Sometimes the Past is a Present: 2007 Revisited

Here it is, New Year's Eve.  

What a great year 2007 has been for me.

I'm grateful for the changes...the little steps I've made to get out of a rut that I'd fallen into. 

When I first separated in 1999 I made commitment to myself to treat myself well, to learn and grow and to get out of my comfort zone.  I did many fun things that I'd have never done while I was married.  (I took writing and art classes, learned to rollerblade, moved to the beach.)    But I didn't feel like myself.  It was a strange feeling--like I wasn't all there.  What do you do when you feel like you're in a chrysalis?  (This is a future blog topic if there ever was one!)  I was able to do lots of stuff--but I felt strange, like my clothes didn't fit and I couldn't yet decide what would I wanted to wear.

Lately I've had a similar urge to change my life--but I'm already a butterfly (I suppose) because I feel very much "myself."  Maybe I just flew around more this year--checked out more gardens, drank from more flowers.  

I'm grateful for the days of 2007 in which I met many new wonderful people.  I went on my first yoga retreat in Ojai.  (www.carpediemretreats.com).  I took a yoga teacher training coarse.  (And found out just today that I passed!)  Yahoo!  (www.yogaworks.com)    I was encouraged by a volunteer at KCRW's biannual fundraiser (kcrw.org) to take a writing class with a wonderful teacher, Jack Grapes (www.jackgrapes.com/grapes_approach.php).  (Thanks Charles and Lara!) and I did some volunteer work for Planned Parenthood (www.plannedparenthood.org/los-angeles) .  

I've also met a man whose company I greatly enjoy.  My children are healthy and relatively happy (they are adolescents after all--some angst is in order, though I've not seen it yet.)  I'm fortunate that an dear friend encouraged me to write about what it's like being divorced--thank you Jackie.  And thanks to the Mad As Hell Club for pointing me in the direction of some bloggers and letting me find this venue where I can express myself.

I'm grateful for rediscovering, in these last days of 2007 that the net has turned into such a great place to learn--it's like sitting in a pile of books strewn from the shelves of all the libraries, lined with walls filled with video feeds, while professors and teachers stand nearby willing to help me explore it all.  I used bulletin boards in the 80s with a dial-up modem (the graphics were created from the keyboard--typing x's and other letters)   Back then I wrote an environmental newsletter that I printed on a dot matrix printer.  Now there is...this!

For 2008 I look forward to exploring this medium.  It was where I left off in 1999 and I'm so glad to be able to return.

Happy New Year!

Any Day You Are Alive is a Good Day

I have a date of sorts for tomorrow night.  My "boyfriend" and I will hang out at his place and entertain ourselves.  We'll watch people celebrate on television and maybe drink champagne.

I've become a person who has lost the ability to appreciate designated special days.  Some of my best days have not been calendared.  For example, about six years ago I was driving on the 405 over the Sepulveda Pass and the sky was filled with Painted Ladies.  (They are a native butterfly, in some southland locations considered endangered--but I also believe they are raised by kindergardeners at many of Los Angeles's elementary schools.  This doesn't make sense, I know, but this being LALA land, anything is possible.)

There were so many butterflies in the air I had the sense that other drivers were slowing down as if they could avoid hitting them.  I swear my windshield stayed clean as I made my way into the San Fernando Valley.

I could pluck any number of special days spent with my sons.  Another car miracle:  We were talking about Elvis.  He's rarely a topic of conversation.  I don't know what we might have been saying. We were driving on a short stretch of Pico,  facing the Pacific--just a few blocks away from where the street hits the bike path.  I stopped at the light at Main.  It was one of those sunny, bright days, the temperature was in the 70s, the ocean twinkling at us.  There we were sitting in my red Corolla in our jeans and t's.  The kids had sodas in their hands.   A tune, not Elvis floated out of the car speakers.   A big red bus with a giant sign advertising an Elvis tele-biography  rolled into the intersection in front of us.  We laughed in amazement.  There is no designated day for strange and wonderful sightings.

My ex-husband asked for a divorce a month and a half before my fortieth birthday.  For his fortieth birthday I gave him a surprise party at an Italian Restaurant and his first son.  He'd been a deprived child and only had one birthday party as a kid.  For my fortieth I got my freedom without the balloons and cake.

That birthday (my fortieth) I celebrated by having dinner with a friend and my youngest son, who was two and a half at the time.  We had dinner at Newsroom--across the street from Ivy (we were avoiding the paparazzi.)   And we went to Century City to walk about.  In a toy store at the mall we bought my son puzzles.  I bought one with little knobs that toddlers can use to pull the pieces up while my friend bought a jigsaw with about twenty pieces--no knobs.  We bought ice cream at Ben and Jerry's and sat outside.  David took the puzzle out and dumped the pieces on the table and worked as we chatted.  At one point he raised his hands straight up in the in the air and yelled "Yay!" prompting smiles and laughs from people sitting nearby.  He'd done the puzzle.  It had two robots--like the two in Star Wars.  It had no knobs.

The kids are with me for Thanksgiving.  I don't really celebrate Christmas.  Some years I've gone rollerblading at the beach  (it is nearly always a beautiful clear day on Christmas.  This year it's in the 60s but most of the past seven years I could swear it's been in the 70s and clear enough to see Catalina from Santa Monica.)   A few Christmases I've done the movie thing.  Sometimes I'll dine with friends.  When I complained to my therapist about the divorce-present, he asked if there are really special days just because they are on a calendar.

