Closing out the GGA in Heart-Filled Doodles...

I've been thinking I needed to write a recap of the GGA Project--now already 2 weeks in my rear view mirror--before moving on to post on other subjects, but as the time goes on I'm finding my lack of motivation to write that recap is standing in the way of my writing about other things.  This is not good!  So, as a lazy compromise, I offer this somewhat brief summation:


The GGA Project was, I think, the best thing I knew to do to help me through the past year.  Through it I discovered a lot of interesting places and happenings in the area that I wouldn't have sought out otherwise.  I ate a crapload of good food and have a dozen new baked goods recipes in my toolbox.  I reconnected with old friends, and tried new fun forms of exercise as well as new torturous ones.  And, simply, I re-learned to focus on all the promise of joy out there in the world.


This last part was huge.


I'm not exactly sure when I stopped paying attention, where along the way I learned to put out of my mind the fact that my life is a fleetingly brief smidge bit time in the overall sense--the equivalent of a cameo appearance in movie that lasts 2 decades.  When I lost sight of that, I was the worst version of myself I'd ever known: the version that stopped believing in wonder and dreams and the happiness that comes when I am truly, fully open to life's offerings.  I settled for what I could see and touch right in front of me and decided to ignore all that could be, even all that I'd already known was.


But somehow, through no particular series of events or logical causal relationship, the GGA Project snapped me out of it.  For that, I will be forever thankful that I chose to spend 365 days of my life in that way.  I have emerged, yes, divorced--but rather than bitter and discouraged, I am hopeful and renewed.  I am once again joyful.


I'm not trying to say my life is one big happy ball of fun.  I have my down times for sure.  And I have my setbacks and insecurities and mournful, broken-hearted moments too.  But they do pass.  They are to be felt realistically and embraced, because fully alive, sentient beings do experience pain.  And those moments are to be appreciated for the brilliance with which the coming, brighter days will shine in comparison.


A few weeks ago an elderly regular customer at the bank came to my window, and we started chatting about the Indian restaurant he owns up in The City.  He knows I've never been there, so he started telling me about it, and this was the detail he chose to share about the restaurant's interior: "There are over a million hearts on the walls of the dining room," he said.  "I've drawn most of them myself."  He picked up the pen sitting on the counter, asked for a piece of paper, and drew a single heart at the top.  "I might start like this," he said.  "And then I look at that and think, 'that's no good.  I can do better.'"  And with that, he drew a second heart around the first.


He kept going while I printed out the cashier's check he needed and completed his other transactions, which have faded to the background of non-memorable parts of that encounter.


By the time I finished, he'd created this, which he signed and dated and asked me to hold onto, "until he becomes famous," he said, with a wink:

It's on my wall above my desk.  And here's why: I think my own heart is like his must be.  My heart is full of love-to-give such that I could easily picture myself handing out heart-filled doodles to near-strangers in banks.  It seems elderly men can pull this move off a little better than those in other segments of the population, so I'll hold off on that, but I loved experiencing that recognition--a kindred spirit and hopeful soul.  The man's face was pure serenity and wisdom, and I thought: this is why you keep moving forward, keep opening yourself up to life and love and joy--so that everywhere you roam, you embody and spread peace and are the bright spot in the monotony of a bank teller's (of an anybody's) day.


That is where 80 years' worth of that kind of living takes you.


I will look at that little piece of paper and it will bring me hope when I'm discouraged and calm when I'm full of anxiety.  The single upside-down heart is, I think, a nice touch as well.  It's a reminder of variations on the theme, maybe even of design flaws or production failures.  It's the phase in a person's life that didn't go according to plan, but which made an equal contribution to that life's perfection--perhaps a more interesting (certainly more character-building) contribution than all the years that did pass smoothly, unremarkably.


I know that upside-down heart phase now too, and in a way I know I'll never be able to fully put words to, I'm thankful for it.


I want to give a huge thank you to everyone who has followed my project and supported my efforts to end up in a much different, much better place now than I was a year ago.  I have leaned heavily on many shoulders for support, and all of those shoulders have proven strong enough to carry me but soft enough to offer comfort.


To my family and my chosen family-of-friends, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a New Year full of inspiration and the energy to follow through on it.  I wish you both smooth sailing and enriching, stormy seas.  And, as always, I wish you joy.


So with that, I'm officially laying the GGA Project to rest and moving on.  I hope you'll keep reading as I share all that inspires along the way...

