Stitch

Years ago, when The Boy was still small, he and I watched the movie Lilo and Stitch. For those unfamiliar with the premise, Lilo is an orphan being raised by her older sister. Stitch is a space-alien-critter who happens into their lives and (of course) endears himself to them over time. There’s a poignant moment near the end of the film where Stitch, referring to Lilo and her sister, says, “This is my family. It is small and it is broken, but it is good.”

This was the moment when The Boy, all young and naive and bright-eyed, enthusiastically said to me, “Just like us, Mommy!”

I had to hide out in the bathroom crying for a good hour or so.

Single parents will understand. That whole broken-family thing will nail you in the gut every time. It doesn’t matter how great a parent you may be, or how the world is changing to accommodate different family structures. Single parents always feel second-best. And they always worry that their kids do, too.

I thought of that Lilo and Stitch moment recently, as I found a copy of the DVD while I packed up the last of my belongings still remaining at my former home in the wake of my recent divorce. Here’s where my convoluted life probably requires some ‘splainin.’ The Ex, about whom I’ve blogged until y’all likely wanted to scream get over it already, is not my first ex-husband.

That’s right — I’m 41 and twice divorced.

Yay me!

The Boy’s father — let’s call him Tee — and I met when I was young and foolish and he was old and horny. He was a lot older than me.

A lot.

So much older that, after my family first met him (whilst I waited for the dropped jaws to to be retrieved from the floor) one of my smartass brothers deadpanned, “Well, I think it’s nice. Dad didn’t have much of a father figure. He could use someone to look up to.”

Ouch.

In the face of such quips, I did the only thing I was likely to do at that stage of my life. I married Tee. It didn’t take us long to realize that what we’d done was idiocy. Two weeks after the wedding, I packed my bags and left.

And then I found out I was pregnant.

In hindsight, I think Tee and I get an ‘A’ for effort. We did our best to make the unworkable work. Ultimately, we parted ways, fought and made a couple of attorneys richer for a while, then settled into co-parenting amicably. Tee adored The Boy and was always a great dad. For a number of years, Tee actually worked for my family, managing their golf business. He played golf with my father and brothers. He joined my family for holidays. It was about as good as it gets for an odd couple like us.

Still, I was ever aware that The Boy and I had this awkward, broken little family. His father was old enough to regularly be mistaken for his grandfather. I wondered if we would ever escape the weight of past errors.

Then I met the man you now know as The Ex. He was handsome and funny and, I thought at first, just quirky enough to fit right into our awkward, broken little family. I dared hope he might be Stitch to The Boy’s Lilo.

Over time, though, their relationship became one of the major issues in our marriage. They were just too different, and I was forever caught in the middle. There were other issues, too — stuff I couldn’t make up for any novel. As one who appreciates life most when it’s drama-free, I knew something had to give.

So, once again, I found myself divorced. I worked my tail off to keep things amicable, and before long I landed in the most unusual of situations: living as The Ex’s neighbor. Serving as his housesitter and dogsitter while he was away on business trips. Continuing to help him with management of our former home and rental properties.

A neighbor teased me as I helped The Ex dig one of our tenants out of the snow that had drifted against the apartment door.

“Forget about you writing another book. He should,” he said, nodding at The Ex. “He took your house and your dog in the divorce, and here you are still taking care of both! Now that’s a story!”

Haha. Funny neighbor. There’s a guy who’s lucky not to have taken a snow shovel to the face.

But a lightbulb went on.

There’s keeping things amicable.

And then there’s being a doormat.

The Ex had not been particularly kind to me for years. I walked on eggshells in my own home. When I begged him to help save our marriage, he was willing to do exactly nothing to that end. And yet, every time he appealed to me for help, I was there.

I began to wonder why.

I also began to wonder if I could truly move on while living so close to him that I saw him daily. We would walk and drink beer together at the dog beach while our pups played. Sometimes it seemed nice, as if we should win a medal for being the Best Divorced Couple Ever. More often, though, it was just weird and painful. Sad.

A child’s movie might seem an unlikely catalyst for change, but when I found that Lilo and Stitch DVD, something clicked.

I’d been small and broken too long.

The question was how to move forward. I took inventory.

The Boy is currently living with Tee, attending community college, and trying to figure out the path ahead.

I have plans for a small house I’d like to build. I need to save money toward that goal while helping The Boy pay for college.

Meanwhile, Tee has an in-law apartment in his home, something he and I had spoken about recently. It’s been in need of renovation since he bought the house years ago, and he wondered if I might be interested in doing the work in exchange for an affordable place to live. At first, I thought he was crazy. It sounded like the sort of thing likely to end in an episode of Dateline.

