Teach Your Children Well

The kids were fighting in the back seat of the car today, not a common occurrence but one that nevertheless elicits an inner groan from me.  Before I could say anything, however, Layla sweetly changed her tone of voice and said to Jonah, “I’m sorry that I smacked you with my shoe.”  Then she leaned over and started kissing his ear, her favorite body part on everyone.  So the admonishment that I was working up to turned to praise, as I quickly commended her for changing her attitude and asking for forgiveness.  This little moment filled me with immense appreciation and love for these two kids of mine that, on the whole, treat each other with such affection and respect.

When we were alone later, I asked her where she had learned to do that.  I had first assumed that she had been taught that at school while playing with other kids.  No, she said.  My mind examined other options, one of which was had she seen my ex and me apologize to one another?  I couldn’t possibly remember all the conversations that she has overheard from us, but I did hold out hope.

We’ll of course never know what our kids would have been like had we not broken up.  However, I do know what they are like now, and frankly, they are doing great.  Jonah is a very thoughtful and intuitive boy, who seems to naturally understand what motivates people to do the things they do.  He also is easy going and flexible and gets along with most people.  Layla, as I have mentioned, is much moodier yet has a sweetness about her that seems to charm even the most inveterate grumps.  Her smile lights up her face, and a room.

I am careful not to identify too closely with my children or accept too much credit, or blame, for their actions.  I tend to believe the Kahlil Gibran saying that children are not part of you but instead come through you.  They are their own people.  Yet I cannot help but experience a sense of pride at seeing how well my kids get along with each other and others, how they express deep love not only for their immediate family but for countless friends and adopted family as well, and how they seem to understand that conflict and anger are natural parts of life that can be quelled with the right attitude.  Despite our previous times of tension, I believe that with our peaceful divorce and ongoing friendship my ex and I have maybe, just maybe, been positive role models.

Kids Say the Darnedest Things

The first day of school

Today is the last day of school for my kids.  Jonah biked for his last time (his new ritual), and I pushed my dear sweet Pokey in the stroller (I am hoping that she will be able to walk next year).  I was getting all choked up as I said good-bye to the principal, the teachers and other parents.  My kids had the best teachers and classes this year, and it is so nice to see them thrive.

We all want the best for our children.  That was one of my biggest concerns when my ex and I broke up.  Having come from a very loving and tight-knit family where divorce was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind, I was worried about bringing my kids up in a (damn this term!) “broken” home.  But lo and behold, my kids are flourishing in spite of (or perhaps because of) our divorce.  In fact, I think they are better off with separated parents because we are now kind and loving with one another instead of tense and at each other’s throats.

There is much that I could say about this topic, but I have noticed that it’s harder for me to write about the kids than it is to write about my ex and me.  They are so close to my heart, and today of all days I am wearing my heart on my sleeve.  So instead I turn to a more amusing topic…my kids’ reactions to our post-divorce dating life.

In the first year after our breakup, I started seeing a guy who had three kids of his own.  Jonah, who is my social butterfly, said to me one day.  “Mama, I want you and Udi (the name he made up for his dad) to get re-married so that I can have a mom and a dad at each house.  And I want some more siblings too.  Wow this is going to be fun!”  I had  to admire his enthusiasm.  Like me, he often looks at the bright side of a situation.  Clearly he is in the more love is more love camp.  My response was … “Sure, honey, but you let me pick the man, okay?”

When I was dating Marc, the kids made a couple of funny, yet poignant remarks.  Marc is 55, quite a bit older than anyone else I had dated.  The kids adored him because he rolled around on the floor with them and threw them in the air, typical kid pleasing activities (his own boys are grown up).  I was therefore surprised when one morning Jonah told me that he didn’t think that Marc should be my boyfriend.  His reasoning?  That he didn’t look “right” for me.  When I asked him why, he said that he looked too old and that my previous boyfriend looked “better.”  I explained to him that looks weren’t everything and that what was inside of Marc was more important.  A few days later the four of us were in Marc’s car, heading to the bowling alley, and Layla, the parrot, repeated the same thing right in front of Marc, who, by the way, thinks that he looks much younger than he does.  I was a bit mortified, but luckily he laughed at how tough kids can be.  However, now that he has broken up with me, maybe I should remind him that he looked too old for me anyway.

