I have never been one to hunt for a man. The lessons I got from Mom as a young girl taught me to do anything but that. From the time of my adolescent years forward, I was always pretty busy, relatively contented and focused on some kind of activity that was satisfying. I held a philosophy that the boys come and go, but your girlfriends will always be there.
I'd be walking along, contented, true to myself and a person of the opposite sex would somehow "trip me"--not literally, but persevere in their attentions so that at some point I would look up and say, hey, you may be interesting. I think for the majority of my life I have operated that way for better and worse. I'm not certain about this, but think part of what attracts others to me is my independence. I reciprocate with a lack of "neediness", confident that I will not be smothered into my world of claustrophobia. Paradoxically, if I choose to respond to another's attentions, that person is either "in" or "out". This phrase has been used on Project Runway with regard to a fickle fashion world, but for me there is no "in-between". I am "there" or not. I am "in a relationship" or not. I am loyal and bestow the same attitude onto another until I have been shown that my trust and human gifts have been misplaced.
The German found me in Philadelphia at a conference where I observed his strong intelligence, my shared academic interests and his certain initial charm. He was witty, gentlemanly and forthcoming. He dressed nicely and had an interesting face that looked like the guy on CSI Miami with red hair and a moustache in the style of Mark Twain. He dressed with European panache, had a big smile and an appealing accent. All of this was topped off by a unique walk where with each step, he ended up on the balls of his feet before taking the next.
We toured Philadelphia together at his invitation, went out to listen to music, visited the Liberty Bell, which I touched for the first time and accompanied each other to a conference party. By the end of the conference, others assumed we had come together, and neither of us corrected anybody. We learned that we lived two hours away from each other in Illinois and that he had previously lived in Evanston. We were both Assistant Professors striving to earn tenure. Having recently left grad school, I was in a community vaccuum with regard to my discipline and appreciated his timely intellectual companionship and challenge. We had vigorous debates over philosophy and the relationship of language to human behavior. We both enjoyed Indie films, art, live music, a good beer now and then and travel.
I was finishing my dissertation that summer, and the kids were in California for an extended period of time so that I could do it. He was finishing a book that he eventually dedicated to me in a surprise birthday "reveal". That's how it started--intense periods of separately working and coming together to relax and enjoy the completion of a chapter or edits.
Having children was an appealing part of my life to him and he made a genuine effort to integrate into the tight threesome we had cultivated over the years. He had an interest in precious rocks, taught my daughters about art, stepped in to shop for summer camp supplies for Steffie one year when I was unable to do it, and carried on long philosophical conversations with Amanda about the ways of the world. He attended parent-teacher conferences and other events of the kids' when he could.
He liked their intelligence and was highly entertained by the parade of nine and ten year olds that came through our place. Over a period of five years, we cultivated "couples" relationships with parents of their friends, enjoyed invitations to parties together and shared parts of our professional lives with each other when possible--going to the same conferences, attending presentations we each did, and enjoying a Thanksgiving dinner with well known intellectuals that were colleagues of his. Our worlds criss-crossed in important ways.
Yet I never quite allowed his full immersion into our family because of some commitments I could not wrangle out of him and a certain hesitance over sides of his character that can only be described as a little Jeckyl and Hyde-ish. I disagreed with some of his parenting philosophies; he was inexperienced, but extremely confident in his knowledge and logic. Some things that happen with kids are illogical, take flying by the seat of your pants understanding and are the product of emotional intelligence and sensitivity rather than high-end idealism. As these doubts crept into my consciousness, he brought me flowers, called every night, made considerable efforts to see us with reliability and regularity, and offered up professional commonalities that connected our worlds.
There are many intellectuals that are competitive, driven, self-absorbed and self-righteous. There are also cultural tendencies among Germans to feel right-minded in taking what they see as "wrongs" and confronting others at any given moment. These qualities leaked and spewed into our relationship, and more importantly my family in ways that had a serious destabilizing effect in hindsight. What kept me there is that I could disagree vehemently (and often did), feel and express anger (and often did)--sometimes in acceptable and dispassionate ways and other times with great heat and passion. I did this without enough consideration for the effect that the dynamic had on my daughters.
It was a relationship where I had taken a risk to share every part of my self and life. I had aspired to actually share the experience of raising my children with somebody who was present for me and them. In substantial ways he was. In others, he was like a chemical for me that brought destructive elements to my sense of values, parenting intuitions and general common sense. My longing and imagination connected to my dreams overpowered the daily realities of our lives.
