The String Around My Finger

The String Around My Finger

I work in a restaurant as a waitress and several days ago a co-worker of mine had to leave work. His ex-wife had called to tell him that their daughter had been rushed to the hospital because of a bicycling accident. He wasn't sure quite what to do. He'd talked to me before he asked the manager for permission to leave. He doubted that it was serious enough to get permission and asked whether or not I thought he should try. I told him that he had to go, and that I thought it was very important that he and his ex-wife be by her side especially considering their recent divorce. From my own experience, I knew that simply having both of my parents come to my aide reinforced the idea that my parents were the ones that got divorced and that, even if they weren't living together, they both would always be there for me.

My parents got divorced when I was two and my younger sister just six months. My sister and I lived with our mother would visit our father two weekends a month and over summer vacation the situation was reversed. As we grew older, our enthusiasm towards those visits with our father waned because, after all, all of our friends were in our neighborhood. We frequently missed friends' birthday parties to visit him. Inevitably however, we always had a great time and were sad when our visits were over and yet happy to come home.

I'd be lying if I said that I never wished that they would get back together and that there were never any times I couldn't wait to show my father what I'd done in art class or a great math test I was particularly proud of. Maybe it was for that reason that as a child I couldn't help feeling slightly abandoned even though he never missed a visit. I thought I'd outgrown that feeling when I was seven and a big first grader. It wasn't until that feeling had vanished that I realized I'd still felt that way. I was in the fourth grade when that happened.

My mother picked us up from our father's on Sunday evenings. On the ride home she told me she had a surprise for me. I knew that she'd rearranged our rooms (she did that all the time; she used to want to be an interior decorator), so I couldn't imagine what my surprise could be.