The GGA Project -- Day #132 "A Life in an 8' by 12' "

The star atop the tree that was this week's big room switcheroo was taking stuff I didn't need, along with some great furniture donations from my parents, to my storage space down the street from the house.  I've probably been there 10 times already since first moving my things there about 6 months ago.  It's on the second floor, and though there's a lift and all, getting all my things in there during the multiple trips involved has been no small (or fun) task.


Thankfully my Dad has been along on most of these trips, helping me organize, maximize the space, and, well, carry stuff.  Today was no exception, and he handily rearranged the mounds of stuff already there to make room for its new friends.


I have to say I wasn't much help today.  I never mentioned this to my Dad at the time (I saved this 'help me!' sentiment for my Mom when we returned home), but I was a little distracted trying to reconcile the sight of my whole life's worth of things, contained in this smallish storage unit.


Today's New Activity: Pausing to Reflect, Mourn


In the beginning of my separation, I cried all the time.  Sometimes it was sadness, often it was pure confusion, and sometimes it was just plain pain.  It was difficult to be focused on parenting tasks during that first, raw period, and thankfully I had both my parents and my dear friends Kelsi and Nicole to help fill in any gaps.  There was definitely a period of feeling simply dazed.


The months that followed were very different.  My new and necessary focus was on logistics: the logistics of work and supporting myself and the Monkey while working out temporary and permanent custody issues, the logistics of filing for divorce, gathering the paperwork, the daily grind of doctor's appointments, grocery shopping, gym-going, baby bathing, clothes washing and the like, and the logistics of carving out time for friends and recreation (which I hadn't prioritized for some time and was happy to make time to do now).  


The past 6 months have been such a whirlwind that I think I didn't even allow myself much time to feel--to give space to the emotions surrounding my divorce.


Today I guess the powers that be decided I no longer had a choice in the matter.


Standing in that little rectangle, looking at the various things I've collected over the years, furniture and odds and ends, my bicycle, and all of Monkey's baby things that I haven't been able to let go of yet, I felt immense sadness.  What it all brought home for me was that I have absolutely no idea when I'll be in the place to let these things out of that little storage unit, when my life will begin to resemble something that feels respectable of a person my age, and a mother at that (meaning, basically, when I'll be in the position to move out of my parents' home).  It was a very sobering moment that made me wonder where on earth my life is headed.


I hate feeling that way when I have a young child who I'm responsible for.  I wish it were the case that I had it all together, that I'd established a permanent place for him to grow up in, preferably one with a yard and nice neighbor kids.  I wish I'd made better choices, all along the way.  I wish that wherever this is all going, it would get started.


And then, of course, I remember that it's already well on its way.  That there is no wish I have that it's not within my realm and not, indeed, my *responsibility* to make happen.  I remember that these are the moments that test a person's character and humility, and that give their loved ones the chance to show just how much they care, the chance to lift them up in their time of need.  My brain knows all that.


And still, in that moment today, my heart ached.  The reality of divorce hit me, anew.  The reality of starting over hit me, anew.  The reality of failure and wasted potential and concern for the future all hit me, anew.


What to do but stand in the hallway and hug my Mama and let that be the little (big) thing to start me feeling better?  These emotions are necessary to allow in, and out.  If I didn't have moments like these I'd be concerned for myself and wondering when, exactly, I'd turned into a robot.  But still, they are painful and then the feeling itself is followed by guilt for not trusting the process (the whole life process) more, for not giving myself a break, for not thinking positively. What a vicious cycle!


Thankfully I didn't spend all day looping around in it.  After all there were deposits and withdrawals to be processed at work this afternoon, and errands to be run, and always the laundry, ready to distract.


And after the day's earlier emotional heaviness, I'm thankful for all that.

The GGA Project -- Day #94 "Sad Sack Club'"

When I separated from my husband I learned of an organization called Kids' Turn, which facilitates classes for parents who have separated or are divorcing, helping teach them how to co-parent in a positive and cooperative way.  I think it's pretty standard for court-appointed mediators (whom it's required for every divorcing couple with children to see, unless they've managed to somehow come up with a custody agreement on their own) to suggest co-parenting classes; ours didn't recommend it formally but mentioned that it may be a good idea.  And it is.  In theory, it is great to think that we could be assisted in the putting aside of our differences for our baby's sake.


