had their own reasons for being angry in the relationship. My mother had given up so much to marry my father right out of high school. She took Advanced Placement courses, but didn't take the exams. She was editor of the yearbook in a school with over four thousand students, but she didn't take the SATs. Fairy tales don't come true, and she was no exception. She was stuck at home with two kids and no husband to help. My dad, for his part, was trying to deal with a religious fundamentalist woman with obsessive compulsive disorder. This wasn't the woman he married. Ultimately things fell apart. I think both felt incredibly duped.

Attempts at reconciliation came from both sides (I suppose). My dad sent my mother flowers after he moved out. He even took her out on a couple of dates. He would come home for weekends occasionally. He would move in, and move out, and then move in again. My mom tried to do little things to make my dad happy. She threw him a surprise birthday party once. She had a drawing done of him and his racecar. One summer night mom got all excited and decided to surprise Dad. We were going to "kidnap Dad and take him to Krispy Kreme!" He was going to be working a late night at the garage. He was at the garage- but with another woman. Mom, absolutely humiliated, rushed us to the car quietly. No donuts tonight.

My mom left for good when I was 12. We packed up all of our things in the back of my grandfather's pick-up and moved to NC. I was angry at first. Very, very, very angry. A righteous, virulent, unabashed kind of rage. I'm not angry anymore- at least I don't think so, and not at her. It's really hard to even be angry at my father. He is such a different person now. Our relationship is very different from my relationship with my mother. My mother and I are like best friends. My father and I sort of stumble around, not sure if we should hash it out or forget about it and move on. I have seen him once in the past year, although we talk on the phone all of the time. I can count on my two hands the number of times the kids have seen him. Perhaps I subconcsiously think the emotional risk is too great, but I'd rather attribute it to busy schedules and conflicting calendars.

 My parents have both married partners more suited to them. My dad remarried first (big surprise) less than a year after my parents divorced. My dad and his wife have had many problems, but it appears his "Ladies Man" days are over. My mom married an amazing man who worships her. She's no longer a religious fundamentalist and has gotten control of her OCD.

 Before my mother remarried, I told her that I was glad she had finally left my dad for good. I meant it, too. In order for her to have made it work with my father, she would have had to of  let a part of herself die. She would never have been a whole person married to my father. She had to leave him to become complete. He would never have let her grow and develop as she has in this new chapter of her life. I respect her for loving herself enough to leave. My dad, well, I don't think he would have been happy with any one woman at that point in his life. I truly think he was just a very unhappy person and no one could fix that for him. He's a different person now. I don't know if the split benefitted him or not, but he seems happy. I hope he is happy. I want him to be happy.

In my husband and I's relationship, I wholeheartedly believe that we make each other better people. The whole of 'Us' is truly greater than the sum of our parts. This is not true of my parents. Perhaps it once was, a long, long time ago, but it quickly became a falsity. They were miserable together. They made other people miserable when they were together. Some puzzle pieces don't fit. You can try and ram them together all you want, but nothing is going to work until you cut some of edges off, and then you lose part of the picture.

 This, of course, leads me to my conclusion. I like my parents apart rather than together. I would love them just the same.