“Fragile Unions Like the One That Conceived Me”: Matthew Loftus

on the way two recovering alcoholics’ troubled marriage is still bearing fruit, decades after they almost split up:

I was six months old, and my mother was ready to leave. My dad had been remarking for some time that he did not want to be married anymore, that it just wasn’t working out for him. My mother had tired of saying that that was fine.

They couldn’t communicate much beyond that, though she did know how to make things dramatic. Lacking funds for a suitcase, she piled our belongings into brown paper bags and left them in the living room of their tiny apartment. So that he could watch us leave, she waited until my father came home from work before moving them into the car.

“Going somewhere?” was apparently all that he said.

more (a terrific piece)