Crisis Management

This past week, something very troubling and sad happened in our lives, something that many of you may have seen on the news.  My daughter’s second grade teacher was arrested and charged with the possession and creation of child pornography.  This event was disturbing on so many levels, but the one that I want to mention is that it made me question my ability to trust people, especially men.

Layla’s teacher was a truly amazing and dedicated educator, and the allegations against him made me wonder what secrets each of us is keeping.  My faith in humanity was truly rocked.  This man, whom so many parents and children adored, had a secret life that was not only illegal but also quite harmful to the same people that he professed to care about.  The irony of this situation was quite painful and confusing for me.

Fortunately, a silver lining appeared in this incredibly dark cloud that was hovering above me.  People started reaching out and demonstrating a tremendous amount of kindness.  As is always the case, my Facebook community responded with overwhelming support.  I disagree with the criticisms made about the superficiality of social media connections because my online community has buoyed me in several moments of turmoil, and their love and admiration for my response to this situation helped restore my faith not only in humanity but also in the role of the Internet in our society (very bad for the dissemination of child porn, excellent for social support).  In addition, the parents at my kids’ school reached out to me, and we shared and bonded in a profound way that wouldn’t have been possible if not for a crisis that made us forget about our busy schedules and take time to talk to each other in a meaningful way.

In this difficult time, I want to mention two people who were particularly supportive to me, two people whose presence in my life I appreciate so much: my ex husband and Jon.  When I first heard the news, my immediate reaction was to call my ex.  It didn’t matter that we had just had a disagreement over plans for the kids’ February break about five minutes before.  I knew he’d care.  And I knew that he would listen to me.

I literally sobbed on the phone.  The mere fact that we could turn to each other in a time of crisis was so important.  No matter how much anyone cares about our kids, no one has the love and investment in them that we both do.  As a divorced couple, we don’t get to share that daily.  However, due to our peaceful relationship and continued friendship, we do have the ability to bond over the big things.  It was very helpful for me (and for him too, I believe) to process this together.

Jon was another great source of support.  I was really blunt with him about how this was coloring my view of men and eroding my ability to trust.  He said something that might seem small to some, but spoke volumes to me.  He reassured me that I could trust him.  He reminded me that he had been honest with me from day one.  As I had mentioned in an earlier post, sometimes that honesty seemed too much for me.  I wanted a rosy, romantic view of him.  Yet in this moment, when I was feeling a devastating lack of trust, I realized how right he had been.  By being forthright with me, he showed me an integrity that not all people are capable of.  And that felt really comforting.

So here I am, once again attempting to find the positive lesson in a very trying situation.  My heart was deeply saddened by the news that someone that my family had admired and trusted had allegedly betrayed that trust.  And it temporarily closed down.  Yet the presence of so many good people (and I use that word deliberately) in my life ended up opening it up wider than it had been before.

Maybe now you can see why I work to keep my exes in my life.  They enrich it in so many ways.  And for that, I am extremely grateful.

What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?

Well, it has happened.  Jon has met my ex.  It’s surprising, really, because my ex rarely makes it to Boston.  We usually meet in lovely Auburn, MA, a burb noted for nothing more than being halfway between Boston and the Pioneer Valley and being easily accessible from the turnpike.  However, this week, Jonah was missing our Friday night dinners together so my ex graciously offered to come all the way here.

I was eager to revive our past tradition (or perhaps recreate it in a new way), yet I also had a date with Jon.  He was returning from a business trip in Atlanta and was anxious to come over to my place right after landing.  So I had a potential crossing of the paths, or meeting of the men, on my hands.  Jon perceived that right away and said that he had no problem meeting my ex, but wondered if he’d feel uncomfortable.  I decided to adopt a “don’t find trouble until trouble finds you” attitude and said that I thought he’d be fine with it.

