When I got married, I was absolutely, totally and completely in love. Both of my daughters were born out of that love. I know I married the right man for me and for them at the time and still believe that now. It is possible (however sad) that I never remarried because when I took those vows, I only expected to take them once in my life in front of God and the rest of the world. Things change, people change and it's ancient history and almost irrelevant what happened to separate us from each other emotionally and physically.
However, divorce is costly in so many other ways. Nobody wins, but when it needs to happen there is no question and no other choice. I've had friends on the verge of divorce at times and I've always said, "if you don't know 'for sure', then don't. If you need to do so, you will know it without question". But the fallout is huge. Everybody loses something, and it is not limited to the couple that finds they need to separate from each other. I "lost" a family that I considered to be mine for a very long time--not out of any loss of love for them all, but out of respect for their need to support their son and not to interfere with their loyalties. They have never been anything but kind to me. They and my family have a strong connection. Both of our parents lost each other for awhile. I never really thought about it till now, but he lost my family in a similar way, and they "lost" him out of a need to support me, yet they love him as the father of my children, and my dad lost a really fun companion. My mother lost bragging rights to her handsome and personable son-in-law.
Yet the children had us all, and we all nurtured the kids from our respective places in their lives with our best efforts. They still "lost" from that separation, but survived the differences and (I believe) are now able to give equal weight to both families and both parents. Despite the inevitability of their confusion, suffering or divided self-understandings, our daughters in adulthood have come to the best outcomes possible.
The only happy surprise (and it's a monumental one) is that the children borne of that marriage have kept us linked in the most important way. My husband and I both did stupid things out of immaturity, limited problem solving skills and very real differences in our life paths and personalities that neither of us probably fully understood until we reached ages that guided us toward our most important passions.
I believe in retrospect that we could not have succeeded in following those paths together in mutual support and understanding. We have done it side by side at a distance, coming together thirty years later with mutual respect and not having done more damage to each other along the way. I am very grateful to him for that and proud of myself. This may never have happened if we had not had our children, and that may have been a loss I wouldn't have known about if it weren't so. The kids are the "glue" that has reunited our families with great joy, genuine care and lack of resentment (as far as I know).
Thirty years gives a person time to reflect, gain perspective and a more mature understanding of others' lives. I did and said stupid things during that thirty years, but looking back I am grateful that none of it in relation to their father or his family was so damaging and/or unforgivable that it hurt the kids.
My daughters lived through my badly stretched responsibilites and our household of three where one child was bound to always feel as if they were not getting the love or kind of attention and understanding they deserved. In some instances that was a fact of their lives, and I don't know for sure, but possibly a fact of the life of every child, even in a two-parent household. There is no way to change it now except to hope in thirty years they may understand better.
At times I have been riddled with guilt for having brought them into a world of a two parent home and then we changed the rules. I also probably overcompensated at times for that guilt and subsequent choices made because I had to make a living somehow. I did not take an easy road, and they had no choice in the matter except to ride along with me. Paradoxically, I did it all for them--so I could make a living that allowed time to attend parent teacher conferences, concerts, swim meets and plays, and so they could live with a mother who came home happy from her work life. I was able to do those things and am proud of that. They also had a mother that grew stronger, more confident, self sufficient and probably a little less healthy than I would otherwise be because of the consistent, long lived strain. I know for a fact there were periods of time in my daughters' lives where I was overoccupied, too stressed and stretched beyond the confines of what one mother could possibly do. Now, I can only hope and plead and beg that they have learned something positive from my limitations and failings that affected them.
Time and life have shown me that no child grows up in a perfect home and no parents are perfect. Perhaps the greatest cost to children of divorce is an instability and longing experienced that parents who stay together don't impose on their young lives. The reward for those children may be a kind of self-sufficiency and resourcefulness learned out of necessity in addition to the extra effort dedicated to them out of parental guilt.
I needed to go back "here" now because I don't know how to go forward. I have given my whole life to kids and work, trying to create some stability in an unstable situation. For better and worse, I managed to do it. But now I live alone; I began living alone for the first time in my life at age 45. I think I spent the first five years of that experience in shock and awe, replacing that emptiness with work and sleep as my body began to show the costs to my health that the prior 25 years had engendered. So I spent time organizing my linen cabinet and experienced great surprise when all the towels were as I had left them. I spent time riding my bicycle because my kids had given it to me. I spent time adjusting to "visits" where I was no longer able to say much about comings, goings or curfews. I spent time being a more conscientious auntie because I had the time to remember every Halloween, Valentine's Day, Christmas, birthday and significant event in my niece and nephews' lives. I spent time hanging out with my parents, loving their company and having them get to know me "alone". When I brought the kids, I got to be wallpaper, as is generally the case (and much appreciated) with proud grandparents.
