Pod Insights Personally Forever is a Long Time, Part 1: My Parents, Ellen and Tom About this episode 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.
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0:31 Speaker 01 This is a CBC Podcast.
0:34 Speaker 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.
0:57 Speaker 02 So in, I guess, full disclosure, I'll tell you that I already talked to my dad on this subject.
1:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:07 Speaker 04 Hello?
1:08 Speaker 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.
1:15 Speaker 04 You're sort of doing something on divorce.
1:18 Speaker 02 You two had totally opposite reactions.
1:22 Speaker 03 Oh, I'm sure.
1:24 Speaker 04 You know, this is really an awkward topic for me, Ian.
1:28 Speaker 03 I'm sure. That isn't surprising.
1:30 Speaker 02 Maybe it's not surprising to you, but.
1:32 Speaker 04 Quite honestly.
1:34 Speaker 02 You know, his response was.
1:36 Speaker 04 You know, it's like I'm 60 years old and I really haven't figured this stuff out.
1:41 Speaker 02 Really? You want to talk about what?
1:44 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:45 Speaker 02 And your response was, all right, name the place and time, so.
1:50 Speaker 03 Yeah. Also, I think that, you know, don't forget, he went through a divorce as a kid.
1:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:56 Speaker 03 And I mean, the ugliest of ugly, and I didn't.
2:02 Speaker 04 I don't know.
2:03 Speaker 02 Well, can I ask you some questions and you can, you can just let me know?
2:09 Speaker 03 I think that he and I both have really different points of view on the whole mess.
2:15 Speaker 02 Right.
2:16 Speaker 03 If you will.
2:17 Speaker 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.
3:05 Speaker 02 My parents divorced when I was eight years old.
3:09 Speaker 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.
3:33 Speaker 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.
3:54 Speaker 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.
4:36 Speaker 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.
4:54 Speaker 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.
5:09 Speaker 04 Oh, well...
5:11 Speaker 03 Tom had been working in Hinsdale, New Hampshire.
5:15 Speaker 04 And then I rode my bicycle down from there.
5:18 Speaker 03 And he was out of a job and...
5:21 Speaker 04 I would say that I was a little bit at loose ends at that point in my life.
5:25 Speaker 03 And actually, I knew Eric.
5:28 Speaker 04 My brother had gotten a job at Friends World College in Huntington, Long Island.
5:39 Speaker 03 The creepy dorms were up top, and those were the ones that had been put there back during the Cold War.
5:48 Speaker 04 I think I might have gotten some kind of job to do some maintenance work on the building.
5:53 Speaker 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.
6:01 Speaker 04 And at that time, your mother returned from Kenya.
6:06 Speaker 03 And a little bit extra crazy, because I'd really gone, I mean, I'd been gone for two years.
6:11 Speaker 04 And she had gotten a very bad strain of malaria.
6:17 Speaker 03 Oh, you know, high fever, vomiting, um...
6:20 Speaker 04 I think she was a little delirious in some way.
6:25 Speaker 03 Oh, I still had it.
6:26 Speaker 04 You know, it's episodic, and it comes and goes, and...
6:30 Speaker 03 It isn't pretty.
6:31 Speaker 04 She came back, and she stayed in that house where I was staying.
6:38 Speaker 03 And the first day I met him, he had turned up in my kitchen, the way I looked at it.
6:44 Speaker 04 And, uh, she kind of made the first move, as I recall.
6:49 Speaker 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?"
7:01 Speaker 04 That's how we met.
7:07 Speaker 02 Okay, you don't have to go into the carnal details here, but...
7:12 Speaker 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.
7:19 Speaker 03 The thing about Tom and me is that we actually have a ton of stuff in common despite being so different.
7:27 Speaker 04 We hung out, we got to know each other, and then...
7:30 Speaker 03 There was just one fateful night. Oh, the rest is history.
7:35 Speaker 04 She announced to me that she was pregnant.
7:50 Speaker 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.
8:30 Speaker 02 I'm curious what, you know, at that time in your life, what...
8:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
8:34 Speaker 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?
