STORIES FROM THE BREAKUP

Life after separation is similar to returning to a country whose laws have all changed since you last visited it. The stories in this file are an attempt to map this territory and mark landmarks in it: the first night when the children sleep with their father, the first holiday apart, the first match on Tinder, a first date with a strange man - but also parting with children who have grown up, parents who have aged and especially old versions of ourselves . "We didn't divide the bank account between us, but we divided the days with the children like you deal a deck of cards at the beginning of a game, one for him and one for me, one day for him and one day for me, and we divided the weekends, which were the jokers in the pack, in the same symmetrical and equal way that turned our diaries into two mirror images, Two chains, two and one evening of presence and absence, with and without. The children wandered between us with drowsy looks, hunched over from the weight of their backpacks. T