I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of Fry’s Electronics yesterday. I was getting a CD in the player, and organizing some of the stuff in the console and things like that.
I glanced up to see a couple walking out of the McDonald’s fifty or so feet in front of me. Along with them, there was a little girl, probably about five or six years old. I could see that the parents looked… well, they looked like they were upset, but that wasn’t the impression that I got. There was just something off about the entire exchange. The parents were walking apart in such a way that they didn’t even want to feel the presence of the other.
The girl was apparently oblivious to their distance. I think that that is the magic of being a kid, though. Not being aware that your life is being torn apart beneath you. I could tell that the parents had recently divorced, and all I needed to see was the way they walked together. The little girl was trying to hold both of their hands, but they were walking at an awkward enough of a pace together that it didn’t work. It was just a sad scene, and it brought back a lot of memories.
The girl, happy go lucky and still unaware, smiled and jumped in to her mom’s car. The father kissed her, gave her a hug, and walked back to his car on the other side of the parking lot. The parents stood there together, a good four or five feet apart, discussing their little girl while she waited in the car playing with her toys. She has no idea how much harder things will soon get, or how much mom and dad are hurting. All she knows is that things are different and that she doesn’t like it.
It made me pretty sad for the rest of the night, as I kept looking at that girl and realized that I was her once. I was that kid at some point in my life. I was a little older and realized what was going on, but I was the kid waiting in the car as the requisite information was exchanged. I was there when the bitter and resentful words were tossed back and forth.
The girl will see in a decade or so that the divorce was important and that it was probably for the best, but right now, she’s just sad and doesn’t know why dad lives somewhere else. She doesn’t know why her family is broken.