Tag Archives: divorce

Holding On to Something That’s Already Gone

There’s a ghost hanging around in my backyard. It’s not hurting anyone or anything, so I’ve been hesitant to let it go. All that’s left of it is a silvery outline of the vibrant thing that used to live there, but at least that silvery shadow is something I can see. Something I can hold on to because I’m not ready to let go.

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I fell hard for this hemlock tree on the afternoon that Richard and I closed on our house. Somehow, in our three visits before buying, I hadn’t noticed the hemlock tree on the right side of the backyard. I was too busy looking at the RIVER…we could have a river in our yard…WHAT? I mean, trees are nice, sure, but a river? Dang.

Once all the papers were signed and the front door key dangled on my keychain, I had more time to look around. Among all the pines and the redbuds and the scraggly crepe myrtles and the dogwoods–all the ordinary trees of my life–there stood a hemlock. I’d only seen them on weekend hikes in the North Georgia mountains. Just saying the name “hemlock” made me think of Socrates and that painting of him on his deathbed, about to drink the poison. (Just so you know, that’s the herb hemlock, not the tree. These are the kinds of things you Google when you have a hemlock tree nearby.)

One September, I made a tough choice to help the hemlock. A cherry tree crowded it from one side. Daddy and Joe told me that they could cut down the cherry to give the hemlock room to fill out. Cut down a cherry tree? I cannot tell a lie–I thought they were crazy to sacrifice something beautiful for a conifer. Couldn’t they both stay? But Daddy and Joe knew more about this sort of thing than I did, so I gave the OK–I chose the hemlock over the cherry. I hid inside while they brought the cherry down. Their advice proved right. The hemlock flourished and its deep green needles erased the memory of the cherry tree.

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Those needles and tiny cones have been fading for a couple of years now. I told myself that it might be some kind of molting process. Maybe this was something that hemlocks DO now and then–turn silver and drop all their needles. The fading started at the top one year then worked its way down the trunk. The bottom branches were still green! It could bounce back, right?

I didn’t want to admit it–the tree was already a ghost by the time I accepted it. One day, a handyman looking for work rang the doorbell. He handed me his card and said, “I can clear out trees–like that big dead one you got in the back.” I practically clutched my pearls at his temerity. People could see it from the road. I had to deal with the ghost.

It’s an eyesore now. And that gets me thinking about Fartbuster and our divorce and the end of relationships in general.

I’m missing what it used to be and holding on to what’s left of it. I’m holding on to something that’s already gone.

It took a year to break from Fartbuster. We separated our daily lives when he moved out. We separated our finances when he stuck me with all the bills and the mortgage. We still went to therapy and planned on getting back together, but my love for him was turning silver, eaten away from the inside after his affair. I filled my own weekends. I went to work. I read books and I wrote and I walked the dogs and I went to movies–all on my own. I built myself a pleasant life. But when it was time to really sign the papers, I sat on my therapist’s couch and sobbed, “How can I live without him?”

She called Bullshit on that real quick. “Ashley. On a daily basis, what does he add to your life?”

Um.

One drama soaked phone call and this gaping hole in my heart where I used to be able to trust people?

She helped me see that I was holding on to something that was already gone.

Last night, a cracking thunderstorm rolled through after dark. I was sitting on the sofa when a deafening pop shook the house. It was loud enough to make the cats skitter and Huck’s ears stand up. My first thought was, “Did it get the hemlock?” Will my decision be made for me?

Like with the end of most things, the decision has been made before we let it into our hearts.

I got up early this morning to write. I’m sitting here on the screened porch in the black dark of pre-dawn, waiting to see if the ghost is still here.

It’s Going to Suck

Image courtesy morguefile.com

Image courtesy morguefile.com

It’s been a tough week and it’s ONLY TUESDAY.

Tonight, I talked with a friend who is going through a hard few months, and today was especially awful. I shared with her another bit of advice from my sage friend, Robin. You might remember Robin from last week and that thought she once gave me about the worst thing you can do for someone you love.

You know how, in tough times, people often say, “It’s going to be OK” when they’re trying to provide comfort? Well, when Fartbuster and I were divorcing, I said, “It’s going to be OK” in front of Robin one day.

