Ugly Divorces

If I did drugs, today would require an overdose of something really strong. I've been working on the Italian Acknowledgements page, and I will forget someone important without a doubt, so that I will be guilt-ridden for the rest of my life or at least until the re-printing. I just had a nice conversation with the 11-year old English Scrabble champion of Grosseto, Mavi, about Jamaica. I brought her upstairs to let her listen to some Bob Marley since we were talking Reggae and told her that it was very relaxing music. She said, "Yeah, it sounds like the kind of music where everyone smokes joints and chills out." Had to pick my jaw up off that floor. Jordan has no idea what a joint is and Mavi is the "good girl" so I was extremely unprepared for that comment. These crazy Italians...

Yesterday, we had a birthday party across the street from our house, where there were about sixty kids playing hardcourt soccer. The middle school girls from this kid's class were like gigantic - twice as large as the girls in Jordan's class, I couldn't believe it, Italy must be growing. The spread rocked, but I'm trying to maintain for the purple dress I have to pick up tomorrow...the Italian ladies can bake. And, there was wine, but I couldn't get the cork off the bottle, so I stuck to water. Damn. Jordan played soccer three hours straight without getting hurt and Sofia talked Barbies with her friend Federica. This left me with the other Mammas. I sat fairly silently, wasn't in a talkative mood...what was I going to talk about, the latest blog on deafread.com? I listened, bored, to the latest recipes, homework assignments, ripping apart of teachers and tales of olive-picking in the good old days until one mom heated up the conversation.

This mom is going through an ugly separation from her delinquent husband who slams anything under the age of 24 (he's 48) after having been married for 23 years. She is having an affair with a man five years younger than her 37 years of age. Her nine year old daughter does not leave her side and this woman proceeded to rip apart her ex in front of her daughter and us for about an hour. Divorces are so ugly as it is, when you have two immature adults added to the equation, ugly becomes disgusting. I cringed at every statement she made in front of her kid and we tried to ask the child to go and play, but she would not leave her mom...she looked so lost.

I have no problem with divorce. When two adults realize that the love is gone, why make each other miserable for the rest of their lives as well as everyone around them. However, once the decision to separate is made, deal with it and get along for the kids. My parents' divorce was one of those disgusting ones. They hated each other through my sister and me...curse words, insults, abuse, sarcasm, constantly. I couldn't choose which parent to love more, so I just started feeling sorry for both of them. My mom had never really lived before marrying my dad and truly began to live after the divorce. I will say that my nine year old self highly approved of one of her companions who had a limosine. Arriving by limo to my ten year old birthday party was one of the highlights of my life *smile* not to mention pulling up to elementary school and making a reallllly grand entrance.

Anyway, things got so bad at one point that I moved in with my dad who sued my mom for custody of me. This was during my teen years, middle school was torture for me. Living with my dad was okay, but when my mom suggested that we begin to have a relationship, I decided that she wasn't so bad after all. My dad was pretty pissed about that considering it took me until I was standing in front of the judge to make the decision. All I can say is that I will NEVER understand how my dad and mom got married in the first place - they are TOTAL opposites...

As opposite as my sister and me. We handled the divorce in completely different ways. I tried to please everyone. And she told everyone to *FO*. I cried. She said *FO*. One thing we both did, though, was play sports. Nothing in the world exists like sports to help build self-esteem.

I really hope this lost child has an outlet, because her mom was coming down hard on her ex...and the child was flinching.