Forever is a Long Time, Part 1: My Parents, Ellen and Tom

My parents divorced when I was eight years old — young enough that I don’t have a lot of clear memories of it, but old enough that I was definitely watching, listening, and learning. So I asked them both to tell me what happened, and got two pretty different stories.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

  This is a CBC Podcast.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  My name is Ian Cosse, and you're listening to Forever Is A Long Time on CBC's Personally. This show is a collection of songs and conversations about every marriage in my family that ended in divorce, which is most of them. Part one, My Parents, Ellen and Tom.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  So in, I guess, full disclosure, I'll tell you that I already talked to my dad on this subject.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07Speaker 04

  Hello?

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Hey there, it's me. But the reason I tell you that, I thought it was funny that, you know, when I broached the topic.

• 1:15Speaker 04

  You're sort of doing something on divorce.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  You two had totally opposite reactions.

• 1:22Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm sure.

• 1:24Speaker 04

  You know, this is really an awkward topic for me, Ian.

• 1:28Speaker 03

  I'm sure. That isn't surprising.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  Maybe it's not surprising to you, but.

• 1:32Speaker 04

  Quite honestly.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  You know, his response was.

• 1:36Speaker 04

  You know, it's like I'm 60 years old and I really haven't figured this stuff out.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Really? You want to talk about what?

• 1:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  And your response was, all right, name the place and time, so.

• 1:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. Also, I think that, you know, don't forget, he went through a divorce as a kid.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56Speaker 03

  And I mean, the ugliest of ugly, and I didn't.

• 2:02Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Well, can I ask you some questions and you can, you can just let me know?

• 2:09Speaker 03

  I think that he and I both have really different points of view on the whole mess.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  If you will.

• 2:17Speaker 04

  I just, I should say before we start that I like to be candid in my answers, and I don't know if I can really do that, which is, you know. I don't know how useful that is.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  My parents divorced when I was eight years old.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  I was young enough that I don't have a lot of clear memories of what happened, but old enough that I was definitely watching and listening and learning from what was happening. I think that's why I pushed to have this conversation, even when I knew that parts of it would be ugly and even when my dad made it pretty clear he did not want to talk about it.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  I felt like I had a right to know, to know consciously at least, the lessons and examples that I had almost certainly internalized as a little kid.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Let me tell you a little bit about my parents, stuff that you won't pick up just by hearing their voices. Today, they live about 10 miles away from each other in two small towns of western Massachusetts. My father, Tom, is a farrier, which is the person who puts shoes on horses. He drives a truck with a forge in the back that's hot enough to melt solid iron. My mother, Ellen, used to work as a paramedic in town. Then she taught eighth grade science. And to this day, I will meet former students of hers who tell me that she is the best teacher they've ever had.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  I take these things for granted, like I think most children take their parents' lives for granted. It's easy to forget that in all likelihood, none of these things would be true if my parents had never met and had two children, my brother and I.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  You know, in a lot of families, this sort of like, "How did your parents meet?" is a familiar topic of conversation, something that's part of the family lore. But it was never part of our family lore. I don't even think I know how you guys met.

• 5:09Speaker 04

  Oh, well...

• 5:11Speaker 03

  Tom had been working in Hinsdale, New Hampshire.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  And then I rode my bicycle down from there.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  And he was out of a job and...

• 5:21Speaker 04

  I would say that I was a little bit at loose ends at that point in my life.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  And actually, I knew Eric.

• 5:28Speaker 04

  My brother had gotten a job at Friends World College in Huntington, Long Island.

• 5:39Speaker 03

  The creepy dorms were up top, and those were the ones that had been put there back during the Cold War.

• 5:48Speaker 04

  I think I might have gotten some kind of job to do some maintenance work on the building.

• 5:53Speaker 03

  What it boils down to is that there were these wacky army barracks that looked like they'd been put up in about 10 minutes.

• 6:01Speaker 04

  And at that time, your mother returned from Kenya.

