Divorce’s Carnelian Anniversary

A 50th wedding anniversary is a golden anniversary. Google A.I. tells me that gold is the traditional gift material for this anniversary because it represents strength, wisdom and prosperity.

I wonder what would be the gift material for a 50th divorce anniversary?

Deep fractures in families with members with different political beliefs have emerged in this contentious election. Deep wounds that were buried for many years have also come to the surface.

Members of my own family have resorted to name-calling. They have called me an “elitist,” a “Marxist,” and a “Communist,” just because I happen to teach at a University.

The intensity of the disparagement throughout the election process has resonated with me in a particular way because the elections have coincided with the 50th anniversary of the similarly contentious divorce between my parents.

It has made me realize that the uncivil election has made it possible for the scorn and the disdain that members of my own family feel for me to rise to the surface.

The uncivil nature of the debates has led to the expression of feelings buried, but long-held, as an effect of deep psychological unhealed wounds.

In my case, the election has also led to my awareness of my own complicity and investment over many years in the burial of that wound.

Fifty years ago, my family underwent a traumatic and contentious divorce that dragged through the courts for more than two years.

The divorce was partly the result of irreconcilble political differences between my parents. My mother was called similar names in the courtroom and out.

The Courts put the children in a very difficult position. We were literally placed in front of a judge and had to choose and reject a parent.

An impossible choice with longtime repercussions.

My family and my Puerto Rican culture is deeply religious, so, to remarry, my parents went to the extreme of travelling to the Vatican in Rome to request the Catholic Church for the annulment of their marriage.

I’ve always wondered whether there’s a name for the children of annulled marriages. I know that there’s a slur for the children of unwed couples.

I can tell you from experience that the social scorn and sometimes familial disdain leveled against the children of the first is close to the scorn and disdain leveled against the children of the second.

We have never treated these traumatic wounds. We have buried them deep within our psyche for 50 years. From there, they have affected all of our actions and our relations.

The 2024 election has made the effects of that wound come to the surface in a virulent way.

But 50 years of silence, self-censorship, and repression have also made unbearable the open display of that contempt. And a difficult exhumation has begun.

Carnelian is a blood-red semi-precious stone that is a metaphor for what “no human eye has ever seen, nor ever will” according to St. Paul.

Perhaps Divorce’s 50-year anniversary should be called its carnelian anniversary.