Pass the Sugar, I Want a Divorce

Cold, irritable, and complaining about the number of parents and children ahead of us in line, my mother drank coffee from a cardboard cup, regretting her promise to take us to see Santa Claus and displaying a definite lack of Christmas spirit. My brothers went first and then it was my turn in the lap of this department store Santa who smelled of stale beer and cigarettes. And what's on your Christmas list, little girl? he inquired with a ferocious pinch of my cheek and a false laugh. A divorce for my daddy, I said quite clearly and my mother, suddenly as red as the imitation Santa's suit, grabbed my wrist and pulled me away with a vicious jerk. The store fell suddenly quiet when she slapped me, only the strains of "God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen" piped in through the loudspeakers were audible, then stunned parents began gathering their children and hurrying toward the escalators. My enraged mother, now the center of attention and white faced with fury, pushed and shoved her way through the crowd, dragging all three of us like rag dolls and cursing like a sailor. Just wait until your father hears about this! she told us with a grim, tight lipped sneer/smile, You'll wish you'd never been born!

Fortunately for me, she was wrong - my daddy was saddened and disappointed by my lack of tact but reluctantly proud of my honesty, Inappropriate and misplaced as it was, he told me with a small and hesitant smile, It's just not a good idea to antagonize your mother, especially not in public, so no television for a week. My brothers, deemed to have been innocent bystanders and not part of any conspiracy to humiliate her, were summarily pardoned.

The storm swirled for a day or so, kicked up some dust and pointed remarks, then blew itself out and the skies cleared. Christmas was three weeks out and I was sent to my grandmother's to help with the decorations. By the time I returned, the incident had been rewritten and by virtue of some clever editing and no rebuttal witnesses, had become the tale of a long suffering and martyred mother with a brood of disagreeable, ungrateful children and a spineless, easily manipulated husband. This new version went unchallenged for the most part, Anything to maintain a fragile peace, my daddy was to tell me in an adult conversation many years later at The Parker House, Children are resilient and your mother needed her dignity.

Nothing is ever as simple and straightforward as pass the sugar, I want a divorce but some things ought to be.