Loving My Life

Today is Valentine’s Day and I considered re-posting what I wrote last year, a piece called Single Awareness Day. February 14th can be a tough day for singles, especially us women who are fans of romance and sometimes feel incomplete without a partner.  However, I realized that this year I have so many blessings to count that to even think twice about being single would be to squander them.

In addition, my seven-year-old daughter Layla showed me the Valentine that she wrote to herself.  It read: Dear Layla, I love being Layla and that will never change.  Happy Valentine’s Day. Love, Layla.  I was overwhelmed by her love for herself and realized that she certainly had the right idea.  Today, and all days really, we should celebrate our love for ourselves.  Without it, we can’t truly love anyone else anyways, at least not successfully.

In the past, I have written alove letter to myself and also appreciation lists (the best of which, perhaps, is “50 Ways to Love Your Ex“), so today I am going to continue that tradition and give you all an update of how life has changed for us in Boston and how we are thriving.

1)    I love my new job. It has turned out to be a great position for me.  I have taken on new responsibilities like mentoring graduate student teachers and sharing pedagogical tips with them, and that has been a wonderful new challenge and source of stimulation for me.  In addition, my university is sending me to Madrid for the summer to teach a six-week course.  Since it will be such a great cultural opportunity for them, my ex has agreed to let me take the kids with me for the whole time.  We are all very excited about this new adventure.

2)    Boston is a great city. It has been very fun to live in a bigger metropolitan area.  In the last few months, I have gone to more museums than I have attended in years.  I love the excitement and newness of living in a new place, and have enjoyed making new friends and exploring new places.  In addition, my kids are attending one of the best public schools in the state.

3)    Our new custody schedule is working well. When we lived in Northampton, my ex and I had the benefit of being only 5 minutes away, and we were able to see each other and the kids almost every day.  That has undoubtedly changed as we are now in Boston, and he is still in Western Mass, and we do miss him.  The kids now stay with me during the school week and spend the weekends with him.  We meet about halfway across the state in Auburn every Friday afternoon after school, and then I pick them up there again on Sunday evenings.  This has allowed the kids to have the consistency of one household during the school days, and I have enjoyed having my weekends free to socialize, do school work, and go to yoga.  Furthermore, the kids have half days on Tuesdays, and I have arranged my teaching schedule so that I could get some down time with them on those days.  All things considered, this change has happened with relative ease, and I am so appreciative of that.

All in all, this move has been a great one.  It has enabled us to have new and exciting experiences while maintaining our bonds with our family and friends in Northampton as well.  As I contemplate my present situation, I feel so very pleased to have had this opportunity.

In the spirit of Layla’s Valentine’s Day card to herself, one of my dear new friends posted on Facebook a beautiful poem by Derek Wolcott called “Love After Love.”  I share it with you now as an inspiration for each one of us to look for love from within, instead of focusing on who is giving us love from without.  Happy Valentine’s Day.

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another; who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Memories from my Happy Marriage

I just finished Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking.  I’m not sure why I read it.  Maybe because recently I’ve gone out a few times with a widower.  Maybe because I was curious to see what Didion’s concept of magical thinking was.  Or maybe just because it got great reviews.  What I do know is that I did not read it thinking that it would be a poignant account of a very special marriage.  And I did not read it thinking that it would make me reflect on my own once very special marriage to my ex.

Didion and Dunne were married writers who spent pretty much all of their time together.  They would accompany each other to medical appointments, take regular lunch breaks together, and, of course, read and edit each other’s writing.  They were best friends that practically shared their every thought with one another. Her grief over his passing was obviously to be expected.  What did take me by surprise, though, was how much their marriage reminded me of my own.

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Making Peace With Divorce

The reader comments on my recent Huffington Post article on sons of divorce have been fairly eye opening for me.  I am a bit amazed at the amount of hostility towards divorcees.  Some of these comments come from jilted spouses who are determined to make everyone see that divorcees are uncaring liars who egregiously broke their wedding vows.  Others seem to believe that divorce is the ruination of not only the children involved but also of future generations.  Selfish seems to be the epithet of choice, as ex spouses are excoriated for failing to put their children first.

When I told one of my best friends that I wanted to show people that divorce can be a good thing, she said to me that no one wants to hear that.  I immediately reframed my remarks.  If about half of the population is divorcing anyways, I’d like to let people know that you can find happiness after divorce, that you can maintain loving relations with your ex spouse and that you can also raise happy and well-adjusted children.  Is that such a radical notion?

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How Close is Near?

Questions of proximity plague me recently

Will my ex find work nearby?

Is he close enough to visit?

How long will my commute be?

Why is my family so far?

Physical closeness isn’t a prerequisite to

Feeling intimacy, yet it does foster

A sense of continuity and solidity

I want to see my sister

Laugh, not just hear it virtually

My kids want to roll on

The floor with their dad and

Actually feel his prickly unshaven face

I want to touch a lover’s

Hand and hold him in bed

Not just receive remote text messages

Maybe I am just too possessive

We certainly can’t hold the clouds

Yet we appreciate their downy presence

Our touch ruins a butterfly’s wings

I will never visit the moon

But its constant cycles soothe me

Love flows through my beating heart

Regardless of my loved ones’ location.

And I wonder, still I wonder

How close is near?

* * * * * *

I am glad that Melissa keeps giving me topics to write about on Fridays because I still can’t seem to write too much about what’s going on with me.   I put my house on the market last Friday and a Facebook friend asked why I hadn’t blogged about it.  I will….eventually.  The good news that the house is already under contract.  One step nearer? Perhaps.

Lucky Charms

There once was a farmer whose

Horse ran away and neighbors exclaimed

What bad luck.  Maybe, he said

The next day the horse returned

Bringing two wild horses with him

Such good luck. Maybe, he said

Then his son broke his leg

While taming one of the horses

Definitely bad luck. Maybe, he said

The following day the army came

To recruit young men to fight

In the war. Seeing his broken

Leg they passed on the son.

Such good luck. Maybe, he said

* * *

There have been times when I

Felt charmed like when I met

My beautiful bronzed boy in school

When we divorced? Not so charmed

Yet the farmer’s story shows us

Every event can be both lucky

And unlucky depending on our perspective

I do believe that the only

place we find lucky charms is

on a bright red cereal box.

* * * *

Today’s Six Word Friday prompt is charmed.

I haven’t written in a week because so much is going on, but I promise I will announce all my news soon.