Blue Sky Day

The Garden Gnome

   I awake to the feeling of a fat baby. Not an infant but a nice study nine-month-old who drools and smiles winningly at me. I have been holding him, my body is relaxed and my spirit is calm and blissful as the little cherub’s chunkiness swims in and out of my consciousness.
  Immediately I remember that my boys are not here; they are with their biological father in another house on the other side of this little valley where we returned after six years at the wet coast, during which time the previous nuclear unit we were imploded and we separated. But all was not lost as we uncoupled and re-formed very nicely, behaving ourselves with an impunity that now elicits amazement when other people hear about it. Upon learning (from the horse’s mouth) that my previous partner, the father of my two sons, was leaving me for another woman, I felt immediate relief and did not, as he remarked gratefully a little later, throw a cast iron sauce pan at him—that was a bit of an inside joke, for we had a friend whose illustrious, mayor-of-Hinton grandmother had done so to her husband, for less reason, it seems.

Yes, I felt relieved. For so many reasons, which all boil down to my soul’s unhappiness with us as a couple, with him as a father, with the patriarchy in general, and the nuclear family unit as a ridiculous attempt to thwart the desires of women. But I digress.

            This morning, as the pale, colourless sky defines itself into bleached denim (a hue my jeans seemed to achieve back in the seventies, though now they rip and fall to pieces when they’re still dark blue) and the rocky mountain peaks emerge from rose-tinged clouds, snow covered—it’s only the last day of March—I orient myself to a childless day and consider the possibilities before me. Every other week is like this. My friend Rosemary keeps track, and calls me for hikes when the children are not here.

See the world through the eyes of a child

For a long, long time I had a really hard time with this—with having a good day when the children were not with me. Their warm bodies—their living, breathing physicality—steadied me so enormously (and much to my surprise, for I had always thought that babies would be a.) the last thing on earth I’d get around to doing and be.) be a lot like cats, easy to deal with on my terms) that after Primo was born I oriented myself into motherhood with a righteous passion. You might say I had got the call. I busied myself quite thoroughly with mothering, had another, a brother for the first, and found such deep satisfaction in caring for these creatures, that all else quite literally dissolved and fell away.

And so did I.

The separation was a wake up call, obviously. But I was motivated to move forward in a healthy way, keeping the well-being of the children in mind as I navigated the waters of, well, moving forward. Now, almost seven years into this version of family life, a life where the boys move between two households, and two sets of loving parents, this is the new normal.

Grandma Mabel

But what is not normal is my own well-being. For though I was relieved that the couple thing was done, my heart broke over the separation from Primo and Secundo.

It never—and still does not—felt right when they weren’t with me. Primo was four and Secundo was one when they started sleeping at another home. The very first night at their dad’s house was treated as a sleepover. Their Grandma Mabel had come to help out and I slept there too—how civilized. We had pancakes in the morning and the boys climbed up and down the steep staircase of their new Fernwood home in one of Victoria’s character houses, Primo a pro, Secundo laboriously and very carefully climbing what seemed like Everest to him.

Becoming acclimatized to separation from my children was my own Everest. Living in a mountain town where emotional challenges pale in comparison to actual exploits, I have often, silently, compared my journey to an epic expedition. For I have steadily toiled upward on my quest to acceptance, though storms and avalanches and every kind of obstacle have threatened to abort my mission. (Just not six weeks ago I phoned him and asked (in tears) couldn’t I have the boys more?) I really hate it when they’re not with me.

He gently—even kindly—said no, and sorry. And I didn’t hate him (any more than usual) because I’ve always managed to love him. Just because I didn’t want to be a couple with him, never meant I stopped caring for him. At some points he felt like my teenage son, or a brother gone a bit bad. Quite simply, he is a member of my extended family; our relationship is very much defined by twenty-first century mores: we are friendly and businesslike, and we have a history, though I rarely dwell on it. But I’m able to co-parent well with him because I do know him so well. His and my DNA live on in our boys, daily becoming more apparent as they mature, and bits of them—which are so obviously bits of us—emerge and manifest as fascinating genetic permutations of our egg and sperm come to life in the form of these humans we created, who are at once foreign and familiar.

Primo

It really has been just this year that I stopped crying about it—or maybe just this month.

The other day I met a woman who is sad. She’s just started her own journey toward herself, a self she left behind at seventeen when she had her first child. Now, half a lifetime later, she’s left the husband she met as a teenager and, head up to the wind is wondering what’s next. When I hugged her and said, Let those tears out out, she replied, There’s too much in there, I’ll never stop if I start.

I cried for six years once, I told her.

Sometimes you just have to trust that you will make it through. And you just have to start.

This morning I honour my friends who are trying—and crying (you know who you are). I honour the moms and dads who are just starting to navigate the turbulence of separation and divorce with children. I honour your struggles, your fears, your anger, and your best attempts at moving forward. I honour how hard it is to remain yoked to that partner that you’re so happy to have left. I honour the mistakes made in the confusion of the loss of love, in the grief of dissolving your shared hopes and dreams, and in the strange and bizarre grip that anger has in keeping you connected when it’s too hard to admit that, yes, you still love this person, but no, you can’t be together any more.

I hope you wake up one spring day and see the bluebird sky outside as the pinnacle of potential, and that your broken heart heals, as mine has. I hope you can find the strength to work hard at your stuff, stop blaming the other, and come out the other side as a mom or dad whose legacy to their children helps them learn. I hope you can be the peace you want for the world, and model for your children behaviour that teaches them how to move through the world like it’s a healthy place for them to inherit.