This is not the post I intended to write today, but life has other plans ….
My doorbell just rang. Unexpected flower delivery! (Really, ladies, are there many things in life happier than that?)
Beautiful.
They are from my parents and sisters and brother-in-law. The card says:
TREES ARE GREEN AND SO IS GRASS,
WE THINK IT’S KEEN YOU’RE RID OF THAT ASS.
WE LOVE YOU!
Honestly, folks—do I have the very greatest family or what?
I’ve been away too long, I know. I’ve wanted to write … about the fantastic Spring Break beach trip the kids and I took with my dear friend Jen and her kids … about the For Sale sign that finally went up in my front yard … about the teleclass that Tara and I did with Laura Campbell of The D Spot … about a quick but fantastically fun weekend trip to Vegas, complete with a little Manilow … about really cute things my little ones have said and done lately. I’ve wanted to write, but obviously I haven’t. The house-on-the-market thing has added a good hour+ of chores to my every day. My real-life paying job has been incredibly busy. The lessons and the programs and the appointments and the repairs and the everything else has meant that I simply haven’t had time to do the ME things that keep me feeling balanced. Things like running. Things like yoga. Things like writing.
I still hope for posts about each of these events, because they are definitely worth writing about. But the development that jolted me out of my non-writing reverie is receipt of the news that The Ex and The Girlfriend are getting married. And I am in a complete and utter state of confusion about it.
I expected it, yet I was still shocked.
It doesn’t hurt (exactly), yet it still feels … painful.
It won’t change anything, but somehow it changes everything.
The Ex informed me of the impending nuptials via email. While I was out of town. In a message that started with an “I thought you ought to hear from me before the kids tell you …” and ended with a sanctimonious lecture about how I should not let my personal feelings be known to the kids or convince them that these developments constituted the end of the world as they know it, as I had—in his view—done at Christmas.
As I said before, the news made me feel strangely (and somewhat illogically), surprised, pained and reluctantly pushed out on a ledge from which I wasn’t yet ready to jump. Mostly, though, I just felt pissed off. By the casual and callous way the news was delivered. By the timing of it, which seemed intentionally designed to plop some turmoil down in the middle of weekend away. By the incorrect and offensive assumption that I was going to try to influence the children’s opinions on the matter.
I won’t lie—I am not at all fond of the idea of them getting married. The news feels oppressive, although I can’t exactly pinpoint why. I’ve been trying to figure it out for days now, but I just can’t quite get my feelings about it in any sort of rational order. I know I don’t want to still be married to him anymore and I know I like my life the way that it is now. But I worry that this is the beginning of the end of The Girlfriend’s efforts to be kind to my children. I worry that, although 18 months ago The Ex swore he never wanted to remarry, she’s managed to change his mind. The additional children he said he didn’t want can’t be far behind. I worry that once she has her own biological children, mine will recede in importance, and because of his weakness, I worry that she’ll convince him to distance himself from our children.
I can’t quite wrap my mind around how either of them will be able to stand up in front of our children and other family and friends and make promises to each other that they’ve each made (and broken) to others before. It feels farcical, and what’s worse—it somehow makes my entire marriage to The Ex feel like a sham. I still have trouble reconciling that he is the same person I loved. I still wonder if I ever really knew him at all. I still regret ever having been so vulnerable, so trusting, so sure.
But at least it got me writing again.
An interesting development from the She Said/She Said project … Laura Weisbart Campbell has invited Tara and me to to participate in a free teleclass on March 23 at 9 p.m. EST.
Laura is the founder the The D Spot, a website devoted to helping women navigate the path of divorce. As a divorce coach and author of The Ultimate Divorce Organizer: The Complete, Interactive Guide to Achieving the Best Financial and Personal Divorce, she helps guide people through the divorce process and into the new life that waits on the other side. Those of you walking this road know just how helpful such information can be—sometimes just the right piece of advice comes just at the right time, and often from an unanticipated source. The D Spot has a blog, too. I’m going to guest post over there (on Sunday, I think), so check it out.
Laura hosts monthly teleclasses on various divorce-related topics and she also offers a monthly “open call” to chat about whatever is on your mind. If you’re in the Connecticut area, check out her upcoming retreat. You can also subscribe to her e-newsletter via her website.
Tara and I will both participate in this month’s teleclass and we’ll discuss many of the same topics we tried to address in our She Said/She Said project: divorce, co-parenting, relationships with the significant others, etc. To join in the conversation, call in on March 23 to the following number:
Number: 1-760-569-0800
Access code: 379361#
I’m excited to participate and will let you know how it goes!
