The summer after my first year of college, I arrived at sleepaway camp for the first time in my life—not as a camper, but as a counselor. At nineteen, I was older than the campers and on the precipice of adulthood. I had spent the previous nine months at a university a few hours from home, trying on independence in small ways. I learned how to navigate a bus system, how to eat alone sometimes in a dining hall, and how to call home less often than I truly wanted. College had changed me, though perhaps not in the dramatic ways I had imagined. Mostly, it had introduced distance into my life.

My younger sister had experienced her own milestone that year. She had become a bat mitzvah that spring, standing at the bimah with a confidence that surprised even her. In the photographs from that day, she looks poised and joyful, suspended between childhood and adolescence. Our parents stood beside her, proud and emotional, and if anyone had told me then that by the end of the year they would be living separately, I would not have believed it.

A few months after that milestone, my sister arrived at camp as a camper while I arrived as a counselor. It was the first time either of us had attended a sleepaway camp. I remember standing in the camp parking lot on opening day. Campers dragged duffel bags across the gravel. Counselors shouted greetings to old friends. My parents helped us unload our luggage. 

Looking back, I can see signs that should have prepared me. My parents fought often enough that it had become part of the background noise of family life. Most of the arguments were not dramatic. They were arguments about schedules, money, household responsibilities, or things that seemed insignificant from a child’s perspective. Sometimes voices rose; sometimes doors closed. Oftentimes, silence settled over the house for the rest of the evening.

Yet none of this led me to imagine that they might someday live apart. Their disagreements seemed woven into the fabric of our family life, as ordinary and enduring as holiday celebrations, ballet classes, homework, or family dinners. I assumed the arguments would continue forever because I assumed the marriage would.

For years, my understanding of my parents had been largely defined by their role as a pair. They were a single unit in my imagination. They managed schedules, attended school events, and worried about their........

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