My Friend...

My friend’s from a broken family. That, in this context, means his parents don’t live together. It’s not like they’re divorced or something. It’s just that they don’t get along. Now, how much simpler can it get? They don’t like each other. Hence, they don’t live together.

Well, it ain’t that simple. When I asked my friend about it, he delivered this killer line from some movie. He said, “A husband and his wife can split. Parents cannot.” Somehow, that made a lot of sense to me.

I understood his point of view. When two mature people don’t get along, they ought to sit down, discuss the issues they’ve got with one another and resolve them. They aren’t supposed to take what’s theirs and run away from each other. That’s what kids do. It’s true. Adults are the biggest bunch of jerks ever. The more they grow up, the more they don’t.

My friend had it even tougher, because his parents split when he was still in the early stages of grade school. He lived with his mom, while his dad lived with HIS mom. When folks at school asked him about his dad, he’d lie. He’d tell them that his father was out of town on a business trip. Now really, how long can a man be out on a business trip? My friend got around this problem by concocting another story. I don’t remember what it was exactly. Every time, someone spoke about fathers, family, parents or anything even remotely connected to these things, he’d make a silent exit or he’d keep quiet.

Come to think of it, it’s difficult to explain the absence of one’s father in school. You have to dodge those wretched open house meetings and school festivities. The stickiest among them all would be the prize distribution ceremony. Every kid’s parents came to those. My friend’s dad didn’t. It wouldn’t have been that much of a big deal if it didn’t happen 7 years in a row.

For him, it wasn’t about those little things. It was about the injustice of it all. Everyone had a mom AND a dad. Well, some folks didn’t. They’d lost their father or their mother to some illness or even an accident. That was real sad. His situation wasn’t that sad. But it was definitely messier. How do you explain this? He had a father, who didn’t live with him. In short, he had a father. Yet, he didn’t.

When two people decide to spend their lives together, it’s a beautiful moment. And when they have kids, it’s a whole bunch of things. It’s procreation. It’s the continuance of the race. It’s the arrival of a new life. It’s the cement that concretizes the bond between the couple. If the arrival of progeny is supposed to bolster the relationship and make it last, where does that leave my friend?

Think about the poor kid for a second. He had a lousy time. Now, that doesn’t mean he was left with nowhere to go. He was fed and taken care of by his mom. His dad paid for his education. But it doesn’t end there, does it? What is parenting? Is it merely feeding, scolding and paying? If parenting was about meeting the basic needs, we’d be a bunch of koalas. But we’re not. We’re humans. At least, that’s what we were designated to be.

We’re supposed to God’s finest and most complex creation. We’ve learnt to use nature’s resources to our benefit. We’ve survived many grave dangers. We’ve destroyed many others to survive. We’ve sent rockets to space. We might colonize Mars soon. But we still don’t understand how to keep a family together. That’s another one of our creations – broken families. I know of not one broken ‘animal’ family. My friend thinks that we ought to be monkeys again. I think he’s right.

As you’ve probably figured out by now, my friend’s got a lot of grief within him. When he hits rock bottom, he vents it all out by writing. He takes out his laptop and hammers away on the keyboard till he’s done. He’s not that creative. He writes in third-person and refers to himself as “my friend”.