It seem like an innocuous drive. We were headed to Marina Park to get some sun and play. I mean, it’s been over six weeks since the sun shined for more than a few hours.

“I hope Daddy gets that job.” My daughter said sweetly.

“Oh yea. Why is that?” I asked.

“So I can see him more often. I haven’t seen him at all this year. I miss him and once you guys are divorced, I’ll never see him again. “

Boom! Ouch that hurts. She went on further to explain about her two friends who have no mom. One lost their mom to divorce. The other to death.

I couldn’t believe she’d come to this conclusion through her own reasoning. I know that she is incredibly precocious but this was beyond anything I fathomed at her age.

After all, I am a child of divorce. My parents divorced earlier in my life. My father was absent but the realization later in life just made me fantasize about who my father was. It hadn’t left me with such a deep, well reasoned fear.

Where I dreamt of my dad and I reuniting someday; she reasoned that divorce would cut him out of her life.

I hadn’t prepared myself for these types of issues. This need for reassurance. I thought surely the fact that her dad and I hadn’t lived together in her lifetime would make it easier. She wouldn’t see a gap. Just a finalization to the way it’s always been. I realized I oversimplified the process in my own head.

I had been asking age appropriate questions about what she wanted to see out of this divorce. Number one on her list was for her parents to be nice to each other. My ex isn’t to blame for my impatience for them, but it shows. Every. Single. Time. For that, I certainly shall do better.

But now I stuck with the feeling that as her mom, I may not be able to give her all the tools she needs to be “okay” with this process. So, I suppose it’s time to already engage with a child counselor. She hasn’t acted out in any detrimental way but I can tell it has changed something in her.

As I write this, I wonder how my own mother dealt with her young daughter and me, a toddler after her divorce. Where we angels? Where we happy? Did we think the way my daughter is thinking now? I’d ask but somethings are better unsaid.