When I was just a lass in the south (in the 1960s) in my
mother’s eyes, a social fate worse than death was to be from a
divorced family. Her term was a "broken home". Just the way she said it made the very thought of it sound as if it were the root of most sins in life and doomed one to a destiny of social purgatory. Like many of her views, it did not take me long, as a young adult, to realize that no matter how off base, how out of date, or how far south she was, it wasn't funny.
The grand irony was that she and my father divorced after
thirty two years of marriage and I, too, sank into that lowly social abyss and joined the ranks of those poor lost souls from "broken homes." And in my irreverent way, I never failed to play that card with her when she scolded me for some social sin I had committed.
Every time my husband and I had a difference of opinion over some issue and my mother happened to learn about it she, more often than not, took his side. One day, I was so peeved at
something he had done, I told her if she continued to take his side, I would divorce him. The look on her face was worth the threat.
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