In 2006, my mom and I both experienced our own form of identity crisis. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. I acknowledged I am gay.

Even though I’ve had five years to sort out how I came to discover my orientation, explaining it to others remains a difficult conversation. I imagine it’s the whole heterosexual marriage part that throws most people off. The Cliff Notes version goes like this: I realized early in life I had some feelings that were different. No one, including myself, seemed to regard these feelings as anything other than bad. I thought it best for everyone if I locked them away in a small box.

Encoding

I used to think Alzheimer’s was a disease of memory loss. It’s so much worse. Victims of Alzheimer’s forget themselves, their mannerisms, their personality, and those characteristics that make them who they are. Over time, I watched as little pieces of Mom slipped away. It first became evident in how she decorated and kept house. Then I noticed she began dressing differently. Whereas previously she was known for her panache for fashion and her ability to put outfits together, the selections she made – while not blatantly mismatched – were noticeably not her. She didn’t fuss over the nuances of her appearance. She stopped painting her nails as regularly. Her makeup coloring wasn’t quite right. Her recipes didn’t taste the same. She wasn’t as feisty or outgoing.

Not long after moving into assisted living, she became unable to attend to the habits so ingrained that they seemed part of her being. There were times when I found myself painting her nails, helping her with makeup (which I knew nothing about), and fixing her hair. The first time I painted her nails she commented what a good job I’d done and that she couldn’t wait to show the workers and other residents. “No, do not say a word about this, Mom!” I said sternly. Either she forgot or ignored me; before I knew it she was out in the hall with an audience showing off my work. “Wow, you’re really good! You should go into business!” the circle of ladies exclaimed. I enthusiastically insisted that I didn’t know about such things. Apparently, I should have centered my words around my absolute lack of desire, because they countered with the comforting news that a lot of men go into the cosmetics industry today and that I shouldn’t be ashamed to do it. I mustered a half-hearted thanks and collected Mom for her doctor’s appointment. As we walked down the hall, my courtesy smile fell away.

It wasn’t the ladies, the compliments, or the suggestion of a career change that made me ill inside; it was how it all came about. Regardless of how “sweet” it was that I’d helped Mom get ready, I only saw the fact that she was unable to do it herself. This was nothing to laugh over. I wanted to bring all the laughing to an abrupt end and make them realize that pieces of my mother were slipping away right in front of me. I wanted them to see her in context of my lifelong memories and understand the absurdity of it all – that my mom needed no one’s help to paint her nails with unrivaled precision. She could do it with her eyes closed.

Without the need of a conscious effort, I began to disassociate my mom from the person being left behind. Though it may sound cold or dispassionate, it was a way of coping that made sense to me. I loved and care for her the same but held harmless my remembrances, locked them away in small box.

Recollection

After I had made peace with myself over my sexual orientation, I felt it important to share with my mom before it was too late for her to understand. She’d moved into assisted living earlier that year and while her short term memory was poor, she was still herself. One would think being her caregiver would have made this process easier, but it did not. I sat on the bed in her room, looked down often, danced around the subject by asking questions, and finally came out with it. She nodded and said, “Okay.” Questioning her comprehension, “Mom, did you understand me?” “Yes, I understand perfectly. I’m glad you told me, and I love you.” We hugged.

The next day we traveled to visit my grandmother. Not a word was exchanged about our previous conversation. I mentioned something about dating and looked for acknowledgement from her. When all I got was a silent nod, I began the process of coming out for the second time, which was a little easier than the first. After I was done, she nodded much like the first time. Then she said, “Okay. But didn’t you tell me this just yesterday?”

This post is part of a synchronized blogging project called The Creative Collective – a group of artists, bloggers, and writers who post on a particular topic every two weeks. This week’s topic was “Identity Crisis” Read more posts on this topic at http://synchrobloggers.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/identity-crisis/

I have such recollections, but my favorite story about falling was one I didn’t actually witness. The incident happened to a close friend. We’ll call her, Jaime, since that’s her name. Let’s even go as far as to say she’s my former spouse. This is significant because the snicker and chuckles I get from the story are due to how well I know Jaime, and it’s the aftermath and reaction, not the act of falling, that cracks me up the most.

