I can drone on and on about nothing; ask my husband John, or my son, Alex.

In fact, there have been several (hundred) occasions where I have droned my husband to sleep. He tells me that my voice is soothing. I can put him into REM sleep in four minutes and if I keep on droning, he can snore so loudly it's as if he is actually trying to drown out the sound of my droning. Must be marital bliss.

The droning translates to rambling when droning changes to the written-word. So instead of my droning on and on, you get my ramblings.

Okay, so I have column topics at-the-ready, but other subject matter always bumps them. Two topics in particular that I have wanted to write about are: only children and divorce.

On first glance, you would assume that these topics are not related, but they most certainly can be. Case in point, if Alex's father had not been divorced when I met him, there would be no only child, Alex. Anything and anyone can easily be connected if you make up your own rules.

Take, for example, the game, "Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon" that was popular several years ago. John and I were at a party and we were talking to a couple who explained this game in sordid detail. They explained how they were five-degrees from Mr. Bacon. Talking to me bumped their status, and up until that very moment, I was not even aware of my Kevin Bacon super-powers.

When I was an actor, I was an extra on the movie, "He Said, She Said," which starred Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins. One day, on the set, Mr. Bacon meandered over to chat with me between takes.

Sorry, I digress yet again. Let me return to the topic at hand -- only children. My son is an only child with a half brother who is old enough to be his father. Jumping ahead a few decades; when my stepson, Josh, is 60 years old, Alex will be 40. I will still be 29.

I am grateful that the two boys have each other and that I have them. One day, I will be elderly and in need of assistance. The fact that one child is biologically mine and the other is not does not matter to me. I know they will both ignore me equally.

In case you were wondering, the stigma of the only child exists. I cannot tell you the number of times that people look uncomfortable or awkward upon learning that Alex is my only child.

I actually had a close friend tell me that she had her second child because she did not think that being a mother-to-one constituted her being a real mother. The look on her face let me know she wished she could take those words back.

I, on the other hand, refrained from telling her that I thought her reason to have another child somehow devalued her existing child. Sometimes snappy repartee is not so snappy. For the record, I feel like a mother and Alex calls me Mom, therefore I am a mother. Enough on only children; I want to attempt writing about divorce because somehow I have intertwined the two topics and I must carry on.

Divorce is not a humorous topic to me, so I have avoided writing about it like the plague. There's nothing funny about the plague, so I won't be writing about that topic either.

Sadly, I know a slew of couples who are divorcing. One of the couples has four children. Not only did they split their belongings; they also split their children. Two went with mumsy and two with daddio. Three moved and three stayed in the home. Each kept half the furniture.

I would not be able to fit a divorce, a move and furniture shopping into my schedule; that sounds way too time-consuming.

Let me check with my spouse to determine his degree of happiness so that I can better anticipate a move or furniture shopping. Perhaps he is on the brink of contacting a lawyer because he needs more sleep and is tired of my droning.

Husband reports he is happy and he is not divorcing me. Good to know because I like my furniture, my house, my husband and I especially like my only child.

---

user comments (0)