Divorced parenting with benefits

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Before I say anything,
A disclaimer:
Of course
I would always prefer to have my son
Here
With me,
Playing with toy cars on the
Rainbow-striped pile rug
In his bedroom.
But,
I have to say,
My husband and I have had a couple of
Very nice kid-free weekends this summer.
Between two co-parenting schedules
For three adolescent kids,
We get five to seven kid-free weekends
Per year,
Mostly in the summer when my boy
Is with his dad.
On the Friday of a kid-free weekend
We look at each other across the
Weirdly tidy living room and say,
“What should we do?”
Mostly,
We can’t think of
Anything.
It’s my fault.
Joe comes up with ideas–a movie, a late concert–
And nothing feels momentous enough for me.
(Or else I’m too tired.)
The other night,
I was so determined to think of something
Amazingly adventurous and fun,
And I was so completely unable to do so,
That I spun suddenly into the
Sadness death spiral
Where I miss my son so much
That I want to crash to the rug
And lie there unmoving,
Not even crying,
Just blinking and staring at the dust heaps
Under the couch.
(I did rally that night,
And we played cribbage and listened to music,
The death spiral averted.)
The best kid-free weekends are ones that are either
Planned far in advance:
Tickets bought and
Time booked (concerts, camping),
Or the spontaneously inspired ones:
Yoga classes together,
Playing cribbage and listening to music,
Even grocery shopping,
Just the two of us,
Feels like a date.
But the best parts
Are the moments when,
Undistracted by other people’s needs,
I’m fully attentive to my husband
As he’s talking.
And I realize
I haven’t seen him clearly
For weeks or even months;
Seen who he is,
Not what I need him to do next.
Is being away from
Our children
Worth those rarefied moments?
I don’t know.
It’s our life
And I’ll take it.

The domestic arts

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I can hang out here

Alone for the weekend,

I’m doing a little yard work,

A little cooking and cleaning.

Activities I used to have

No patience for:

The juicy smell of grass

Fresh cut with an electric mower;

How the heavy snake of water from the

Emerald garden hose is cool but not frigid;

The sizzle of chopped yellow onions

In hot olive oil,

Then garlic mince,

A carpet of ground thyme,

Flecks of basil and oregano,

Cubed tomatoes:

A marinara sauce to be

Dumped over a nest of pasta strings,

Eaten slowly

At a freshly wiped table

While I measure with my eye

The straightness of the folded throw blanket

Draped on the arm of the couch.

I have even folded

All the plastic grocery bags

Into triangles,

Like flags,

And they’re tucked in the kitchen drawer

Under the window.

I used to scoff at

Learning these skills,

Satisfying the

Basic human needs

With a little grace,

A little dignity,

Even some flair.

I had no time.

Now,

I enjoy these honorable, repetitive tasks

That are undone within hours or even

Minutes of completion.

It takes a gentle,

Detailed,

Patient touch

That I don’t naturally possess,

But could maybe learn.

I want to learn.

An open letter to my husband about why I like it when he and the kids go out of town

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You get it, Joe,

Don’t you?

What I mean when I say,

Go.

Yes, please.

Go to your mother’s in California.

Fly standby with the kids,

Gamble that you’ll get on the next flight.

Don’t come home.

Not yet.

The quiet it this city and state

Is delicious.

You and my step-kids in California,

My son with his dad in Finland.

My parents on vacation in Alabama.

Even my brother is in Wisconsin this weekend.

My own little family diaspora,

Leaving me here in Minnesota,

Alone.

No

One

Needs

Me.

What will you do with yourself,

People ask in wonderment.

Oh, I’ll meet friends for coffee,

Go to yoga,

Take a nap on the porch.

It’s supposed to be a secret from you, Babe,

But what I really like to do when you’re gone

Is clean.

I’ve got two small cleaning projects:

My mom cave, which became

The dump spot for wedding detritus,

And my son’s room.

Time to finally get rid of this five-year-old’s size 2T clothes.

But it doesn’t matter what I do.