Jaime has been called shy most of her life, even though she’s not. She is quiet, though it has nothing to do with being shy; Jaime just doesn’t enjoy the coruscations of the social spotlight. When amongst strangers, she pretty much hates it even more. If there were a high school Who’s Who award for Least Likely to Cause A Scene, Jaime would want to win hands down (no pun intended). If you know someone like Jaime, you may agree that falling down in public might rank reasonably high on their list of things to avoid at all costs. However, one of my favorite qualities about Jaime is that in the midst of situations she considers mortifying, she possesses an exceptional ability to find humor in those moments when the universe spits on her neck.

It was just an ordinary trip to the bank, or at least it should have been. Had she just been able to use the drive through, it wouldn’t have happened. She had bought a new shirt recently, and she thought she looked pretty good in it. It’s never been customary for Jaime to give any kudos to her sense of fashion, but on this day, she felt good about the shirt. She would later claim the following events were karma’s way of checking her ego.

In retrospect, all the elements for disaster seemed obvious: the hot asphalt, a smear of motor oil, a pair of flat soled shoes, a curb. As she stepped up on the curb, her oily sole slipped, and suddenly she was on the ground – on the ground directly in front of the bank.

Some might have laughed; some might have cursed aloud; some might have cried. Jaime entered damage control mode. For her it boiled down to a simple question: How many people just saw me do that and is it enough to justify a flight response? She looked up to assess the crowd of potential onlookers and found only herself in the reflection of the bank’s expansive tinted glass. She assessed the parking lot and concluded her performance had likely earned a decent size fan base. Perhaps they didn’t see? She had, after all, fallen as subtly as she could. It crossed her mind to leave, but she bravely decided to persevere and entered the bank.

Whenever Jaime fell, she always followed up with a concise report of the happenings to those closest to her. Later that evening, she gave such an account of the events to her mother who offered the following: “Well, it’s a good thing you decided to go in otherwise it would have looked as if you just went to the bank to fall.”

This post is part of a synchronized blogging project called The Creative Collective – a group of artists, bloggers, and writers who post on a particular topic every two weeks. This week’s topic was “Falling.” Read more posts on this topic at http://synchrobloggers.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/falling.

I’ve been this way since I can remember.  Growing up I settled on a new hobby or interest every few months.  This occurred when I’d grown bored with the previous hobby, when it was no longer fresh and exciting, or when I recognized some obstacle I believed I could not overcome.  Sometimes the interest was brand new; other times I recycled one of the previous choices.  The earlier ones included painting, astronomy, fish, the guitar, the organ, and collecting action figures.  Then came photography, the French horn, cars, reading, and creative writing. Still, what I lacked in constancy, I made up for with zeal. If I was “into it” then one had best look out because it was likely that the residual energy radiating off of me was contagious.

This continued into high school, though at that point it was less about hobbies and more about my eventual vocation. I expended an extraordinary amount of energy trying to answer the question of what I was going to do with the rest of my life; to not know troubled me greatly. My senior year, I could often be found sitting at an Apple computer in my guidance counselor’s office searching a database of job descriptions. Once home, I read over my dot-matrix printouts, describing the nature of work of psychologist, high school teachers, podiatrists, airline pilots, automotive engineers, ophthalmologists, optometrists, novelists, pediatricians, and entrepreneurs. It wasn’t enough to simply know about the profession; I wanted to be saturated in it, consider all the pros and cons, ponder the amount of education required, envision what daily life would be like, think about the lifestyle I could afford.  There were many discussions with teachers as I garnered information.

Similarly, the college years brought about many major changes and exploration. When I first began, I chose music because among the undulations of interests, music came up pretty often.  The discipline necessary greatly surpassed my own, so I gave up.  High school English teacher followed and stayed around a while until a clinical experience at a middle school classroom full of unruly, hormonal teenagers. Psychology was next, and with my college years coming to an end, I committed myself to it, unsure of my post-grad plans.

Although these transitions may sound as if they were made easily, each one was quite distressing, but more distressing was that I couldn’t seem to find something that held my interest.  I couldn’t hold on to that initial zeal.  Where it once held excitement, approaching my parents with yet another career direction became an onerous experience.  None of my other friends appeared to have this problem. Sure they might have changed their minds a time or two, but by comparison, I seemed all over the map.  I envied those who knew ever so lucidly their inherent talents and abilities and was baffled by stories of those who had carried those interests from childhood forward with diligence.  I did many things reasonably well yet mastered none.