For sure, the success of any co-parenting class depends greatly on how invested each parent is in cooperating in the first place, but I'm sure the skills learned in classes can be helpful even for couples who haven't been able to reach that point just yet.  So far I've had a difficult time talking with my ex about parenting issues because when I do, he thinks I'm "trying to tell him how to parent."  In five married years I still never figured out how to communicate any kind of concern with my ex without bruising his ego in the process.  I've stopped trying, as I can scarcely imagine a more futile exercise--but the recognizing of that doesn't exactly leave me with a good solution when it comes to the necessary discussion of parenting issues.


Enter Kids' Turn.  We've both signed up for the classes, though we enrolled in different sessions.  It says right on the organization's web site that it's best if both parents can attend (I imagine they mean to attend the same session), but it seems the other parents enrolled may have the same issues we do, as not a single (ex) couple showed up to tonight's first class of a six-week course.  It was a bunch of single parents like me, battling the rain and the SF parking to get to the waiting area of an office where the receptionist had no idea we were expected and who began making frantic calls to the people at Kids' Turn to find out what was going on.


We all waited in that office until the poor employees of whatever that office Kids' Turn had rented was had to go home for the day.  Then we moved the operation down to the office lobby, where a few phone calls revealed that the facilitator of the class had gone to another of their rented locations across the city, while the rest of us had been told to go to this one.  By the time we got to the bottom of that, some of the parents had already left.


This was, of course, frustrating.  I'd left 1 1/2 hours early from the East Bay and two others had come from San Jose...it was pretty annoying to think of having made that trip for nothing.  When it was clear our facilitator would not be coming up with a magic solution to the night's snafu, the seven of us who remained waiting decided to go to a nearby diner, since we'd all driven the distances, paid the bridge tolls, and gone to the trouble of arranging babysitters.


Today's New Activity: Dinner with Divorcing Strangers


After my separation, I started seeing a wonderful counselor at Kaiser who helped me in sorting out some of the most rotten of my immediate-aftermath  feelings.  She let me know there was also a divorce support group that I could attend if I thought it would be helpful to be among others in my same situation.  I went to one session and decided that, for then anyway, it wasn't helpful at all.  Maybe it was the fact that most of the attendees were a good bit older than me, with older children, and seemed to have more than their fair shares of bitter between them--maybe those were the turn-off factors--but for whatever reasons I didn't go back.


Now, many months later, I'm in a very different place and eager to be among people who are also navigating the winding and seemingly endless trail that ends at Destination Divorced.  The nice thing about Kids' Turn is that they divide groups by the age group of the children involved in the separation.  So in talking to the other group attendees, I found out that most of them were about my age, involved in marriages of about the length of my own (5 years or fewer), and all of them had a child or children under 4 years old.  Already we all had a lot in common.


I've decided there is no faster way to get a group of strangers to break the ice with each other than to make sure they're all in the middle of divorce proceedings.  You sure have heard the tales being relayed, about calls to the police, about lawyers, about custody matters (the whopper), about promises made and broken, false reports to various agencies, and about how much everybody was eager for the entire process to be over.  It sounds like a terrible way to get to know people.  I can say, though, that tonight was just what I needed.


Just among the women seated right next to me, two had husbands with cultures very similar to my ex's, so we had a lot to discuss on that subject alone.  A man nearby was also headed back with his ex for round two of mediation soon, as my ex and I will be this coming week.  Another man (the only one among us who was already successfully divorced) was revisiting custody matters 3 years later...it was good to hear from him just to know what can be expected further down the line.


Aside from having this instant thing in common with people, it was just nice to be among people who so clearly needed to talk; they seemed uniquely poised to understand how badly others may need to talk as well.  They were a very friendly, open, concerned and helpful group--eager to share what they knew and readily seeking the best possible solutions for their children involved.


The title of this post is, of course, tongue in cheek.  I do have to say that when we left the diner and were walking down the street I mentioned this was the weirdest group I've ever been part of....not that the people themselves were weird, but it was a strange and unpleasant reason to have been put into a group together.  But hey, at least we can sort through the strange and unpleasant together.


I'm actually happy things happened the way they did.  If the class had begun as planned, I sincerely doubt we would have had the chance to get to know each other the way we did.  The rain, the absent instructor, and the almost desperate need among us to connect with others on this path all combined for one of the best on-the-fly hangout decisions I've ever made.


I'm looking forward to walking more of this journey with my newfound, single parent pals.