The deliciousness is in the

Range of my thoughts
When I’m alone.
Books I might write,
Characters,
Like cats that hide under the bed
Until the house is empty
And then slink out to play.
Or just nothing.
An empty mind
Filling up the unclaimed space.
The vastness of human existence,
I can see it
Alone.
Like pulling back on a wide-angled lens.
It’s hard to explain without hurting your feelings.
You miss me when I’m gone
One night on business.
Without my civilizing influence
You stay up too late,
Zombied out on the Internet,
And sleep listlessly,
Staying on your side of the bed.
When I come home,
And am walking past you in our small kitchen,
You pull me by the waist toward you
And hold onto me until I fidget to be let go.
And it’s true.
I wouldn’t enjoy this solitude
Unless I knew you and our family and friends
Were aware of me,
Were maybe even thinking about me,
Were available if I needed them.
That’s the difference between
Solitude and
Loneliness.
Solitude is supported by a
Foundation of
People
Who are not physically present
At that moment.
Loneliness has no such foundation,
Or has the perception of no such foundation,
So that you feel that you’re
Falling through space with
Nothing to catch you.
I’ve experienced both,
And you, Babe,
You’re a part of why this is
Precious solitude.
So thank you,
Joe.
Thank you for leaving me
Alone
This weekend.

Grace

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The Skype window flickered on,

Revealing my boy and his dad

Granulated and dimmed by a

Few thousand miles of ether.

They were giggling together.

My boy on his dad’s lap in front of the computer

Trying to squirm away

The dad’s large hands

Gripping the narrow ribcage

The thick fingers digging in

For the tickle.

Both of them laughing

White teeth flashing.

“What are you monkeys doing?”

I asked,

Feigning disapproval.

My boy

Broke free and

Scampered to the other side of the room,

Where he stood panting and laughing,

Watching his dad.

Who said,

“Okay, it’s time to talk to Mom.”

The boy walked out of the room,

And his dad said,

Apologetically,

“He’s hungry.

He’s gonna have some ice cream in the kitchen.”

No tears for Mom,

No wails of longing,

Or I miss you.

Later,

Thinking about my boy

And our Skype time,

I was glad

That my boy is

Having fun

Without me.

I get it now.

That parent’s mantra:

“All I want is for you to be

Happy and safe.”

Incredible, the

Complex and paradoxical

Layers of

That kind of love.

That I could be happy and grateful

At the same time I’m

Sad and grieving.

When other parents say to me,

“I could never do what you do,

Be away from your child for months at a time.”

I always say with the assurance of

One who has experienced grace,

“Yes you could,

If you had to.

I hope you never have to.”

Last night of taking care of my mom

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It’s my last night of putting

Mom

To bed.

Eleven days and nights of caretaking her

For my dad, who’s on a trip.

I haven’t touched her this much since I was a child.

Steering her thin arms with their

Cool, white, wobbly skin,

Anchoring my hand to the only solid part of her left:

The hips and lower back,

Disentangling her clutching fingers from straps and pieces of clothing,

Pulling her pants up the haunches with their empty hanging sacks of skin.

I see things I remember about

Her body

From when I was a child:

A mole on her lower back,

The way her thin hair streaks against the base of her skull when

Pulling a shirt over her head,

The knuckle-knobs on her hands.

We have the same hands:

Long narrow fingers,

Knobby knuckles,

Blue vein tubes leading into the wrists.

I used to press on her hand veins when I was a child

When I was holding her hand.

But at a certain age,

10 or 11 probably,

I didn’t want to

Touch her

Or be touched by her

Anymore.

If I ever handed her something and her fingers,

Overreaching,

Would brush against the top of my hand,

I would wipe off her touch on my pant leg.

And now,

Here I am,

Her nurse.

She is easy, as Alzheimer’s patients go.

She is light enough to lift,

And gentle, agreeable, trusting, quiet.

(I am sure I will not be so easy if my mind goes.

I will be heavy and contrary and paranoid and I will

Screech nonsense constantly.)

But still.

It’s been hard.

A dependent child

Seems like a worthwhile investment of energy.

They’re the future of the world, after all.

Investing energy in an elderly dependent parent …

They’re at the end.

It’s just comfort now.

What’s the return?

(The return is for me in the giving, I suppose.

Another tough-love parental gift.)

Giving comfort doesn’t come naturally to me.

I would make an efficient,

Detached,

Perhaps harsh nurse.

The kind a sick person would cringe at,

The kind who would jerk an injured limb,

Or scrub a wound too hard.

So not only am I touching

And touching

The maternal body I avoided for 25 years,

But I’m trying to be

Gentle and

Patient.

Yesterday was hard.

She spilled her cereal, juice and milk

On her pants and the floor,

Broken glass.

Lifting the bird-like body in and out of the car.

Mutterings and delusions.

She messed up my plans.

I wanted to go to both

Yoga

And a 12-step meeting.

But I could only choose one.

This caregiver got one hour off duty.