She shook her head gently and said:

“Oh, no, honey…It is going to suck. You are going to be OK.”

And that is the truth. Tough times are going to be tough. That’s why we had to make up a whole nuther word to describe them because “good times” didn’t work. Death of a loved one sucks. Divorce sucks. Parenting struggles, health problems, foreclosures–all that messy shit we live through every day SUCKS. But YOU are going to be OK.

Share that encouragement with someone today, whoever needs to hear it–even yourself.

The Gold Bug

Green Beetle With Brown Legs by Jan Vincentsz van der Vinne

Green Beetle With Brown Legs by Jan Vincentsz van der Vinne

I went on a personal archaeology expedition last week and got choked up on a little gold bug. A yellow plastic beetle, to be exact.

Ever since I read that journal that I wrote while my marriage to Fartbuster was ending–“Bless My Stupid Heart”–I’ve been trying to recall more about that time of my life. After 15 years, the big events stand out, but the minutiae of our ordinary life together has begun to fade. I started keeping gratitude journals about a year before our marriage went up in flames, so I pulled out the really old ones, the dusty ones in the bottom drawer of the nightstand and I began to read.

I spent 3 hours reading through 2 years worth of gratitude journals–a tough two years. I was prepared for the awful days, those days when I wrote terse little entries like, “Well, at least I have myself” or “Now I know the truth” and “my neighbor came over to check on me when she noticed I was parking in the middle of the garage.” I turned the corner down on those pages so I could come back to them when I need to.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the days just before those awful ones. It’s so had to look back and see what I was genuinely grateful for the day before my whole life blew up.

In the detail of thousands of entries, my old life assembled itself again. The hollyhocks that grew higher than the windows in the sunroom. The way my dog, Zoe, shivered after her bath. Margaritas at his grandmother’s house on Christmas night. The lazy Sunday mornings when I woke up with my feet entwined with my husband’s. A new Judybats CD coming in the mail. Reading Oxford American magazine. Pecan rice with a roasted pork tenderloin. That time we installed the dog door without arguing. Painting the bathroom a terra cotta color and talking about going to Rome someday. Walking the dogs in the evening when the whole neighborhood smelled like dryer sheets. Dusting bookshelves then finding myself rereading a favorite book. Valentines. Nicknames we gave each other.

About every 20 minutes of that 3 hour journey through my grateful past, I had to stop to cry. Once, I got so sad for my younger self that I tiptoed into Carlos’ room to listen to him breathe those deep little boy sleepy breaths.

It wasn’t all bad, that life.

It ended so badly that I have trouble remembering that it wasn’t all bad. I wasn’t stupid to love Fartbuster. Most days, we were doing our best.

That came clear for me when I read one little line in a journal that brought a dear memory back through all the pain:

“a little gold beetle in my drink at dinner.”

gold beetleI don’t remember how I ended up with a yellow plastic beetle–it doesn’t matter. One night, I tucked it under the covers on Fartbuster’s side of the bed. He saw it and jumped. We laughed. The next day, I picked up my drink at dinner and there sat the little gold beetle on the bottom of the glass. A few days later, he found the beetle in the toe of his shoe. For weeks, we traded the gold beetle back and forth in pockets, the sun visor, on the towel bar, in the cereal box.

It was fun. We had fun.

When your heart is broken by someone you trusted, it’s so hard to remember the good times. It’s hard to accept that those days were just as real as the months I spent in that middle place of fear and pain.

The muddle of it all reminds me of an idea from Hermann Hesse, one of Fartbuster’s favorite writers: “Oh, love isn’t there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.”

Hesse

Bless My Stupid Heart

A Woman Reading by Camille Corot courtesy Met OASC

A Woman Reading
by Camille Corot
courtesy Met OASC

Fifteen years ago, I kept a journal of sorts for a writing exercise. Each morning, I wrote three pages of stream of consciousness writing. This afternoon, I read it for the first time since then.

Oh, bless my stupid little heart.

I thought he was my best friend. I thought he loved me. I thought I couldn’t live without us.

