A recorded conversation between a man in his late fifties and his twenty-one-year-old daughter, one year after his second divorce. The daughter is from his first marriage; her relationship with the step-mother had lasted seven years. Recorded with the consent of both, edited for length and clarity, names changed. The companion piece on adult children of divorce and the question of weddings traces the longer arc that this conversation is one segment of.
The first ten minutes
Daughter: A year ago today, you came to my flat in Pune and told me about the separation.
Father: I know. I have been thinking about the date.
Daughter: I have not been thinking about the date. I am surprised I remembered when you mentioned it.
Father: That is probably a good sign.
Daughter: Maybe. How are you?
Father: Steadier than last year. Not as steady as I thought I would be. I had assumed, going in, that the second time would be easier than the first.
Daughter: Why did you assume that?
Father: I had assumed I had already done the difficult work - twenty-three years ago, when I divorced your mother. That was the hard one. This one, I thought, would be the practised version. I was wrong about that.
The middle conversation
Daughter: Can I ask you something I have not asked you?
Father: Yes.
Daughter: When the first marriage was ending, was I in your head?
Father: Constantly. I was twenty-eight when you were born and thirty-three when I separated from your mother. You were the thing I was most afraid of getting wrong.
Daughter: What were you afraid of?
Father: That you would grow up thinking I had abandoned you, even though I had not - at least, not in the way the word usually means. I was afraid you would read the divorce as proof that the parents who said they loved you were not to be trusted on the question of love. I was afraid you would carry a structural skepticism about marriage. Some of that did happen, I think. We have talked about it.
Daughter: We have. And I do carry it, partly. But it is partly an inheritance and partly an observation. I have watched two of your marriages now. I have my own observations.
Father: Yes.
Daughter: Was she - my step-mother - was she good for you?
Father: For five of the seven years, yes. For the last two, no. The erosion was slow and I did not see it.
Daughter: I saw it. Or I think I saw it.
Father: You saw something I was missing. I am sorry. I should have asked.
Daughter: I would not have known how to answer if you had. I was fourteen then. I could see the change but not the cause.
The harder middle
Father: May I ask you something?
Daughter: Yes.
Father: Has the year been hard for you?
Daughter: Harder than I expected. I had thought I had no investment in your second marriage. She was not my mother; she had become a kind of household familiar, not a parent. When she left, I thought I would feel a small regret and move on. But there was - I do not have a clean word for it. There was a re-litigation of the first divorce. Watching you go through this one made me feel, again, the thing I felt when I was eight. Which surprised me. I had thought I was done with that.
Father: I had assumed the second divorce would not affect you in the same way.
Daughter: So had I. We were both wrong.
Father: I am sorry for the structural cost.
Daughter: It is not your structural cost. Or - it is, partly. But it is also just the shape of being the daughter of someone whose marriages have been important to me even when I did not realise.
The closing twenty minutes
Daughter: What are you doing now?
Father: Less. Reading more. Cooking, which I had not done in years. I have started to go for walks in the morning. I have not yet - I am not yet at the dating stage. The piece you sent me on dating again in your own city was - well-timed.
Daughter: I did not send it to make you date. I sent it because I thought you would find it well-written.
Father: Both, perhaps.
Daughter: Both. Are you lonely?
Father: Less than I had feared. More than I am willing to admit on most Tuesdays. There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes after fifty-eight that is not the same as the loneliness of twenty-eight, and I had not expected the distinction.
Daughter: Are you all right?
Father: Yes. I have a child I love who has agreed, in her twenty-first year, to be in conversation with her father about his second divorce. I am all right.
Daughter: The conversation has been valuable for me too. I want you to know that.
Father: Thank you for saying so.
Daughter: We should do this again. Maybe next year, same date.
Father: I would like that.
The conversation between a parent and an adult child about the parent’s second divorce is the conversation the first divorce was the rehearsal for. Both speakers are better at it the second time. Both speakers know how rare that is.