The GGA Project -- Day #83 "Yes, This is Your (New) Life"

I don't know about any of you married folks, but when I got married, the part of my brain that instinctively generated flirtatious behavior (or whatever organ is responsible for kicking this instinct into gear...use your imagination) shut down completely.  I still flirted with my husband, but the kind of flirty exchanges that used to happen between me and customers or co-workers came to a screeching halt.  Actually, that happened before I even got married...just as soon as I was exclusively committed.


I was happy about that.  I didn't want to be getting into any sticky situations, and I certainly never wanted to do anything to make my husband feel uncomfortable or disrespected.  For the record, I think a lot of (healthy) marriages allow for some, even a good degree of flirting.  It can even be good for a marriage.  The key is knowing the limits of what works for you and your partner and respecting those limits.  I was well aware of my own.


While I was happy about being able to feel strong and committed to my marriage, I did--at times--wonder if a part of me had died a little.  I like flirting.  Who doesn't?  And to feel that what was once a significant part of my personality had disappeared completely was kind of odd.  I think I must have given off a different pheromone entirely--or maybe it was just the presence of my wedding band--because all activity in the stranger/customer flirt department ceased, even outside of my own initiation.  Despite the odd feeling, however, I mostly considered it a good development.


Stranger, though, has been observing how this part of me has just now begun to reawaken, 8 months into separation, 4 months into divorce.  As you may imagine, I meet and talk to a lot of people working at a bank. And I've only recently started even hinting at any kind of response to men who are giving off a vibe.


Being totally honest with myself, I suppose I can say I'm more than a little bit scared of men at the moment.  I'm not physically scared of them (though having a young son, I do feel *especially* cautious about whom I would welcome even a little ways into my life right now).  It's just so fresh for me still...the idea of being with anybody other than the man I'd thought I'd be spending my life with.  It's not nostalgia for him, or for my marriage...it's not even the hurt about that--I recognize that getting divorced is the best possible thing I could have done for my life and that of my son.  It's just, oh god, getting to know somebody new?  The idea of intimacy in every sense of the word, with someone new?  Sometimes it feels like something I could go for at any moment.  And sometimes it feels like it'll be months before I'm ready to go down that road, if then.


And yet I must have been giving off some kind of quasi-readiness/flirtatious vibe, because after I'd helped a customer today, he called the branch and asked for me, then thanked me for my assistance and offered to "take me to lunch on a purely professional level, just to thank me for my great service."  That's a different approach.  I told my Mom about this and she said, "jeez, just imagine if you help him again.  Maybe he'll offer to take you on a cruise."  Haha.


As you might have guessed based on what I've said, this is the first time I've been asked out since I separated from my husband last June.  In the past, I might have gone along with that "purely professional" pretense and responded accordingly ("Oh sure, customers take me out to lunch ALL THE TIME to thank me for clicking a few buttons on my keyboard, despite the fact that I'm paid to do so. Why don't I pencil you in, next Saturday, say?")  But one truly good thing that has come from my marriage is my finally learning the lesson that dishonesty, even in the form of lies of omission, or going along with pretenses, gets a person into a lot of trouble.  Sometimes it takes a long time for that trouble to materialize, but it will eventually.  Honesty is, finally and forever, my only policy.


Today's New Activity: Using the "D" Word


For the first time today, I found it necessary to tell a stranger who knew nothing about me or my life that I was in the process of a divorce.  My exact words were, "I appreciate the offer, but I'm in the middle of a divorce right now.  I'm not really going to lunch with anybody."  I do find this customer friendly and handsome, though (it was the second time I'd helped him), and I might be interested in going out with him at some point, but I let him know I would just see him at the bank for now, and maybe take him up on his invitation in the future.


It's a weird thing, to leave the familiarity of a marriage (however clusterf*cked it may be) and reemerge into the world as a divorced woman.  Doesn't it just sound so ugly?  I'm a "divorced woman."  Okay, I'm not yet, but my divorce will be finalized within a few months, and I will soon find myself in a category of people I never imagined myself belonging to.  Who does really?  Nobody goes into marriage expecting to get divorced ("Eighth Time's a Charm" Larry King excluded...if he expects anything different at this point he is even more delusional than he is irritating), and no matter what the circumstances of your decision to part ways, it is a sad, sad day when you realize that despite all your love and best intentions and efforts to make it work, this marriage--like so many others--has, too, run its course.