I was writing those words while Fartbuster was sneaking around and cheating on our marriage. I was so clueless. So much of it was devoted to me trying to convince myself that it was all going to be OK. So much of it was explaining away how he treated me. So much of it was about how my insecurity was the REAL problem. So much of it was me trying to be the reason it was going wrong so that I could be the one to fix it.

One morning, I wrote about how the night before, someone had rung the doorbell at 7:45 p.m. I had found myself hoping that it was Fartbuster, surprising me with a big bouquet and a spontaneous laugh. No, it was a teenage boy selling the newspaper. And in my writing, I chastised myself for being “tough” on Fartbuster when he did finally get home at 8:30. Eight thirty on a Wednesday night and I beat myself up instead of him.

One morning, I wrote about how he was helping out around the house more. How I had returned home from a Saturday outing with a friend to find that he had washed the sheets. Now I wonder what he was washing away. My heart is tightening up in fury now, just thinking about that Saturday, fifteen years ago.

It hurt my heart to read that journal. I skimmed. I fumed. This woman I am now, this wiser woman wanted to judge my younger self for being so dumb. I gave my younger self some grace. Trusting someone you’re supposed to trust isn’t a bad choice. Being a lying asshole is a bad choice.

She wised up, eventually. That mess didn’t ruin her. I’ve come so far, but I’d still like to give her a hug and a good talking to.

A Blender Family

family-76781_640“Mommy?  Who’s my stepmother?”

“You don’t have a stepmother, sweetie.”

“But you’re Sissy’s stepmother.”

“Right.  I’m Sissy’s stepmother because Daddy was married to her mommy but now he’s married to me.”

“So Daddy is Sissy’s stepfather?”

“No.  Daddy is Sissy’s daddy just like he’s your daddy.  Bob is Sissy’s stepfather.  A step is someone who’s married to your parent after your parents decide not to be married anymore. You don’t have any steps because your parents are still married to each other.”

“Do you have steps?”

“Yes!  Nana is my stepmother because she’s married to my dad, Papa.  Papa and Grandma Janice had Aunt Gay, Uncle Joe, and me.  Then when Nana and Papa got married, Aunt Brett became our stepsister.”

“Is Sam my stepsister?”

“No, Sam is Sissy’s stepsister because her dad is married to Sissy’s mom.  But you know what?  We just say sister.  Sam is Sissy’s sister.  Sissy is your sister.  Aunt Brett is my sister.  We’re a blended family.”

“What’s a blender family?”

“It’s when people are married and have kids then they decide not to be married to each other anymore.  If they marry someone else, then you blend the family together and your family gets bigger.”

“Like mixing fruit in a smoothie?”

“YES!  Exactly like that.”

“So how many times has Daddy been married?  I know YOU married a LOT of people…”

blink….blink…blink…

Excuse me, little girl?

The Empty Boat

 

"Returning Home" Shitao (Chinese, 1642–1707). Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Returning Home” Shitao
(Chinese, 1642–1707). Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Today, I had a conversation with a friend that reminded me of the Taoist parable of the Empty Boat.  It is a teaching story attributed to Zhuang Zhou, a Chinese philosopher who lived 2500 years ago.  Here’s how I tell his story:

Imagine that you are in your fragile boat, rowing across the river at dusk.  Out of the gray darkness, you spot another boat heading straight for you.  You call to it, announcing your presence.  There is no response.  You watch helplessly as the boat floats ever closer to you, on a collision course.  You shout.  You wave your arms.  Your panic rises along with your rage.  You shake your fist at the boat but it comes right at you.  The boat collides with your skiff broadside.  Your boat is shattered and you spill into the water.

Now, imagine that there is a person in that boat.  How do you feel?  What do you do?  You focus all that energy and rage on the one who has done you harm.  You have been wronged!

Then clear your mind.  Imagine the same scene–you on the river at dusk.  Imagine that other boat rushing towards you, but it’s empty.  The empty boat.  There is no one who has wronged you.  There is no one who ignored your plea.  Even as you tip into the shadowy water, there is no one to shake your fist at.

It’s just something that happened.

