Tag Archives: parenting

At All Cost

Posted on by
Reply

Today is 7/23/13. I wrote this passage 4 years ago. It hurts to read it again. Not because I feel the same despair and anger, but because I remember feeling it and I grieve for us and for the difficult journey we were on. I want to go back and deeply embrace us all. I want to give an invisible shoulder to lean on.

I’m a little embarrassed reading this now…and I cringe a weensy bit when I think about posting it. I was so raw and vulnerable and the pain is shocking to look back on. But that’s part of our beauty as human beings; we are such complex and intricately stitched together creatures. Our rough edges and flaws are as legitimate as our gentle, intact and sound parts. And now, here’s what it was like to tell my three children that NH and I were separating.  Ugh.

My children. My dreams and fears. They are all so beautiful. It’s more than the color of their eyes, the way their noses are set or the gentle curve of their chins. They possess that infinite love, hope, and innocence that only a child can. They speak from the heart. They feel intensely and often. They’re bursts of laughter, runaway silliness, and the sweetest of joys. They’re selfish and needy, anxiety ridden at moments and seriously unaware. And I love them immensely, immeasurably and intensely. Their pain is my pain; their bliss is my bliss. And one day we will have to separate, and I will release them fully to the world and to themselves. Today, though, they are mine and I cherish the moment.

I believe fiercely – some could argue foolishly – that there is nothing in this world that compares to a mother’s love. Nothing stronger, more virtuous, more right, more deep than the love a mother has for her children. Yes, fathers love their children and would sacrifice themselves to preserve their offspring. But that’s just it. It’s about preserving an offspring and not cherishing the child. That’s power shaded by love. When you hold a living being inside your flesh and nourish it with your blood, a commitment is forged from the strongest of steels. The need to protect the life is simply pure love.  Life as they know it is threatened now, and I’m in protection mode.  But what am I protecting them from? From NH? From all the uncertainty? From the landslide that our life is in? I don’t want them to know divorce. I don’t want them to question the stability of our life together – not yet, not because of me.

Shortly after NH told me he was leaving, he commented that he would take the girls with him a few days every week. Take them? Why? No, I wasn’t going to have any of that and quickly suggested that he and I take turns being in the house and caring for them. I didn’t really think through how displacing myself would play out; I only knew that my children needed stability. They needed to lay their heads on their pillows, in their beds every night, and they needed to open their eyes every morning and see the only four bedroom walls they had ever known. NH suggested it would be fun and camp-like for them to stay with him at his friend’s house. I could not believe he was serious. Fun? Camp-like? Sleeping on the living room floor of a strangers’ house? This was the beginning of their world being spilt in two, not a fucking trip to Yellowstone. Thankfully, he agreed with me, though, and we set about creating this ridiculous “on-off” parenting arrangement.

It was a Wednesday night at dinner when we explained to the kids that we were having a serious argument and that sometimes when this happens adults need some space from one another (yeah right, real adults wouldn’t run away. Real adults stand and face the onslaught of anger and disappointment. Real adults look one another in the eye and speak from their heart about their experiences, their fears and their needs. Real adults take ownership of the shit they created and real adults do right by their partner. But, hey, I’m not angry or bitter about this separation.) So we were going to create some space and take turns being in the house and caring for them. All of the standard catch phrases were spoken: this isn’t anyone’s fault, we love you more than anything, your world is intact and will stay on course, we will work hard to resolve this and put the pieces back together.

NH did most of the talking. I was truly and utterly broken-hearted. Devastated: verb, destroy or ruin something • cause (someone) severe and overwhelming shock or grief. I was the definition of devastated. I’m not sure if the pain of losing my mother when I was 24 even compares to the pain of knowing I had to leave my children, even if it was only for a few days every week. And after we put them to bed and he prepared to leave the house, I sat at the kitchen table and I asked him what he was going to do to take care of himself. I had witnessed him have, what can only be described as a major emotional breakdown that afternoon during therapy, and I believed he needed serious outside support. He had the nerve, the insensitivity, the pure gall to ask me what I thought he should do. I didn’t have a mirror so I can’t be sure what the look was that I gave him, but I know what the feeling was.  Simple hatred. He tears our children’s life apart because he is incapable of processing his own emotions and being a present, engaged adult, and then he asks me what he should do. Jump off of the bridge, fucker. Crawl in a hole and die. I won’t dance on your grave, but I won’t shed a tear either.