Adults often think about things in their heads but have learned not to share every thought with others.  Kids…not so much.  So just like Jonah compared Marc to another boyfriend, Layla one day compared me to my ex’s girlfriend.  She said that her laugh was not as loud as mine, but that her butt was just as “jiggly.”  Considering that she is 26 and I am 43, I think that was a major compliment.  I’m just so sorry that she isn’t having as much fun as me.

Back to Marc…when he broke up with me, Layla looked me straight in the eye and said,  “You don’t need him, Mama.  You’ve got us.”  You’ve got to appreciate that she has learned female solidarity at five years old.

The last one is my current favorite.  Jonah said to me a few days ago, “Mama, you know why you aren’t dating anybody right now?  Because your stories aren’t very interesting.”  That one hit below the belt.

Pater Familias

Rainy days are always a source of frustration (and inspiration if you are lucky enough to have it strike you) for parents of young children.  It is especially hard if the factory is down one man (or one woman as the case may be).  This Saturday wasn’t supposed to be rainy, but it’s New England where the weather can change on a dime.  The kids and I had plans to spend the day at our friend Tobey’s lake cabin in Goshen, frolicking in the sunshine and water, of course.  But Mother Nature had other plans, and we just had to work around them.

Tobey is a 39-year-old public defense attorney, never married, never had kids and never wants either.  As one friend wittily couched it, he’s “unattachable” and argues quite deftly for that position.  Yet you can tell that he’d be a great dad by the way he fawns over his Labrador retriever.  I know…a dog is not a kid.  My ex and I sure learned that.

Despite the glimpses into his softer side, Tobey gives the impression that he is an irascible, prototypical bachelor with less than progressive views on women and relationships.  He’s a tough karate dude who could take most men down in a heartbeat (or kill them in court, pick your poison).  Nevertheless, over the last nine months or so, he has become not only one of my closest friends, but also my so-called platonic boyfriend and sort of Uncle Tobey to the kids.  His relationship with them really started via the weekly karate lessons that he gives them, yet it has transcended the dojo both physically and emotionally.

I’m sure that Tobey never expected, however, to be hosting two divorcees and playing pater familias to their four children on a rainy day in June 2010.  But host extraordinaire he was.  Despite the moms’ reluctance to go to a lake cabin in the pouring rain, Tobey convinced us we’d have fun.  We’d cook lunch, play games and hang out.  With no better idea than that, we did it.  Tobey had packed asparagus, corn, veggie sausages, chips, salad and enough towels for my family alone.  He even had these great enviable insulated bags.  He was more prepared than me.  I did marinate some chicken breasts (which only I ate) and brought 3 beers and half a bottle of wine (which only I drank).

Our friend Mel, a yogini divorcee who in progressive Massachusetts provides alimony for her former wife, rounded out the group with her two girls. We all ate lunch together (with everyone sitting, can you believe it?) with Tobey at the head of the table where his grandfather, who built the cabin 50 or so years ago, used to sit.  After lunch, the moms and kids played games while Tobey cleaned up.  The kids actually got in the lake and made sand castles in the cold and foggy weather and had a ball.  Then Mel and I cuddled up on the couch and worked the crossword puzzle while Tobey toted the kids around on the “Tobey train” to an endless chorus of “Do it to me.  Do it to me.”

Well perhaps there is nothing particularly insightful or funny to this post.  It was just remarkable for me because it was such a sweet day.  This guy that I met last summer in yoga hosts us in his home and plays daddy for the day to our kids.  It is endlessly surprising (and touching) to me the many directions that love can take and all the wonderful ways in which we form family constellations.

We arrived back at my house around 5 pm after dropping off the kids with my ex, and Tobey, of course, had to head home immediately for a nap because…damn…raising kids is a very tiring job.

Photos on the Fridge

I used this photo for last Saturday’s post because I thought it represented what my ex must have felt seeing another man’s number on my fridge.  I revisit it now with my own recent run-in with a refrigerator…at my ex husband’s girlfriend’s apartment.  What was I doing there? you ask.  Well, in our typical peaceful way, she was helping me (us really) out because my ex had to suddenly go to Puerto Rico to visit his dying father.  It was their spring break, and she offered to take the kids for part of the day so that I could go teach.

The first time she had made such an offer, I considered refusing, telling myself that she was not our children’s parent and shouldn’t be doing such a thing.  Then I reminded myself how silly I sounded trying to be a martyr (never a good look for anyone) and that I really just didn’t want to admit the role that she played in my kids’ lives, even though by all appearances it seemed to be a positive one.  The second time she offered to stay with them, I had moved right into practicality mode.  Let’s face it.  It just made good sense for the kids to spend the day with her instead of being bored in my office while I taught class (and tried to multi-task).  So I graciously accepted her offer without hesitation.