“It is what it is.”

“Shit happens.”

Many a time I have found myself dumped into the river by that empty boat.  Oh, when I got soaked by Fartbuster…I shook my fist plenty.  I shouted and cursed.  I waved my arms.  I wanted to blow up his boat with him in it to take my revenge.  I considered swearing off boats altogether.

Eventually, I quit focusing all my energy on the REASON I was in the river and just started swimming to the other side.  I let it go.  I remember confessing to my therapist that I didn’t want to give up on him after ten years together because I just KNEW he was about to turn the corner and become the wonderful person that he couldamightashoulda been to me all along.  She said, “No, this is as good as he gets.  He’s doing his best.”  She wasn’t running him down–she was encouraging me to live in reality instead of in the world that might be waiting around the corner.  She was right–he was doing his best and I deserved better.

Sometimes you have to throw a fish back in the river so it can grow some more.

Sometimes you have to swim for your life even when you politely have said, “No, thanks, I’ll stay up here on the bank because I don’t want to get my shoes wet.”

Sometimes you have to quit trying to figure out who is rocking the boat.  Let it go.

 

Fartbuster Lost It

RingPutI told y’all how Monday was kind of weird because of that wedding ring memory, right?  Well, it got even weirder when I came home from work.  G met me at the door of our bedroom with the words, “I’ve got some bad news.  Not big bad news…”  He held up his left hand.  “I lost my ring.”

I shit you not.  My body went cold because that’s not the first time a fellow who’s wearing my ring confesses that he’s “lost it.”

Guess who?  C’mon, guess.

FARTBUSTER.

About a month before I found out that Fartbuster had been having an affair, he met me at the door as I walked in from the garage.  He was picking at the skin of his palms, all sweaty looking and panicky.  “Don’t freak out–I lost my ring at lunch today.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say so I stayed quiet.  Funny how the only thing I could hold in my mind at that moment was the door mat from that fall.  Funny how that betrayal came right back to mind.

“I think what happened was I took it off to wash my hands in the bathroom and I stuck it in my pocket but it must not have gone all the way down in there and it fell out. But I didn’t hear it maybe because the water was running.  When I was getting in my car after lunch I realized that it wasn’t there.  I looked EVERYWHERE–in that bathroom, under the table, I asked them to look in the kitchen.  I was an hour late getting back to work because I didn’t want to stop looking for it.  I left my number with the restaurant manager.  We even looked in the parking lot.”

I still couldn’t say anything because all the blood in my body had gone to my head to pound between my ears.

“I’m sorry.  I’ll go back and look tomorrow.”

I shrugged.

“Are you mad?”

“I’m sad.  That was a beautiful ring.”  Handmade and special ordered from an artisan in California.  A wide band made of alternating braided gold.  Even with Tony the Jeweler giving me the family discount, that ring had cost me $1500.

ringI was sad.  Maybe I had been sad since the summer before, when we took that miserable trip to England.  Or since that August, when he came home with the lipstick on his collar.  The door mat had made me more angry than sad, but sad at the heart of it.  I had been sad back in October, when I planted those daffodils in the backyard and wondered if we would still be married when they bloomed.  Had I been sad since January, when he had lost his job?  It had been a sad year.

That ring was never found.  A couple of weeks later, we went down to Tony’s and ordered a new one.  I thought it would be a fresh start for us.

A few days later, Fartbuster told me that he wanted to move out and “get his head together.”  I STILL didn’t know about the affair. But I was pretty sure it wasn’t the time to lay out another thousand dollars on a wedding ring.  I was too embarrassed to call Tony myself and cancel the order. Big Gay took care of that for me.

So a few weeks later, when Fartbuster came clean about the affair and I threw my own heavy gold wedding ring at his head, his finger was already bare. I remember saying, “Oh!  Now I know what happened to your ring!” and he said, “No!  I wasn’t lying about that.  About that.”

Yeah, G didn’t know WHAT can of worms he was opening up when he told me “I lost my ring.”  I kept quiet, working through all these thoughts.  That was the same day I had been visited by the memory of Richard’s wedding ring–now here I was reliving a deja vu ring scene from ANOTHER marriage!

