A little bit brutal, a little bit rock and roll

Today was a little bit brutal, a little bit rock and roll.

Daughter had a really rough handover at Dad's House. Half and hour of clingy "I want Mommy-ness" that ended in a tear and holler fest. Which left me, in tears, in the car. Because there wasn't really anything I could do to make it better. And I don't live there. And I had to leave. And she wasn't going to stop crying as long as I was there. And I desperately didn't want her dad and I to start snapping at each other. And I it all just felt like shit.

With a side of FAIL.

We were a little bit early (ten minutes I think) and Daughter had fallen asleep in the car. She woke up when we arrived, but was in good spirits until we got into the entry way where she tossed her jacket on the floor and refused to remove her arms from around my neck while starting to whimper. I did not want to leave her dad's girlfriend with two kids of her own, dinner in the works, and my kid freaking out, so I offered to stay until she was comfortable. Her dad didn't get home until almost 5:30. I was there for about 25 minutes. It was ok. We mom chatted a little. The little boy is adorable. The baby is HUGE, in the most gorgeous 6 week old, fifteen pound baby sort of a way.

(I want to go on record as saying how lovely it was to spend 20 minutes watching her "mother" today. She's a pro and so calm and confident and able to seamlessly break away in all the ways that I struggle with. I just wanted to say, we can talk "Mom" and she is a genuinely fabulous mother. If ever comes the day when they are reading this most random of random websites. I wanted to say that. In all of its pith and anonymity.)

It feels a lot like a no win situation for me over there. Its just weird. I know my eyes catch on stuff that used to belong to me or remembering the painting or the toy that I bought that is sitting outside with a 12pack of beer on the porch or how hot it is. Maybe its just my personal discomfort.

Anyway Daughter, who I thought would be thrilled as usual to see her dad and get over the clingy weapiness in pieces when I passed her off to Dad. She was crying and hollering and just in despair. And it was awful. And painful. And she was still totally loosing her shit when I passed her off to Dad. And she was still totally loosing her shit when I put on my shoes and said goodbye to her most adorable, nearly two year old brother, and she was still loosing her shit her shit when on the porch and the other side of the door I felt the tears well up in my eye.

I drove around the corner before really loosing my own personal shit because my car was parked where she could see it from her bedroom window.

I spent five hours with Daughter today and we had a blast. We danced and did art and played blocks and decided that she would dress up as a Bella Kitty* for Halloween.

She is at the most adorable point where she can hear a song once and know all the words. She danced (DANCED!) her heart out to all the Enchanted songs while picking up her blocks and tool truck toys from the living room floor.

Good god. I just love her so much and am so devastated by her genuine wanting tonight. I spent five hours with Daughter today and have spent six hours writing this post.

And I'm just so sorry.

I'm just so profoundly sorry that she has to juggle two houses and Mom Day and Dad Days and School Days and Girlfriend and Boyfriend and brothers and everything all in one life.

And, Daughter, I'm just so sorry. Its not so bad really. There are all of these people who love you so much, but I'm sorry that the simple story, the easy choice, wasn't a feasible option. Its not worse, the choices that we made. It wouldn't be better to go through a divorce now, or five years from now. It was the right choice. It was the right choice. It was. And most days everyone is happy. And everyone loves you. I love you more than you will ever, ever know. And I am so deeply sorry for all of your tears. I am so very cut to the core. You, my perfect, darling baby are my one true thing and someday you will realize that your mother has truly failed you in a whole lot of ways and I will never, ever forgive myself for any single one of them, but I do honestly believe that you will thrive in your life and goddamn, I'm not going anywhere. I won't break that promise.

Annivorcery

Yesterday was the first anniversary of my divorce.

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of my separation.

Good times!

I didn't get any sleep last night. Not unlike the night before my appearance in divorce court last year. Or the night(s) prior to my moving out of my ex-husband's house two years ago.

There is a post that has been on my mind a lot in the past couple of days. Snickollet wrote a really touching piece about babies and memory and all of the things she wants for her children to remember about their father who died of cancer when they were babies. Her hope is that they keep tangible memories of the time that they had with him, of their infancy, of the time when their family what nuclear and whole. It was very poignant and haunting for me.

I wish just about the polar opposite for my own child. I'm thankful that she has no memories (real or otherwise) of her family the way we intended it to be. Of her mother and father as a couple who lived together and were married. Of a time when her 'Daddy House' was shared by the three of us. When we bought a new car to replace the one that she now refers to as 'Ours'. The days we spent as brand new parents in the hospital. The slow, scary, drive home in the bitter cold going all of 8 miles an hour with an actual PERSON in the car seat. Of the weekends with family visiting. The endless laundry and cloth diapers. The stories we read to her in bed together before she was even a month old.

I'm glad she did not keep those memories because of all the ugly ones she would have brought along with them. Of a fight so loud it woke the baby. Of my being locked out of my own home by my own husband. Of all the alienation. The separation. The sadness. The head games and power plays. Of all the time it took to battle our way back to a place where we can act casually with one another.

