The Hamlet Project

Yesterday, I was thinking of my father’s wedding
Remembering what it was to be 12 and watching domestic disaster strike
in stepwalk slow motion.
I thought, briefly, of the one session of therapy they sent me to
(“Why do I have to go to therapy? You’re the one with the problem!”)
Which made me realize that I didn’t know which came first
My father’s wedding or my mother’s moving in with her boyfriend, me in tow.
One followed the other so closely that my memory cannot distinguish
One from the other.
I know that my mother told me across a table
at a restaurant with the word “Dutch” in the title.
She told me with the same tone my father had told me about the divorce 8 years earlier, like she expected me to be upset
But because this move meant leaving our house with no plumbing
or phone or friends for the comfort of the city, I was delighted.
At first, anyway.
That was before I understood what living with a man who wasn’t my father, meant.
I had some suspicions about what living with a woman who wasn’t my mother might be.
My future stepmother had already revealed some fairly fairy tale like
stepmother behavior before she’d even taken the job.
But the effects of a formerly cheerful fellow suddenly taking up the reins
of a pseudo stepfather were slow to shake the foundations.
My father’s wedding: an earthquake
My mother’s submission: an aftershock
Or a premonition
One following another
Following the other.