I was feeling good on the drive to her apartment.  It was a beautiful warm spring day and I was looking forward to having a few hours to myself in the office and then an afternoon trip to Great Barrington where I was leaving the kids for the night with a friend.  However, when I got there I received a metaphorical punch in the face or maybe just in the stomach (which is worse?).  As I dropped the kids’ stuff off, I came face to face with her refrigerator, and what was there were photos of my kids.  Now I’ll admit that I did some snooping on Facebook and saw that her profile picture was of her and Hugo.  It felt a bit weird to think of someone else’s identity being formed by her relationship with my husband (right…ex), but I didn’t feel any sting.  Seeing my two precious babies on the front of her refrigerator was a whole different story.  For a split second, I wanted to grab them and run and remind her that they were mine.  But luckily yoga has taught me a thing or two about non-reactivity, and so I politely thanked her for helping out, kissed and hugged the kids, and got the hell out of there.

They had a wonderful day with her riding their bikes on Smith campus and visiting the greenhouse.  But my overwhelming memory of that day is those photos and how they offered me an important lesson.  Yesterday a friend of mine wrote on Facebook “There is a difference between what is right, and what is right for me.”  The photos on the fridge moment certainly made me come to terms with that adage.  It wasn’t right for me to see those pictures there, but it was right that they were there because, as I said just yesterday, more love is more love, and that woman loves my children.  That might not make me feel good, but it makes the kids (and my ex) feel good.  It makes them feel loved.  And with that realization, what was right instantly became right for me as well.

My Other Co-Parent

I have a confession to make.  I am two-timing my ex.  I have taken another co-parent, and he’s lovely.  I never meant to do it, but Jonah found him for me by becoming best friends with his son Noah (sometimes I wonder if Jonah chose him because he too had separated parents).

I always tell my suitors that I am not looking for a father for my kids.  And I mean it.  They already have a wonderful father.  But as my friend Sarah Buttenwieser reminds me in her musings on her daughter’s open adoption, more love is more love, and so I would never reject someone who wants to love my kids.  They can only benefit from caring adults in their lives who bring them unique perspectives that their parents don’t have.

Jon teaches Jonah tennis, took the boys to the US Open last fall, and taught Jonah how to ride bike, for which I was quite grateful because Jonah always got mad at me when I tried to do it.  He has helped me move an air conditioner, invited us to enjoy potato latkes with him at Hannukah, and even got Layla excited when she bowled a strike on the Wii.  It is clear that neither the kids nor I have the tension or charge with Jon that a marriage or blood bond often brings.

We have developed a certain Saturday ritual in which Noah comes over to our house in the morning while Jon teaches tennis and then we do an outing with the kids.  Last Saturday we headed out with our bikes for an excursion.  Jon asked for a wrench and fixed my bike and then loaded up the cars.  As I was preparing myself inside I realized how easy and light it felt to do this with him, whereas family trips with my ex always seem so stilted and rife with tension.  He was even patient with me when I had to make a couple trips back inside to get things that I had forgotten.

He took us to the Williamsburg Snack Bar, a place I had never been before.  Of course, why would a beach girl like me expect to find a clam shack in rural, land-locked Western Massachusetts?  We actually had one of the best lobster rolls I have had (outside of Gloucester, MA of course) for $6.25.  As we ate, we laughed about how much the kids were whining (which would have been much more unbearable had he not been there) and tried to teach them some manners (a process that really requires many adults to reinforce).  It was nice to be able to share that with another parent and to also have something that I always value…adult conversation.  The weather was stifling hot and so we decided to bail on the biking idea and go to a nearby swimming hole that Jon knew about.  I  very much appreciated that he had local knowledge that this transplanted Californian still hasn’t picked up.

At one point, a friend called to solidify our plans for that evening.  When I told her what I was doing she said “Oh the family is together.  How nice.”  And that is exactly what we are.  A part-time family, a different kind of family, but a family of a sort nonetheless.  People always talk about divorce as the downfall of the American family (and of course, the vaunted “family values”), but I instead see it as an opportunity to create additional meaningful bonds, to have even more love in our lives.

The next day Jon sent me a Facebook message reminiscing about some adorable comment that Layla had made.  Didn’t I tell you that he was a lovely co-parent?