So as we were heading out to dinner, I let my ex know that Jon might be showing up before he had left.  He was very cool about it and asked a few questions, like how does Jonah feel about him (Why only Jonah? That must be a guy thing.)  Over dinner he started asking me other questions, such as does he like beer.  I said, doesn’t everyone, and the kids said yes.  Then he asked if he’d be bringing some beer over to the house.  I said, I have beer in the house if you’d like one.  Then I realized what he was really getting at, and I asked him if he wanted to have a beer with Jon.  He said yes, which I thought was good sign.

The rest of the story is really rather uneventful.  It was a little quiet, maybe a tad awkward, but the kids filled the room, as always.  My ex didn’t stay long since he needed to drive back to Northampton.  As they were leaving, we discovered that one of my neighbors had blocked his car in so the kids and I went looking for them.  As I looked behind us, I did see the two of them leaned against my van having a brief conversation.  My heart swelled at the sight.  We’re just one step closer to my ultimate vision of peaceful world domination, in which we all join hands and sing “We are the world.”

I’d Do It All Again

On this day in 1998, I got married to the man I loved.  It was a very special ceremony with just 36 guests on the top of a cliff overlooking the confluence of the Russian River and the Pacific Ocean.  I never felt more in love or in sync with another human being as I did that day.

Thirteen years later, we are no longer together, both maritally and geographically.  I woke up this morning from a terrible dream in which we had had a huge fight.  It was so realistic that I had a tension headache and tightness in my chest.  I felt very powerless and angry.

Many of my readers tell me that they would like to have a peaceful and loving relationship with their exes, but that they can’t seem to connect with them or even like the person that they chose to spend their lives with.  I can understand that feeling.  Since the move to Boston and the conflicts that it has stirred up, I too have experienced those emotions.  As I see my ex from afar, I wonder sometimes how we could have ever loved each other as much as we did.  We have such different temperaments and personalities.  Even my son recently told me that he couldn’t imagine us ever being married.

Last night I watched a melodramatic movie called “Bandslam,” in which the teenage protagonist is raised by a single mom, after his father goes to jail.  Despite having a supposed SOB for a husband, the mom says to her son that she would do it all again in a heart beat because it led to the birth of her beloved son.  Of course I feel the same way.  I have these two amazing children who are smart, sensitive, funny, and very loving.

However, my kids are not the only reason that I would marry him again.  Despite the pain, conflicts and inevitable loss, we also had some wonderful years together, and he has greatly contributed to the person that I am today.  He taught me that I could love someone so deeply that he seemed like an extension of myself.  With him, I learned to share my life, my goals and my dreams.  I’m not sure that I would have made it through the intense and isolating experience of graduate school without his companionship and support.  In short, he is woven into the fabric of my life even before we had kids.

And I certainly learned about myself through the tough times as well.  I think we both see where we made mistakes and are trying to do things differently now.  Trial and error are powerful teachers.  Sometimes in our striving for achievement, we forget that.

So today, when we would have been celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary, we will be briefly crossing paths at an Applebee’s off of the Mass Turnpike instead as I pick up the kids from him.  Nevertheless, I celebrate this day and the wonderful gifts that it has given me.  I love him still, and thank him for his mark on my life.

Camping with My Ex and His Girlfriend

One of the things that I appreciate about having this blog is that it serves as inspiration to me when I am feeling frustrated at my ex and ready to throw in the towel on the peace process.  Such a moment happened this morning when an article on my blog came out on the front page of my local paper, the Hampshire Gazette.  It was a really lovely piece that, unlike the New York Times article that quoted me, felt like it faithfully captured my spirit and my perspective on divorce.  It couldn’t have come at a better time because this weekend, I wasn’t feeling so peaceful because, well, I ended up on a camping trip with my ex and his 27-year-old girlfriend.

Like most bizarre events in life, it wasn’t supposed to happen.  Some old friends of ours, who like all of our couple friends stay in touch with me rather than my ex, had invited the kids me and to go camping with them in Rhode Island.  They had made reservations for three nights, and I could only go for two of them because I needed to get to my new apartment in Newton to start painting the kids’ rooms.  So I suggested to my ex that I go with the kids on Friday and Saturday nights and that he join us on Sunday and stay the night while I headed north.