But then again?

Maybe not so much.

Tee and I have functioned as friends and coparents for over 15 years now. And I realized that, while I have been living in one of the most beautiful places in the world, it’s no longer the right place for me. Every lovely aspect of the area is steeped in memories of The Ex. And if the memories aren’t enough, there he is in the flesh: driving past the front of my house in his car, past the back of my house in his boat, walking on the beach, calling me for help with this or that.

While there may be no geographic solution for most problems, this may be an exception.

One of my very best friends lives right across the street from Tee, on the river where she and I swim together as often as possible in summer. Several other good friends live in the same neighborhood. I don’t know what’s in the water there, but it’s Good People Central. And I need good people around me right now.

So I’ve found someone to sublet my little piece of paradise for the duration of my lease. I’m working on making the apartment at Tee’s my own, an affordable place to call home while I find my way forward. The Ex seems to understand that I need to move on, and has promised to enlist a proper dog- and house-sitter.

Here’s a snapshot of my life right now:

I am 41 years old.

Twice divorced.

Escaping my second ex-husband by moving into an apartment owned by my first ex-husband.

And feeling better than I have in a while.

Truth is stranger than fiction, right?

The other night, Tee and The Boy and I were surveying the progress on my new digs, talking and laughing, and a thought made me smile…

This is my family.

It is small, and it is broken, but it is good.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Happy

The Boy is home from college.  This is as it should be, since the semester has ended and the holidays are upon us.

What isn’t as it should be?

He’s not going back.

He informed me of his decision just a few weeks ago.  “I’m not sure what my path is,” he told me, “but I’m sure this isn’t it.”

This isn’t it?

This path I’d worked my tail off for eighteen years to afford him - he was just going to meander off it after one semester?  Abandon my hopes and dreams for him?  Turn me into some statistic about how single mothers fail their kids?

Because it was all about me, right?

I told him I felt he was making a mistake, that he ought to just tough it out through the spring semester and see if he felt differently.  But I also silently owned up to the fact that this was opening old wounds for me, and I was going to have to work to keep from imposing my issues on him.

See, I never finished college.  The full story is one for a book.  The Reader’s Digest version is this: I was unhappy at one school, and when I found myself in a downward spiral of Girl, Interrupted proportions, I decided transferring to another school would be the answer to my problems.  Then I decided to defer my enrollment and work for a while.  One year became two, two became three.  I found myself married and pregnant and divorced (more or less in that order).  I chipped away at my degree over the years, but as a single mom working full time and attending night school, I had more than a few moments where I wanted to travel through time and throttle my eighteen-year-old self.

Which, I suppose, is why I wanted to throttle my kid when he dropped his bombshell.  I mean, didn’t he get it?  I thought of all the years I’d have given anything to go back to the days of having a dorm room and a work-study job and enviably few responsibilities.  Didn’t he understand how good he had it?  Couldn’t he learn from my mistakes?

Of course he couldn’t.  None of us ever does.

A few of my friends suggested that I tell The Boy he had to stay at school.  That coming home wasn’t an option.

Ha!

Have you met my kid?

Pretty much since conception, he’s upended my every plan.  My pregnancy (which I’d intended to spend quilting cute things for his nursery) was miserable, thanks to Hyperemesis Gravidarum - you know, the brutal 24-hour-a-day variety of “morning sickness” that everyone now cares about because Kate Middleton suffered it.  And those dreams I had of singing lullabies to a sweet, cooing infant or writing for hours while he napped?  Not a chance.  My baby was colicky for a full six months, which basically meant that he never slept more than two hours at a stretch, and when he was awake he was often screaming inconsolably.  I kept waiting for his little head to spin around like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist.  And though the colic ultimately passed, his defiance of norms became his defining trait throughout childhood and into adolescence.  ‘Strong-willed’ would be the kind term.

The funny thing, though?  Things have a way of working out for The Boy.  I’ve learned - time and time again - not to sweat his quirks.  He can be frustrating as hell, but he’s also smart and funny and has a better sense of self than anyone I’ve ever met.  And while there may have been times when I wished I’d made better choices when I was eighteen, this much I cannot ignore: the path I took brought this awesome kid into my life, and being his mom has given me more joy than I can quantify.  There’s a lesson in that.

As it turns out, The Boy has a fairly concrete plan for his schooling: spring semester at community college, then transferring to an in-state school for the fall.  He’s done the work to make the shift.  He seems happy.  Truly happy.

And I can’t think of anything I would rather have my son be.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

The Boy and I meet.  And yes, childbirth is exhausting and makes for bad hair.

