Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Tag: divorce

  • On blogging and privacy

    I have three sons. None of them feature on my blog. While most of this blog’s posts are about photography and history, sometimes I tell stories from my life. I try to lay myself bare in them, to go right to the places where I struggle and am scared, because I think that’s interesting. I…

  • The Christmas bellwether

    This is the third in a short series of stories from 10 years ago. A sad story for Christmas Eve, but with a hopeful ending. Just one more story to go after this, next week. It seemed like a good idea at the time, having Christmas as a family. It was our last. I couldn’t see,…

  • Three hundred square feet

    This is the second in a short series about the most difficult time of my life, ten years ago right now. I told this story once before, in November of 2009, but rewrote it for today. She wanted me out, just for a month, just to clear our heads. Ten days later, the double-cross: don’t come back.…

  • $159 a week

    This happened 10 years ago at this time of year. We called it a trial separation. I took my brother’s couch while she stayed with the kids in our home. Ten days later, she said she didn’t want me back. My brother walked the line between helping and enabling, and stepped off on the side that said I’d have…

  • Fatherhood changes when teenagers are almost ready to launch

    I was so happy and proud for my sons on the days they started Kindergarten. I could feel them growing up as they boarded the school bus, their hands on the rail and their superhero backpacks hanging low. I’m sure my grin was plenty goofy as I watched them go. My older son was absolutely thrilled to get…

  • Reflecting on 20 years in Indianapolis

    2014 is turning out to be a year of many anniversaries and passages for me. I’ve been sharing many of them; here’s another. I moved to Indianapolis at the end of August in 1994. My 20 years here can be divided into two 10-year periods: before and after my wife decided not to be married…

  • Kodak Automatic 35F

    The Kodak Automatic 35F is an early-1960s viewfinder camera with a built-in selenium light meter. It’s a decent performer, if you can find one working.

  • Sophie

    2007 was a year of major transitions for me. I was trying to glue together the pieces of my life after my divorce was final. I bought my house. I started this blog. And Sophie passed through my life. My older son, then just 10 years old, was just sure I was lonely now that I…

  • Anchors

    Do you have any possessions that connect you to times in your past? My end tables and coffee table came from a used furniture store just after I graduated from college and got my first apartment. A matched set in the fussy Colonial Revival style, they were inexpensive when they were manufactured, which was probably…

  • Home alone

    It’s Down the Road’s fifth blogiversary! All month I’m reposting favorite stories from the blog’s early days. My ex-wife was happiest when she was busy, and so she always had an astonishing to-do list going. Saturday mornings she’d bounce out of bet at six and work hard and fast, a million things to do, all day.…

  • Captured: Early autumn sunrise, almost Indianapolis

    During the school year my sons stay overnight at my home on Wednesdays. We like our relaxed evening family time. But school starts early, and none of us enjoys getting up long before sunrise the next morning for the 45-minute drive to their mother’s suburb. We stumble around the house getting dressed and eating breakfast,…

  • Reflections in the snow

    The snowy season began a little early here in Indianapolis, with the first snowfalls in late December. We had a white Christmas for the first time in years. It snowed three times before I was able to shovel my driveway. The more my little car packed down the snow, the more it slipped and slid on…

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