Rachel Braccini English
4/18/10
If your parents have ever divorced and you were aware of it, you may ask yourself, “Who knows if it’s good or bad?” If your parents got divorced when you were two, and you were too busy soiling yourself and fighting with your younger sister to understand the documents floating around the house, then you may have waited a few years to ponder on the goodness or badness of the decision. At first you may have thought, this is great! Two Christmases, two birthdays, four sets of grandparents, which increases the amount of people who spoil you and love you and would do anything in the world for you. As you get older though, as most of us do, you may think, “Well this wasn’t so great after all.” You might get less materialistic, and that week of going around to all your families for Christmas gets tiring, and you wished they could all just be in one place, together, for you to soak up all the love and attention at once. The traveling may get to you after awhile, and you start to dread Fridays instead of Mondays. This is because you know every Friday you’ll have to pack up all your stuff and drive 15 minutes over to your other parents house for a week. It’s not so bad, at least you get to see your parents pretty equally, and you have pros and cons of each house. Sometimes you look forward to going to your dads house, but when all your little brother did was cry, eat, and poop, you could not wait to get to your moms, where you could actually sleep past 6:00 on a Saturday morning. Then again there is only one bathroom at your moms, a drawback that is usually easy to deal with, but sometimes really isn’t. At least you have a mom, it would be worse if you didn’t, that much you know. And at least your parents are happier without each
other. Which is completely understandable to you now that you’re 17, but wasn’t always clear. Having divorced parents was bad when your mom moved you many times, and you lived in places like Clifton park, where there were bugs and dogs and bullfrogs. And at least your parents had another kid before the split. And your sister is the only person you really spend all your time with, even though you hate her, she knows what you’re dealing with better than most of your friends would. It’s not so bad really, not yet anyway. But who knows? Maybe it’s completely good, maybe it’s bad. Maybe your parents questioned their marriage in the same way, not knowing if it was good or bad. But when you look back and think of all of the things that have happened since their marriage and their divorce shortly after, it’s good to see that you can name more good than bad.