My parents sat down at the dining room table and appeared very sad. I worried that they would tell me my other grandmother had died. The last time I’d seen them with such serious frowns was when Gramma Martin had suffered her final heart attack and passed away. I didn’t want to hear whatever it was Mom was going to tell me. I tried to focus on the cat playing with a toy in the kitchen.
My mother spoke slowly and explained that she was going to pack her things and my things up in suitcases that weekend. She and I were going to go live in our very own house about twenty minutes away from where we were currently living. This was annoying. It didn’t strike me that this meant she and my father wouldn’t be staying married. It bothered me because I had planned to watch a Charlie Brown special on the television that weekend. I didn’t want to pack, and I certainly didn’t want to spend the day moving things back and forth to a house that wasn’t even wired for cable yet. I pouted and started to cry. Mother got up to come hug me for a few minutes, and I stared at the somber, drained look on my father’s face.
A few hours later in bed, I suddenly realized that our move was going to be the start of what one of my friends at school had told me was called divorce. I also knew about divorce because one of the preteen girls in the book series I enjoyed to read had divorced parents. She was always leaving the wrong clothes or the wrong homework at the wrong house. She never felt that she could relax in one place for too long. That night dragged on for a very long time as I held my eyes open, worrying about what would happen if I left the cat at the wrong house. I was more worried about the cat than I was about myself. This was appropriate, as the cat ran away as soon as she spotted suitcases and boxes being loaded up. I turned out to be fine through it all.