8:48 Speaker 03 Well, so with me, yes.
8:55 Speaker 03 But it was also something that had been used as a weapon.
8:59 Speaker 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
9:45 Speaker 04 just, you know, pissing away his talents the way that he did. It just like really infuriated her.
9:52 Speaker 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.
10:33 Speaker 02 So you think if you hadn't been born, your mother would have divorced your father?
10:38 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah. You know, she had kind of put things in motion and then wham, she got pregnant.
10:44 Speaker 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.
10:50 Speaker 03 Paul was fifteen, going on fifteen. Yep. Yeah.
10:54 Speaker 02 And then you came along.
10:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, you know, and she really felt like that was the time. And so I guess for me, like.
11:03 Speaker 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.
11:35 Speaker 04 Yeah. So I think we were both wounded in some ways.
11:42 Speaker 02 I'm curious how that conversation went when she told you she was pregnant with my brother.
11:49 Speaker 04 Ah, you know, I don't have a real great memory.
11:55 Speaker 03 His immediate response was that, how's he getting abortion?
12:00 Speaker 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.
12:12 Speaker 03 So that kind of, that was sort of the first chink.
12:16 Speaker 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...
12:25 Speaker 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.
12:37 Speaker 04 I don't have any recollection of having the instinct of bolting, you know?
12:42 Speaker 03 And I kept expecting him to leave.
12:44 Speaker 04 And she made it very clear to me that, that there wouldn't be any consequences for me if I did, you know?
12:50 Speaker 03 You know, I just, I knew it was going to end badly.
12:54 Speaker 04 And I decided to, to come with her and to stick around.
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14:40 Speaker 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-
14:51 Speaker 04 And you were also unplanned.
14:54 Speaker 02 Right.
14:54 Speaker 04 I don't know if your mother ever told you that or not. Oh, for two.
14:59 Speaker 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?
15:18 Speaker 04 Ah, you should probably ask your mother that.
15:21 Speaker 02 So it was her, it was her idea?
15:24 Speaker 04 Totally her idea.
15:26 Speaker 03 So, we talked about it and decided that for tax purposes, it would be more sensible if we got married.
15:33 Speaker 04 You know, I was perfectly content to live in sin, but your mother really wanted us to be married.
15:42 Speaker 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.
15:53 Speaker 04 We did that and then, I don't know, maybe three, four years or even less after that.
16:01 Speaker 03 I mean, we barely were married for two years, like eighteen months.
16:05 Speaker 04 She asked for a divorce, so.
16:09 Speaker 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.
16:21 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
16:22 Speaker 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.
16:37 Speaker 03 And I, and there were times I wondered with, you know, like late at night, whether he was coming home.
16:43 Speaker 03 And I'm sure that there were times when he was thinking some stuff, "Shit, if I just keep driving,
16:49 Speaker 03 it would be easier that way," you know?
16:53 Speaker 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.
17:06 Speaker 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.
17:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:20 Speaker 03 And I was really sure of it.
17:37 Speaker 04 When your mother told me she wanted to end the marriage, I was not expecting that.
17:43 Speaker 03 He went completely bonkers.
17:46 Speaker 04 I mean, now, now, we're, we're getting into like, stuff that's a little uncomfortable.
17:51 Speaker 03 We agreed that we would not get lawyers.
17:54 Speaker 04 You know, it's like he said, she said, and...
17:56 Speaker 03 You know, he wanted a lot of stuff.
17:58 Speaker 04 You know, I mean, divorce is never a pretty thing.
18:02 Speaker 03 Like, this is a little weird.
18:03 Speaker 04 You know, we had that bump in the road when, when she took out a restraining order.
18:07 Speaker 03 We got into a pretty serious physical altercation.
18:12 Speaker 04 Your mom and I had a fight about something.
18:14 Speaker 03 And I called the police.
18:16 Speaker 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."
18:24 Speaker 03 And that was back.
18:26 Speaker 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.
18:38 Speaker 03 And that's how we ended up with a restraining order.
18:41 Speaker 04 A restraining order against me.
