My children struggled terribly after my divorce — and my oldest daughter struggled the most
Filling up a car with diesel is never a good move… especially when your car runs on regular gas. But there I was, standing at the pump somewhere between the Midwest and New York, my hand shaking as I squeezed the handle of the nozzle.
All I could think about were the jeans. My daughter. In the passenger seat. Wearing jeans.
It wasn’t the first time, but those stiff, ripped blue pants still felt like a heart attack waiting to happen. I was driving her to a special school in New York, a school for girls who had gone off the derech, girls who needed “a different kind of environment” (I knew all the euphemisms). Girls like my daughter.
I glanced stealthily to my left, and my stomach dropped. A chassidish family was filling up their van at the next pump. The mother in her tichel, the father with his long peyos flapping in the wind, a gaggle of children streaming out in their pressed, proper, tzniyus clothing. That was what a frum family should be. What I used to believe my family would be.
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