How To Stay Out Of My Husband's Office--Marriage Tips From A Divorce Attorney

Rich and I talk about divorce all the time, not because we want a divorce (Hell no!) but because for more than twenty years he's worked as a divorce attorney.  My husband is an interesting study in contrasts—he’s a divorce attorney, a Mormon bishop, a child of divorce, and has been happily married for twenty-nine years.  His experiences, I think, make him uniquely qualified to talk about divorce, and so, for this installment of my blog, I’ve picked his brain about the D word:

Lisa:  Good morning.  How are you?

Rich:  Crazy in love, and you?

Lisa:  Same, but we digress..

Rich:  Not really.  In my opinion, in a healthy marriage, declarations of love should come as easily as breathing.  So, I’m just taking care of bidness, so to speak.

Lisa:  Take care of it later, I’ve got questions to ask you.

Rich:  And that is what I love about you.

Lisa:  What?

Rich:  Everything. 

Lisa:  Before our readers vomit, let’s get this interview started.  So, you’ve been working as a divorce attorney for twenty years.

Rich:  Twenty-Two.

Lisa:  Honestly, it’s a blur, but because you’ve been at it so long you’ve seen a lot of marriages end, and I’m wondering if there is one piece of advice you could give to anyone who is considering divorcing their spouse?

Rich:  Every case is different, one bit of advice isn’t really adequate.  For some it’s the only option, but for those who are not in that position, but still considering divorce, I would tell them this:  Divorce is hard.  If you’re considering divorcing because of finances or falling out of love, you need to understand you’ll most likely find those problems again in the next relationship.  So, to those couples, I would say, Don’t give up.

Lisa:  What is one thing you think a couple can do to strengthen their marriage?

Rich:  Spend time together, even if it’s just a half an hour walk.

Lisa:  Who is more likely to file for divorce, the husband or wife?

Rich:  I read that women file more often, but I can’t say that I’ve seen that in my practice.

Lisa:  Have you seen marriages end that you felt didn’t need to?

Rich:  Yes

Lisa:  And what made them continue with the divorce?

Rich:  Selfishness, more often than not.

Lisa:  Considering what you see in your practice, what advice would you give to someone who is at the beginning of a relationship?

Rich:  Don’t have sex.

Lisa:  Are you saying that because you’re just an old-fashioned guy?

Rich:  I’m saying it because 99.9 percent of the divorces I do are relationships where the couple rushed into having sex.

Lisa: If you could change one thing about the way divorces play out in the court system, what would it be?

Rich:  I’d like for there to be greater recognition by the courts that adultery is wrong.  The way it works now, a spouse has an affair and leaves, and the courts don’t say to the spouse who was betrayed, Hey, what happened to you was wrong.  I think it would be great for there to be a penalty in court for those who have affairs.  And I don’t mean that it would stop the divorce from happening, but it would be nice for the wronged party to hear in court that the behavior of their wayward spouse is wrong.

Lisa:  So, let’s say a couple is close to getting divorced, but they work at their marriage and avoid doing so.  What do you think are some of the benefits they will enjoy because they chose to stay together?

Rich:  There are plenty, especially for the children.  It’s nice for kids when parents can work out their differences, regain their footing, and the family can stay together.  And for the family there are so many social and financial benefits.  There is one house, not two.  One electric bill, not two.  One vacation, one Christmas, one table for the parents at weddings.  One trip to see grandma and grandpa.  The united front approach to life, if it can be achieved, really pays off in the end.  And there are studies that show that people who hung in there and stayed married, ten years later when interviewed again, were happy. 

Lisa:  And you’ve seen this?

Rich:  Actually, I recently overheard a nurse asking a patient how many times he had been married.  When the patient said two, she asked which wife he would marry again, and he said, the first.  To this, the nurse said, Yes, that is what everyone says when I ask them that question.  If it can be done, hanging in there pays off.

Lisa:  How should a married couple view divorce?

Rich:  They should see it as serious a question as whether to amputate a limb.  If you have cancer and there’s no choice, you choose to amputate to save your life.  And that’s how it should be with divorce—it’s a last resort.  My advice is to seek professional help.  If you liked each other enough to get married in the first place, there might still be a reason to stay married.