And driving to yoga,

Alone in the car, I thought,

“You know how people say they won’t want to be a burden to their children?

Well, Mom, you’re a burden.”

But at the end of class,

Sweat-bathed and lying on my mat,

I started crying silently,

My tears mixing with the sweat rolling down my temples into my ears.

Tonight,

Laying her into bed,

I looked into her eyes and said,

“I love you, Mom.”

And her blue eyes focused for a moment and she said,

“I love you, too too.”

And I said, “I miss you.”

And she closed her eyes.

The hours before my boy leaves for the summer

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Six hours before my

Small boy’s

Plane leaves,

And he and I are at the zoo.

I’m always the one who wants to come here

Before he leaves for the summer with his dad.

“I don’t want to go to the zoo,” he says as we’re leaving the house,

But I don’t give him a choice.

The impervious rhythms of the animals

Are a comfort to me.

And anyway,

He likes the sharks and

The giraffes and

Buying lunch in the cafeteria and

Cotton candy from a cart,

And a small toy from the gift shop.

Today we were watching the snow monkeys when my

Chest tightened up like a drawstring.

Nine weeks, he’ll be gone.

The gestation period of a dog.

Today driving here, I thought

There must be other mothers who put their

Kids on airplanes for the summer,

Who dread the last days of the school year

(“Any fun plans for summer?” people ask.)

Who take extra pictures and videos,

Who think melodramatically:

“What if he dies while he’s gone?”

Before remembering:

“I suppose he could die here with me, too.”

I say cheerily,

“You’re going to have so much fun this summer!”

Smiling,

As a tear tracks down my face.

And he will.

He’s got his life over there, too.

I don’t share much in it,

And that’s okay.

He’s not mine, really, anyway.

It soothes me to think that

He’s a child of God out in the world,

And I’m one of his guides.

Among my many duties,

I take him places like the zoo,

And let other people take him places

Without me.

On airplanes even.

Training children like the animals they are

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Kingdom: Animalia

I was reading this book on

Disciplining children,

And it offered this strategy:

Don’t think of your children as

Adults-in-the-making,

Using

Reason and

Logic to

Help them

Understand

Why

They should

Behave in certain ways.

Instead,

Think of them as

Wild animals

To be

Trained.

Huh, I thought.

We are animals after all.

Kingdom: Animalia

Class: Mammalia

Order: Primates

Genus: Homo

Species: Homo sapiens

When my son was born,

I remember studying the

Whorls of the hairs between the small shoulder blades,

And running a finger down the

Knobs of his spine.

“He’s a little animal,

A small creature,” I marveled.

Five years later,

The whorls have faded to blond and the

Spine knobs are usually covered by a t-shirt.

He is starting to be

Civilized.

Which I guess is my job as his

Mother-trainer.

It’s difficult to not rely on

Reason and logic to

Make a case to him.

But it’s true.

When I ask him

Why

He did a certain unacceptable thing,

He shrugs and says,

“I don’t know.”

And I believe him.

I think he really doesn’t yet have the

Self-awareness to

Know why.

Or when I try to create

Golden Rule parallels for him:

“How would you feel if someone

Did [something inconsiderate] to you?”

He just looks blank.

Or when I try to explain the layers of

Reasoning behind why I tell him not to do things:

“Do you see how sharp this knife is

That you just tried to grab?

It could slice into your finger,

We’d have to go to the hospital,

You could get nerve damage,

Maybe lose the use of your finger!”

I’ve lost him after “sharp knife,”

Which is more of a fascination than a

Deterrent anyway.

Best, the book says,

To just say “No,”

Offering no explanation or reason,

And follow with immediate–

Humane–

Consequences.

Time-outs.

Wow, it’s hard.

I have to pretty much

Train myself to shut up

Before I even start to train him.

It’s probably good for both of us.

Spending Memorial Day with the living, avoiding the dying

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I suppose I should have spent

Memorial Day

With my mother,

If Memorial Day is for

Remembering

Those who are

No longer with us.

Then, she would’ve been the

Appropriate one.

If you think of a person as a

Sum of three parts,

As I do:

Mental,

Physical,

Spiritual,

Then at least

One-third of

My mother–

The part centered in her

Atrophied brain–

Is gone forever.

Dead.

So I should’ve gone over there.

Paid homage to the

Memory of her mind,

And helped my father maintain her

Body and

Spirit.

But I didn’t.

I spent Memorial Day with the

Vividly alive:

My husband,

Our children,

And friends.

