A Maid Family

I suppose the whole sorry mess that I now find myself in started months
maybe even many years before I showed up on the scene! but for me (Jack)
and my older sister (by two years) Jill (Ha,Ha) I would say that if you
had to pick a time and an occasion that it started, I would have to
choose above all others was that cold January afternoon one month and a
day after Christmas (and exactly one week before my 15th birthday) when
our ordinary parents sat us down at our ordinary dining room table (that
we ordinarily used only for holiday dinners) in our ordinary middle
class house in our ordinary middle class neighborhood which was located
just outside of the very ordinary town of Springfield Massachusetts, and
announced to the two of us (from out of the blue) that they had gotten
an uncontested divorce a little over two months ago.

To say that I was shocked would have been an understatement of epic
proportions! as the whole time they spoke to us (outlining the way thing
were to be from now on) I simply sat in silence with my mouth hanging so
wide open that you would have thought that I was part large mouth bass
(as Jill told me later that day without a hint of mirth in ) as I looked
first at moms mid thirtyish freckled face (that as I now recall always
for some reason kinda reminded me of Kim Darby's face in that old movie
True Grit) then at dads face (who as I sat there as well for some reason
perversely reminded me of Edward Fox) then at my sisters face (that was
as I recall lined with tears as she was crying freely) who for some
reason in my parade of stars logic reminded me of a young Melissa
Gilbert!

Anyway the result was that the next day when I awoke to go to school the
loving mother who had always made my breakfast, and had seen me off to
school was now gone (to visit an old friend somewhere in Montana she
said before leaving that very night in a cab) which was it turned out
the last time I would see her for nearly three whole years!