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At bedtime I read to my son. He picks three books and we curl up together in his bed and we read and laugh. It’s one of my favorite rituals and it makes going to bed a pleasant experience. By the time we’re done with reading he’s usually calmed down, relaxed and ready to sleep. He’s also happy, he loves to be read to, he loves books.
When he feels happy like this he usually proclaims, “Mommy, this is really fun being together.” What a statement, from the heart, full of joy and his own sense of wellbeing, it fills me every time he says it.
But then one night about a month ago he said, “Mommy, I love you more than Daddy.” Ouch, that was a stab to my heart. There is a small side of me, to all of us, that loves it, we want to be the favorite parent. And in a house with both parents, this is normal and not an issue. Unfortunately, if you find yourself parenting in a two home family, this can be a sign post for problems up ahead. In the big picture, I don’t want him feeling like he needs to love one of us more, that he needs to appease us or make us feel… well anything in particular. That’s way too much responsibility for a young child.
In my dismay, in an effort to take a moment to asses things, I looked across the room and saw his chest of bins. This cute little dresser type stand that holds six different colored bins, in our case for toys, sits across the room holding all of his favorite treasures. So it struck me as a wonderful metaphor.
Rather than go with the statement of his comparative love as a compliment, which I didn’t feel, in my heart, that it was, I decided to discuss the bins. I told him that when we love someone it does not affect the way we love anyone else, that we can love as many people as we choose with as much of our heart as we wish without taking away from the way we feel about anyone else. Like his toy bins. Each bin has the capacity to be full or empty on its own, without regard to the quantity of toys in the other bins. One could be empty while the other is overflowing. That’s love, that’s the power of love, it’s infinite, or as infinite was we choose to allow it to be. I probably said it in more six year old terms, but the metaphor was well received.
I looked over to him, resting in his bed, looking up at me with the biggest blue eyes nestled within his creamy soft skin, cuddled into his blankets, sucking his fingers with his old warn blankie and he smiled. I kissed him goodnight and he said, “Mommy, this is really fun being together.”
Living between reality and the ideal means that I am constantly thrown up against the most counterintuitive lessons. Sometimes these are the most horrible feeling experiences and yet they turn out to be the best of all worlds. When we were young, if we grew up with security and a feeling of safety, we took our parents for granted. We tossed them aside like our old, used toys only pulling them close when they suited us. That was fine for me, when I was a kid, but now I’m the grown up, the adult, the parent. I am the one tossed aside as the painful expression of my own child’s feelings of well being. For good or ill, my son doesn’t actually toss me aside as much as he tosses his emotions, loudly, into the center of the room. He continues to throw tantrums, even at the advanced (ha ha) age of six. Generally he is a calm, happy kid, but when he’s tired, or worse even, hungry, he reverts to an over stimulated, emotionally driven three year old with ear twisting screams and cries that would make the most tolerant of parents seek a paddle (and for the record I do not spank or hit my child, ever).
Some well attached children simply reject their parents. A true sign of love. One night a week my dear friend from down the street brings her lovely daughter over for an evening play date (babysitting) so that she can get some personal projects done on her own. Last week when her lovely daughter was here the kids played, and dressed up, and ran around with the dog. They laughed and they built things, and just as we all sat down to read books our time was over. Her mother returned, her face filled with a bright smile ready for her lovely daughter’s, usual, warm embrace. But none was given. The child, beautiful with her blue eyes and happy smile turned sad and started crying, not a tantrum a cry, an honest, deeply felt sadness brought to the surface, cry. She looked at her mother and said “I don’t want to go home with you, I want to stay here.”
Let me just say, as flattered as I am that she loves coming to our home, this isn’t about me, this is about the joy of playing with someone else’s toys, this is about what it feels like for two kids without siblings in their homes to play as a brother and sister, and most of all, I believe, this is about her deepest feelings of security that she can reject her mother. She is four, too young to connect the dots of life without her mother, life in our home with different rules, different food, and a completely different rhythm of life. These are not her concern, her concern at that emotion filled moment was simply to keep playing. And, in her deepest feelings of security she could reject her mother, push her away, treating her only everyday parent as dispensable. What a treat, huh? But yes it actually is. Because this lovely daughter is telling her mother is that she, her wonderful mom, is completely ubiquitous within her life, within her own secure view of the world and thus she can push her away physically because she is always with her in her heart.
My son expresses the same message through his tantrums. For him, it’s not about my ubiquity in his life as much as my unconditional love. This is not an excuse to let the tantrums continue, we are working on getting those managed, but in the meantime, they are his ill formed articulation that he knows he can be who ever he needs to be at any moment with me, that he can show me his full range of emotions without rejection and that he’s always safe with me.