Avery and Owen have always been close. Though they are two years apart in age, they’ve always traveled the same orbit. They play together a lot. When they have friends over, they invariably include each other and usually get along quite well. More often than not, each really seems to enjoy the other’s company. Don’t misunderstand—my kids also fight a lot. They constantly drive each other to distraction and I referee their squabbles over inanity ALL. DAY. LONG.
But they have always loved each other fairly fiercely. They have always protected each other (as in, THEY are allowed to beat the crap out of and psychologically torture each other, but no one else is). It occurred to me last night how much more they have begun to rely on each other since the divorce. We were in the kitchen and I was scrubbing cabinets in my seemingly never-ending and greatly-daunting quest to get our house ready to list. Owen needed help with his reading homework. Aside Numero Uno: Owen HATES to read. So much so and in such an aggravating and aggrandizing fashion that I pretty much stopped doing his nightly reading homework with him back in like, October. Bad Mom.
Plagued by inexplicable recent guilt about this, last night I insisted we do the reading because APPARENTLY, that’s what good mothers do. He brought his book into the kitchen, dragging his feet the whole way, and plopped pissily down next to me on the floor. Thus we began. Within milliseconds he was so frustrated that he was on the verge of tears (as was I) or violence or spontaneous combustion or something equally unpleasant. The high-pitched whining and the quick breathing and the “I hate reading! Why do I have to do this? WAAAAAAAAHHHH!”
Aside Numero Dos: At that moment, I just didn’t have it in me to properly parent. I’m surviving on very little sleep these days and very little food (because damned if I haven’t had to put my ass on an actual DIET). I am trying to sell one house and buy another. I am cleaning and cleaning and cleaning and cleaning (and I could write an entire post about how The Ex deserves his own entire episode of the show “Hoarders” for the condition in which he left our garage, no lie). I am taking carloads of donations to Goodwill and carloads of trash to the curb. I am working, though not enough, and parenting and calculating and negotiating and repairing and updating and staging and calling and signing and stressing. I am a one-armed juggler. I am overwhelmed.
I sat there listening to Owen begin his melt down and failure smacked me full in the face. I realized I just can’t do it all. I can’t get the house ready to sell and cook everyone’s meals and do the laundry and work and pay the bills and clean up and clean up and clean up and clean up and paint and scrub and change diapers and give baths and help with homework and attend school Open Houses and talk to realtors and talk to lenders and go to the orthodontist and go to swim practice and drive carpools and entertain and create memories and set boundaries and teach lessons and provide good life experiences and and and and and. I just CAN’T.
and yet i have to.
In that mini-freeze moment as I sat there staring at all of us sitting on the kitchen floor and watching all of us about to lose our shit, I just couldn’t formulate the right plan of attack fast enough. I felt tapped. Trapped. Drained. Spent. And very, very solo.
It lasted only the briefest of moments, then Avery sat down next to Owen and in an exceedingly patient voice said, “I’ll help you.” Everything shifted. She helped him sound out words and I encouraged and praised them both. I kept scrubbing and they kept reading and Amelia kept climbing over and amongst it all.
It made me think about all the other times lately when they have stepped in and stepped up. Not just when they have helped me, but when they have helped each other or consoled each other without being asked. When one has coerced a desired response from the other that I was unable to bring forth. These days, they do it a lot. It made me wonder if the divorce has strengthened the bond between my children and made them more dependent upon each other … tied them more closely to the brother or the sister who is always there while simultaneously loosening the strings that I still want bound so very tightly to me for at least a few years more. The fact that they have realized they can’t always have Mommy when they want and they don’t always get to see Daddy when they’d like is painful. It makes my soul ache. But the fact that they have figured out they always have each other, no matter which house they’re sleeping in? That gives me great comfort. Circumstances dictate they can’t rely upon me for everything, at every time. But they can, and do, rely on each other. With any luck at all, that will last a lifetime.
Avery interrupted my thoughts, suddenly indignant that Owen’s kindergarten reader contained a really tough word. She showed it to me, I agreed, and she asked, “How in the world is he supposed to read that?!” “Sound it out,” I said. Owen, ever the don’t-do-anything-for-free kid, asked, “What do I get if I read it?” Certain there was no chance in hell he’d get it, I told him, “Popsicles. And we’ll call it a night with the reading.” Avery sat back down next to Owen and pointed at the word.
Owen read, “atmosphere.”
And then we were all laughing and eating popsicles on the kitchen floor, forgetting the reading struggle until tomorrow. In the middle of all of life’s current craziness, it was a good moment and a good realization. I can’t do it all. I’m not even sure I’m doing any of it very well. But my kids are all right anyway and when I can’t do everything, they have each other to help pick up the slack.
NOW
IS
GOOD.