Lisa:  Do you think your parents needed to get a divorce?

Rich:  No

Lisa:  Any parting thoughts?

Rich:  Don’t threaten your spouse with divorce when you’re angry.  It sends the message that you’re only committed to the relationship as long as you get what you want.  Throwing down the D card isn’t part of a healthy marriage, so make a point as couple to not do that.

Lisa:  Thanks for the interview.

Rich:  Thanks for not making spaghetti again for dinner.

Lisa: That’s it for now.  Thanks for reading!

With Gun As Our God

It is more likely that the students that were killed at Douglas High School will be posthumously issued fines for running in the hallway as the bullets flew than it is that we as a country will put an end to the violence.   

We grieve, light candles, sing songs, make shrines out of flowers and photographs, and we bury the dead, but we don’t put an end to the violence. 

We cannot.

Because if after Columbine we allowed Sandy Hook and Douglas, as well as several other massacres, then there can be but one truth:

We are no better than the pagans who made human sacrifices to pacify their gods, and entertain the masses. 

And Gun is our god.

It’s not that we’re not nice people.  Honestly, nine times out of ten we’ll hold the door for you.  But you have to understand Gun is an angry, demanding god. 

There’s no way around it, every now and again there has to be a sacrifice. 

We know that to do it properly we should have built a stone altar, but there were Union problems with the stone masons, so we’ve put a modern spin on the ancient rite, and the sacrifices happen at our schools, or concerts, or movie theatres, which actually works well.

 Gun loves randomness and irony.

With a firearm as your deity, you accept that there will be another slaughter. 

Gun requires it.

It’s a stark reality, but I don’t think it hasn’t turned us into a bloodthirsty people.  We still love seeing who gets the final rose or the mirror-ball trophy. 

But, and I hate to admit this, it’s also true that our phone screens have become our Colosseum. 

We’re glued to the harried footage of children, who were worried about their next quiz, ducking for cover, and we scroll the names of the dead, reading with wide-eyed curiosity about who they were, and what they were set to accomplish. 

Our hearts tug as we consider the songs left unsung, the graduation tassels that will not be moved to the left, the empty chairs at Christmas dinner, and we light a few more candles, and even shout into microphones that the violence must end.

But we know, in time, there will be another slaughter.

What’s that? 

You want to know if this could be the last sacrifice to Gun that we as a country make?  That we do whatever it takes never let this happen again? 

You want to know if the list of the sacrificed could end with:

Scott Beigel,

Alyssa Alhadeff,

Martin Duque Anguiano,

Nicholas Dworet,

Aaron Feis,

Jamie Guttenberg,

Christopher Hixon,

Luke Hoyer,

Cara Loughran,

Gina Montalto,

Joaquin Oliver,

Alaina Petty,

Meadow Pollack,

Helena Ramsey,

Alex Schachter,

Carmen Schentrap,

Peter Wang

Not another name? 

Never another name?

I mean, it’s a beautiful sentiment, really it is, but…

We’re going to need a copy of that list.  Most of the dead were students, and we have it on good authority that they were seen running in the hallways.  And, you know, rules are rules.

And Gun is our god. 

Or maybe I’m wrong. 

Prove me wrong, America.

Owning A Piece Of Black History

Everett Griener had hoped to die in the house that he’d built at the top of the hill, to finish up the yard work, tighten a few loose boards in the fence, and then close his eyes and walk into the light.  But at ninety-one, and still in relatively robust health, Everett accepted that he, like the morning fog that clung to the orchards in winter, would slowly fade.  There was no way around it.  He would have to sell his house on the hill.

And so he began to pack.

The McKendricks, it could be said, had more children than sense, at least by anyone who had ever sat next to them on a transcontinental flight.  It could also be said that when they arrived in Florida, they did so with little more than a thin dime.  A dime, and lots of children.  And the longer they stayed in Florida, the larger their family grew.  Their house, however, did not.  If anything, it seemed to shrink, and, Mrs. McKendrick, it could definitely be said, was going bonkers.  “We need to find a bigger home,” she sighed.

