During those years, our family had grown. Cece and I already had our first son, Ben, born the year before my graduation from Lamar, and in November 1974, another little boy came into our lives. We named him Bryan. We now had two sons. We had bought our little house in Lake Jackson. I had graduated from college and begun building a career. I had left the State of Texas and was learning an entirely new business in steel fabrication and estimating. From the outside, it might have appeared that our lives were moving forward exactly as they should.
But inside our marriage, something was going wrong.
Something Changed
During this period, Cece went to work for a doctor in Lake Jackson. Then our marriage seemed to deteriorate very quickly. Looking back over so many years, it is tempting to try to identify one moment when everything changed or one reason that explains everything that happened afterward. Marriage usually isn't that simple. What I know is that the marriage that had carried us through my college years, the move back to Lake Jackson, the beginning of my career, buying our home, and the births of our two sons began to come apart.
By 1978, it was over. Cece and I divorced.
Two Little Boys
Divorce between a husband and wife is never only about a husband and wife when children are involved. There was Ben. And now there was Bryan. They were still little boys. That made the ending of the marriage something much larger than simply dividing property and going separate ways. I knew something about that from my own childhood. I had been a sixth-grade boy when my mother and father divorced. I remembered leaving the farm. I remembered moving to my grandparents' ranch. I remembered attending three schools in one year.
Now, years later, I was the father. That is one of those circles in life you never expect to complete. As a boy, I had experienced my parents' marriage ending from one side. Now I was experiencing the end of my own marriage from the other.
Life Does Not Stop
The strange thing about personal heartbreak is that the rest of the world keeps moving. You still have to get up in the morning. You still have to go to work. Bills still arrive. Children still need their father. And employers still expect you to do your job. Even as my marriage ended, my career was developing. I had two sons I loved, a growing knowledge of estimating, and music to help support us. I still had to get up, work, pay the bills, and be their father.