The first three years of adulthood levied me with an adult-version of the same song, with the adult version carrying somewhat more weight than completing a change of major form. Those years were spent either trying to “fit” myself into jobs I’d obtained or earnestly seeking an alternative that would make me happy.

∞

A distressed face looks back at me from the other side of my desk.  It’s a look with which I’m familiar. I inquire about his major, and he goes blank, looks down, shakes his head, and with some embarrassment, replies something like, “I have no idea.”  He appears skeptical about discussing it, as though to do so would be a waste of time, but I engage him in conversation anyway, asking my line of questions, pushing past the initial superficial responses.  It’s obvious he’s not accustom to talking about himself this way or thinking about some of these questions, but we begin making some progress. We talk for a little over thirty minutes.  I give him some recommendations and direct him to relevant research sources.  Shaking my hand, he thanks me, “Wow, you’re really good at this!” I smile back, “I’ve had a little practice.”

This post is part of a synchronized blogging project called The Creative Collective – a group of artists, bloggers, and writers who post on a particular topic every two weeks.  This week’s topic was “Giving Up for the Long Haul.”  Read more posts on this topic at http://synchrobloggers.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/giving-up-for-the-long-haul/

With that in mind, I’m thankful for the influence of my parents, my former spouse, my teachers, my friends, a few former partners, and Lou Gene Kilgore.  Of those, I know Lou Gene the least well; our interaction was relatively brief, and I got the impression she didn’t want to be friends when she threw her bank statements at me and threatened to sue the branch where I worked.

∞

At the end of a long day – the type of day whereby at the end you’re fairly certain that humans, as a species, are in fact regressing – I was finishing up with a customer when I hurried past a short, bird-like woman who muttered “I wanna talk to you!” in a voice as cuddly as a piece of steel wool.  I didn’t recognize that this was Lou Gene Kilgore, for whom I had opened a checking account approximately a month prior. At some point, Lou Gene had become convinced I had conned her out of the $2000 she used to fund the account, and she had come filled to the brim with all the tenacity she could muster in order to set things right.

Not being one who enjoys confrontation, I nervously thumbed through my records, trying to recall exactly what had transpired and where the funds might have gone.  Lou Gene was correct; the money was gone, but this was as far as cooperation would carry us.  In terms of her problem-solving aptitude, Lou Gene was persistent, though I questioned her methodology – namely her repeated exclamation:  “You stole my money! I want my money now!”  After about the fifth declaration, I kept thinking how much I wish I could punch the bastard who coined the phrase, “The customer is always right” or at least introduce him to Lou Gene.  When I explained the bank would likely frown on me just handing over $2000 but that I’d be happy to research the account to figure out what had happened, she stood up and threw her bank statements at me.  While they were settling all around me, she yelled into my manager’s office that I didn’t know what I was doing before snatching up her statements, warning me that I would be hearing from her lawyer, and leaving the branch.

∞

About a year and a half before Lou Gene and I crossed paths, I’d been contemplating graduate school.  I had gone so far as to apply and had been accepted. Although on the surface, this served  as an excellent defense mechanism to the all too apparent reality that most days, I simply tolerated my job, I truly wanted to return to school.  However, I was afraid.  I was married, my wife and I had secured a nice lifestyle, I’d just recently dropped a chunk of money for my first degree, so the idea of quitting my job, regardless of my feelings about it, seemed counterintuitive.  I worried what my family would think.  I worried about the risks involved.

When I arrived home that evening, I had a message from the University of Alabama.  Some money had become available for a graduate assistantship, and they were curious if I was still interested.  Without hesitation, I looked at my wife and said, “I’m taking it!”  There was no looking back after that.  I was officially off the fence.  A few months later, I was a full-time graduate student, having finally jumped down on the side of the fence I’d been so afraid of and bid farewell to the realm of the financial workforce.  Ten years later, I still hold a reverence for this seemingly minute point in time, this serendipitous collision that altered my course in ways that neither Lou Gene, myself, or her lawyer would have imagined.

This post is part of a synchronized blogging project called The Creative Collective – a group of artists, bloggers, and writers who post on a particular topic every two weeks.  This week’s topic was “The Earth around the Sun, or the Sun around the Earth: Centers of Gravity”  Read more posts on this topic at http://synchrobloggers.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/centers-of-gravity.