I had never had the experience of being able to express my anger in a relationship and have the person take it in, consider it and sometimes admit that I had a point. If we had a disagreement, he always came back. I needed to learn how to work through a problem with another instead of pretending it didn't happen, which was what I had been conditioned to accept in my first long-term relationship. My daughters felt the fallout--of sharing their mother with someone else, of watching their mother make bad decisions and take non-sensical risks with their tender pre-puberty and adolecent years, and of having a mother around that was unpredictable, at times deeply unhappy and confused, but trying to make something work without becoming unrecognizable to myself or my daughters.
One of my daughters connected with him and the other did not; she seemed to adopt and attitude of tolerance and a strategy of distancing herself. I made a decision after a significant crisis to leave; however, it took me another year and a half to actually do it because I could not bear to deprive my eldest of a stepfatherly relationship that was important to her. When we parted, I was relieved, exhausted, embarrassed, and feeling stupid because of the destabilizing effects this relationship had on my family.
We had met each others families, traveled to Finland, Germany, St. Louis, and Jamaica together. During each of those trips, I suffered his character limitations and my tolerance for them (at the risk of sounding self-righteous here, I am an easygoing traveler and equally optimistic person); as well, I learned things I never would have otherwise. I was just tenacious enough to refuse to admit I had made a bad choice. After all, relationships have their ups and downs, don't they? It was the first man I had allowed into my family's life and I did not want to be wrong about it. So I tried and cried and endured because I felt responsible for making the initial decision to let him "in" in the first place.
When the relationship ended, it was with a whimper. When I lose respect for another, it is not possible for me to love them either. His actions had whittled away at any threads of connection I would tolerate. As well, my own self-respect and integrity as a woman of quality were at risk. When that happens, it's time to go. I cannot get those years back for my daughters, and that is a great regret. I feel ashamed having allowed five years of a bit of wreckage to happen--I am strong and can endure the complications of adult failings. It's one thing if a woman alone experiences betrayal or heartbreak, but to impose that onto one's children is nearly unforgivable. The only "reparation" I could conceive of was to promise that the next five years I would have kids at home, I would do everything possible to re-establish a genuine sense of the three of us. It may have been too late because whether is was teen angst that would have happened anyway, or a certain emotional rawness that had weakened me, we were all considerably damaged.
The whole of the experience was more dream-breaking than life-giving. So the next step was to conjure new dreams and set aside any hope I had ever imagined that I would share the beauty of raising my daughters with another that was fully present for me and them. That was big, because my most fervent dream of all else that I have done in my life was to share the joy of parenting, talk about and make decisions together, sit side by side at LaCrosse meets and plays, celebrate milestones with the kids and have a common understanding of what it was like when a "first" happened for one of the girls. The German guy did much of that, but just enough to tempt me into believing in commitments that turned out to be more words than deed.
I have paid my penance, but I do not know if either of my children have forgiven me for the German guy.
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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.
I think that it is perfectly fine that you fell for Bert. I honor the time he spent in our lives and what he added to it. I appreciated having an adult around who cared about what I liked and valued my interests. I also felt like having him around took some of the "heat" off of me. I realize that your relationship was simply unhealthy for you two, and certainly needed to end. I also realize that he took a horrible route of ending it. The relationship was disharmonious and unhealthy, and the responsibility for that(if there is any need for fault at this point in time) lies in both of you. People can be infuriating, but we always have a choice in how we deal with and express our own anger.
ReplyDeleteI think we can all have a tendancy to look back on moments in our lives- especially the difficult ones as all bad- or the happier ones as all good. The truth is that it just is- it is just a part of our journey- our best option is to take an honest look at our own mistakes and forgive ourselves, and not let these hard memories rob us of the glory of this present moment. So I have never needed to forgive you for Bert. Love, aManda
Okay, I'm going to be a teenager here. I ended it:) Thanks for this response, honey. I am not surprised at all that you found good in your relationship with him because there was a lot of good in it. (In fact, of the whole family, yours was probably the most harmonious). You're also right to understand that my relationship was different because we were partners and I had a responsibility to keep you and Steffie in a healthy environment. I just needed to write about it (and once again, I am not obsessed by it or longing to fix it). I've just never "talked" about it in this way so that others can understand how I think about my own culpability here. But thank you for saying you have never needed to forgive me for Bert. That means a lot to me. I love you. Mom
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