Statistics claim half of all marriages end in divorce. I guess that means my family must be doing marriage right.

When my mother was fifteen, her father left home. She followed his tracks a year later, a lone animal cutting through the thick Minnesota snow, and banged her fists on his polished door to be let in from the chilling bite in the air. "I'm never going back to that house," she said regarding her mother, a neurotic storm who raged by slamming cupboards and crashing dishes on the floor. He let her in. When my mother was eighteen, her father married another woman and cleansed himself of his kin. Erased, she moved in with her grandparents.