He liked the idea and even texted our friends to ask if it was okay to bring his girlfriend.  My friend called me first to see if I was cool with it, and I told her that it was my idea because I was leaving early.  She was happy with that and said that her husband really wanted to see my ex.  So it was settled.  So I thought.

A week or so later, while I was knee-deep in packing boxes at my house in Northampton, my ex and his girlfriend stopped by to drop off my daughter and announced to me that she was trying to get Saturday night off from her job so that they could come a day early in order to enjoy the delicious menu of gourmet food that my friend Stephen had planned.  I was caught off guard.  The girlfriend was right there, and I was too involved in my packing to really react or even process it.  I told myself that this was the vision that I had for us anyway: to take vacations with our new partners.

Well, after this weekend, that vision has changed.  A friend of mine joked that we were like Demi Moore, Bruce Willis and Ashton Kutcher, just without the money.  I realized that maybe it would be fun to be Demi, but I didn’t really like being Bruce.
I was very uncomfortable having the two of them around.  It started with having to watch her on the beach with her young little body in a bright orange bikini.  It shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did.  Even though I do hot power yoga five times a week, my body has still succumbed to some of the ravages of time.  I don’t want to eviscerate myself on this public blog, but suffice it to say that cellulite and sagging have occurred despite all my best attempts at fitness.  It’s genetic.

Things got worse when he started rubbing sun block onto her.  I tried to avert my eyes, but it was like a car wreck that you can’t avoid staring at no matter what the damage may be to your psyche.  His hands on her torso are now burned upon my mind.
Before I go on, let me remind you all that I don’t want him back.  People often ask me that because we get along so well, but I am happier post-divorce.  As much as we loved each other, it has become very clear to me that we are temperamentally so different that it is impossible for us to be happy together as romantic partners.  Nevertheless, I spent 13 years with him and seeing him intimately touching another woman was too much for me to take.  As was later in the evening, when she called him baby and sweetie and held his hand.  For lack of a more elegant term, it was yucky.

My reaction?  I wanted to leave, but then I felt bad about that, especially because I knew that the kids were having a great time with me there and really wanted me to stay.  Also, I wanted to prove that I was this cool peaceful divorcee.  Nevertheless all I wanted to do was pick a fight with him.  To scream at him and ask him why the hell he had decided to bring his girlfriend to camp with me when we had conveniently arranged a way for us to be there at different times.  I really wanted to let him have it.
I am usually good at finding a way to be happy no matter what the situation is, but this day and night were a major challenge for me.  I have to say that I didn’t ever completely turn my mood around.  Instead I white-knuckled it.  I gritted my teeth and held my anger inside.

Normally I have some insight to share with you all about how I found a way to look at the situation from a different perspective.  This time, I believe that my big victory was simply not going ballistic when I wanted to.  I did notice one small thing, though.  My ex also seemed uncomfortable with the situation, and the few times that we exchanged glances, he appeared a bit pained.  I interpreted that as a bit of compassion.

At one point, my iTunes played one of our favorite songs, Iris Dement’s “Our Town,” which was the song that accompanied the final scene of Northern Exposure, a television show that we adored and watched together in reruns almost every night for about six or seven years.  The words were particularly poignant for me this time “Don’t you know that the sun’s setting fast. And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.”  We had a good relationship once—a really good one—but it didn’t last.

I made it to the next morning separated by a thin tent wall from my beloved ex and his girlfriend sleeping together.  Then I hightailed it to Newton, where I was greeted by a bottle of champagne, a welcome card and a gift for the kids from my new landlady.  I realized that it’s time to celebrate my new life, 100 miles away from my ex and the house that we once shared.  I won’t reject our peaceful relationship because as luck would have it, the Gazette article about me entitled “Still a Family” came the next day to remind me that I do cherish our friendship.  My blog is a constant reminder for me to walk my talk.  Nevertheless maybe it’s time to do so with just a bit more space between us.