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For the past 35-plus years, my wife, Judy, has rarely missed an opportunity to reminisce about the day I played the piano in my parents’ living room to the tune of Neil Sedaka’s Breaking Up Is Hard to Do. The reminiscing regarding one of my more melodramatic moments usually serves as lighthearted drollery for dinner guests.
The story behind the song goes something like this: One day back in 1978, I invited Judy (a friend and fellow student at the time), another female friend and my girlfriend to my parents’ house for a home-cooked Italian dinner.
My mother had an open-door policy when it came to having my friends over for dinner. She was more than happy to cook up a batch of pasta at a moment’s notice. But when I told her I’d invited “three girls” for dinner she became momentarily flustered. She was thrown off her game. She eventually acquiesced, but not without first branding me as furbo (Italian for clever).
The clever badge was lost on me. The guest list wasn’t a tidy one but an ambiguous, precarious three. It was one girlfriend plus two girl friends. Why I considered it desirable to have this convoluted triumvirate around my parents’ dinner table eludes me to this day. Suffice it to say that the awkwardness of the event was surpassed only by the heaviness of the one that followed shortly after – the breakup of my girlfriend and me. She had decided to end our two-year relationship. Whether my Neil Sedaka recital was an omen or an attempt at musical transparency remains disputable.
In hindsight, what I know is that the dinner proved to be a pivotal moment in determining the course that my “affairs of the heart” would take for the rest of my life. Judy and I married two years later, and this year we are celebrating 35 years of marital bliss.
Six months ago, the reminiscing found a new purpose. Our eldest son called, sounding sombre and dejected, to tell us he and his girlfriend “broke up.”
Over the years, Judy and I have relied heavily on a tag-team parenting approach. If one of us dropped our kids off at daycare, the other picked them up. If one of us bathed the kids, the other read to them before bedtime.
When our kids needed help with math and science homework, Mom stepped up. Music and sports were Dad’s domain. Dad changing the camper’s flat tire en route to a weekend getaway inspired Mom to lead a back-seat chorus of “Daddy saved the day” for the remainder of the trip.
The more we practised the tag-team dance, the more our dance steps coalesced. Through the school-age years and into our kids’ adolescence we were like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers floating across the parenting dance floor. When our two sons moved away to university, we incorporated new steps into our routine, such as editing essays and sending money.
But when we heard our son utter the three fateful words “we broke up,” we suddenly lost our rhythm. Hearing the sadness in his voice was like having the band switch from the melodies of Gershwin to the dissonance of Sonic Youth.
Judy looked to me to lead, but I was paralyzed. It was as if my dancing shoes had become glued to the floor while the song of my son’s broken heart kept playing on speakerphone.
It wasn’t our son’s first breakup, but this one was different. Maybe it was because he was older and seemed more invested in this relationship, or the way his eyes would light up whenever he spoke about her. Perhaps it had to do with my wife and I ticking off all the boxes in less than a minute after meeting her over dinner. Or maybe it was that we, too, were going to grieve the loss of our relationship with her.
The Internet is replete with advice on helping your children get through a breakup: “just listen,” “give them space,” “offer support, not lectures,” “keep them hydrated,” etc.
But it wasn’t until Judy turned to her trusted practice of reminiscing that my feet started moving again.
Recalling and describing the pain of my own breakup experience in 1978 helped me to better understand what my son was going through. I remember at the time feeling like nothing anyone said or did could help relieve the heartbreak. I learned there was no way around the hard reality that breaking up really is hard to do. My son was surprised to hear that something like this had happened to his father, and he told me later he appreciated my honesty.
My Internet sources tell me a broken heart is a universal human construct that dates back more than 3,000 years. However, new research suggests a silver lining in that our brains may be wired to “move on” after a heartbreak. My silver lining was finding the best dancing partner in the world. I hope my son’s silver lining soon finds him.
Update: Judy and I continue to learn new steps to add to our dance repertoire. As I was writing this article, my son and his girlfriend reconciled. Two days ago we received a three-word text from our other son: “We broke up.”
Carlo De Lorenzi lives in Timmins, Ont.