Grateful.

Comedienne and writer Bridget Phetasy was a recent guest on the Maiden Mother Matriarch podcast which is hosted by the English social critic and author Louise Perry. Phetasy's "How divorce never ends" was recently published in the U.S. edition of The Spectator, a UK-based publication and this seems to have prompted the invitation to appear on the podcast, although other topics were discussed.

During the interview Phetasy largely reiterated and expanded upon the article. Its precis, at the most basic level, is simply that divorce hurts children and that the negative consequences redound into adulthood for people whose parents divorce. While not advocating for the abolition of divorce, she quipped on the podcast that it should be "safe, legal, and rare". If your husband is abusing you and/or your children, for example, then divorce is warranted. Simply wanting to be single so you can go on a voyage to discover yourself does not warrant the end of a marriage, in her opinion.

That divorce hurts children isn't controversial. But that it should be an act of last resort is, apparently, these days, for many. Phetasy's piece serves as a riposte to the likes of Lara Bazelon's 2021 New York Times essay, "Divorce Can Be an Act of Radical Self-Love". I am not sure how common Bazelon's egoistic laissez-faire attitude towards marriage is but Phetasy argues that it is ascendant in our culture and that many abdicate responsibility and view commitment in cold, Lockean terms of contract.

Reading Phetasy and listening to her interview got me thinking about the dissolution of my parents' marriage and how it affected me.

Back when I was 13 or so, my father saw a notice on the announcement board at the office one day saying that his employer was looking for people to take an early retirement. (The company was downsizing.) He immediately made his way to HR and volunteered - without consulting my mother.

A year or so later my parents had sold our home in Chicago and purchased one in west central Wisconsin. My father and brother made the trek north in April while my mother and I remained in Chicago until the school year ended in June.

When we finally arrived at the new house out in the boonies, my parents' marriage was already over. I didn't know it at the time and I don't know if my mother did.

My father greeted us at the door shirtless and tanned from working outside. He was also a bit drunk. I can picture in my mind the smile on his face that I now know disguised his true feelings. After a short time spent unpacking and settling into my new bedroom, my father said he wanted to take me into town - Eau Claire - and show me around.

This was a lie.

Rather than cruising around town to get a feel for it, we went straight to the bar of a bowling alley where my dad drank martinis and chatted with the blonde bartender. Sitting there nursing a soda and looking around uncomfortably, if not in total disbelief, I couldn't have imagined that she would become my stepmother.

After an unknown amount of time which seemed like days, my father announced that we were heading out. I felt a wave of relief wash over me. However, the bartender's shift had ended and instead of going home, we went to her apartment where I ended up watching some TV with her daughter, who was 5 or so years older than me, while my dad and his new girlfriend carried on in the kitchen.

My soon to be stepsister was very nice to me and I have never had reason to complain about her. Still, I did not want to be there and kept glancing towards the kitchen for a sign that we'd be leaving soon. Instead I caught sight of my father laughing with his pecker hanging out of his shorts while his girlfriend, thoroughly embarrassed, hastily tried to get him to put the thing away.

Truthfully, we probably weren't there very long but every second seemed like an eternity to the 14 year-old me. When we left, my father declared himself to be too drunk to drive and that I'd have to shuttle us home.

It wasn't too long before I noticed that my father was never around. He had moved out of the house and into an apartment in Eau Claire. I admit that I wanted nothing to do with my father at this point and it seems he felt much the same way.

Busy establishing a new life with his girlfriend, he never made any attempts to be a father or to reach out in any way to me unless prompted by my mother. Some of my grades were slipping at this time so, when we'd get together for dinner, conversation was dominated by expressions of his disappointment in me and mild threats of repercussions if I didn't do better in school.

By this time, my brother had moved back to Chicago and my mother followed suit after I started college.

I cut off most contact with my father after high school and he reciprocated. He didn't tell me of his cancer diagnosis and I never went to see him during his treatment after I had heard of his illness from someone else.

I lived at his house the summer after my freshman year of college and reached a kind of détente with him. We treated one another politely but kept each other at a distance. Come August I made Madison my permanent residence and home.