• 6:06Speaker 03

  And a little bit extra crazy, because I'd really gone, I mean, I'd been gone for two years.

• 6:11Speaker 04

  And she had gotten a very bad strain of malaria.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Oh, you know, high fever, vomiting, um...

• 6:20Speaker 04

  I think she was a little delirious in some way.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Oh, I still had it.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  You know, it's episodic, and it comes and goes, and...

• 6:30Speaker 03

  It isn't pretty.

• 6:31Speaker 04

  She came back, and she stayed in that house where I was staying.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  And the first day I met him, he had turned up in my kitchen, the way I looked at it.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  And, uh, she kind of made the first move, as I recall.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  And he was eating this just absolutely magnificent sandwich, and he held up top of the sandwich and said, "Are you hungry? Would you like some?"

• 7:01Speaker 04

  That's how we met.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Okay, you don't have to go into the carnal details here, but...

• 7:12Speaker 04

  Okay. Well, it was kind of romantic. They had a fireplace just there in the room. And it was, you know, it was kind of a nice place.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  The thing about Tom and me is that we actually have a ton of stuff in common despite being so different.

• 7:27Speaker 04

  We hung out, we got to know each other, and then...

• 7:30Speaker 03

  There was just one fateful night. Oh, the rest is history.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  She announced to me that she was pregnant.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Up to this point, my parents' narrative of events and their feelings about those events mostly agree. They met, they hung out, and without meaning to, they conceived a child, my older brother Sebastian. Eventually, of course, their stories do begin to diverge. But it's not just a matter of two people telling stories to make themselves look good. It's two people who, long before they got divorced, and long before they got married, were already seeing their relationship through the lens of very different past experiences, the experiences that they had grown up with.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  I'm curious what, you know, at that time in your life, what...

• 8:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  I guess what was the, what was the model in your mind of, of how marriage was supposed to work? Did it, did, as an institution, did it feel valuable or meaningful to you?

• 8:48Speaker 03

  Well, so with me, yes.

• 8:55Speaker 03

  But it was also something that had been used as a weapon.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  My parents are like textbook of what divorced parents should not do. You know, which is to basically make war on your ex. And put what salt in the soil, you know, the, the way the Romans did in Carthage, you know? I mean, it was, it was just a never ending, nonstop war. And, you know, I think that that's a lot of what drew your mother and me together also is that we, you know, we both had really troubled relationships with our fathers. And your mother was just furious at her father for being a drunk and for

• 9:45Speaker 04

  just, you know, pissing away his talents the way that he did. It just like really infuriated her.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  And my dad, you know, was really on a really bad downward spiral. From the time I was born, say, maybe when I was fourteen or fifteen. So my, my mom, anytime she was stressed. Um, so my mom would take me out in the car and drive around and explain to me how I was a mistake. And she hadn't planned to have me. And that, um, she had been planning to leave my father. And she would laugh wryly. You know, one of these days you're gonna come home and I'm not gonna be here. It's gonna be just you and your dad and, um.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  So you think if you hadn't been born, your mother would have divorced your father?

• 10:38Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. You know, she had kind of put things in motion and then wham, she got pregnant.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  And is that, cause at that point you're, I mean, your siblings were practically out of the house. They were like well into high school.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  Paul was fifteen, going on fifteen. Yep. Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  And then you came along.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, and she really felt like that was the time. And so I guess for me, like.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  I was the generation where every single one of my friends, their parents got divorced before we were out of high school. But, and that was new. That was super new. So these were the, you know, that was the first wave. And I remember being like, like partially proud that my family had managed to stay together and partially horrified. You know, because, I mean, they, they, they did such a bad job being there with one another.

• 11:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I think we were both wounded in some ways.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  I'm curious how that conversation went when she told you she was pregnant with my brother.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  Ah, you know, I don't have a real great memory.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  His immediate response was that, how's he getting abortion?

