Chapter One

1: Growing Up Divorced



When I was growing up, divorce was an all-but-nonexistent topic of conversation. Beyond my own siblings I knew few other children of divorce; much less did I have any sense that I was part of a brand-new cohort, a generation of children marked by the first era of widespread divorce. I did, however, always feel "different" as a child; in the lingo of the seventies I thought of myself as a "weirdo." But I assumed my weirdness was part of who I was. Sometimes I took pride in it, but more often I felt lonely because of it.

It was only in my early twenties that I began to understand how common the experience of having divorced parents was. Only then did I begin to wonder how divorce might have shaped me as a person. I was born in 1970, just as the no-fault divorce revolution started sweeping the country. California was the first state to pass such legislation, in 1969, and virtually all the other states followed. My own parents, high-school sweethearts who were among the top graduates of their class in a small town in North Carolina, married in their first year of college, had me in their sophomore year, and separated when I was two years old.

In the very early pictures of our family my dad has a shaggy haircut, barely covering his ears, that scandalized his father. My mother wears her hair differently in nearly every photo and is clad in hippie regalia—pretty, homemade crocheted vests and snug-fitting shirts and jeans. I am usually dressed in overalls or, for special occasions, in dresses that she and her mother and grandmother sewed for me.

I