My paternal grandparents were both divorced when they met one another. They each had children from a previous marriage and then they had 2 children together. Theirs is the friendliest divorce story I've ever heard. All the adults and children would get together on a regular basis, and they would even take summer vacations together. My grandfather said that they were all happy in their second marriages and put aside their hostilities for the sake of the children.

My father did not learn from his parents' example.

I was in middle school when I came across some paperwork in the living room. It was a list of everything we owned, with notes about dollar value. Some items had my mother's name next to them, some had my father's name. I sat and thought about it for a while, and when my dad came into the living room I asked if they were getting a divorce. He said yes. I asked if I could live with him, and he said it was up to me to decide. It turns out that it wasn't up to me, it was up to Mom, and she wisely did not let me live with my father.

He seemed like a pretty good dad back then. He was strict, but he paid attention to us and he wanted us to learn right from wrong. Most of all he wanted us to always be truthful and we were punished more severely for lying than for anything else. He took great pains not to say anything racist in front of us, because he wanted us to grow up without prejudice.

He was a bad husband right from the start. He met my mom through her brother. Her brother warned her not to marry my dad. Dad's nickname was "Psycho" in high school, because he could do crazy, cold-hearted things, he was addicted to speed and made his living stealing. Eventually he was caught breaking into a store, but he was taken before a sympathetic judge who knew my grandparents. He was given a choice between jail or the military, so he entered Air Force basic training.

We moved very frequently, and were always stationed far away from our extended family. My parents fought constantly, over money and infidelity. He brags now that he cheated on her many, many times, and claims she did the same. Mom says she cheated on him once, before they were married, when he moved out of state for a while and the status of their relationship was uncertain. My dad found out about it later, when the guy, who was one of his friends, confessed during a night of heavy drinking. He calmly told his friend that he already knew, then went home and held my mother up against the wall by her throat until she confessed. That story I heard directly from Dad, on a night when we were drinking together. He was proud of himself for torturing her and making her confess. He considered it a moral victory.

My father almost left my mother once, when I was 3 and my sister Alice was 1. He met a 19-year-old girl named Yolanda and began slowly moving things into her apartment, until my mom noticed and said something, for he was taking all of the nicest things they owned. Mom said it was fine with her if they split up, but he changed his mind. He never went back to Yolanda's to retrieve his things, letting her keep it all as a sort of compensation. She was a lucky girl, to lose him.

I was used to my parents having screaming fights after we went to bed at night. Sometimes I would come and sit at the top of the stairs, listening to them and trying to figure out what the fight was about. My father would always speak in a slow, measured, threatening tone of voice, looming over her, trapping her in corners, not letting her move while she screamed and cursed. She would sometimes throw things at him to make him stay away, but he would slowly advance until she was trapped. A few times she pushed him away and ran up to lock herself in our room, and we would all pile up against the door to keep him from breaking in.

I was glad when Dad acknowledged that they were getting divorced. Even at 12 I knew we would all be better off if they were separated.