The idea of getting inked first occurred to me about three years ago. The decision to do so came from what I’d refer to as a paradigm shift in my life – where various inevitable life events inspired changes in my notions of religion, politics, sexuality, and the order (or lack thereof) of life. This was a considerable decision since I grew up believing that tattooing was a strange and taboo practice affiliated with scary and a somewhat “tacky” kind of people. I let the idea coagulate, knowing that I wanted it to “mean something” and such a decision was not to be made precipitously, but rather deserved the time to culminate from a lengthy period of experience and introspection. I resigned that the right time would present itself, that it would be distinctive.

Last March, I believed that time had arrived. Within the vicissitude of my self-confidence it was a period in which I was flying high. I had lost weight and therefore felt good about my body. I was running and felt energized by it. I found myself in the nascent stages of what I perceived to be a promising relationship. My job performance had improved. I knew who I was and made no apologies for it. I perceived to be in a good, stable place. I felt as though I had in fact arrived at a place, hit a benchmark in my life. Insert needle, please.

∞

Growing up, there is a panoply of evidence suggesting that the very act of growing up, developing, maturing is a linear progression. We learn at an early age that height, grade level, scores, and time are important measures that help us determine our place as well as how far we have progressed. Adults engage small kids in conversation by asking: How old are you? What grade are you in? How tall are you? How many siblings do you have? Are you the oldest, youngest, or somewhere in between? When we’re about five, we start kindergarten; when we turn fifteen, we begin learning to drive; when we turn eighteen, we can vote; when we turn twenty-one, we can drink alcohol. As we get older, we acquire additional privileges up until this point, but after twenty-one we’re left hanging; there’s nothing else to work for, but fortunately, we have alcohol to help us deal with the ambiguity. Yep, after twenty-one it’s just a series of years that you manage to stay alive until you hit retirement at age 65…67…76…depends on when you’re reading this, I suppose.

In my recollections of childhood, I see how much I bought into this concept of knowing my place in line. With my glow-in-the-dark roller skates strapped to my feet, I shimmied orbits around the rink at Skate Odyssey, when another little boy gave me a shove from the side. Surprised and a little hurt, I sat there staring with my glowing skates straight out in front of me. I scampered up and launched myself in pursuit. Normally, I would have let it go and avoided any confrontation, but I thought I could take this kid – he did appear shorter than me after all. When I finally caught up with him, I intended to make him understand the error of his ways:

“Hey! You knocked me down!” I protested.

“Yeah, I know!” he replied.

I stood there for a moment with the realization that my grounding was in fact intentional and not a mistake as I had hoped. I looked at him and then looked deep within myself:

“How old are you anyway?”

“Eight!” he barked back. I leaned into him.

“Well, I’m eight and a half!”

At this point I picture myself beginning to back away slowly, feeling that everyone was clear on the situation now and there was no further need for anything else to be said. My cool expression surely exclaimed that this rookie of the eighth year better step off fast – back to the rink boys and girls…nothing to see here…just a little chronological misunderstanding.

I miss such pinpoint clarity. Apparently, I’ve had a difficult time of letting go of it and accepting that there are no such benchmarks for adulthood. There are no straight lines symbolic of my learning, my maturity, or the amount of wisdom I possess; at best, there is a frenetic collection of precariously overlapping orbits, leading me to points that I feel like I’ve been before.

∞

Approximately three weeks after I was ready to allow a stranger to tattoo “Know thyself” on my back, I found myself rather disoriented about who I was. The confidence, the relationship, the self-esteem had all disintegrated right out from under me, leaving my ass firmly planted on the ground and my skates out in front of me. As I attempted to understand the course of events responsible, there was no one to blame for pushing me down. Instead, there was only me and my own lack of self-awareness.

To those who would suggest the greatest challenges in life are found in the course of getting what you want, I’d demur that they lie in determining what you want and whether or not you are willing to accept certain variations of it when they come along. In my case, I fault myself for settling for variations of what I wanted and doing so for the sake of being capable of saying that I had arrived at a point – an adult benchmark, if you will.

Understandably, since my recent grounding I’ve swiped my brow a few times with the thought, “Well thank goodness I didn’t get the tattoo!” However, I don’t take any comfort in that now. In the process of getting up, I believe I’ve managed to brush off some of my faith in the straight road ahead. Perhaps I’m learning to be ok with the seemingly orbital nature of my adult life, free from degree, criterion, and measurement.

At present, I have not yet gotten my tattoo. I remain inkless, the original hardcopy, but nonetheless edited.

