Family Values

Heart of Glass, Blondie is playing.

The other day, in the van where most of Sumner's profound thinking and sharing takes place, he retorically asked me, "Do you know why people kiss when they get married?"

Playing along, I told him, "No, why?"

He said, "So you can give each other germs. You know, you share your germs and then you're family."

"Oh, I see. That makes sense," and it did. Sure, you're getting married and you're going to share a bed and a house and maybe children and a lot of trials and tribulations and joys and triumphs and at least 50 years, why not swap some spit--share some germs--to seal the deal. There was quiet as Ramona and Sumner and I pondered this idea.

After a minute, Sumner said, "What would you do if you were married and you decided to break up?"

"You mean, like if you decided to get a divorce," I asked for clarification.

"What's that?"

I was astonished when Sumner said this. He had no idea what a divorce was. I searched my brain trying to think of anyone, someone, who he knows who is divorced and I could not come up with anyone. Here we are, living in Jamaica Plain, a place where Nader nearly won as many votes as Gore in 2000, and my son's experience and our dinner-as-a-family values have insulated him so much that he doesn't even have a frame of reference for divorce. Don't some claim that all these crazy liberals around us are supposed to make this place without a moral foundation?

So, I carefully tried to explain to Sumner and Ramona what a divorce was and how it worked to get one and how sad it was for everyone involved. They listened intently and asked a lot of questions. Ramona kind of liked the idea of us having two houses as part of a divorce, but she understood that this thing I was explaining was supposed to be a bad thing. She said, "Can we just have a tiny crack in our family and Sumner and Daddy could live right next door to us, or on top of us, in a different house?"

Sumner was still stuck on the germ thing. How can you get a divorce once you have shared germs? This was an impossible concept.

I was still stuck on the divorce thing. I am so pleasently suprised that my kids see marriage as the way things are. Divorce, what's that?