Luckily, while I was tracing my way through all that mental drama, G found his ring in the sofa cushions.  Sometimes, if I keep my mouth shut, things work out on their own!

The Cool Kids

We do a good bit of this...

We do a good bit of this…

If I have one wish for my daughters, it is that they will find a tribe of girlfriends like the ones I have found.  I’m lucky to have a couple of tribes–the GHPers from high school, the Wesleyannes from college, and lately, the Cool Kids from work.  “The Cool Kids?” you ask?  Yep, The Cool Kids.  All capitalized.

Along the theme of “choosing yourself” instead of waiting to be chosen–we named ourselves The Cool Kids.  It seems that not a single one of us (except maybe Susan, the elegant blonde and Nicole, the sassy one) was a cool kid in high school.  We were the B team, on the margins, always worried that we might be found out and kicked out.  So now that we are All Grown Up, we decided to become The Cool Kids.  Our table in the cafeteria is the one ringing with laughter, the one people walk by and say, “Y’all are having too much fun!”  Nope, no such thing.

...and a little bit of this.

…and a little bit of this.

How did The Cool Kids begin?  Well, I made a speech about employee giving at New Employee Orientation and I began by saying that my baby had kept me up all night (Vivi) then went on to mention that the cancer support center for which we were raising money had really been a great resource when my fiance was diagnosed with leukemia.  Heather came up to me at the break and said, “So it sounds like everything turned out OK?”  Um.  No.  Well, eventually, but….no.  She was mortified, but had the strange similarity of also having been a young widow.  We bonded quickly over that shared part of our past.

Then one day, Heather and  I were having lunch in the cafeteria and Jean joined us.  Jean is a palliative care nurse, and she and I had talked a lot after Richard died.  A week later, Erica, a nurse like Jean and a singer like Heather, came by and fit right in.  And Susan joined us a while later, the woman who used to intimidate the hell out of me because she was so wise and elegant–but funny and genuine too.  Heather started working for Jana and Jana joined us, too.  Libby and I started talking babies when Carlos came along.  And Courtney had a little boy, too.  Then Courtney hired Nicole and she fit right in.  After about a year of evolution, there we were…The Cool Kids.

Jean's Merry Christmas. I still have a jelly worm in my purse.

Jean’s Merry Christmas. I still have a jelly worm in my purse.

What does it mean to be a Cool Kid?  It means that we fill in the gaps for each other.  Last year, Jean confided that she had never really had a nice Christmas.  So we got together and surprised her with a Christmas lunch with all her favorite things:  a Loretta Lynn album, a tiny tree decorated with jelly worms and dog biscuits, books, and dog toys for her Scout.  She couldn’t believe it.

When I was at home on maternity leave, Erica made me black bean burritos that I could eat with one hand.  When Erica went to Chile for five months, Heather kept her dog like a member of the family.  Libby and Erica get their sons together to play XBox.  Nicole and Susan swap baseball mom stories.

Two of us are adult children of alcoholics and a few of us need to hear those lessons.  Some of us know about grief.  Some of us know about divorce.  Some of us are learning about divorce.  Susan has been married for the longest time and she shares advice that begins with, “I remind myself, ‘Don’t Kill Wes…'”

Two of us have left that place where we all worked, but we still get together for Friday lunches.  A few of us just survived a hellatious few months on the job, with the help of our tribe.  Sometimes Jana comes to lunch with two phones, but she comes to lunch.  Sometimes Libby can only stay for 15 minutes, but she’s there.

Warrior Dash 2012

Warrior Dash 2012

When Erica is out of paid time off, Heather picks up her son from school and gets him to his playoff game.  Courtney brings books for Nicole’s son to share.  I pass Vivi’s clothes to Libby’s daughter and Heather sends her son’s toys to my son.  When Libby is making hairbows for her daughter’s softball team, she makes extra for Nicole’s daughter.  I buy books that I loved for Libby’s little bookworm.  If there’s a birthday, Courtney bakes a cake from scratch that would make Julia Childs pull her hair out in envy.  Susan once came to my house and decorated for a birthday party in the June heat because I had strep rash and was nine weeks pregnant kind of sick.

