Telling the boys

The next day -- we're up to Saturday the 6th at this point -- we drove to Durmstrang for their Parents' Day.  I won't describe the whole day, except to note a couple of things.

The first is that ... well, you may remember a number of posts (such as here and here) where I have described Son 2 in ways that make it clear he is a little offbeat.  And indeed, every where he has ever been -- at every school he has ever attended -- he has always stood out.  He has been the kid no-one could quite figure out, the kid who was different in ways nobody could ever put a finger on.  He has always seemed just a little bit odd.

But not at Durmstrang.  We watched him interact with his teachers and peers, and there was nothing unusual at all.  He didn't stand out.  He was just a normal kid.  And it's not because he had changed in any significant way.  But the school is obviously right for him, in ways that may be too subtle for me to identify.

We made time to talk with his advisor, to give him a heads-up that we would be telling Son 2 about our divorce some time over the weekend.  And his advisor was very helpful.  The school had said that parents could sign their kids out for five hours Sunday afternoon.  But the advisor said, Hey, no problem, of course you want him to be at home for something like this.  Just sign him out and we will expect him to be gone Sunday night.  Bring him back Monday afternoon.  I'll tell people he's got some family stuff going on, and they don't need to know any more than that.  He's a really good guy.

So Sunday afternoon we signed out Son 2.  He didn't especially want to go home and was a little confused about why we were signing him out.  Our explanation that we wanted him to come back so he could see his brother (who had a few days off, you recall) didn't make much sense to him.  But home we went.  We collected Son 1 from the train station (he had visited with Brother after signing out of Hogwarts, and so took the train to our town instead of coming back with us) and drove home.  And once we had all piled out of the car and into the house, I asked the boys to come out to the living room.

No point in dragging it out.  "Your mom and I are separating. You know we haven't gotten along for a long time, and so I have asked that we live apart. This isn't your fault -- it has nothing to do with you, really -- and there are a lot of details we haven't worked out yet. So right now we are both still living here. It's going to take a while for us to figure out who lives where, and how we handle a hundred practical details. But this is where it's going."  There was probably more ... I don't remember exactly what I said, and Wife had a few things to add from her side.  Son 1 sat in a chair opposite us and said nothing.  Then he got up in the middle and walked back to the study to log onto the Internet and do something else ... and we had to call him back until we were done.  Son 2 was curled up on the sofa: maybe not exactly in fetal position, but he was clearly very upset.  (Wife later told a friend of hers that he rolled his eyes at everything I said, but I couldn't see it from where I was.)  Interestingly, he was the only one with questions, and they were all practical ones. 

• Mom's Social Security isn't enough for her to live on, so how will she pay her bills? I'll pay her spousal support. That's one of the details we have to work out is to figure out how much. But basically every month I'll send her a check for $x, and that will supplement the Social Security she already gets.
• Mom can't live on her own, because what if she faints? Excellent question. We haven't figured that out yet.
• Well maybe she could get one of her friends to live with her. Mom? Could you get one of those friends you go walking with, to move in and keep an eye on you? Wife said she didn't think so, but we would think about this and figure something out. (In passing, I wonder if he meant Boyfriend 6 and Boyfriend 7? Sometimes Wife will say she is meeting one or the other "to go walking" for the exercise. Was Son 2 really being as wide-eyed and naive as he sounded just then? Or has he figured out what her relationship with these men really is, and concluded that maybe one of her lovers would be a good person to share living space? I don't know, but I sure wouldn't rule out the second one ....)
• ... and so on.

Then we were done.  Son 2 went back into his room for a while.  I couldn't tell if he was talking with Son 1 or talking to himself or quietly crying.  When I next saw the two of them, they were on the computer together looking at cartoons on YouTube or something like that.  The rest of the afternoon they pretty much ignored the two of us.  We all had dinner together and the evening wound down just like hundreds of other evenings together.  We didn't talk about it any more.

Monday I didn't go into work.  And really, none of us did a lot until it was time to take Son 2 back to Durmstrang.  He hadn't brought any stuff with him, so there wasn't much to pack -- just a couple of things he had realized he would need, that he collected in a shopping bag.  Son 1 had no interest in going: he wanted to stay home and play on the computer.  And I heard Son 2 muttering sotto voce, "I don't think Mom wants to come along. Why would Mom want to come?"  But of course Wife did want to come along (here Son 2 sighed silently) and so we clambered in the car and drove him back.  We were met by the Headmaster and the Head Nurse, who just wanted to assure us that Son 2 would have all the support he needed.  And then he was gone -- back to his next activity -- and we returned home.

For better or worse, they've been told.  At this point there is nobody from whom it is being kept a deliberate secret any more.

Time to press on.