Last Friday, my mom called me at work.

“Do you want the piano?”, she asked.

“Sure”. She must have detected the curi­ous hes­i­ta­tion in my voice.

“We’re going to be mov­ing soon”, she fur­thered. There was never even a hint of mov­ing before, so I had to ask.

“Separately?”

“Yup.”

This is how I find out my par­ents are get­ting divorced.

My imme­di­ate feel­ing was that of resigned sad­ness, and a grow­ing resent­ment as a result of this sad­ness. I wished that they couldn’t affect me like this, that they meant noth­ing to me, but in the pit of my stom­ach, I know that they do.

It’s like won­der­ing if you’ll cry when your grand­mother dies, never believ­ing that you will.

Until it happens.

I should have seen it com­ing. A few weeks ago, she called to inform me that she was putting funds in my invest­ment account, so that she would have an acces­si­ble cache of emer­gency funds in case my dad ever left her. Like insur­ance, it’s another thing to have just in case, hop­ing never to need it. Even in my early child­hood, there were mem­o­ries I’ve tried to block out. Bloody gashes, divorce scares, plead­ing for us to stay together. All I ever wanted from them was a nor­mal family.

Thumbnail: Parents 1

Thumbnail: Parents 2

Lately, even in the last few years, every­thing seemed to be going well. The last time I vis­ited, they were doing things together. Dancing. Eating. There was even talk of buy­ing a new car. Now the real­iza­tion is set­ting in. That was the last time I’ll have seen them together. Married. As hus­band and wife. I took a pic­ture of them that week­end, when we went out for dim sum. My dad was order­ing food from the menu, and my mom was pour­ing him tea, arms crossed over his. It’s the last time I’ll see them together like this, and the only pic­ture I have of them.

I don’t even want to think of what the annual fam­ily gath­er­ings are going to be like, or how I’m going to visit them, indi­vid­u­ally, dur­ing the hol­i­days. How I’m going to react if I find out they’re dat­ing again.

All I can say now is that I’m disappointed.