Go, girl!

Go, girl!

We cheer for each other.  When Nicole is running, I holler from the sidewalk.  When Libby wants to do something crazy, Courtney and I lace up our shoes and get muddy.  When Heather took a sabbatical, we mailed her a birthday party in a box.  When Jana won Boss of the Year, we shouted Hooray!  

Wrong one of us and get the stink eye from all of us.

Our friendship really shined through this weekend.  One of us needed to reclaim a rental property that she had been leasing to a person she used to be married to.  Ahem.  Not the best of situations.  He, despite a month’s notice, hadn’t done SHIT.  And let’s be honest–he hadn’t done shit for SEVEN YEARS.  That place was Single Man Nasty.  Like cheese that expired in 2010 and old underwear beneath the kitchen sink.  The toilet was so filthy that we thought about just buying a new one.

But down swept The Cool Kids, in a bustle of good intentions and steadfast “get yo ass outta here”-ness.  Jean loaded stuff on his truck and backed that trailer up like a girl who grew up on a hay farm.  Hit the road, Jack.  Heather put together a trundle bed that Erica had procured and when she didn’t have the right tools, Nicole called her husband to swing by with the toolbox.  Nicole and Jana snatched a knot in that kitchen, even bleaching the floor behind the refrigerator.  Courtney shampooed rugs while Susan crawled around on her knees cleaning stains out of the carpet.

Coolest Cleaning Crew Around!

Coolest Cleaning Crew Around!

Libby washed the blinds while Terri cleaned a ceiling fan that was black with dirt.  I spent an hour scouring muck out of the tub.  And Erica?  She may have gotten there late because she wasn’t going to miss church, but damn if she didn’t hit that forsaken toilet like it was nothing but a thing.  Cleaned it with a toothbrush and a smile.  I learned that if you have a nasty mess to clean, invite a couple of nurses to help, because they aren’t afraid of ANYTHING.  Through it all, we laughed.  The sweet aunt and uncle who brought lunch for our weary work crew said, “I’ve never heard such laughing!”

And in the middle of all that GROSS, Jean looks over at me and says, “This feels so good.  To help out, doing something together.”  I said, “Yeah, it’s one thing to love somebody enough to clean their toilet, but it’s a whole other thing to love somebody enough to clean their ex-husband’s toilet.”

There comes a time in every one of our lives when we look around and think that it’s all gone to hell.  I’m so grateful to know that when that day comes for me, I’ve got the Cool Kids.  A good set of girlfriends is the key to life.

How Could I Have Missed This?

red flagThere was a time in my past, that time when Fartbuster started making a real effort to be happier.  He got contact lenses.  He started working out.  Bought some new clothes and experimented with hair products.  I found myself saying, “He’s getting better.  He’s taking care of himself.”  Duh!  He exhibited every cliched sign of a cheating man–right down to the lipstick on his collar.  Once the lies came to the surface, I sat all alone in the ruins of my life and said, “How could I have missed this?”  I was so ashamed that someone had fooled me like that.  How could I have been so stupid?

There was a time in my past, that time when Richard couldn’t seem to shake that cold.  He had no energy.  Sometimes, he’d spike a fever.  He finally went to the doctor but the doctor said it was bronchitis.  The antibiotics didn’t clear it up but it was the end of the semester so he was feeling exhausted anyway.  That was probably all it was.  His grandmother died and he felt low.  He had bruises,  but said they were from skiing…back in March?  And now it was May?  Then there was that blood vessel that burst in his eye and didn’t get better during two weeks of vacation.  His vision began to cross so he finally went to an ophthalmologist who thought there was a chance he had a retinal bleed.  When Richard mentioned that he hadn’t been feeling himself for a while, the doctor ordered a CBC.  Within 48 hours, Richard was at Johns Hopkins on the oncology ward.  A few days later, our film from that vacation came back and when I saw the pictures–him resting on a driftwood tree, his legs covered in a solid swath of bruises from yellow to purple–I was so ashamed that I had “let him” walk around like that, so obviously sick. I hid the pictures.  And I asked myself, “How could I have missed this?”  How could I have been so stupid?