Swimming,

And lounging around on plastic lawn chairs

In the sun,

The finally hot sun.

I typically make it a point to

Think of the dead

On Memorial Day:

All my grandparents,

An uncle who died at 10 years old,

An aunt and cousin killed in a car accident,

A cousin who drank himself to death.

Some of them I’ve never met.

But this year of all years,

With one of the

Dying

Still available,

I avoided her.

The crispy bones in her back and shoulders

When I pat her in greeting;

The jaw ticking

Ceaselessly back and forth;

The milky eyes watching my nose,

Then my hair,

Then looking past me as I

Talk and smile.

I never want to be there,

With her,

But I’m usually willing to go.

Yesterday,

I wasn’t even willing.

This Memorial Day,

I chose the living.

The kid who watched me do yoga in the park

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A few weeks ago,

I was in the park over my lunch hour

Doing yoga in the sun.

I was in headstand

With my legs pretzeled into lotus.

I was listening to the

Birds chirping,

And enjoying the spring breeze on my stomach

Where my shirt had peeled down,

When I heard a voice:

“Hey, I can do that.”

I curled at the waist,

Lowering my braced legs to the ground,

And looked up.

A teenage boy was kneeling on the

Green pitch next to me.

He put the tip of his head on the pavement

And raised his legs above him,

Basketball shoes tiptoeing against the sky.

“See, I can stand on my head.

I don’t think I could do that leg thing, though,”

He said, his voice as steady as if he were

Standing upright.

“You could if you practiced,” I said,

Moving into my next set of poses.

(I hesitated,

Are we going to chat?

But then I just kept moving.)

Shoulder stand:

Legs and torso slicing up into the sky.

My eyeballs,

Behind my sunglasses,

Rolled left:

The boy was perched on the concrete wall,

Toes brushing the ground.

“Do you mind if I watch?

I’m not invading your privacy am I?”

“No, no, that’s fine,”

I said quickly.

My legs folded down over my face into plow,

The backs of my legs pressed up against the sky.

From between my knees,

I could see him.

His hands were resting on his thighs.

We were silent for about ten minutes.

I moved through my poses.

Breathing as I’ve been taught.

I didn’t forget about him,

But the fact of his presence receded

As if he was backing slowly away.

When I stood up into

Eagle,

Twisting one leg around the other leg,

And one arm around the other arm,

I quick

Checked.

He wasn’t looking at me.

He was looking up at the sky.

———————————-

After I was done,

And rolling up my mat,

We chatted.

He had just moved up from

Chicago

To live with his mom.

He was a senior.

He played football,

And wanted to be a

Car engineer.

He was going to go to the

U.

He thought I should put

My son

In football

If he couldn’t sit still in class.

That’s what his mom did.

We walked

Sort of together

Back toward the road.

Me toward work,

Him toward his alternative high school.

“See ya,” I said as we walked in different directions.

A few other times,

I went back to that park over the lunch hour,

And he was there every time,

And every time,

He would come and

Talk to me

Or sit by me

As I moved through my yoga poses.

One day,

I started going to a different park.

The origins of my mom cave

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For the first year we lived in this house

The room at the top of the stairs

Was a dump space.

I wouldn’t even say “storage”

Because that implies some

Deliberation and

Method.

One day,

The kids discovered it,

And started nesting in there like

Wild voles

Among the piles of clothes and

Boxes of junk.

They would stash

Food under their t-shirts and

Close themselves in the windowless space

To snack and

Conspire in the

Pitch blackness,

Until one of them yelled they had been

Stepped on.

We would open the door,

And they would blink at us

And the offended party would pick his way

Through the clutter,

Crying,

To the door,

And then everyone was kicked out for the day.

I came up with the idea of making it a sort of

Indoor tree house

For the kids.

I cleaned it out

(Crumpled pop cans,

Deflated bags of chips,

Empty Gogurt wrappers folded gutter-shaped,

Stray bits of candy rolling around —

It was a bandits’ lair I commandeered that day).

I laid down a patch of carpet,

And lugged all the toys up the stairs,

And organized them on shelves.

When I presented it to the kids the next day,

They were dismayed:

“But we liked it the way it was!”

It never really took off.

Every few weeks,

I would open the door and turn on the light,

And see that the toys were strewn about differently,

Or the Christmas lights I had strung up were falling down,

Or a bed pillow was left in the middle of the floor.

But I never saw them playing in there —

It was as if elves stole in at night and

Messed the room up.

So one day,

I grabbed it.

And now it’s mine.