The Translucent Divorce
By: Trevor Huffman
Tags: Parenting Advice, Dads, Divorce, Parenting, Kids

Gravel crunched and popped under hard rubber tires. I woke up to the sound of a Cadillac sedan pulling up next to me. I rubbed my hazy eyes. It was my aunt Liz, and my mother, Jennifer. Jenni, everyone called her. I was only 14, but I can still see the faces and hear the words and feel the emotions of that day — my worst day.

My mother got out of the passenger seat and walked right past me. Sullen. Sullen is the word I’d use to describe her body language. I thought she must have been there to tell Jeremy, my older brother, that he forgot something or didn’t do his chores before he left. But it was also 1995 — there was no such thing as a quick text or call to say, “I love you,” or “Come home honey,” or “You forgot the sleeping bags dummy.”

Jeremy was the strongest of us boys, that was for sure, not just physically, but mentally. He wouldn’t wince or cry when my dad used to discipline us with the paddle. He would just grit his teeth, and I swear half the time Jeremy would smile.

Most of you will think my dad was a bad person. He wasn’t. His childhood, discipline was switches, leather belts, spankings, summer harvests, and 4:00am potato hauling with the ‘Hill Billies’. When my dad got angry at us, he would grab the fraternity paddle and we would scatter like buckshot into a gaggle of geese.

Back then, the paddle meant you had really messed up. Like really, really messed up. But that wasn’t the hard stuff. I didn’t mind the paddle, I usually deserved it. I knew what line I was towing with him. In fact, I thought I had figured out how to beat the paddle. I’d stuff my pants with towels or wear three pairs of underwear, or beg for forgiveness with fake tears. I was always good at talking myself out of the paddle or the occasional spanking.

Jeremy, well, not so much.

In our family, discipline and pain went together like English tea and milk. Anger in my dad built like a tea kettle. He was old school. There was no mental health research on what spanking did. Maybe he’d get arrested today. But I turned out okay. His anger would just build up and spill over and my guess it was because older generations didn’t talk about emotions. About their problems. About their marital issues. About their spirituality. About their financial woes. No, people pretended to live the American dream — angry as fuck.

To be fair, I’d never ask for a different dad, but I would have definitely asked for a different, lighter paddle. Maybe that makes me a martyr, but I can look back with self-awareness and understand why discipline looks different than it used too.

Post traumatic growth syndrome, I think they call it.

To keep up with my dad was foolish. I remember him shoveling all the snow from our 100 yard hill driveway in less than thirty minutes in a big puffy red coat, Wrangler jeans, and a Russian ushanka after a full of work in the city.

“Trevor, you want to shoot baskets?”

“Dadddd,” I’d say, playing Ice Hockey on the Nintendo. “Did Magic used to shoot in the snow?”

“You know the answer to that. He never missed a day.”

“I’ll be right out.”

My dad would shovel and push the snow like a maniac, until the sweat dripped off his nose and he’d unzip his coat, the steam rising from his chest and mouth like a train chugging up the Rocky mountains in the dead of winter. He’d stand there and watch me shoot, smiling. Those were always my best memories of my dad; the ones with him there. Content. Happy.

Now my mom, she was a special woman. She was a tender, loving mother that embodied Sunday peanut butter pancakes, endless trips to my sporting events, and best of all, she always fed me like a king. I loved my mom. But I always knew when she was off. Or upset. I could sense unease in her. She would always scream and yelp at all my soccer and basketball games and would hug me after each one — win or lose.

Mothers should be the definition of unconditional love — and she was. But every family is different. From the outside, a lot of the families I see, there always seems to be a good-cop-bad-cop scenario working itself out. My mom spanked me too, but her spanks weren’t half as bad.

If you were to ask my family what I was like, you’d probably get some funny answers. I was a goofy, introverted, a dreamer — an endless well of ideas and creativity and possibility.