Immediately I prickled. My well-trained and mostly dormant Irish temper flared inside of a nanosecond. I hit delete. The comment to a blog I posted about parenting in separate households read: “Joint custody is terrible for children. They never have a home.”
I opened a new fresh document and furiously (and indignantly) filled the page with 400 words about how my daughters have a loving, cheerful, comfortable home. A home filled with cats and memories and their old artwork on the walls. As a Taurus, my primordial instincts to stubbornly protect the home I am proud of, flexed so fast my thoughts could barely keep up with my fingers.
There. I thought, smugly closing my laptop. As the experienced lawyer I am, I had put my best case forward – my new blog read like an opening statement, a killer cross-examination, and a mic-dropping closing argument comparable to the best of the best cinematic courtroom scenes. My arrogance came off me like a bad perfume in an elevator.
At dinner that evening I sat with my daughter, her boyfriend, and her best friend – all their parents divorced. We sat at our obviously cozy dinner table in our homey dining room with a home-cooked meal I had lovingly prepared (or maybe we were eating a delivered pizza…). I told them about the outrageous comment left on my blog post and was about to launch into my triumphant response when I noticed the room had gone still.