Red flags.  Why didn’t I see them?

I know, I know–it was never my job to police a cheater.  And I know, I know–leukemia is easy to miss in an otherwise healthy 37-year-old man who doesn’t like to go to the doctor.  No one blamed me because I didn’t order a CBC right away.  But because I’ve been spun sideways by a couple of doozies like these, I sometimes feel like I am just living in wait, waiting for some shoe to drop.

I thought that shoe had fallen back in December when I took my darling son in for his well visit and left with a handful of red flags.  Filling out those social/verbal/motor skills inventories threw me for a loop.  I thought he was independent, a free spirit….but maybe he doesn’t know how to interact with other people?  I thought he talked when he wanted to talk…but he’s falling behind his peers.  Where’s the line between a hard-headed little boy and a syndrome, a condition, a diagnosis?   When our doctor said, “I don’t think he has autism, but let’s get him screened now that he’s three,” the first thing I asked myself was “How could I have missed this?”  How could I have been so stupid?

Now it turns out that my son has some kind of language issue.  I haven’t wanted to talk about it here (and as soon as I typed that, my stomach knotted up and I thought about deleting the whole thing for the 1000th time) because it’s still hazy.  He’s getting speech therapy and he’s making swift progress.  The doctor is encouraged.  I’m encouraged.  And the fact is that he’s still my baby boy, no matter what.  I write about personal things here, but usually it’s things that are resolved.  Lot of rear view mirror stuff on Baddest Mother Ever.  Not things that are “we’ll see.”

The whole thing got me thinking about this reflex of saying, “How could I have missed this?”  Because when I sat across the table from a speech therapist who says, “Yeah, he’s not making sentences,” I felt like an idiot.  How could strangers be telling me something about my own son?

The same way a doctor knows how to read a CBC.  It’s what they do.

Now I’m looking for red flags EVERYWHERE.  I won’t be fooled again.  I will figure this OUT and by sheer force of will I will……

….what?

I will accept whatever comes along.

Because that’s what I learned from the other doozies.  Even if I HAD seen the red flags from Fartbuster and Richard, I couldn’t have changed anything.  I can’t “fix” what happens with other people, even my own kids.

All I can do is love them where they are, how they are, who they are.

I am hopeful for Carlos.  On the first day he started getting speech therapy, I picked him up and decided to spend some car time working on his conversation skills.  The therapist said he needs to learn to express “Yes” and “No” and I could help him with that by asking simple questions.  We also want to increase his “mean length of utterance” to an average of 3.  So I asked him, “Is your name Carlos?”

His reply?  “That’s funny, Mommy.”

Then he started saying his colors in Spanish–he LOVES Spanish.  I pointed to my shirt and asked, “Que color?”  He said, “Wojo!”  I said, “Si!  Mi camisa es roja!”  Then he said a few more color words.  I was at a stop light, so I picked up my knee and pointed to my black pants.  “Que color, Carlos?”  I lifted my knee higher and waggled the fabric.

He caught my eye in the rear view mirror and said, “Drive car, Mommy.”

I Should Have Slugged Him: My Husband Confesses to an Affair

woman slapping manThis story contains scenes that some readers may find disturbing.  It contains strong language, mild violence, and mockery of a Braves legend.  Baseball fans and cuckolds are strongly cautioned.  Intended for immature audiences only.

Here’s the story of the April night in the year 2000 when I found out why Fartbuster had moved out of our house.  We had been separated for three weeks.  I was parking my car in the middle of the garage and already cooking for one.  He and I talked every day and cried just about every day.  I just couldn’t get it through my head WHY he had moved in with his friend downtown when he was telling me every day how much he wanted to be back together.

So one night he came over for dinner and drama.  We were sitting on the couch with our dogs–pretty normal night.  He started crying first, which usually meant that I would end up crying most.

“I’m not good enough for you.  You deserve better.”  He sobbed.  I patted his knee and assured him that that was not the case.  He was a WONDERFUL person.  Ominously, he peeped at me out of the wet corner of his eye and said, “You don’t know everything.”  