Words do not adequately describe the pain of involuntarily leaving my children, of packing a bag and walking out of my house and leaving my children behind. There is a small piece of hate in my heart reserved just for NH because of this. Now, I know that I need to be very careful to not nurture this hate, and that I will need to process and release it one day soon. But as I write now, it’s there. It has a tiny pulse and although it spends most of the day and night silent, it does breath.

p.s I just remembered that part of NH’s breakdown at therapy included him admitting that he hoped for my plane to crash when I went to visit family. Without the kids. Just me being torn to pieces in a plane crash. Thanks, darling. I hope the UPS truck runs you over, too.

Movies Are for Escaping Harsh Realities, Right?

Posted on by
1

My children are worriers. They come by it honest. Do you remember the shooting at the movie theater in Aurora, CO? Hopefully no one has forgotten. One of my children hasn’t, and every time we go to the movies she gets worried. She tells me, in her sweet, soft voice, that she likes going to the movies but that she worries someone will come in and shoot her.  Parenting is humbling in so many ways, and this is one of those “bring me to my knees” conversations.

I’ve been able to give one part validation: of course that was horrible and scary and I understand your fear; and one part reassurance: no one is going to hurt you and that won’t happen to us. It’s a lie, right? People will hurt her in life and crazy shit does happen to innocent people.  I look her in the eyes and I tell her everything is going to be OK. And then I give her a long hug, as if it might create a force field of sorts around her that can deflect a mad-man’s bullets.

Yesterday, the kids took a big step towards independence – the kind of independence that no one thought twice about when I was growing up. They walked from our house to the local movie theater with two other friends, about 1 mile. It was a beautiful summer day, they had money in their pocket for a stop at the ice cream store and they were happy. And then my one who worries about being shot in a movie theater says, “I want to go, but I’m worried. You know. About someone coming in with a gun.” I look her in the eyes, hands on her shoulders, digging deep inside myself for confidence and authority but adding a little light-heartedness, and I say, “We know all the crazy people in this town and none of them own guns. No one is going to hurt you in the movie theater.” She smiles a bit and asks, “Who are the crazy people in our town?” and I tell her that we might be on the list of crazies and that some of our dear friends might be on the list, too. She relaxes and they’re out door.

Two weighty issues here: the soft lies we tell our children to comfort them and to maintain their sense of security, and crazy people with guns! Our society fails the mentally ill. Not many seem to care  and yet we all pay dearly for this state of denial.

I might be an atheist of sorts. It’s not that I’m a nonbeliever, it’s that I believe we don’t truly understand the inner workings of our universe, both physical and non-physical. We seem to have a small grasp of the physical arena, but the spiritual eludes us. For the record, I don’t believe in a God that sits in heaven and manipulates our existence. I do believe we – humans and other animals, the earth and all that it contains, space and all that it contains – are part of an intricately woven web. This “we” is deeply linked, bound and influenced by the different components. I think the answers to who and what we are, are beyond our imagination. The only element that I have confidence in is the concept of love. Love is mighty powerful and part of the answer, part of the reason, part of the basis for this web. (I’m going to go eat some granola and dance in a fairy circle now…ha! I can hear my Midwestern family thinking those thoughts about me.)

I believe that the idea of afterlife was created when a small child turned to his or her mother hundreds of thousands of years ago and asked, “What happens to me when my body breaks and I leave you?” And that mother, because let’s be honest it realistically was the mother, looked into her child’s eyes and said, “There’s a place where we will all be together again”.   And you know what? Hundreds of thousands of years later, I said the same thing to each one of my children when they asked. I think there is an afterlife; I’m just not convinced it looks anything like what we have here on Earth. I omitted that last thought, though, because there’s not a lot of comfort in the idea that something happens to our being after we leave the physical body, but I can’t give any details or provide a thread of familiarity for my child to hold onto. That’s like saying, “Go ahead. Jump in the ocean by yourself. A lifeboat  – or something that might resemble a lifeboat – will find you eventually. You’ll be fine”. I wouldn’t jump.

And then there are our mentally ill. I say “our” with purpose. (It doesn’t have anything to do with being a socialist, although some might accuse me of that. Fine, I don’t think it’s a dirty word.) The “our” goes back to the intricately woven web where we exist together…and the love. We need to take better care of one another. There’s no honor in allowing our young, ill or old to fend for themselves. What we do – or don’t do – for these marginalized or vulnerable groups is a reflection of how we value life and humanity. And apparently we’re suffering.  I don’t have answers for this one, yet. I’m thinking about it. We need something better to catch our most vulnerable when they fall.