This post is part of a synchronized blogging project called The Creative Collective – a group of artists, bloggers, and writers who post on a particular topic every two weeks. This week’s topic was “What we might become if…” Read more posts on this topic at http://synchrobloggers.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/what-we-might-become-if.

Has there ever been anything else? Hasn’t it always been this way? Memory blurs different time periods together, and the day-to-day appears the same. All those November 6ths are indistinct because nothing uncommon happened – nothing worthy of being remembered. Still, strength of memory isn’t really the issue here; the lull of routine is the culprit, as it quietly rocks our perspective to sleep. We are swaddled in familiar blankets while daily life’s calming, consistent sway moves back and forth. It’s warm; it’s safe. Why would we think about changing it? Well, we wouldn’t. We’re asleep and will remain so until something (pleasant or not) wakes us.

Even if you do wake, you’re not necessarily going to find any perspective. You look up, look right, look left, and it all looks the same. That’s because you’re still lying down. If you don’t sit up, you can’t see out. Then again, why would you?

See, those enemies routine and familiarity, they’ve hired one bitch of a nanny. Let’s call her adaptability. She’s great in that she soothes all those minor irritations that wake you up – kind of like ointment on a chapped ass. Unfortunately, she also doesn’t ever want you to grow up. Her job is to keep you comfortable, which you have to appreciate, but she’s too good at her job. As a result, you call on her a lot, and she responds immediately. She is stasis, and unknowingly, you’ve become so dependent on her, you don’t realize you’re not doing so well. Your curiosity has waned. You’ve stopped asking “What if?” Your poopy diaper doesn’t bother you as much as it used to.

Thankfully, nature eventually kicks in and throws a few changes into the works. You grow. Suddenly your little space seems too small to hold you. You get some strength; you pull yourself up; you see what’s outside. Things are a lot bigger than you’d ever imagined. You’re not a fixed constant, and you don’t have to stay here. You realize you can redefine routine and change what is familiar.

Then the nanny comes back in and wants to lay you back down, because while this new knowledge is exciting, it is also scary. Somewhere in this scuffle you find those first words:

“Fuck this.”

So, for those amongst you who have till this point lived in uncertainty, who never trusted “yellow and blue make green” or found it to be a rather dubious teal color, who were never comforted by “double zip” bags, and who couldn’t bring yourself to believe in that precarious “easy zipper,” Ziploc has given you auditory assurance that your bag is closed.  Your soup is safe.  You are free to indulge yourself in the risque practice of turning your bag upside down and giving it a violent shake.  You know you want to, and perhaps it will make you feel better.

∞

When I see such inventions, I have two thoughts:  1) Where does it stop?  How much more R&D will go into convincing people that a bag is closed?  Perhaps an OCD indicator light built into the bags?  I would think those hours and dollars could be used to come up with a whole new storage method that trumps zipper bags.  2)  (And this is the more disturbing) Somewhere in a secure, zipper-sealed location within Ziploc headquarters, there sits a consumer focus group who has apparently been saying: “We’re still not convinced the bag is closed.  We wanna be able to shake it and throw it against the wall without losing a drop.  We want to hear the bag close. We want the bag to speak to us and tell us it’s going to be okay.”

At what point does our relentless American spirit for innovation become little more than producing for the dumbest common denominator?

I’ve not yet lost my childhood fascination with snow. Perhaps living in the deep south the majority of my life helped solidify my affinity for it.  When you live in Alabama and Mississippi, snowfall (and particularly accumulation) is so rare that it takes on the same magical qualities inherent in other remote events – like Christmas or visits from the tooth fairy.

Strangely, on these occasions, the conditions outside were seldom “snowy”. The magic that I referred to as “snow” during those times was often merely the result of rain plus freezing temperatures, yet the few flurries or dustings that occurred in tandem were enough to sell me on the idea that it was snow. This would have to do because there’s nothing magical about ice. We had ice; I could have looked in my freezer and found it. Big deal. Snow, on the other hand, was the stuff of magic. This is why there was never a Frosty the Iceman, which sounds more like a serial killer than the kind of guy you’d march through the streets of town with on a winter day.