• 12:00Speaker 04

  My father found out about it and his immediate response was to get rid of it, you know, because he was convinced that, that your mother was trying to take advantage of me somehow or something.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  So that kind of, that was sort of the first chink.

• 12:16Speaker 04

  Your mother decided she was going to keep the pregnancy and she told me, you can either come with me or, or not, but either way, I'm going to keep this baby and...

• 12:25Speaker 03

  My thought was, well, you know, that's fine. If you don't want to do this, I'll go my way and you can go your way. And for whatever reason, that wasn't okay with him.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  I don't have any recollection of having the instinct of bolting, you know?

• 12:42Speaker 03

  And I kept expecting him to leave.

• 12:44Speaker 04

  And she made it very clear to me that, that there wouldn't be any consequences for me if I did, you know?

• 12:50Speaker 03

  You know, I just, I knew it was going to end badly.

• 12:54Speaker 04

  And I decided to, to come with her and to stick around.

• 13:38Speaker 00

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• 14:40Speaker 02

  So keep going with the story then. You go to Tennessee, Sebastian is born. You wind up back in Massachusetts. I'm born. At what point did-

• 14:51Speaker 04

  And you were also unplanned.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  I don't know if your mother ever told you that or not. Oh, for two.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  I guess maybe my, the thing, the next thing I'm curious about is, when did the idea of getting married enter the conversation? Because I was at your wedding. I mean, I was already born. I was a couple of years old. When did the conversation start to, oh, I guess we should get married?

• 15:18Speaker 04

  Ah, you should probably ask your mother that.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  So it was her, it was her idea?

• 15:24Speaker 04

  Totally her idea.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  So, we talked about it and decided that for tax purposes, it would be more sensible if we got married.

• 15:33Speaker 04

  You know, I was perfectly content to live in sin, but your mother really wanted us to be married.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  It wasn't. There was no proposal. There was no, "I love you" and none of that stuff. Um, I bought my own ring. Yeah, that's how that happened.

• 15:53Speaker 04

  We did that and then, I don't know, maybe three, four years or even less after that.

• 16:01Speaker 03

  I mean, we barely were married for two years, like eighteen months.

• 16:05Speaker 04

  She asked for a divorce, so.

• 16:09Speaker 03

  I mean, I never understood why Tom stayed with me. I really didn't. I mean, it was always a mystery to me because I don't think he ever loved me. He never said so.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:22Speaker 04

  I think that she would tell you that I didn't love her and that I was just sticking around to, to, to be with you guys. And there's probably some truth to that.

• 16:37Speaker 03

  And I, and there were times I wondered with, you know, like late at night, whether he was coming home.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  And I'm sure that there were times when he was thinking some stuff, "Shit, if I just keep driving,

• 16:49Speaker 03

  it would be easier that way," you know?

• 16:53Speaker 04

  But I never would have ended it because I didn't wanna put you and Sebastian through what, what, what I went through, you know, e- even if the marriage was not ideal.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  But I just knew that I was hurting him and he was hurting me. And that despite the fact that we had two beautiful children together, we would be better apart.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  And I was really sure of it.

• 17:37Speaker 04

  When your mother told me she wanted to end the marriage, I was not expecting that.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  He went completely bonkers.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  I mean, now, now, we're, we're getting into like, stuff that's a little uncomfortable.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  We agreed that we would not get lawyers.

• 17:54Speaker 04

  You know, it's like he said, she said, and...

• 17:56Speaker 03

  You know, he wanted a lot of stuff.

• 17:58Speaker 04

  You know, I mean, divorce is never a pretty thing.

• 18:02Speaker 03

  Like, this is a little weird.

• 18:03Speaker 04

  You know, we had that bump in the road when, when she took out a restraining order.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  We got into a pretty serious physical altercation.

• 18:12Speaker 04

  Your mom and I had a fight about something.

• 18:14Speaker 03

  And I called the police.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  And I, in the heat of the moment, and, and, you know, not being very smart, I put my finger on the button, you know, and said, "No, don't call the cops."