And he is.
Shortly after my husband and I split up, my son, then just over three and half years old, wouldn’t get out of bed one afternoon after his nap. This was not like him, to just stay in bed. He’s always been a mellow child, but after naps he usually likes to see what I’m doing. If he is still feeling tired we might read a book or perhaps watch a movie if we don’t have plans. But this day he just stayed in bed. It took me a while to realize that he wasn’t getting up. I was busy unpacking our boxes as we had just moved a week or so previous.
Realizing that something was wrong I went into his room and asked if he was going to get out of bed. He said he was tired and didn’t want to get up. My instincts kicked in, lucky me. Why is it that my instincts lead me astray when I’m talking with people at parties, or my extended family on vacation? I guess I can’t complain as my gut seems to work well for my head when it comes to my son, that matters more and I’ll try to remember that the next time I’m tasting sock at a party.
“I’m tired and don’t want to get up.” He said. I offered a “special treat” our code for candy or cookies, that always motivates. He turned it down. I watched him for a moment, he laid in bed with his big beautiful blue eyes open staring off into nothing, sucking his fingers with his little blue flannel blanket wrapped around his free hand. I did what any sad, depressed, newly separated mom would do when faced with a son who won’t get up after a nap, I got in bed with him. I asked him if he was tired or sad. I guess kids are easier to navigate than grown ups. He told me he was sad, he told me that he wished we didn’t have to live here and that we could go back to Daddy’s house. I wanted to cry. I wanted him to like our new home and I didn’t want him to have to pay the price of our problems. But there it was, that’s how it is. The kids, the innocents, are the ones to pay the bill for our indulgences.
Laying in bed together I held him and we started up at the ceiling for awhile. Then he asked outright if we could move back to Daddy’s house. I reached as deep as I could go, through all of the pain and anger, all of the filters that work so hard to keep him away from these feelings and deeper still into the truth of the matter and I apologized to him. I told him that I was sorry that he had to be so affected by our problems. I told him that we are now a two home family and that he will live with Daddy sometimes and me sometimes. I apologized that we couldn’t work out the things that made us, Mommy and Daddy, sad in any other way and that he was not to blame. I told him that we both loved him deeply, and that the best way for us to all be happy was for Mommy and Daddy to live apart. I reassured him that we are still a family, we’re just a two home family now. He looked over to me and then got out of bed.
He left his bedroom and went to play in the front room. Like a gust of wind his depression had passed. That was two and half years ago and he has never again asked for us to move back to Daddy’s. And this recently past holiday season when his class was asked to draw pictures of their families he drew a line down the center of the box and put me, him and the two cats on one side and his dad, him and their cat on the other. When he showed me his drawing, he proudly exclaimed that “this is our two home family.” I wanted to cry.
One of my dad’s favorite sayings is that “in life there is what is and what ought to be, and they are not the same thing.” He said this my entire childhood and now as an adult I still hear him saying it. I have come to believe that wisdom is found in understanding how to bridge the chasm between these two, between reality and the ideal.
I am now a divorced, single mother, although that is not how I define myself. We are all multi faceted and varied, not as easily defined as the world wants to see us. There are moments when I am still that 24 year old recent college graduate who just moved to San Francisco with my entire life in front of me, staying out late with friends to watch the sun rise over the bay, going to shows to hear our favorite bands, or sneaking on the roof our apartment with the crazy lady on the top floor who would come out and yell at us for being up there; and other times I’m a frantic single mother with too much to do and not enough time, loosing patience with my son as he follows the dandelion seeds through their wind guided travels and my stress jumps over the fence with him.
Regardless of these robes, these masks, these outer shells, I, like so many others out there, find myself exploring the world of this chasm between reality and the ideal. I ask myself, how do I help my son understand it and create his own bridge, his own reality, his own peace and happiness? There will be a day, all too soon, when he’ll be old enough to connect his own understandings of “what is” and “what aught to be” and I hope I’ve done my job to give him the tools to navigate this world of joy and disappointment, abundance and sadness, peace and strife.
Getting divorced was a giant leap into this chasm, for both of us (that’s my son and me, my ex and I get along just great, but he has his own realities to work out). Now, my life lives here down deep in the abyss, but there are others here and it’s kind of pretty. My hope is to create a community of friends down here in our pastoral valley of our own making. Perhaps we’ll build some bridges, perhaps we’ll just hang out here and throw a party.
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