On divorce and dogs.

Twenty minutes after my broccoli in garlic sauce and an egg roll arrived, my two chihuahuas finally stopped barking. My apartment was filled with the emptiness that’s only apparent right after someone leaves before you adjust to the stillness.

And I thought of you.

I thought of those three years after Mom left. All the Friday nights I called you from college, and how you would laugh and tell me about your plans for the evening. You, the two dogs, and a cat on the sofa. Butterfly shrimp, spare ribs, a Bud Light, and an episode or two of The Sopranos.

You poked fun at the irony, both of us dining on greasy Chinese takeout– you at home and me in my dorm room. Cracking a can of beer, you would “ahhhh” as you took the first sip. I laughed when Barney and Fargo started barking and begging in the background. You pretended to fuss at them, annoyed but welcoming of the conversation and commotion.

I think back on how it must have felt to have your wife leave, not for a business trip, but with little intention of coming home. I think of all those late nights and weekends you worked when we were growing up and us running downstairs when we heard you pull in the driveway. I think about the Saturdays you woke up early and surprised us with breakfast from Hardee’s and how warm and full the house felt those mornings. I think of the afternoon you and Mom suddenly gave into our desperate pleas for a dog, and I can still feel the wiggly, scrawny joy that puppy brought us all summer.

I think about the stark contrast between a house filled with happiness and holidays and one shaken to the studs by the demands of work and marriage. I think of a home filled with screen doors slamming, dogs barking in the summer, and the slap-in-the-face reality of an empty nest.

I think of you eating Chinese food on the sofa with Barney and Fargo in an echoey living room after most of the furniture, photos, and rugs had moved out with Mom. I think of you walking in the front door from work at night, wondering what had come of the life we once had.

But mostly, I think of the children you raised–all three of us in varying stages of early adulthood and self-involvement, convincing ourselves that Dad and the dogs were fine.