I remember only three times in my youth when significant snowfall occurred, and even then it would melt and refreeze so quickly it would become this crunchy ice/snow composition. It wasn’t long before I realized that snowballs comprised of this mixture wouldn’t just burst into a playful powder when striking an unsuspecting target. I say this as the unsuspecting target. No, these balls of ice could hurt, and not being one who enjoyed pain, I steered clear of any competitive group snowball fights, keeping exchanges between my sister who consequently had terrible aim and lacked agility.

I remember more ice storms than snow.  One such storm occurred in college when I had just taken a part-time job at a local 24-hour supermarket. You learn a lot about human nature when you work in a grocery store. While the chance of yearly snowfall steadily decreases the further south you go, the “snow panic” seems to remain the same. Actually it might be a little worse, though I can’t be positive of this as North Carolina is as far north as I’ve ever lived. Anyway, if you want to see bread and milk fly off the shelves at an astonishing rate, work in a grocery store in Alabama after a snowy forecast. I was scheduled to work the midday 2-10 shift when the Great Ice Storm of 1996 hit. The sleet had started around noon and made slushy work of the road fairly quickly. For eight hours, I endure a constant flow of milk, bread, beer, and frozen pizzas. (My arm would be sore the next day from picking up gallon after gallon of milk.) In front of my register there was promo display for Digiorno’s Pizza, which included a small television continuously running a commercial. Over and over, I watched the crust magically rise and brown, surrounding a layer of melting cheeses. By the end of my tedious shift, I had decided there would be nothing better than to go home to my warm apartment, cook my Digiorno’s pizza, and watch TV. I counted down my drawer, picked up my pizza, and was checking out when the manager came up and said, “Will, I need you to do me a huge favor.” She explained the night checker was unable to come in due to the weather conditions and asked me to work the shift, which ended at 7 AM the next day.

Somewhere in my development, I picked up the need to please people. I wanted people to like me and apparently believed that doing monumental favors would make this happen. I also had no “filter” when it came to the problems of others. The fact the night cashier didn’t come in was not my problem, but I didn’t see it that way. I was actually very concerned about how the store would operate without a cashier and felt bad that the manager was in this situation. This is the only explanation I can offer as to why I agreed to work for 17 hours straight at $5.25/hour.  The other is that I’m a total sucker.

I don’t think I’ve ever come closer to falling asleep while standing up. While I trudged through the hours, a one inch layer of ice covered everything outside. The worse part of the long evening was the occasional third-shift men that came through my line would say things like, “Sure do hope you’ve got a 4-wheel drive to get out of here. Cuz otherwise you ain’t going nowhere.” They would say this and then chuckle a little to themselves. I looked at them blankly, not responding, knowing the red, three-cylinder, front-wheel drive Geo Metro outside was my only way home. I slid my way home just fine.

∞

Last week it began snowing in Asheville. It stopped after about two days, but everything around me is still covered in a 8-inch blanket of white. It’s the most snow I’ve ever experienced. It’s beautiful, soft and powdery. If I were one for a good snowball fight, this would be the perfect opportunity. However, my romanticized view of snow has been altered since childhood. I believe it to be something enjoyed from indoors, by the fire with a cup of coffee or maybe a hot toddy. Mind you, this opinion may be grounded in the fact that attempting to drive my car right now would be somewhat like going snow sledding.  To me, snow is like nature’s “timeout” – a time for books, candles, pen, paper, and a stiff drink that warms the insides. It slows everything down, makes me remember how few years electricity has really been around, how much it controls our activities, and how people survived without it. I’m not suggesting it’s all fun and games or that it doesn’t eventually become boring or frustrating. Certainly, it does. Though perhaps there is something healthy in such an interruption. Regardless, I still find the magic in it.

I hate to see people getting out with their rakes and trashbags, treating my leaves like some sort of pestilence. It makes me want to jump out of my car, run madly into the yard, grab a filled garbage bag, and begin strewing leaves to and fro. And then drive off.

My parents divorced when I was five, and then I myself got divorced after seven years of marriage. So, I can’t put those stickers on my car. But you know, I’m proud of my relationships despite divorce. It took an extraordinary effort on everyone’s part to hold relationships together when the home fell apart. Frankly, I think we’re all stronger people for having gone through the experience. In the threat of human annihilation, I bet we’d outperform the “sticker people” in survival rates.

So maybe I will get some of those stickers, cut the people all apart, put one person on one side of the car window, put another one on the other side, have the kids all randomly scattered around everywhere, all with the text “Proud survivor of a broken home.”