Two important shifts have happened in my mind since the reality of my own marriage's demise has set in.  First, I've had to come to terms with my own judgments about divorced people and their choices.  Although I'm kind of ashamed to admit it, in my mind I had judged that they simply weren't trying hard enough...that they were lazy or selfish or uncommitted or bored.  I always made the exception in my mind for people who left physically abusive marriages, but for the most part I think I judged divorcees pretty harshly.  I now recognize that there are myriad good reasons why a marriage can end, and that people deserve some sympathy and the benefit of the doubt.


Secondly, I've had to come to terms with the idea that many, many, many people out there likely judge divorces and divorced people the way I myself used to.  And I have to wonder how they will view me.  Karma is a bitch though, ain't it?


I've been embarrassed, ashamed, and highly unlikely to share my marital status with people except those I trust completely (and it's been a challenge even among some of them), and I'm *really* not looking forward to the first time I have to mark the "divorced" box on some kind of document or questionnaire.  No matter what my circumstances and all the whatnot that brought me to this place, if I'm honest I'll admit there is a part of me that feels like a failure.


I acknowledge and deal with that feeling as it comes, when it comes.  And at the other end of that processing, I always get to the place where I know in my heart that a first step in getting my life on track as I want it to be is accepting where it is right now.  And right now, I'm a soon-to-be-divorced 32-year-old woman, a single mother who's living with her parents.  Ouch.  It's kind of a harsh reality to face.


Always moving forward though, honoring the path that led me here and sending out heaps of gratitude to all the people and events in my life that have touched me along the way.

The GGA Project -- Day #60 "A Little Bit of Letting Go"

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you are bound to have encountered some vague and roundabout posts in which I dance all around the subject at hand without ever getting to the point.  The reason for this was my reluctance to get into anything too personal before I was ready, coupled with my lack of faith in my ability to do so without veering wildly off the topic and into bottomless realms of sticky, yucky material.


At the same time, I've often felt that as long as I wasn't being honest about what this blog, this project, was really about, I was neglecting the most poignant and important stuff of my life as it is in the moment.  I took a small step in the right direction by amending the blog's header description the other day to mention my pending divorce.  Like I've mentioned before, there is definitely something going on in a person's life when she decides to commit to 365 Days of New, seemingly out of the blue and having nothing to do with a New Year's resolution.


I guess it's more of a New Life resolution.


Here's the gist of it: beginning in 2002 and continuing for the following 5 years (though much more sporadically toward the end) I was writing a blog called Monkalicious.  It was one of my cherished hobbies, and thinking about material to write about often added new perspective to all the things that happened to me during any given day.


In 2006 I got married, and though my husband wasn't thrilled about my blogging before we got married, it wasn't until after the deal was sealed (twice, no less, on two different continents) that he let me know exactly the extent of his disdain for my hobby.  Though I did note that his anger seemed most acute following a posted comment by anyone of the male gender (I had a semi-decent blog following back then), I was loathe to think of his criticism as simple jealousy or insecurity, chose to believe him when he said the stuff I wrote about was trivial and pointless, and opted, ultimately, to forgo the writing in the interest of keeping peace (and quiet) in my home.  By the way, perhaps my writing and subject matter was trivial and pointless, but it was something I enjoyed, so I feel I should have continued it on that grounds alone.


The writing was just the beginning of the things I chose to forgo.  I stopped spending time with almost all of my friends for the same reason (to avoid the conflict that would ensue if I saw my girlfriends even once in the span of a month, for coffee).  I stopped doing the things I found interesting and fulfilling, stopped venturing into new places and situations, and slowly began to feel the former lust I had for life begin to drain away, to be replaced by an ever-present, low- to high-level stress, the majority of my time newly devoted to the seemingly impossible task of keeping my husband from becoming enraged (I went back and forth there between "upset" and "enraged," just because "upset" sounds so much more civil, but "enraged" truly is the proper word, and since words are my passion, I want to be accurate).  Finally it came to the point where I thought I may need to chose between my family and my husband.


And maybe I did.  Which is how I came to be living with my son, in my parents' home, in the midst of a divorce.


I need to say something here.  I've said this to my friends, but I want to put it out here in the public record before I really get into things.  I take full responsibility for the choices I made in my marriage.  Though it was my husband's choice to treat me the way he did (which was, I think by any objective assessment of the events, unkindly), it was my choice to put up with it instead of demanding more respect and kindness.  And it was my choice to stay in the marriage as long as I did.  It was definitely my choice, mine and my husband's alike, to bring a child into a little marriage of horrors, and I may always have very complicated feelings about that choice.  It is made, however, and we brought a beautiful soul into the world, and nothing could ever detract from the joy I feel about that.


