Divorce Is A Three-Way Street
I remember crying. I remember banging my small fists on my second-floor bedroom window. I remember my mom waving at me from the driveway, smiling as she was smoking a cigarette. I remember her blowing me a kiss. And then I remember her leaving.
I must have been only 5 years old, but I remember the night when my mom told us that she had to leave, that she loves me and that my dad is a good man.
Divorce wasn’t a word that I could understand, or that I even knew at the time. What I did know was how I felt. I was confused, sad and angry. I even felt punished and abandoned. But what I realized in my adulthood is that I never considered how my parents felt.
What I didn’t know about divorce is that it didn’t only mean that my parents were splitting up. It meant a lot of things. It meant lawyers and social workers, court hearings and testimonies. It meant being asked uncomfortable questions by people I’ve never met and answering questions that I didn’t understand.
Custody was one of the things I learned when my parents divorced. Full, 50/50, sole, joint, physical or legal custody. There were so many terms that I heard, but I understood them all the same. It was about who I saw and when I saw them, where I lived and which school I went to. To me it was really about the possibility of not seeing either my mom or my dad again.
We started switching places every week. I was able to be with my mom and dad. I had two rooms in two different houses. Two Thanksgivings, two Christmases, two New Years and two birthdays. But three parents to grow up with.
On my 6th birthday, in our old single-bedroom apartment in Panorama City, my mom introduced me and my older siblings to someone she was dating. Her name was Cecille.
For a while after meeting Cecille, things were different. Not any worse or better. Just, different.
I would be dropped off at school by her and picked up by her later in the day. She would pack me lunches and ask about what I liked. Then she started comforting me when I was sad and hugging me when I cried.
She started to cook my favorite food, make me laugh by telling me the corniest jokes and introduced me to the wonderful world of Chinese action movies. Before I knew it, things went from different, to better. And I felt like I had another parent in my life.
Acceptance was never an issue for me. Maybe it’s because she won me over, maybe it’s because I was so young when I was introduced to the concept of homosexuality that I thought everyone knew about it or maybe it’s because it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because I was fortunate to have two parents and lucky enough to have three. But my childhood seemed to be unimaginable to everyone else.
I had to explain who she was when I was in elementary school, to everyone who asked. My friends at school, my teachers and even my relatives.
I had to explain to my school’s principal that, yes, I knew who was waiting for me. “That’s Cecille, my mom’s girlfriend.” I remember the look of confusion or disbelief on people’s faces. One teacher even tried to explain to me why I was mistaken. That my mom couldn’t have a girlfriend because she was a girl. But what I remember most was my dad’s disapproval.
I don’t recall ever getting a clear answer as to why my parents divorced when I was a kid. Maybe they were trying to preserve my innocence or maybe it was too fresh of an issue to talk about. Regardless, I got an answer from my dad when I was high school.
“She cheated on me,” he said.
My dad grew up an active Christian. Church every Sunday, bible studies on the weekend and charity events every month. With those beliefs, he worked his hardest to support his family. His wife and three children.
My parents were teenagers when they had my sister, barely in their 20s when they had my brother and I came along just two years after.
Fresh out of high school, my dad picked up a full-time job at an old Clorox factory in the industrial district of LA. It didn’t pay much, but it paid for everything.
It paid for my mom to go to college. For loans, tuition and food. It paid for their newborn’s diapers and eventually my own. And it paid for a house in the suburbs 20 minutes outside of the valley.
But it was hard for my dad after the divorce. He had to sleep in the same room, the same bed, alone. He had to pick up extra shifts at work. Hoping for doubles, overtime or time and a half. He worked holidays, weekends and birthdays so that he could pay for the house that my mom left. So that he could pay for our clothes and our food. So that he could pay my mom the spousal support that the court decided on.
“I wanted to be a teacher,” my dad confessed. “I always wanted to teach kids with learning disabilities. Like I did when I was a tutor in high school.”
I learned that my dad was a complicated man. He showed us the kind of tough love that his parents showed him in the Philippines. With his actions and not his words. With ear pulls and spankings. With cold, piercing glares and silence.
I knew my dad loved us. He would wake us up for church on Sundays by throwing open our bedroom door while playing his favorite jazz tune on his saxophone. He would sing songs in the morning before school, brushed my sister’s hair on the dining table while feeding us those old, chalky Flintstones vitamins.
But when we would talk about my mom, or what we did with her the previous week, his tone would change. He would call her names and insult her in front of us. He scoffed at her plans to take us places. I remember all of his judgments about her. And I remember when they stopped.
I was in the 6th grade. I forgot what was said about her, but I remember it made me cry.
“Stop talking like that, that’s my mom,” I said, teary-eyed, stomping up the stairs to my room before I slammed the door.
I remember him coming to my room and sitting on my bed while I cried under my blanket.
“You’re right Pat, I shouldn’t talk about your mom that way. I’m sorry,” he said.
And things slowly started to change after that.
My dad started dating a woman named Rebecca from church. I never felt as close to her as I did with Cecille, but I remember her being there. And I remember how happy she made my dad.
But I don’t think his happiness with Rebecca changed how my dad really felt about my mom. After all, he was a Christian through and through. And so was my mom growing up.
You can imagine all of the awkward conversations we had with the church folk about my mom and her girlfriend that would drop us off. The conversations about sin and adultery. The judgmental looks and loud whispers about my family.
I thought for a while that our church or religion was what stopped my dad from accepting my mom for who she was. Because the concept of homosexuality being unholy was preached so strongly toward my dad ever since he was kid.
Maybe he thought of my mom as a sinner. As someone who betrayed her beliefs, her upbringing in our church and her parents who were so dedicated as a deacon and choir member. I thought I knew.
When I was 17, about to graduate high school, I had a long conversation with my dad about my childhood, about church and about my mom.
When I brought up their divorce, I expected a lecture in faith. One of the many spoken by a minister at church. I expected to hear how it was wrong and how it wasn’t what God intended. But I was wrong.
Any regret, hate or shame my dad felt toward my mom wasn’t because she was a lesbian. It wasn’t because she was attracted to women. It wasn’t because he couldn’t comprehend what homosexuality was or what it meant to my mom. It was because she cheated on him. It was because he loved her and found out, in the worst of ways, that she didn’t love him back.
“She broke my heart,” he said.
I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that for all of my childhood and all throughout high school, I thought my dad was homophobic. I couldn’t believe I thought he judged my mom with the same judgement that I was taught God would have for her. I couldn’t believe I thought he resented her for her sexuality, for who she was and who she loved. I couldn’t believe I thought he was in the wrong and that he had something to learn.
Then I remembered that night, all those years ago. The night that my mom left our house in the suburbs. The night that I cried looking out the window. The night I found out that my parents were getting divorced. I remembered what my mom told me.
My dad is a good man.
