On Separation

 Curtis Sittenfeld writes beautifully, and her recent NYT piece has a shrewd opening:

I’ll offer it up right away, the part that, depending on your perspective, might seem ironic or juicy or enviable or tragic: I’m now divorced.

It would be difficult to stop reading at this point. What makes the sentence "pop" is the absence of self-pity. Sittenfeld has a healthy sense of perspective. (She *consistently* has this.) Also, Sittenfeld has an imagination: she can anticipate her news "landing" in several different ways, and she lists these ways.

I find it hard to know how long I was married. My former husband and I considered ourselves separated by fall 2024, but maybe it was before that? He didn’t move out until fall 2025, and the divorce was legal in January 2026.

There is an impression of chattiness--but I believe Sittenfeld works to select the insights that really seem (potentially) universal. Also, she is writing from the gut.

Now I welcome advice from other divorced people, like my friend Alyssa telling me she makes plans every other night when she doesn’t have her kids because that’s not too much and not too little. My friend Felicity told me, “It’s not that you might at some point spend a holiday alone. You definitely will spend a holiday alone, and it’s OK and occasionally awesome.” She recommends a pajama day and movie marathon on Thanksgiving. And when I told my friend Susanna that sometimes without my kids I eat popcorn for dinner standing up, she said, “Popcorn is fine, but sit down.”

The details are priceless: the popcorn on the run, the alternating quiet/busy nights, the movie marathon. The passage is also layered; underneath the humor, Sittenfeld is noticing exactly *how* friends take care of one another.

Once after mediation, I said, “I think you’ll be a good ex-husband.” He replied, “You mean like Jimmy Carter? A better ex-president than a president?”

People make these sorts of remarks on a regular basis--but Sittenfeld is rare in the sense that she remembers and *records* the remarks.

I now know that when people tell you they’re getting divorced, you don’t say, “I’m so sorry!” or “Oh no!” But it’s OK, and maybe recommended, to say, “I’m sorry and congratulations.” As it happens, my divorce is not ironic or juicy or tragic, but it might be enviable because once, near the end, my ex was driving our kids somewhere while I stayed home, and he called me from the car to tell me that baby turkeys were in the yard. The truth is that my ex and I came to feel let down by each other in deeply painful ways, that I found going through a divorce to be the hardest experience of my life, and that we continue to frustrate each other intermittently. But I’m grateful that we both still want good things—stability, delight, baby turkey sightings—for the other person.

I suspect that this is why Sittenfeld chose to write the essay. The baby turkeys. As a TV fan, Sittenfeld was likely thinking of Tony and the ducks in the pilot episode of "The Sopranos." I'm working with students on college applications--and it is so, so difficult to reach a state of perceived safety, to feel that it's permissible to just tell the truth in print. Sittenfeld makes me think of Jessica Lange--revealing her pain in "Frances." A major coup for the NYTimes.