Sixteen years ago, my first husband sallied out the door toward his new life with another woman and a baby on the way. “You’ll get the papers next week,” he said, the automatic window of his SUV sliding up as he roared off. Meanwhile, there was already a baby at our house. His name was Pablo. “Oh my God,” I thought. “How will we get through this without a husband and a father? Will our son grow up angry? Will he be devastated? Resentful?”  Nearly two decades later, Pablo isn’t psychologically maimed, or plotting his revenge against us as I’d originally feared. In fact, he’s just fine.  He was a baby when we split, and then a boy, and young boys don’t talk much about feelings. I never really knew all of what went on in his curly-haired head. Now that he’s 18, it feels like the right time for us to talk about the divorce – what I did right, what I did wrong, and what he wished I knew. I hope this conversation can be a guide to parents in the midst of ending their marriage, mothers and fathers wondering how their kids will fare.  Did you have any sense that things were coming to an end between your father and me?  Pablo: As a toddler, I barely had a sense of how day turned to night or where the Teletubbies went when the TV turned off. So no. I was blissfully unaware. Just growing teeth.  And filling diapers. I always felt that the fact that you didn’t potty train until you were four was your way of wresting control. Like, I can’t control anything but I can crap my pants. Without a husband to help me and with a hectic work schedule, I learned to improvise. I learned to do what I called the Standing Change, wherein I changed your diaper while you stood up, in about 10 seconds flat. Was there a moment when it hit you that we were different from other families?  I felt no emptiness at the table, no lack of father in the living room. There was never a moment where I felt like our house was wrong. But the first time I had to get on a plane, at age five, to see my dad in Los Angeles, it hit me. I was distracted by the pilot and the fawning flight attendants but looking out the window, it felt like a lot. I had to enter the stratosphere just to see my dad.  I put you on that airplane and I was fine; your flight was less than an hour long. I was almost relieved: a whole weekend to myself. Then I burst into tears. It was like my heart had been placed in ice and ferried away. I’d spent time without you before on weekends while you were at your grandparents’, but this was different. This was you flying away into the sky. I came unglued, shambling to my car like some blithering zombie, saying your name over and over to myself, like a mantra. When did you feel the effects of our divorce most acutely?  I remember I was seven or eight and I heard some Luther Vandross song about dancing with his father. I was shocked when I began to cry. For years, I’d kept most of my emotions hidden. But somehow all of that changed with a simple R&B song. The line “My father would lift me high … and I knew for sure I was loved” resonated strongly with me. I didn’t have the kind of memories he sang about. I had lost them.  Yes. I couldn’t listen to passionate love songs or watch sitcoms where there was a funny dad just bumbling around, just taken for granted. They made me feel I’d lost something important that everyone else had. Instead I focused on Dr Phil and CNN, especially reports about natural disasters. That seemed more relevant. Watching and rewatching all the plane crashes on Seconds From Disaster was oddly comforting to me. But that’s how I manage things. I go toward the wreckage. I examine it. How do feel about the way your dad and I handled the divorce?  Your divorce was laid with a calm presence. “Your father left me, not you,” is what I remember you emphasizing. You always encouraged me to see him when I could.  I came to see my dad as one might view a loving uncle who visits pretty often  He took me to restaurants and movies, subtly revealing the things men should like (Dijon mustard; Halle Berry; a simple brown baseball cap was “a hat with guts”). I came to see my dad as one might view a loving uncle who visits pretty often. I picked up on you two acting like friends for my sake, but didn’t mind.  Indeed. We both refrained from venting our spleens in front of you. Because it would splatter you. Plus, your father is half of you; that’s a biological fact. I can’t condemn that half. Still, it was horrifying when it all came crashing down like a cheap house of cards. I wanted to die, which was out of the question because I had you. I had you and that saved me. What was the worst part for you?  A lot of kids with divorced parents feel like pawns in an ongoing skirmish to see who is the better parent. I usually didn’t feel this way. But I do remember being put on the phone with my father while you argued. You were driving me to school and begging him to visit. You passed the phone to me and told me to say how much I missed him, and thrust your argument into my hands.  I also want to say my father is a man I deeply love, who is irreplaceable, who I’ve taken and accepted despite his leaving, who calls whether I pick up or not. I need to say that before I say he has also acted like a careless runaway. Having to be in the middle of it, to request a visit I hardly wanted and to hear shame in his voice, that was the worst part.  If a Freudian analyst had been around, he might have jotted down: 'Mother projects anger toward ex-husband on to son'  Wow. I come off really bad in this, as does he. I know he missed you dreadfully. Sometimes I would waive child support so he could buy a ticket to come see you, as he moved from one distant place to another more distant place. It was like some hideous game of keep-away. What do you wish I had done differently?  Nothing. If a Freudian analyst had been around, he might have jotted down: “Mother projects anger toward ex-husband on to son” … but, I don’t know. I’m trying to think of a lastingly hurtful choice you made. But all that’s coming to mind is you making me tacos, the smell of the sizzling beef. You used to roll me up in a blanket and call me burrito boy, pretending to sprinkle cheese on me. That’s all I can think of.  There are definitely things I’d have done differently. I wouldn’t have started secretly smoking that first year, because I am a Bad Smoker and late at night a lot of nice comforters were ruined. I would have started dating sooner. Five years was too long. But I had you to raise, and I got to have every minute of that, unadulterated. What was the most challenging part for you?  Not hurting either of you. Like, I couldn’t just say to my father that I didn’t miss him so much, because I loved him too. And I couldn’t tell you I’d begun turning to him to discuss things that were too uncomfortable to talk over with you. It was sort of like being a double agent.  This conversation has been a revelation. As a mother, seeing how you turned out is all that matters to me. I literally can’t imagine my life without the divorce. While it was harrowing and painful, I also feel like it was a lucky break, a kind of drastic intervention that saved us.  Suzanne Finnamore is the bestselling author of Split: A Memoir of Divorce. Her forthcoming novel, The Ghost Husband, is deep in the works. Pablo Finnamore is studying English literature at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. He also writes poetry.
Sixteen years later, Suzanne Finnamore’s son Pablo tells her how his parents’ split looked from a child’s perspective: ‘It was like being a double agent’