I didn’t say a word.  My heart stopped then raced to catch itself.  “What don’t I know?”

“I had an affair.”

Well.  What’s a wife supposed to say to that?

This wife, being a bit of a codependent class clown typemade a joke.  A bad joke.  The dissolution of our marriage happened just a few months after the public meltdown of Chipper Jones’ first marriage–when he confessed to fathering a child with a Hooters waitress.  I don’t follow baseball, but Chipper had been married to a girl I knew from college.  I had felt so awful for her when he was busted–the situation was terrible enough, but imagine having the world discussing your cheating husband on drive time radio shows and Entertainment Tonight?  So to lighten the mood in our living room that night–oh, when will I ever learn???–I said:

“At least you didn’t get a Hooters waitress pregnant, right?”

He froze.

I froze.  

Holy shit.

I lifted my hand off his knee.  He hopped up off the couch and got a safe distance away before he turned to face me.  “Not exactly…but pretty close.”

Every sound in the world was replaced by the buzzing inside my head, a metallic hum that seemed to begin deep in my bones and rattle through my body.  “Ah,” I whispered.  “She doesn’t work at Hooters.”

“Yeah.”  He stared at me to make sure I had put two and two together.  Or one and one and gotten three.

He started babbling about how he had cheated but knew it was wrong and he had ended it but then she had turned up saying she was pregnant and that was why he had moved out–to clear things up with her.  He planned to come back to me as if nothing had ever happened.  As if.  His fancy German therapist had pointed out the problem with this logic and had suggested that Fartbuster come clean to me if he ever hoped to patch our marriage back together.  I had to know the truth.

And now I did.

Like you might expect, I stomped and screamed and shrieked while he stood there with a hangdog expression in the middle of the living room.  The dogs hightailed it for the bedroom.  I tore off my heavy gold wedding band and beaned at his head, but I telegraphed my pitch and he had time to dodge it.  He scooped the ring from the floor after it bounced off the fireplace and held it between his hands.  He was still crying.

I dropped into a chair as my fury dissolved into anguish.  It was my turn to cry.

He approached me hesitantly.  It’s hard to know if you can comfort someone when you’re the one who dealt the blow.

“Don’t you dare lay a finger on me,” I snarled.  Then I hung my head and sobbed.  He knelt on the floor before me, so still and just a foot away, my wedding ring still in his hand.

We sat frozen there for a long time, like some mockery of a marriage proposal–him on bended knee with a ring and me weeping.

He reached out slowly and touched my hair.  I let him.

I whimpered, “This hurts so bad. …. I want you to hurt like this.  ….I want to hit you.”

He stretched his arms open wide and smiled.  “Do it!  Hit me!  I’d feel better if you did.”

We both laughed as he continued to encourage me to punch him.  “C’mon…this is your chance…”

“No.  I’m not going to.”  Laughing with him like that, like old times, minutes after he confessed to pulling a Chipper?  My fury flamed back.  “I don’t want you to feel better.  I don’t want you to think that makes up for any of this.”  I snatched the ring out of his hand.  “And I’m keeping this.  I can always melt it down and make a pair of earrings.”

Well.  That was the beginning of a long journey–a year it took us to finally go our separate ways.  I think back sometimes to that moment, that choice I made to withhold my fist and not beat the shit out of him.  I didn’t want his atonement to be that easy.  A punch in the face was nothing compared to the punch in the gut that he had dealt me with his confession.  I took the high road that night, but there were many many times in that year when I wished I had walloped him.  Swung for the fence.  Smashed a tater.  Blasted a homer.  Belted him.  Slugged him.  Knocked a four-bagger.  Hammer time.

But if I had, I would have chipped away at the awful burden that he had to carry.  If I had hit him, he would have walked to first.

 

P.S.  – The ex-Mrs. Jones, Karin Luis, has flown far far above where she ever could have gotten with that turkey.  She’s a therapist, author, and speaker who focuses on women’s resiliency and spiritual development. She is co-auther of the book The Fatherless Daughter Project. Check her out on Facebook as “Dr. Karin” or on her website.