And so they began to look.

Back when Dr. Martin Luther King was organizing marches, and a black man in the south could expect to feel the sting of the word boy on a daily basis, Livingston Roberts sat along the side of Highway 27 selling his latest paintings.  The world had told Livingston, or Castro, as his friends called him, that he would be a picker.  That was what all the black men he knew did.  Looking downward, they picked beans or strawberries or onions.  They picked all day long, and then got up the next day and picked again.  The world told Livingston, picking is all I have to offer a young black man with little education in the south.  Livingston looked at the beauty around him, picked up a paint brush, and said, "I don't think so."

And so he began to paint.

Not everyone who decides that they will make their money by painting instead of picking succeeds.  But Livingston knew from the time he was little that he could do it.  His parents had a painting in their home, and for years he studied it.  Then one day he announced that he was sure he could reproduce it.  And he did.  He hadn’t had any lessons or summer camps or the guidance from a local artist.  He just did it.  And the more he painted the better he got.

Maybe he was successful because he had always been a keen observer, the kind who could look up into the sky and study the clouds for hours.  Or maybe it was because it was in his nature to be hungry and generous—hungry for knowledge about how to paint better and always generous to share what he had learned.  But from the moment he took to selling his paintings along the side of the highway, people stopped and bought his work.  He painted on gypsum board because it was cheaper than canvas, and what he painted was what he knew the tourists wanted to take home with them—pictures of Florida.

It was hot and humid, the day Everett Griener pulled his Cadillac to the side of the road and walked with his wife toward Livingston and his paintings.  Livingston smiled at the small, blonde man and his equally small wife.  He always smiled when a customer came to see his work.  Everett explained that the deep red in his painting of the tree had caught their eye, and Livingston explained it cost 35.00.  Everett peeled off some bills from the wad in his pocket.  He always had money in his pocket.  The world, after all, had told him he could become anything he wanted if he worked hard enough.  Having purchased the picture, the Greiners went on their way, back to their home on the hill, where they deposited the picture of the tree with the splashes of red into a closet.

And there it stayed for 45 years.

When the McKendricks, a family who apparently didn’t know how to prevent a pregnancy, offered to buy the house that Everett had built on the hill, he walked them through it.  Fading slowly, as his body had every intention of doing, meant that he needed to pare down his belongings.  And so as they walked through the house, he asked the couple if there was anything that they’d like to have.  Mrs. McKendrick, who was always worried about taking advantage of people’s kindness, at first declined the offer, until, that was, he opened a closet and she saw a splash of red. 

“Could we have this?” she asked, without even pulling the painting out to get a proper look.

Everett Griener nodded.  “Of course.  Bought that on the highway from a black gentleman.  Never did hang it up.”

In forty-five years a lot can happen, and in the time since Livingston had sold the painting to Everett, lots had.  The Highwaymen painters, as Livingston and his friends were called, had gained the respect of the art community.  At first, their work was discarded and was easy to find at Goodwill.  But, with time, people took another look at the works they created, and then they thought about the times in which they were created—these men who were told to pick, and painted instead.  Their pluck, entrepreneurial spirit, and contribution to Florida history, not to mention black history, all added something special that the art world likes to call provenance.

And the prices went up.

All the McKendricks knew was that they liked the splashes of red, and so they hung the painting in the house Everett Griener built on the hill.  And there it has stayed for the past ten years.  A lot can happen in ten years, and in the ten years since the McKendricks were given the painting a lot did.  They learned that the painting was a picture of a Poinciana tree, and that it was created by a man who sold his paintings on the side of the highway, a man who had been told to pick, but painted instead.  They learned that Livingston Roberts died in 2004, and that there is a statue of him in Fort Pierce, the town where he grew up.  And they learned there was more to the painting than the pretty red color.  They admired his brushwork, and his ability to create a brooding sky.  They also learned that people wanted to buy their painting, this slice of Florida history.  "No," said Mrs. McKendrick.  "Not even if we were down to our last dime. We’re keeping the painting.”

And so they have.

To learn more about The Highwaymen of Florida visit floridahighwaymenspaintings.com