18:42 Speaker 03 Which, of course, didn't make me any friends.
18:45 Speaker 04 That was, that was probably the, the low point in the whole thing.
18:53 Speaker 02 I didn't know any of this stuff before, about the police coming, the restraining order, and really, it just keeps going.
19:00 Speaker 03 He gave me a scare.
19:02 Speaker 02 There's the story of the actual divorce proceedings.
19:05 Speaker 04 I think it took, you know, close to a year.
19:08 Speaker 03 He called me and said, "Just so you know, I'm not gonna sign it."
19:12 Speaker 02 The day when my mom apparently called all the local paramedics on duty to show up in the courtroom.
19:18 Speaker 04 She was working this crazy job on the ambulance.
19:22 Speaker 03 He had his five bearded crazy people, and I had probably fifteen uniformed men.
19:30 Speaker 02 There was the question of whether my parents might move away from each other.
19:34 Speaker 04 For a little while, she was making noises about leaving the area.
19:37 Speaker 02 Or whether they could date other people.
19:39 Speaker 03 He said, "I wanna have some say in who is living with my children."
19:47 Speaker 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.
20:01 Speaker 03 Oh, it's so weird, yeah.
20:02 Speaker 04 I'm not, I'm not gonna psychoanalyze your mom.
20:08 Speaker 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.
20:47 Speaker 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.
21:26 Speaker 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?
21:38 Speaker 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.
21:51 Speaker 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.
22:18 Speaker 03 Yep.
22:19 Speaker 02 The end result doesn't actually look better to me. It often looks worse.
22:23 Speaker 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.
22:35 Speaker 02 But what it, what it makes me think is you had sort of opposite, but mirrored traumas.
22:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:42 Speaker 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.
22:53 Speaker 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.
23:19 Speaker 02 Do you remember, do you remember how Sebastian and I responded to you guys getting divorced? Because I have no memory of this.
23:28 Speaker 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?
23:42 Speaker 02 Yep.
23:43 Speaker 04 Up, up on the hill in Worthington?
23:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:45 Speaker 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.
24:22 Speaker 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?
24:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think about that too sometimes.
24:51 Speaker 03 You know? Yeah, I mean, because it's hard not to become your parents.
24:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:12 Speaker 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.
25:34 Speaker 07 Huge doe eyes and blink blink.
25:40 Speaker 07 And like, everyone's playing with the puppies and she's gazing at Ian.
25:43 Speaker 02 As always, they were their very different selves.
25:47 Speaker 07 Who was completely oblivious.
25:50 Speaker 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.
26:41 Speaker 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.
27:06 Speaker 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?
27:36 Speaker 02 I can't know that yet, but I've been talking
27:39 Speaker 04 Hello? Hey, Ian.
27:40 Speaker 02 to every one of those relatives who was there that day.
27:43 Speaker 03 How are you? Oh, hi, Ian.
27:44 Speaker 02 Hi, how are you? about their marriages.
27:46 Speaker 05 At that moment, all my friends were getting married.
27:49 Speaker 03 They really thought I would be with him for the rest of my life.
27:52 Speaker 02 and their divorces.
27:53 Speaker 03 The fuse was lit. I think it takes a lot of courage to change the direction of your life.
27:58 Speaker 04 I was just expecting it to be more fulfilling.
28:02 Speaker 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.
28:16 Speaker 04 I get very cold. I withdraw.
28:22 Speaker 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.
28:29 Speaker 05 Oh, God. Marriage really doesn't mean a thing to me.
28:33 Speaker 04 I didn't want to pass that legacy on to my kids.
28:36 Speaker 03 They did a lot of stuff to fuck you up, but you also get gifts.
28:39 Speaker 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.
28:53 Speaker 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.
29:28 Speaker 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?
30:13 Speaker 02 And remind me It comes back later It'll come back later
30:41 Speaker 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?
31:26 Speaker 02 It'll come back later.
32:42 Speaker 02 Looking at the sun.
32:46 Speaker 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.
33:34 Speaker 01 For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.
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