• 18:24Speaker 03

  And that was back.

• 18:26Speaker 04

  And I got in my truck, and I, I remember stopping, there was a payphone, and calling her, you know, and saying, "I hope everything's cool," and everything, and, but apparently, the cops showed up.

• 18:38Speaker 03

  And that's how we ended up with a restraining order.

• 18:41Speaker 04

  A restraining order against me.

• 18:42Speaker 03

  Which, of course, didn't make me any friends.

• 18:45Speaker 04

  That was, that was probably the, the low point in the whole thing.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  I didn't know any of this stuff before, about the police coming, the restraining order, and really, it just keeps going.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  He gave me a scare.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  There's the story of the actual divorce proceedings.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  I think it took, you know, close to a year.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  He called me and said, "Just so you know, I'm not gonna sign it."

• 19:12Speaker 02

  The day when my mom apparently called all the local paramedics on duty to show up in the courtroom.

• 19:18Speaker 04

  She was working this crazy job on the ambulance.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  He had his five bearded crazy people, and I had probably fifteen uniformed men.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  There was the question of whether my parents might move away from each other.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  For a little while, she was making noises about leaving the area.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Or whether they could date other people.

• 19:39Speaker 03

  He said, "I wanna have some say in who is living with my children."

• 19:47Speaker 02

  It's pretty rare that their stories directly contradict, but they don't really match either. They focus on different moments or different details, details that align with the way they see the world.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  Oh, it's so weird, yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  I'm not, I'm not gonna psychoanalyze your mom.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  All of us have ways that we deal with uncomfortable truths. For my dad, I think that means downplaying, understating, or simply forgetting the parts that don't sit right or that he doesn't want to say out loud. For my mom, I think it's more about dramatizing and embellishing, making the whole thing into such a great story that you can almost forget what it even means. I know these behaviors well because I do them too. They're things I learned from my parents that they probably learned from their parents.

• 20:47Speaker 04

  In retrospect, I, I respect your mother for ending the marriage when she did because it wasn't easy for, for anybody involved, you know? But she, she felt like this is what she had to do to make it right. But at the time, I was pretty, uh, pretty devastated and I, I think part of it had to do with the fact that, that you and Sebastian were just about the same ages as Eric and I were when, when our parents divorced.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  But I mean, that was his experience because he went through, you know, multiple stepmothers and, you know, and there was no hint of a family unit, you know?

• 21:38Speaker 04

  Uh, both of us tried our best to not repeat the mistakes that my parents made, you know? And that's, again, that's a very low bar.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  I mean, in hindsight, I'm, yeah, I'm really grateful that you guys split up when you did and went on to choose your own lives and your own homes and your own partners again. And, yeah, I guess, you know, when I look at, you know, the children of other marriages that held on bitterly, you know, that did stay together for the kids.

• 22:18Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  The end result doesn't actually look better to me. It often looks worse.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, because, because you spent all that time growing up having this terrible behavior model for you, you know? Like, I lived that with my parents.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  But what it, what it makes me think is you had sort of opposite, but mirrored traumas.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  And so it's like, when it came to that moment of, do we stick this out or do we call it quits? It seems in a way you were both trying to avoid what your own parents had done.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. No, I think that's very accurate. But because they were opposite, there was no happy medium. And I just had to hope I was right.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Do you remember, do you remember how Sebastian and I responded to you guys getting divorced? Because I have no memory of this.

• 23:28Speaker 04

  Well, that's interesting you should mention that, because that's one of the few scenes that I really can picture. There was a therapist there at the Worthington Health Center. Can, can you picture that?

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  Up, up on the hill in Worthington?

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:45Speaker 04

  We brought you guys there to tell you that we were getting divorced. I remember that these tears just sort of spontaneously popped out of your eyes. And you're just like, I don't know. I just, it was unlike you because you're, you're quite, you're quite stoic in a lot of ways. But you just like cried instantly. And I can still see that now.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  My fear is always like, what awful things are you carting around from both of us? That are negative behaviors that you don't even know about? Or maybe you do, but you don't realize that they're there? And when you act out on them will cause harm to your relationship?

