D-I-V-O-R-C-E

Tammy Wynette wrote one of the most famous Country songs, D-I-V-O-R-C-E, rather poignantly singing of a mother's reluctance to tell her son his parents were breaking up.

On Christmas Eve I saw our neighbors across the street. The mother, who lives there, was handing off their kindergarten-age daughter to the divorced father. The parents divorced when the daughter was a baby, after having arranged a child through a surrogate. No, I'm not making this up.

Although no one was crying or seemed particularly unhappy, the moment was very poignant to me. Both parents seem like intelligent, pleasant people. It seems unutterably sad that this child should be divided this way, shipped back and forth.

I don't say this out of pride. I, too, was divorced when a daughter was young, for what seems in retrospect no good reason. At age five, she came to visit me for a month. At one point, she said to me, "I wish there were two."

"Two what?" I asked.

What she meant was, she wished there were two of her, so one could stay with me and another go off with her mother. Very cogent for a five-year-old.

Eventually, I ended up raising her, which was a pleasure, and if anything did, made a man of me. She grew up into a woman I love and am proud of.

Now, though, in my old age, the frequency and ease of divorce seems both sad and symptomatic, and like my neighbors' cleavage, unutterably sad.