So here I am. When I got ready to start "living" again, I think I overdid it because of the pace I had been used to. I am looking forward to my first five consecutive days off that have not been spent traveling. The only time I have taken away from work, I have been ill or lugging a suitcase and boarding a plane to escape. It is probably time to sit still with myself long enough to "be" because no matter what, "wherever you go, there you are". I am here on this page, revisiting this woman-child who needs abundance, joy, connection, love and companionship. Those are the most meaningful and fulfilling experiences in life. I get them at work, but don't want to make 51 East Pearson my only place. I need my daughters more than they know because as much as I love my work, I will always love them more. Yet they both need at this time in their lives to have a primary connection with their husbands and my grandaughter. I don't mind riding in a backseat to give them every opportunity to make their lives work and thrive. Yet I am faithfully, always and will be forever their mother. And whatever and whomever they add to their lives, they will always and forever be my greatest, most abundant joy. They are a product of my love for their father, so any companionship I find will have the richness of that experience missing. I am open to new and different kinds of experiences, but when a ship has passed, the bounty of its vision and presence is forever, no matter how dim its shadows on the distant horizon.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Ventures into virtual land
I admit I am a techno dinosaur. My laptop is slow and low on memory space. Maybe these first two lines parallel mid-life. Both of my daughters have recently married in the last two years. I am at odds with myself and contented at the same time. Is that possible? I began this blog in a technology boot camp that was our faculty retreat just days before the halls of our new building were filled with cute boots that college girls wear and the sounds of cellular equipment dinging, vibrating and rapping. Within the span of two years, I turned fifty, traveled to Africa, accepted a position as Associate Dean of a brand new School of Communication that had long roots in a small department I have been part of for eighteen years at an institution I love. I became a grandmother of a little girl, deployed thirty five students to mentor young girls, women and migrants from faraway places out of one of my classes, and traveled to two different states to stand in my role as proud mother of the bride. Alone. Their weddings were as perfect as my daughters are different. I cried unbridled tears at the ceremony where I felt like I was revisiting my former life with their father's family and loving them all, healing from an ancient divorce and regretting the unfinished business I have with the bride. The second ceremony signaled a "coming out" of shyness I had never seen in my younger daughter. I have not been successful in love, though I have loved and been loved; yet both of these beautiful young women, my daughters appear to have found their life's mates. I wish I could take credit for that, but I have no idea if any is mine and am grateful for their good judgement. My insides moved at the second wedding from fatigue, joy, a sense of completion, and overwhelming sentimentality at the simultaneous sight of watching my eldest nurse her baby, worry about a baby girl's fusses while cutting new teeth, and my youngest's embracing of her big, beautiful day that she had worked months to deploy with a budget spreadsheet, delegation of roles to aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents and her truest friends. I spent that day in two places very far away from each other--ecstasy and longing. I celebrated a beautiful couple's joy, likeness, practicality and sense of humor, watched my parents who are in their seventies dance for perhaps the first time in fifteen years. They came alive as if they had not suffered the loss of many dear friends over the past few years; they looked young and as I remember them loving each other in sweet and funny ways throughout my growing years.I felt the loss of my importance in each daughter's life as I watched my eldest fulfill her role as wife and mother, nursing her baby girl, feeling those early pangs of watching your daughter suffer, even if only from cutting new teeth. I felt like a woman cutting new teeth in suffrage and liberation at once. I was far away from my home in Chicago and close to the home of all that I knew as a child and young mother stranded between the whole of what I thought I might do with my life's future over five decades. I have failed miserably in some things and reached heights I never knew I was capable of. I finished a book manuscript over the summer that took me eleven years to write through the trials of tenure, raising teenage daughters and managing parts of my life that always seemed like bikes and ropes and water and steam that I tried to hold onto, but could never fully grasp.
Oh Bam, welcome to the start of mid-life.I see myself in so many of your comments. I just started five years earlier, because my kids were older.
ReplyDeleteI read this last week, but needed time to write. You write so eloquently, I'll probaly be a bit intimidated at times, but I shall not let that stop me, ha ha.
In as much as I come from divorced parents, I may have more fear at seeing any of my loved ones have to deal with it in thier lives. It does have a huge inpact on all involved. However, we can all take a great level of comfort in seeing what well balanced, beautiful, full of life, daughters you have.
I think the girls will deal with differnt issues in thier life, as do all children. I can say that I would have greatly benifited if my mother could have written a blog. It is healing to share feelings. What a wonderful way for your daughters to have a better understanding.
I carried resentment for many years over my parents. I was very close to my father when he left when I was ten years old. He told my mother, and the two kids left at home, that he was going to find work in another city. We didn't hear from him again for one year. By then all was lost between them and/or me. There were compilcated layers in my situation, with both my mother and father. I had a constant relationship with my mother, but I saw her life as unstable, and most of the time she had many needs that I felt helpless to fulfil. I wish now that I could go back and be more helpful, understanding, insightful, all of that.
Anyway, I didn't mean to write my on blog here. Just know that you are loved. I do hope you can feel well real soon.
Oh, Mama Sue!!!!! Thanks so much for reading and writing back. I do think this is a wonderful way to let the girls know who I am (or am trying to be!!! haha:) But I can do it without "lecturing" them. They can do whatever they want with what they read. Yep. . .mid-life. You have said EXACTLY what I hope to hear when anyone reads what I write--that you could identify with something in there. . .it really is about the "human" condition, but more about trying to be a good woman. I didn't exactly give my Mom the kind of understanding she should have had when the kids were little. But there are some things a daughter only knows or understands when they "get there". It means so much to me to have you here, so please, please, "blog" away on these pages anytime. Both my daughters and your great grandkids will love to have it. Much love (and respect of the highest order!) Bam/Hannah THANK YOU!
ReplyDelete