My little buddy.  I think he’s humoring me.  Do you know how much I love to play in sand?

He hated that buzz cut.  I was not allowed to do that to him ever again.

We’ve got sweet dance moves.  Probably thanks to all those times we watched Napoleon Dynamite.

I am permitted only one selfie per road trip.  Even though he does stuff like shoving a cheeseburger into his face at the last second.

The Lucky One

I sometimes forget just how lucky I am.

This past weekend, I spent some time with The Boy, and I was reminded.

As one who has lived most of my adult life as a self-employed single mother, it has too often been all too easy to count the ways my life was lacking.

For starters, there was that whole “single” business.  Which often felt more like, “destined to die sad, horny and alone.”  Blech.  No fun.

Then there was the living situation.  My son and I lived in a series of rentals.  The place we stayed the longest - seven years - was a one-bedroom apartment.  The Boy thought it was normal for Mom to sleep in the living room.

Money?  Don’t get me started.  Paying the bills was a juggling act.  Car repairs or unexpected medical expenses were a disaster.  I hid in the bathroom and wept every time The Boy found a new interest requiring lesson fees or equipment.

Material gains I made in recent years - building my business, saving, owning a home, investing with a man I loved in a future together - were largely lost in my divorce.  The Boy is in college and those tuition bills are rolling in.  I am back to living in a rental, back to working every spare minute to make ends meet. 

Whiny and bleak with a side of poor-me, anyone?

Of course, that’s not the whole story.

Singlehood?  Sure, I’d have preferred a long-term love story, but I’ve had some really great guys in my life - so there’s that.  Even the most difficult of my relationships has helped me learn and grow.  And damn, I’ve had a whole lot of fun, too.

Those rentals?  The early ones were chosen to place us near schools where The Boy could get the best possible start in education, first at Montessori Children’s House in Providence, RI, then at Friends Academy in Dartmouth, MA.  For several years, fully half my income went to private school tuition - and it was worth every penny.

The seven years spent sleeping in the living room?  I’ll get far less pity when I tell you our small apartment was in a multimillion-dollar house on the water.  The Boy grew up able to fish for crabs from the dock in his back yard, paddle around the marshes in a kayak, make snow angels in the stillness that envelops a salt pond on a winter night.

Money?  Maybe the bills would have been easier to pay if I hadn’t been hell-bent on seeing to it that The Boy didn’t suffer for my failings.  We could have stayed home, could have socked away a little more in the rainy-day fund, but having a child felt to me like having a fresh pair of eyes with which to explore the world.  So we explored.  Hiking ruins in Mexico, skiing in northern New England, snorkeling in the Florida Keys, road trips to DC and Boston and New York.  If you want to know how to travel well on a seriously-shoestring budget, I’m your girl.

And now?  I’ve found another tiny rental with a million-dollar view. The Boy has earned scholarships that defray the tuition bills.  Business is booming.  And while, ultimately, I suppose we all die alone, sad and horny feels like less of a given these days.  

This past weekend, I drove on winding back roads with fall leaves swirling in the sunshine overhead.  The Boy and I sang along with the radio for a while, then I left him at his dormitory and continued on my own.  I felt my heart - that thing I feared mere months ago was broken beyond repair - open wide.

In that moment, I remembered:

                                  just how lucky I am.

Turn to the Left

As many of you know, my only kiddo - a/k/a The Boy - leaves this week for college.  He’s psyched for it, and somehow his excitement seems to have translated into a penchant for dressing like Hunter S. Thompson:

I love it.

I love it, but I try not to say too much about it.  Parental endorsement of fashion is presumably the last thing an 18 year old kid wants.

Still, between you, me and the blogosphere, I love it just as I love seeing kids with pink or blue or green hair - and I love that there seem to be so many of them now.  I love seeing teens with fearless fashion sense and a creative, offbeat outlook on life.  I love that, at least in some corners of the world, our culture seems to be shifting in a way that allows young people to have fun expressing who they are.

As a teenager, I wanted desperately to let my freak flag fly.  My mother bought me khakis and Keds.  I bought combat boots and lace tights.  Trying to leave the house in my preferred attire was like trying to convince Sarah Palin that Hillary should be our next President.

Mom, horrified:  “You can’t leave the house like that!  You look like that crazy Madonna person.  What will your teachers think?”

Dad, stern:  “You’re ruining your life.  Do you want to be a degenerate?”

