He Wanted the Moon by Mimi Baird Eve Claxton

Author:Mimi Baird,Eve Claxton [Baird, Mimi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3748-5
Publisher: Random House Inc.
Published: 2015-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

What pain to have your name as a practicing physician removed from the roster of all Massachusetts hospitals, directories, medical societies and other institutions. To have your old reliable secretary who was holding things together discharged by another doctor. What pain to have your assistant discontinue using your prescription pads and stationery, and instead to use his own.

The days seemed long. I read my mail and kept up my correspondence, enjoying the daily newspapers and reading books. There were visitors only rarely and the few who came stayed only for short periods of time. There was no opportunity for any real exercise. During certain hours of the morning and afternoon, we were allowed to sit outside in front of the dormitory. There was a stone bench beneath a day shade tree and chairs were available. You were permitted to amuse yourself by putting rubber horseshoes (quoits), throwing a baseball or walking around a small plot of grass. The rules required that you confine your activities to very small space with clear vision of the nurse or attendant in charge. If you tried to walk enough to get any real exercise, you would appear to be over-active. Most patients just sat around or lay on the grass. There was no amusement of any regular sort. Once or twice a week, some of us were taken to the auditorium for music and dancing. These excursions were irregular and brief. There was no bowling.

In this atmosphere of boredom, loneliness, uselessness, my own little world had come to an end. I was divorced from my wife. I was coming to the realization of what it meant to have a family broken up. I hadn’t seen my children even once since I came to Westborough. My own profession had been taken away from me. The clouds were black and I saw no silver lining.

In a moment of intense concentration upon phases of marital unhappiness past and present, I could look upon divorce as a logical solution. But as my mind took time to consider all details of the situation, I realized that divorce meant the loss of certain things mutually possible in marriage, not otherwise available to either marital partner. No longer a home with children, moments enjoyed with mutual friends now to be discarded; the meaning of Christmas, birthdays, just a warm and welcome place to return at the end of the day; a wife to plan parties at home and to accept invitations elsewhere, talks with my wife at the end of the day, local gossip, kissing the children goodnight and tickling them to make them laugh, bedtime stories; the question of little comforts, laundry, dry cleaning, all the little things which make up a home, the club we enjoyed together.

Divorce is a horrible nightmare, but just a part of the great general nightmare of failure, frustration, loss of license to practice, a long and expensive illness, the torrent of disgrace and loss of prestige in the community, so many things that in

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