Etiquette and the new family tree

...as if the person has been crossed out of life forever, branded with an “X” like one of charles Manson’s groupies. I am better at coming up with titles for books than I am at actually writing them. The last title I wrote was this:

"Divorce Etiquette, Southern-Style: How to Act When Mama and Them Are No Longer Mama and Them."

If only I had the book to go with the title, I'd have my best-seller.

There is a real need for this kind of instruction; that much I know. Divorce is so common today that you can't plan a wedding, funeral, bridal shower or cemetery-working without considering the hairy logistics of what to do with ex-in-laws.

Even in South Louisiana, where Catholics outnumber all other denominations, the children of divorce sometimes bounce about between three sets of parents and six or eight sets of grandparents, not to mention their godparents, so important to the culture. Christmas is a real bonanza for these parent-poor kids, but the family tree of such hapless sprouts can look like a cypress-knee swamp.

On first blush, any sane person would say common courtesy should determine where to seat or stand those whom -- for lack of a better term -- we'll call "divorce orphans." Only the commonest, trashiest hostess would be rude enough to ignore or slight a person whose only crime is being related to an ex.

Rules would make it far easier, though, and I mean the kind of arbitrary, written, never-broken rules that put a salad fork on the outside of the meat fork and on the left of the plate. Who first decided that should be the way to set a table, anyhow?

Isn't it just as important to know where to put divorce orphans at a wedding?

I'll write one random rule right now: The wife of the father of the bride who is no longer married to the mother of the bride should sit with the groom's family, third row from the back, next to the aisle. Thus I have declared, and thus it shall be written.

How simple is that?

Specifics, give specifics. The guidelines don't have to make any more sense than any other rules of etiquette. Just somebody, please, make some up to help keep the peace.

My mother used to say that "Blood is thicker than water." By that she meant that people tend to side with their own relatives in any given dispute, no matter how stupid or mean or vulgar or wrong said relative might be.

Something must be badly maladjusted inside of me, because I've often found myself plowing through some thick water with mighty thin blood. I'm closer to some of my former husband's relatives than I am to my own, mostly because some of his treat me better.

I see no reason to take beautiful photographs of my former brother-in-law's child down from the wall just because we're no longer technically family. Whenever anyone asks who is in the pictures, I say, "My nephew."

Until someone comes up with a better thing to call the precious little boy who is my first husband's brother's child, I'll continue to say it.

I've always hated the term "ex," anyhow. It sounds so harsh, as if the person has been crossed out of life forever, branded with an "X" like one of Charles Manson's groupies.

I try to say "former," or "past," much gentler-sounding words for a good person.

In a polite society -- and the South is on the fence between being mannerly and like-every-other-region these days -- you need to be able to address these issues with good humor and some consistency. We need a Miss Manners with a drawl.

I guess some families aren't cursed by divorce. I've heard they still exist -- and I don't just mean in Utah. I guess those clans can fill in the names on the family tree with ink and lord it over the rest of us, the ones of us splitting sheets and wielding erasers.

Face it. Many of us still exchange Christmas cards and cell-phone numbers with good people we met through former spouses. Till death do us part. And, then, only politely.

© 2005 Rheta Grimsley Johnson

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