The Weekly Catch Up
Time in the emotional baggage claim.
My parents split up when I was 26. They never had a perfect marriage but most of my formative years were happy ones with memories of my parents’ adoration deep seeded into who I am. No matter what was going on in our family I knew I was loved. Still, even as their relationship grew tumultuous in my late teens, I was shocked when they decided to split up. It was right before 9/11, and I remember thinking that maybe my parents would get back together because of the tragedy.
Within a few years I could see it was for the best. Still, it didn’t come without a complete rejiggering of our family. One of the hardest parts was that I suddenly had to forge independent relationships with my mom and my dad. What I mean is that I had spent lots of time alone with my mom over the years. But when I talked to my dad, I tended to be talking to both of my parents. My mom was often the mouthpiece of their ideas and opinions. Plus, he worked a lot, and it wasn’t that often that I went shopping with my dad, traveled on day trips with him or even went out to eat. After they split, I remember feeling as though I was in uncharted territory. I had to work on getting to know him better, and we had to find things in common, and as rocky as those early years were, our relationship came out stronger for it.
These days, over twenty years later, I talk to my dad every week, but I still don’t see him as often as I see my mom. So when I had a speaking event with Bethany Beach Books at a country club in Delaware, I turned to him. “Would you mind coming with me?” I asked. He’s retired, and I had no idea how much he’d want to go. “I would love to,” he said.
Last week, we drove four hours south to the beach. There weren’t any kids in the car to attend to. Just us talking for a long stretch. I asked him about how he began playing music in Montauk — he was a singer/songwriter in New York City and someone saw him and asked him to come to Lakeside Inn (now the Surf Club) to spend the summer. I asked about the night he met my mother. She came to hear his band play and they stuck up a conversation. There’s a lot more of course, but it’s all just to say that it was so lovely to be stuck in a car together. To be forced to just sit and talk about our lives.
This comes much more naturally to me with my mother—and while I’m not saying my dad and I aren’t close. I’m just saying this felt like a different kind of special. It felt like we were deepening our relationship even as I approach fifty years old.
My dad came to my event and he was blown away by seeing me stand in front of a room of sixty people and just talk. “It’s so great that you make people laugh. People just want a reason to be happy and you’re giving them a few minutes of it.” He also loved that complete strangers were coming up to him and telling him what a good job he did with me. Ha! We never stop being parents, even in our seventies!
That night, we both got in our own beds in the hotel room and we watched a movie together, laughing at all of the same parts. We went for a walk in the morning with our coffees, and then we headed back home. After I pulled into my driveway and my dad drove home to Long Island, my husband asked me how it went. I remembered then that my husband lost both of his parents in the last ten years and it made me squeeze him a little tighter. “I feel so lucky that he came,” I said, and it never felt truer.
Signed Copies of Our Last Vineyard Summer
Want me to personalize my latest novel for you? I would love to write you a note! If you preorder my latest from Bronx River Books, I can personalize your copy. Woot! Honestly, we’re friends now, so it would be amazing to get your support. I think you’ll enjoy this book if you love sister stories, complicated family relationships, love stories and happy endings. I really want to share this book with you!
Details about my tour are on the way too!
What I’ve Been Watching: Still watching “Sirens” — I can’t stop. It’s so good!
What I’ve Been Reading: I’m about to start my friend Heather Bell Adams’ latest novella called Starring Marilyn Monroe as Herself. So up my alley!
An Article Worth Sharing: “The Vineyard Novel,” featured in the Martha’s Vineyard Times that features all of the novels set on the island this summer, including mine!
Podcast I’m enjoying: OMG. My dad and I listened to Amy Poehler’s Good Hang episode where she interviews Michelle Obama, and I laughed out loud more than once. The two of them talking about their pajamas and how much they love to sleep is so endearing, but there’s so much more. A must listen!
Lovely!
I think divorce comes with its challenges for kids at any life stage. My parents divorced when I was two years old, so I never really knew a life with them together. I never thought about this idea that one would need to forge new, independent relationships with each parent if the divorced happened when the child was already independent. Eye-opening. And how wonderful that you had that special trip with your dad.