********

A couple weeks ago I heard the news that the father of a friend of mine from high school had died. I, being rather out of touch with events from my old stomping grounds, found out a couple months or so after he had passed and 4th or 5th hand.

My friend and I had lost touch back in the mid-90s when he married and, if I recall correctly, began his new life way up north while I was busying doing the same to the south. Nothing unusual, no falling out. I also lost touch with his parents at the same time.

Shortly after hearing the unfortunate news, I found that it had made me profoundly sad, even to the point of tears welling in my eyes. I was genuinely shaken.

I am going to call my friend's father S here and his mother T.

When I knew them, S and T were hippies. I don't mean that in a derogatory way or that they in any way put on pretenses. From what I recall, they lived in or near San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in the late 60's before moving to Colorado. Their Rocky Mountain sojourn didn't last too long and they would go on to settle down in west central Wisconsin.

Unlike a lot of their counterculture peers, S and T never abandoned their ideals to become 80s cocaine addled cliches on Wall Street. They lived on a small farm. S had long hair and an equally long beard which caused many a local to declare that he looked like Jerry Garcia even though he didn't. He did, however, love the Grateful Dead and I recall him working in a barn and on a tractor with a Dead bootleg playing on a nearby boom box. He'd been a pig farmer at one point but gave that up, though he still practiced the swine trade now and again for his family's consumption or as a favor to a friend.

For her part, T was a nurse. She was the exact opposite of 80s trends and excesses. No poofy Aquanet-laden hair and I think shoulder pads were forbidden on their property. Instead she refused to shave her legs or armpits. T was also a wonderful cook and baker and I recall smelling the bread she made as it baked. Later I would eat it along with eggs picked that morning from their chickens and bacon from a pig that had lived in a pen not far from the coop.

T and S were both smart, kind, and cheerful people. (T is still with us, to the best of my knowledge, and I hope she remains so.) They took the whole "back to the land" ethos to heart and lived it and I felt and continue to feel great respect for the way they chose a lifestyle and refused to abandon their principles.

Many people in the area were suspicious of T and S and held them in low regard. Because they were hippies, there were those who denounced them as pot smoking druggies while the goat skulls on the barn door were, some surmised, surely a sign of Satan worship. I ran into precious few people who took them at face value instead of feeling wariness and keeping them at arm's length. There must have been a fair amount opprobrium directed at them.

When S died, I fondly recalled the gentle mock sneer in his voice when he called my friend and me "teenagers" or me "that kid from down the road". The first time I ever had a hangover was on my birthday one year at their house. My friend and I both woke up feeling terrible from all the rum we had consumed and S cranked up "Birthday" by The Beatles quite loudly. (It was one of those original numbered copies of The White Album from back in 1968.) The song echoed through my skull and amplified the throbbing ache that was consuming my brain. S stood there with a wide trickster grin as my friend and I clutched our heads and grimaced in pain.

While I never viewed S as a surrogate father, perhaps he was. Certainly a mentor. He looked out for me. When a classmate got pissed off at my friend and me and decided that we needed to meet his shotgun, S was there to calm our nerves and offer protection and reassurance.

He didn't just point out when I had screwed up, as was my father's wont, he also offered words of praise and encouragement. S made the ability of my friend to go out and have fun contingent upon getting work done. And so I, a city kid, found myself helping to collect eggs, slop pigs, throw hay bails around, etc., things that I never dreamed of doing when I lived in Chicago.

S had a wonderful sense of humor that could be wicked. One time I went with him and my friend to protest the pro-lifers in front of the Planned Parenthood in Eau Claire. S dressed as the Easter bunny and held up a sign saying something to the effect of, believing in me is just like sharing their beliefs.

Both T and S were extremely welcoming and kind to me. S provided paternal guidance to my lost teenage self when my own father wanted nothing to do with me. As a middle-aged man I look back and see how he was a role model for me as I was developing into a man. He showed that kindness and strength were not mutually exclusive. S demonstrated that there was more to being a father than exacting discipline. For all of this and more, I am ever grateful. I wish that I'd thanked him in-person. (And Uncle Des too.)

And so I raise a glass to S's memory - and to T as well. Thank you for all you did.