Juggling Divorce, a New Man, and My Old Man
Juggling Divorce, a New Man, and My Old Man
(check out my blog every Tuesday and Friday)
I started dating before my divorce was final. Maybe you did too, so maybe you don't think I'm going to hell.
I don't know if my father thinks that's what will happen, but he certainly wasn't happy about my behavior. Initially, I understood his concern: my new relationship might cause problems as I ended the old one.
But it turns out that Florida, despite its backwardness in many other areas, is remarkably enlightened about divorce. Under Florida law, there are only two reasons to end a marriage: the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, or the mental incapacity of one of the spouses. Under Florida law, I learned that, as a rule, adultery doesn't enter into the equation.
If, say, I had exhausted the marital assets on trips to Fiji for the boyfriend and me, the court probably would have frowned on that. But since the two alcoholics in my marriage had already exhausted most of their assets, I saw no risk.
I explained this to my father more than once. But now that he's old, his mind isn't so flexible anymore, and he could not, would not, wrap it around the idea that it was okay for my life to go on while I divorced. He glowered a lot and made menacing pronouncements about the earful he would have for me when the time was right (which, thankfully, it never was).
To this day he hasn't met the new man in my life.
One morning at breakfast, shortly after my divorce was final, he asked a simple question. "Sondra, how old are you?"
I looked at him, figuring this was the beginning of the tirade he'd been holding for months. "Forty-eight," I replied.
"Oh," he said. I think he had forgotten.
And then he added, "You'd better be glad you're grown and nobody can tell you what to do any more."
Really? Nobody can? Not even you, Pop?
Wow. I guess Daddy's Little Girl is an adult at last, and all I had to do was get divorced.
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