Friendly.

Cordial.

Cooperative.

As I write this I am in the midst of a great internal turmoil. I am wanting very much to talk to Daughter's father about amending our custody agreement so that she has more evenly divided time between the two of us.

This would put a lot of balls back in the air. Even broaching the subject is full of uncertainties and I am terrified of testing the waters of our hard won 'friendship'. I am terrified of creating ugly memories for my child that she would carry with her into her adult life. I want what I have always wanted for my baby, a peaceful life. A happy family, whatever that may look like.

I do not want her's to be a life of conflict or sadness or confusion.

I do not want her to be the subject of lawyers and trials and all those terrible things.

She asked me today if I could come live at her 'Daddy House'. She suggested that we get bunk beds and share her room.

I think I actually felt my heart break when I had to tell her that no, that would not be possible and could not promise her anything positive in return.

Happy Annivorcery to me. The first of many to come.

Sincerely, Anonymous

Dear Internet,

I choose not to share with you my daughter’s first name. Although it is a very, very good one if I do say so myself.

Privacy issues are a topic of constant debate in the mommyblogosphere. Honestly, it was one of those debates that I was having with myself for months that inhibited me from writing my own stuff instead of just reading about other people’s lives.

Here is the thing. I do not actually believe that putting her face and/or name online, on my blog of all things, is going to put my daughter at any real risk.

I am not a celebrity or an heiress. No one really gives a damn. She doesn't carry a Prada purse. My car is ten years old. Like I said, no one GIVES a damn.

Here, then, is my reservation and it is part of a much larger ongoing aspect of her life and mine as her parent.

Her dad and I are divorced. We have similar parenting philosophies and are currently writing out the details of a long overdue ‘parenting plan’ for the child that we share we don’t raise together. We share custody. When she is with him, she is with him. When she is with me, she is with me.

I think this is a unique thing for single parents who are writing about their kids or about being parents. I don’t have anyone to ok things with. And oh lord, I don’t want to rock the boat or upset anyone. I don’t want to appear to be exploiting my daughter or her father or their new family which includes his girlfriend, her son, and the baby they are expecting in the fall.

Eventually this topic winds its way around in my brain back to the much larger topic of Family. What constitutes my family? My daughter’s family? What loyalties to I owe and to whom exactly? My daughter is clearly first and foremost in my decisions, but there are so many other people’s lives and opinions that must be factored into this process. There is her dad and his family. There is my boyfriend who has children and an ex of his own. There are sisters and parents and employers and ARGH! Where is the guidebook already? Hmm?

Hell, my mother still hasn’t quit contesting some of the facts in a story she found that that I had written for a memoir class in college and that was Seven Years Ago. Darling internet, can you feel my fear?

At any rate, for the time being I choose to stick with anonymity. At the very least, I choose to do so on this very global level. Those of you who know who I am because I invited you here also know my kid and her dad and the rest of it. For those of you who do not, please bear with me, I’m not trying to be a prima donna; I’m just attempting to navigate uncharted territory.

Family is the topic at hand here this week. What do we look like? Where we are going. And how , though we may not all look like the Berenstain Bears or Leave it to Beaver; we all deserve the same acceptance.

Please Stay tuned.

Sincerely, Anonymous

My Motherhood, Myself

I am not an overly emotional kind of girl. I’ve managed to keep it together pretty well over the past three years in particular. Three years that have been filled with pregnancy and the joint arrival of a new baby and a disintegrating marriage. Capital letter events like: Estrangement, Separation, NEW relationships, Divorce, new Babies, Illness, Toddler-dom, finally the beginnings of something resembling Reconciliation, a life separate, but still eternally connected.

And here it is, Mother’s Day again. An impossible time of year to not reflect upon my own motherhood and the unexpected twists and turns that have led to where we are today, my two year old daughter and I, watching Caillou in my parent’s living room.

--

Three years ago, while on an impromptu getaway weekend to visit friends up north, I got myself pregnant over Mother’s Day weekend. I didn’t realize this shocking fact until weeks later while traveling in Europe. The exhaustion and mental fatigue that this realization tossed into the mix made for a bit of a trying trip and a fair amount of resentment over the need for thirty five pound backpacks, camping on the ground, and a lot of barfing on a lot of trains.

The pregnancy went reasonably smoothly, I think that every bump and twist of a first pregnancy seems more dramatic than it probably is in reality. We spent most of the summer traveling through Europe, taking in New York City, visiting family in my hometown, and finally driving up the AlCan Highway in my little sister’s little truck v e r y s l o w l y with a very large trailer filled with all her belongings in tow.

--

In the fall we started back to school. I finished my B.A. in Literature. My husband went back to teaching and finishing his graduate thesis. I took naps on my yoga mat under the desk in his study carol in the library using my messenger bag as a pillow.