Usually the kids are with me New Year's Eve.  We hang out--watch T.V., then run outside when the fireworks at the Marina start.  We try to see them over the rooftops of the houses on Grand Canal.  But the boys are at their dad's this year.  And my boyfriend and I will keep each other warm indoors at his place in the valley.

Any day you are alive can be a holiday!

Here's to another year!

Moms Who Lose Their Children: Disneyland Dad Morphs Into Weekend Mom

Christmas Day I went to the market to buy a plant for the woman who planned to feed me that evening. When I was in line to check out I chatted with the woman in front of me who was a retired middle school principal.  We commented about the state of Los Angeles' schools.  The checkout girl joined in.  She said her daughter didn't go to L.A. schools because she spent the school year with her dad in Colorado and that at the end of her work shift she'd be going to pick her little girl up.

This woman is in the same boat as me I thought. 

"I have the same situation," I told her.  "And I used to feel uncomfortable about what other people might think--like there was something wrong with me as a mother.  I imagined they thought I was a drug addict or prostitute."  

Not getting to chose how I wanted custody still bothers me, because I didn't get pregnant and give birth and spend the time I did taking off work, losing retirement contributions to not be with my kids.  As a matter of fact, before I divorced I wanted to be working at home so that I'd be around whenever they needed me.  On top of missing my kids--and them missing me (my youngest son was only 2 1/2 when my ex- and I split) I also felt stigmatized.

The evaluator who spoke to my kids at the custody hearing said that my ex husband and I were the same as parents and that the kids should stay in the same house.  She didn't realize that I left the house to be away from him--and that he refused to leave.  At the hearing my attorney did nothing--he didn't object or tell me what to do to change the decision.  (And I was too blown away by that decision and the whole divorce process to think clearly at the time.)

It's been seven years and it is what it is.  My kids and I made an attempt a few years ago to try to convince their dad to switch the custody (I have vacations and weekends and he has them during the week generally) without going to court, talking to a psychologist, but he refused.  I've almost initiated a court review of the custody a few times because my youngest son doesn't get along with his dad and step-mother as well as he does with me, but we've managed to work things out.  Fortunately, my sons enjoy being with me on weekends and vacations.  I've accepted that life doesn't go the way you planned most of the time.  We have a terrific time when we are together and that' what matters.

But I do have custody advice for women:  I think all women should consider a prenup agreement before marrying. The custody of the children should be the woman's unless she's truly unfit--a drug addict or clinically mentally ill.  If divorce settlements can be decided ahead of time, so can custody.  When children are of the age to make the decision as to where they'd like to live, that also should be considered.

I know men are more involved as fathers now.   But it seems to me that woman must be the main voice in deciding who raises the kids.  A man is not a mother.  And even in this age, it's women who makes the biggest sacrifices to be married.  Women deserve to have their children--to not be considered the same as a man in this regard.

Since I've divorced I've met many women who've been in my situation.  It's a devastating thing to have to work through.  None of them are or were bad mothers. 

Identity--The Ball Starts Rolling

A friend suggested that writing about our experiences as divorcees might somehow be of benefit to other women.  My immediate reaction was that I didn't want to think of myself as a "divorced person."  This particular friend and I would often complain about our ex-spouses.  So, in the context of that friendship I suppose I am a "divorced person."  I have other friends who are also divorced but I might be to them a "yoga person" or a "mom" or a variety of other identities.  So there is hope, because although I think getting divorced is one of the best things I've done in my life, I don't think of myself as a divorced person.  Being on my own, however, has allowed me to become a person--an individual--a gift I couldn't imagine as I went through the process years ago.

What made me finally feel that writing about divorce would be worthwhile was listening to a young man's description of the day his mother told him his parents were divorcing.  We were in a writing class together and I'd written about the same thing.  My parents divorced when I was seven and I divorced my children's father when my oldest son was seven.  I remember how my sister had come into my bedroom one morning--I would have been lying in sheets decorated with cartoon characters. I was wearing a little pink nightgown. There'd have been stuffed animals tossed about me on the bedspread.  I had that room all to myself. It had been my father's den and had a window that looked out onto what seemed like a giant avocado tree.  That morning was quiet and cool.  It was probably just getting light.  Patty, who was a year younger than me, stood in the doorway, flipped on the lights, and announced "Mommy and Daddy are going to live in two houses!"

I'd investigated divorcing my ex-husband the day after he called me "evil."  It was September 1998.  We had such a boring existence--in anyone's eyes we must have been quite the pair of good-two-shoes. We didn't cheat on each other, there wasn't an addiction problem or a money problem.  He called me "evil" and that was enough for me.  There wasn't any love there and I'm not evil (or any more evil than every other human being) so I called a lawyer.  The lawyer never called back and I didn't pursue it further.  At Christmas-time--that was when our wedding anniversary was--I bought him a wedding band and had written a note about how couples go through bad times but that it probably wouldn't last.  When I gave him the band though, he said something that angered me and I didn't give him the note.  A few months later I was driving home from work in the middle of the day and strangely thinking of my husband being in a plane crash (he was safely on the ground at his work).  When I got home he called and said he'd like to get a divorce.  I was sitting at a crappy office desk that bowed in the middle from the weight of a computer and bookcase we'd put atop it.  I don't remember being surprised.  I probably thought it went with the airplane-crash thought.  When he came home we moved into the kitchen to talk.  It was dark.  It was a little room that we'd remodeled before our first son was born.  He leaned against the white tiles next to the refrigerator.  I asked if he'd get therapy and he said "I don't want to know what's wrong with me." 

These are moments your remember. They are the moments that get the wheels rolling, or shake the ground--take your pick.

And then everything changes.