D-I-V-O-R-C-E

There is more than one way to unpack a break-up. I’ve hosted a score of explanations for my parents’ dissolution, only to grab my kit and run for higher ground.

My mother and father had an old-fashioned mid-20th-century divorce — the kind where you have to sue each other and assign blame.

The rhetoric of “extreme mental cruelty” appeared in their court documents. There was a court-appointed psychiatrist. Though they separated in 1960, it was still the morality of another century when they dissolved their partnership— a scarlet “D” etched on their permanent record. My mother’s complete estrangement from the Catholic Church was concluded when she was informed that her divorce meant she could never receive “the sacramental host” again. No more Body of Christ for you.

By the time I hit puberty, the marriage climate turned upside down. In 1973, I was in a Los Angeles high school, where I was dressed-down by an English teacher who informed the entire class that I was “out of line” because I w…