We sold our condo, bought, radically renovated, and moved into a bigger house on New Year’s Eve. Three weeks later our daughter was born, one week early, 8.5 pounds and 20 ½ inches long. She had lots of golden brown hair, long fingers, and eyes as sparklingly blue as the heart of a glacier which was fitting as the temperature read -28 as we drove to the hospital the morning she was born.

--

It was a long, cold, sleepless winter and spring. I started working a bit a couple of months after the baby was born because the combination of the giant new mortgage and the graduate teaching stipend scared the tar out of me. In June I was presented with a big, job opportunity that would last only six months. The school year was over and my husband was home most days with the baby who always seemed happier around him than she did me.

We decided to separate by August 1^st. My job required longer hours than my husband thought were reasonable, there was tension and strife in our home and we didn’t want our baby raised in an environment that we both felt pretty helpless to control.

I moved out and into a small apartment owned by a generous friend. Tensions flared as they often do, but everything was amplified by the ‘unusual situation’, the fact that it was the mother who had moved, the father who stayed home. When winter rolled around again and my second job, the one that helped to pay the mortgage on that new house where my child lived, took me to the State Capital for four months of the spring.

We resolved the issues of our separation and formally filed for divorce just after the fourth anniversary of our marriage. I met someone and reluctantly entered into a new relationship. I was diagnosed with Celiac’s Disease which answered a lot of questions, but caused radical shifts in my diet and overall health and demeanor.

My daughter, mother and I traveled for two weeks in June to California. I lived with generous friends at home that summer. Tensions ran high through the time we were divorced, the day before the anniversary of our separation.

By the arrival of fall I was exhausted and emotionally spent. I had some money in the bank and was no and no longer paying any part of a mortgage. I quit my job and enrolled in graduate school. The man I had been involved with since the spring invited me to live with him to save on overhead while attending school and to advance our relationship. It was an enormous leap of faith on both our parts as we each had a failed marriage in our pasts and a lot of predictable fears.

--

In January I packed a carry-on suitcase and returned to my parents’ house for a five day trip to celebrate my daughter’s second birthday. Immediately preceding my return, my father had been hospitalized for a shoulder removal surgery, the final attempt to rid his body of a MRSA infection that had been ravaging his body for over five years. Release from the hospital, we discovered, would require round the clock in home care and i.v. injections administered every eight hours, 24/7 for several months. It was decided that I would stay, in my high school bedroom, in my parents’ house for an indeterminate amount of time to help with his care.

The winter and spring in my parents’ house was not easy. It was exhausting and full of stress and rapid change. There have been positives though. Staying home with my father has meant that I have been able to stay home, full-time with my daughter for the first time since she was an infant. We have eaten meals together everyday and gone to the pool, baked cookies and raked the yard, gone for coffee, and shopped at the bookstore. Taken long bubble baths and big girl showers, braided hair, read stories, taken naps, potty trained, and practiced riding bikes on the sidewalk as the snow melted.

Her dad and I have started talking again, reading books about co-parenting, and eating lunch from time to time to make plans for our daughter for the coming months as she transitions into the role of big sister to two brothers.

Yesterday, my daughter and both her parents went together to visit the playschool she will begin attending in the fall.

Last night, my mostly non-emotional self bawled through the sappiest movie I have seen in recent memory. I am, on a normal day, way to cynical to shed tears over your run of the mill chick flick, but P.S. I Love You floored me. I cried and cried for hours.

I cried because my marriage had died. I cried because my life and my motherhood and my family is so radically different from what I had planned. Because this spring of being a stay at home mom will only last through the fall and then reality will have to set in again. I cried because we’ve all made it through the roller coaster of the past three years and the ride has come to an end. Friendship has started to settle into a relationship that I feared for a long time was poisoned beyond repair with pain, anger, and resentment.

I cried because its is Mother’s Day weekend and for the first time since I became pregnant, I will get to enjoy it fully with my daughter, planting flowers in my parent’s yard. I cried and cried and felt better when I recovered than I had felt in ages.

And then, yesterday morning, when my daughter came bounding in through laundry room of my parents’ house while I was making coffee, I groggily looked up to see her father holding flowers and a card for me, her mother. To say that flowers from my daughter and her father were unexpected is a colossal understatement, but I didn’t burst into tears. I did wrap my arms around my daughter’s father, almost involuntarily. It has been years since we had shared a hug. Our physical contact has been consciously limited to the passing back and forth of a baby or squirmy toddler since she was born.

This weekend we have lazed about and planted flowers and dressed up in party dresses to go out to dinner with my parents. In a few weeks we will pack up and head back to my new home and for the summer and in the fall she will return back to her “Daddy House” and her growing family.

It doesn’t look like I thought it would, but my daughter is a happy, thriving, active, independent little creature. She has a large family of people who love her and who she loves right back. Motherhood isn’t what I expected it to be, but in so many ways it is so much more than I ever anticipated and we all keep on growing every single day.