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think about that too sometimes.

• 24:51Speaker 03

  You know? Yeah, I mean, because it's hard not to become your parents.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Six years ago, I got married. My parents were there, and they both spoke. My dad, reading from prepared notes on yellow legal pad. Two atoms move to share their electrons on equal terms. And my mom, riffing her way through an anecdote with totally over the top gestures.

• 25:34Speaker 07

  Huge doe eyes and blink blink.

• 25:40Speaker 07

  And like, everyone's playing with the puppies and she's gazing at Ian.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  As always, they were their very different selves.

• 25:47Speaker 07

  Who was completely oblivious.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  It's hard to view your parents' relationship as a mistake when it's the only reason you could possibly exist. But I think I've always known that my parents made mistakes. And that, given the chance, I would act differently. Maybe find a way to express myself more fully. Or make decisions with more care and compassion. What I really didn't know until now is that they were trying to do the same thing. To avoid the mistakes of their parents. To take the models they'd grown up with and the examples they'd internalized and do better.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  At the time I decided to get married, every living relative who had ever been married had also been divorced. My parents, of course, all my aunts and uncles on both sides, my only living great uncle, my only living grandparent, all had been married and all had been divorced, some twice.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  To this day, I don't know what made me think I could do better or even if I knew what better looked like. Is it just ignorance or overconfidence that made me think I could hold this commitment that none of them had? Or is it possible that we can learn from our elders and take a different path?

• 27:36Speaker 02

  I can't know that yet, but I've been talking

• 27:39Speaker 04

  Hello? Hey, Ian.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  to every one of those relatives who was there that day.

• 27:43Speaker 03

  How are you? Oh, hi, Ian.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Hi, how are you? about their marriages.

• 27:46Speaker 05

  At that moment, all my friends were getting married.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  They really thought I would be with him for the rest of my life.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  and their divorces.

• 27:53Speaker 03

  The fuse was lit. I think it takes a lot of courage to change the direction of your life.

• 27:58Speaker 04

  I was just expecting it to be more fulfilling.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Just like with my parents, there are pieces of these stories I knew already. There was so much compensating, really on both sides, for the other person not being the person that you really wanted them to be. but many pieces that I didn't.

• 28:16Speaker 04

  I get very cold. I withdraw.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  And there are other pieces, pieces that I've been carrying around with me this whole time, even if I didn't know it.

• 28:29Speaker 05

  Oh, God. Marriage really doesn't mean a thing to me.

• 28:33Speaker 04

  I didn't want to pass that legacy on to my kids.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  They did a lot of stuff to fuck you up, but you also get gifts.

• 28:39Speaker 05

  You sort of start to feel like you're good and sufficient reasons. Maybe they really weren't so good and sufficient for who you actually become.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  These are the conversations I'll be sharing in the rest of the series. It's called "Forever is a Long Time." In Part Two, I talk to my grandmother about her marriage, the one my father described as a very low bar, the one he was trying desperately not to repeat.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  I can tell a lie Right into your eye You can look away Hide it with a smile Pass another day Thinking what to say We can make it work At least for a while Would you do me the favor? And watch for this behavior? Would you do me the favor?

• 30:13Speaker 02

  And remind me It comes back later It'll come back later

• 30:41Speaker 02

  But if it's the life, I want it for myself, then why do I lie? Why do I wake at night wishing I could be anywhere else? Would you do me the favor and watch for this behavior? Would you do me the favor and remind me it comes back later?

• 31:26Speaker 02

  It'll come back later.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  Looking at the sun.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  And everything under the sun. For a second it's clear. But you are the one. Would you do me the favor? Remember this behavior? Would you do me the favor? And remind me it comes back later. It'll come back later.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.