What I Don't Know

            Half their lives they are not with me, and I am not with them.

            Today my boys are on Vancouver Island. Attending the memorial of their other mom’s mother who died this month, they are with the clan that I am not part of—cousins I have not met, uncle, aunt, friends of family: all strangers to me. Their dad’s parents, who used to be my in-laws, are there too, and together they are participating in the ritual of mourning and celebration. A milestone in my boys’ lives—for death must be accepted and understood as part of life.
            And every family has their ways, their own subtle beliefs and practices. I will not be privy to that deep, often unspoken, modeling. What happens when we die, after we die? Why are we born? How is death celebrated, a life commemorated? This is for my boys alone to discover with that wing of their family.             

            Are they in good hands? I know they are safe, their primary needs are well handled. They will have delicious family dinners and special breakfasts that I will not taste. They are probably neater, tidier, more contained than when they are with me. They will play with their cousins, two girls similar in age whom I have never met. They may hear prayers and reference to a religious belief that is not mine.
          In my email this morning I received a photo of them in button down shirts with fresh haircuts. Bright eyes, ears sticking out like jug-handles and closed-mouth smiles.
            I am grateful for the picture, for news of the changes in their lives, for a glimpse into the window of that world. And of course I miss them. Of course I want to smell their hair, and put my fingerprints on their cheeks, and hear their white noise—Primo’s repetitive whistling and snippets of things he says to himself, and even the sniping and bickering that happens, inevitably, no matter the day or occasion.
            The photo evokes in me a longing. It unsettles me. And momentarily I am undone.

            Yesterday I attended a Parenting After Separation workshop. Required by parents in Alberta who are dissolving their marriage, the course recommends co-parenting, using mediation over the courts to solve problems they can’t handle between them, and reminds parents to rebuild their original relationship into a more business-like model where they work together to co-parent their children.
            No easy feat. I was struck by the facilitators’ reminder that one of the most important emotional processes at play in this experience is grief. Like it or not, parents—and kids—will have to endure the roller coaster ride that grief takes us on. Or, as their diagram depicted, the inter-twined, circular, figure-eight pathway of grief that is dynamic, not linear: from protest and denial to despair, detachment and meaning, which loops us into hope, exploration and investment.
            We can’t expect it to be a clean journey, and we never really finish the work; there will always be new challenges. And these challenges will come not from the separation, but from the necessity to remain together for our children, this ultimate irony of divorcing with kids.
            So we must continue to build our relationship, the very one that disintegrated to the point where we had to call cease and desist.
            In the not-so-recent past, dad would have largely removed himself from the picture. If he had a conscience and means, he would have paid support, and possibly had visitation on weekends, or holidays. That’s it. Sometimes—naturally—I see the attraction of that model. But that’s not—for good reason—the way it is.
            The way it is, is for us is to call upon emotional intelligence, and the highest practices of right communication. We need to learn to manage our own emotions—volatile ones such as anger, and painful ones such as grief. I must learn to focus only on the life that I create with my children, not on the part of their life that is not mine.
            For me, that continues to be the tricky piece. I don’t see them as halved, and they must be known as whole, yet there are pieces I must not—may not?—manage. It’s vital to allow my children to be happy in their other home, to make this transition regularly from one life to another, to normalize their experience, and validate their feelings through all of it.
            A few weeks ago we saw my mother, stayed in her house, and experienced her worldview. The boys absorbed whatever values and beliefs she embodies. I was there too, and we enjoyed our rituals, and created new memories. At dinner we looked at the family portraits on her walls—the boys' ancestors—and she told us the story of five generations of Peter Wiebes. I pointed out my (paternal) grandmother’s mom and grandfather’s dad, who married each other, turning my dad's parents—who were already first cousins—into step-siblings.
            All that convoluted Mennonite family history is one contributing heritage stream that forms their gene pool. And epi-genetics—current child development theory—suggests that my boys' experiences and environment will also shape them. So this weekend that they spend with the clan that I don’t know will inform them, alter them in some way.     

When they come back, I will look for it. I always do. In that first moment of reconnection, I often see it, and for a split second, we feel shy. Something has changed. But in a flash it is absorbed and they recognize that they are seen and known. We pick up right where we left off.

I do not disrespect the clan I do not know. I honour the events I cannot attend. This is how I manifest my love for these boys, and how I transform the grief that I feel each and every time they leave.