I thought this was kind of funny coming from a guy who was a fan of David Bowie and Lou Reed, but clearly what was acceptable in rock star fashion was not acceptable in suburbia.  What I didn’t get was why.  I just wanted to wear combat boots and lace tights.  Maybe occasionally use makeup to turn my massive eyebrows into something deliberately severe, a la Siouxie and the Banshees.  What did any of that have to do with my teachers?  Did I ever say anything about their horrific fashion sense?  Those polyester pant suits and orthopedic shoes seemed to me far more likely to carry one down the road to ruin than the occasional blue streak in my hair.

But damn, folks love to fixate on the superficial.

If I had a nickel for every time I was told to do the very opposite of what I wanted to do - of what felt natural to me - well, I’d have a shitload of nickels.  And for what?  I spent my youth fearful of exploring, constantly told to zip my lip, change my clothes, fix my hair, be mindful of what my teachers, my grandparents, the neighbors might think.  That limiting mindset stuck with me for far too long.  I am 40 years old and just now beginning to live the life I’ve always imagined.

It makes me gleefully happy to see so many young people encouraged to have fewer hang-ups and secrets, and more awesome, life-building experiences.

My words of wisdom?

Wear what you want to wear.

Say what you want to say.

Stop worrying about the superficial stuff and go do fabulous things.

Because our world gets better every time we stop worrying about what the neighbors might think…and just get off our asses and make the neighborhood a better place.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Now give a listen to my new favorite groove: ‘Secrets’ by Mary Lambert.  If this earworm doesn’t make you smile, check your pulse.

The Unicorn at the Dog Beach

He was tall, pale, and soft around the middle in that endearing way that forty-something married-with-children men tend to be.

He was wearing the very same swim trunks as every other father of small kids there at the beach - the ones stocked by Marshall’s within easy reach of wives headed to the checkout.

He’d expertly wheeled a cart loaded tidily with L.L. Bean bags and sand toys and umbrellas and chairs, staked out his patch of beach, and begun to unpack.  Then he stopped, dropped everything, and chased after his small son - a boy of about 3 or 4 years old, I’d guess.

"Hey, buddy," he said, corralling the kid under the umbrella.  "Gotta get sunscreen on first, right?"

He slathered the boy with sunscreen, then secured a hat on his little blonde head.  He sent him off with a playful pat on the tush.

"Why don’t you take that shovel and start on our castle," he suggested.  "I’ll be over to help in a minute."

Ladies, he had my attention.

And apparently I wasn’t subtle about it, because - to my horror - he addressed me.

"Oh, I’m so sorry," he said.  "We didn’t mean to disturb you.  We’ll try to keep it down."

Yup.  Courteous, too.

I waved off his apology and stuck my nose into a book.

I couldn’t help but keep my antennae tuned in to the activity at the beach blanket next to mine, though.  This guy set up camp like a pro.  He pitched in on sand castle construction helpfully.  He addressed his son with nonchalance and respect as a variety of issues arose.

"No, no - you shouldn’t put that in your nose."

"Well, if you really need to poop, we’ll go to the potty.  Only doggies can go on the beach."

"Sure we can have lunch.  Let’s just go wash our hands first, okay, buddy?"

This was something I had missed out on as a single mother.  This variety of man amazed me by his mere existence.  And I knew from my girlfriends who were married with small children that they were all too rare.  Far too many fathers out there failed to notice objects going into little noses until emergency room extraction was required.  They thought all the world was a bathroom.  And washing hands before eating?  Good luck getting the dads to do it, never mind their offspring.

This guy was a FIND.

And clearly, I was staring.

As he settled his son into a beach chair and carefully unwrapped the little guy’s sandwich, he struck up a conversation with me.  He was probably trying to ascertain that I wasn’t a loony about to steal his small child or boil his rabbit, but whatever.  It was a nice conversation.  I learned that his wife was home with their 3-week old baby, which only endeared the guy to me more.  He understood that his wife needed a break!  That she needed time alone with her new baby!  

Then he told me his mother had come to help.

Aha!  I’d discovered it!  His fatal flaw!  His poor wife was stuck home with the mother-in-law.  She was probably wishing for a natural disaster to put an end to her “help.”

"Will she stay long?" I asked sweetly.

"Oh no," Perfect Dad said emphatically.  "My mother doesn’t like to impose.  She’ll just do some laundry, look after the baby a bit so my wife can take a nap, and then head home."

A MIL who didn’t want to impose?  Dear lord, even she was perfect.

"Well," I said wistfully.  "I’ll let you get back to your beach time with your son.  Congratulations."

And then, as father and son sat nibbling apples, their profiles and mannerisms so similar I nearly laughed, I went back to my book.

With - truly - a little bit of a crush.  And the sense that I’d seen something not unlike a unicorn.