I decided to file for divorce about 4 months after separating.  Things were very difficult in the beginning days.  First of all, nobody in my family or among my friends had a clue what was really going on in my marriage.  To find out horrified them.  It was with a great deal of help from them, and a few books on the subject, that I began to see the dynamic of my marriage for what it really was.  And I should never have stayed in it as long as it did--not only because it wasn't right, but because there wasn't a chance of it changing.


The first night of our separation, I slept better than I had in a very, very long time.  There was a layer of anxiety whose absence was so strongly felt, I realized I had sorely underestimated how powerful it was in the first place.  In the first few weeks and months, nearly all my energy was spent trying to understand how I'd become so confused about what was normal and acceptable in relationships...it had been a slow spiral downward, so slow my dizziness was just mild enough to ensure I never got too alarmed, too fast, or all at once.  It took the help of a whole gang of helpful, loving, and supportive people for me to unravel the riddle of it.  I sometimes still need help in that way.


But after the initial period of debriefing and confusion, the fog began to lift.


And I began to reconnect with my friends.  And I went to see a couple of movies of my own choosing.  And I went to a couple of places I'd never been to before.


And I remembered what it was to enjoy again.  Not to enjoy anything specifically.  Just to enjoy, without any trepidation...without waiting for any shoes to drop.  The reclaimed sense of freedom was like breathing in the first scent of blossoms in the spring, the reminder that lying dormant for a season (or five) doesn't mean the death of a living thing.  It can make for a powerful reawakening.


It was then that I decided to start writing again.  I created this new blog and wrote a few posts.  But they were kind of few and far between.  By then I was filing for divorce, had a lot on my mind and on my plate, and wasn't taking the time I wanted to devote to writing.  A few months later, after a couple of fun new experiences and a particularly well-timed mini-epiphany during my company Christmas dinner, the idea for the GGA Project was borne.


It has been my absolute pleasure to have the chance to expose myself to so many new experiences, especially those that have come with the help or just the company of friends.  And now, about 1/6 of the way into the 365-day project, I'm beginning to realize that participating in this project truly is helping heal the sadness of what became of my marriage, and pull me out of the state of confusion that followed.  I am fully alive again.  I am reminded of all there is to be seen and felt and done out there.  I am reminded of the brevity of life.  I am reminded of laughter and family and love and joy.  I am reminded of music and arts and sports and parties, of outdoors and brilliant flavors and just pure recreation.


And that, to be perfectly and finally honest, is what this project is about.


All of which brings me to today.  To the inevitability of today, which is the sad part of divorce.


Today's New Activity: Spending the Night Away from my Baby


Just typing that brought tears to my eyes, as I sit here in a coffee shop just down the street from my soon-to-be-ex-husband's house, where I dropped off my son about an hour and a half ago now.

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So...we went through two rounds of mediation, received the custody recommendations from the mediator, and ultimately settled into semi-permanence that exact arrangement, through our lawyers.  Since we separated nearly 8 months ago, my ex has been taking the baby sometimes for a few hours on Sundays, sometimes all day on Sundays, sometimes Sundays and an additional day in the week, and occasionally 3 times per week.  But he's never taken him overnight until tonight.  Our arrangement for the next three months is that he'll take the baby from 5:30 Wednesdays until 5:30 Thursdays, and for 8 hours on Sundays.  The time is very limited because the baby is so young and he's never been away overnight.  And for that reason we have to return to court in 3 months to see if there is the possibility for him to get a stepped-up share of custody, depending on how the overnights go.


Though I've known in my heart that there was almost nothing I could do to keep this day from arriving, it doesn't make the arrival of it any less difficult to bear.  There are very good reasons why I left my marriage, and very good reasons why I am leery about leaving my son in my ex's care, especially overnight, and especially during those long early-morning hours, when the baby--who's in the throes of toddler teething--is most likely to awaken and cry, in need of comfort.  

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I know millions of mothers and fathers the world over have experienced this moment I have found myself in now.  Millions of mothers and fathers have feared and tried to sidestep and ultimately survived this moment, as have their children.  Just as I sat here writing this I witnessed and overheard what was clearly the exchange of a roughly 8-year-old boy between his divorced parents.  It happens all the time.  Just never in my life, until now.