Bugaboo
My kids laugh about a long-ago night when we went to eat at a place called Bugaboo Creek. It was a restaurant chain — now defunct — designed to look like a Maine hunting lodge with talking animal heads on the wall and birthday sing-alongs from the waitstaff that shook the walls and invited the birthday person to kiss a giant moose head puppet. It was a favorite kid-friendly spot when my children were growing up and though they had outgrown much about Bugaboo, it was the last outing we had as a family unit. In fact, I wrote my daughter to ask what month it was and what came back was: “LOL will look in my journal.” On the night mentioned, she was 15 and her brother 12, and it was the day their dad and I told them that we were getting a divorce. Ironically, it also happened to be February 29th, that bit of time added every four years to make up for what’s missing and synchronize the future.
I’m not the first to make an analogy between the contentious divide in our country and divorce, and yet I keep coming back to it because I think that there is a lot to be mined. For one thing, divorce is not a way of life (unless you’re a complete fool and/or masochist) but a means to an end. If there are no other people affected by the split, then it’s a simpler situation, but when children are involved, there is the need for compromise and ongoing collaboration to ensure a healthy future.
Used to be, if you divorced in the state of Massachusetts and had children who were minors, you had to attend a Parenting Education course and present your certificate to the judge. I called it “Divorce School,” and I remember thinking that ALL parents should have to attend such a class, and perhaps all people, because at its base, it was really a course about coming to terms with another person through a difficult, often combative situation, learning to agree to disagree while also trying to make the best decisions. Call it Civility School. Call it keeping an eye on the future and acknowledging that today’s actions will most definitely have a lasting effect.
Massachusetts was only one of 17 states that required such a course, and I am disappointed to learn that it’s been discontinued. I thought it was a lot like Drivers Ed except instead of watching gruesome crash films with drunk drivers and reckless teenage shenanigans, we watched reenactments of all the things a divorcing parent should never do.
Ask your no good dad for money. He took it all and left me nothing!
Tell your mother she should have thought of that before she screwed the neighbor!
I hate that son of a bitch and I hope you didn’t get his genes. I can tell you so many stories.
She’s been on the Loser Bus her whole life. I don’t know why I ever married her except of course, for you.
And whatever you do, don’t you ever tell your so-called dad I told you that.
And so on, example after example of triangulation and name calling, using the child as messenger or confidant, with no consideration of the lasting effect. As in drivers ed, the role of parenting asks that those in charge stay vigilant and keep their eyes on the road ahead.
And what about those parents who are not willing to cooperate and who have shown that they do not have the child’s best interest in mind? What if they are abusive or neglectful, more harmful than good. Then a judge might make the decision that the parent is not fit for the role. Obviously, the ideal would be that every parent cares about what is best for the child, but we all know that doesn’t hold true, just as many politicians don’t choose what is best for or best represents their constituents. Being biologically capable of producing a child doesn’t mean you will be a good parent, just as throwing your hat in the political ring and managing to get the most votes won't guarantee that you're a good legislator.
There’s a break between two people who share a child. What is best for that child’s future?
There’s a break between two parties who share a country. What is best for future generations?
From the point of view of a child (or constituent) you ask: who will give me what I need? Who is most concerned about my safety and wellbeing? My living conditions? My future?
There are many decisions in life based on a preference or a choice. For lack of a better analogy, I will just continue with vehicles. Cars, trucks, motorcycles, RVs. That one likes sleek convertibles and/or what’s sexiest, and another wants a macho hemi or whatever is most powerful; that one is concerned about safety records, and another wants whatever is most cost efficient, practical, best for the environment. Put a stripe down the side. Family decals on the back window. I’ll take whatever color is cheapest. Give me butt warmers. Gotta have big bass speakers. Add your bumper stickers and what swings from the rearview but when you get out on the highway, there aren’t a whole lot of choices beyond what exit to take. There is a speed limit and there are lines drawn to form lanes that are moving in one direction and when you break away from the fundamental ground rules, you risk getting a ticket and/or being a threat to others and dealing with the consequences.
When it comes to those decisions that can be determined as right or wrong, I think of the wisdom of King Solomon and the two women who appeared before him with a baby. One mother’s child had died and they both claimed the living one. Each woman vowed that she was the rightful mother, so Solomon finally said: Okay then, Fetch me a sword, and proceeded to say he would simply cut the baby in half to settle it all. One of the women immediately began begging for the life of the child, and the other, whose biggest desire by that point was just to win at all costs, said, Sure! Cut it in half . And of course, we know the end of the story: All recognized the wisdom of King Solomon when he determined the rightful mother by proving that she truly cared about the child’s welfare; the people relied on and respected his desire to seek and serve justice. It’s important to also note that the scripture says that both women were “harlots,” and yet, Solomon passed no judgment whatsoever about their personal lives but stayed focused on the issue at hand.
I also thought of the Judgment of Solomon not too long after that last night at Bugaboo Creek when the kids and I were moving into a new house. The children had pet turtles at the other house — Scratchy and Eddie — but sadly one died not long before this transition time and sadder still, both children, tired of taking care of them, claimed the dead one. I was left with the chore of taking care of Screddie and in the midst of the move, I put his tank down beside the back door with a lot of other things and kept unpacking. That night it snowed, and I woke in the wee hours of morning — Screddie! I didn’t like taking care of him either, but I didn’t want his death on my hands given everything else that was going on. The glass had cracked and the water had frozen. I turned the tank on its side to let the slush run off and miraculously, out walked Screddie, now known as Lazarus.
And what does any of this have to do with a long-ago meal at Bugaboo Creek with Bill the Buffalo (I got my MA of Bison Administration at the University of Buffalo) or Moxie the Moose (Your menu is your map. Where else can you get a Moosebreath burger) and a kind of creepy eye-rolling talking Christmas tree who stayed up way past the holiday? I guess I was just trying to think about the kinds of things that might bring a little bit of comfort in the midst of an otherwise chaotic and difficult time. We had gone there many times as a family, those ordinary days when the biggest concern was getting a Spice Girls CD or Pokemon card, talking about what had happened at school or what movies we all wanted to see. There had been laughter about the dumb things the animals on the wall were saying and a burst of birthday frenzy that had prompted my son to jump up in his chair and begin to dance. Maybe the decision to go there that night was a simple act of civility, or an attempt at not forgetting the comfort to be found in an ordinary day, a reminder that better days would come again. Or maybe we didn’t know what in the hell else to do, but from this distance I can safely say that it was an okay choice and one that now brings laughter.
I take great comfort in a day without chaos. I like that, with the exception of freak error, we all drive in the right direction on the interstate and that people are required to take a class and pass a test before getting behind the wheel. I like the comfort of living in a democracy where we have choices and freedoms within a framework that strives to best serve and respect the whole. I want a judicial system that can be trusted to make wise decisions, and leaders with an eye on the future and what will be best for generations to come. I really like Leap Year, the recognition of what is lost and needed, and the way it corrects what needs to be corrected so we can keep moving forward; and I’ll admit, I also like a restaurant where everyone in the place joins in to sing and clap for a kid dancing on the chair even when the world outside might be dark and cold.
Jill McCorkle, a native of North Carolina, is the author of four story collections and seven novels, most recently Hieroglyphics. Her work has been published in many periodicals and included in Best American Short Stories. She is core faculty in the Bennington Writing Seminars and affiliated with the MFA Program at NC State University.