The help

Remember how my brilliant headshrinker solved my angst about the cottage with a single utterance? The proper phrase, it seems, will set you free. I have not been back to see her in months, mostly because I cannot afford it. But the sort of help I look for from a shrink can apparently be summoned without one.  I’ve got a new mantra.  Before I tell you what it is, though, consider yourself warned:  you’re all going to think I’m a sexist bitch and want to rake me over the coals.  I don’t care.  I welcome your coal raking and agree wholeheartedly with your censure.  I am a git, a prat, a jerk, a pig, a selfish twat, and whatever else is left–I admit and embrace it.  But what I’m not, ever since I re-defined my children’s father in a totally reductive and anti-male way, is boiling over with pointless, irresolvable rage.  Get ready to despise me, and I’ll tell you what I came up with in order to calm down.

And while you’re finding the rake and firing up the coals, I’ll try to explain what my ex-husband has done to reduce me to a seething, wrathful mess in need of a mantra. Nothing big, mind you. The big issues don’t bother me any more. Where big issues are concerned, I’m transcendently calm and poised, a model of detachment. I either find a way to live with them (so Zen!), or I confront my ex-husband head on, having (finally) figured out that confronting him is never as bad as I fear it will be. Anyway, speaking seriously for a moment, I don’t ever take our post-marital détente for granted. I know several divorced couples who live to thwart each other. Stuck in a tight orbit of mutual hatred, they remain absolutely fixated on their ex’s misery at the cost of their own happiness. We, thank all the gods, are not like that.  And when it comes to the kids, things are even simpler.  Just like the good old married days, I’m the maker of big decisions, and he–lacking an agenda or ideology that conflicts with mine–shrugs, and goes along. Big issues are fine.

It’s the little issues–the biting, unswattable gnats, as it were, of shared custody–that really suck me dry.  And these last few months have been, for lack of a better way of putting it, a virtual swarm of minor irritations.

We’ve been separated, with the kids going back and forth, back and forth, for nearly three full years now.  When they’re with me, I run the ship.  It’s not a terribly tight ship, but–since I no longer have a first mate or even a bo’sun–I’m both mistress and commander.  Which means I don’t call my ex-husband every ten seconds to ask him some stupid question whose answer, so help me fucking god, should be obvious by now.  I don’t call him to ask how much Tylenol one gives a fifty-five pound slightly feverish child (it’s right there. On the box.) I don’t ask whether one keeps a slightly feverish child out of school (yes.)  I don’t ask whether one really has to dial the school’s attendance line to say that the kid’s staying home (yes), and I don’t even ask for the school’s number, because we’ve had one kid or another at that very school for over a decade now, so I know it by heart.  And if I didn’t?  It’s on the first page of the school directory. Each of us has one.  I know this because, you see, I ORDERED AND PAID FOR TWO DIRECTORIES AND SENT ONE TO HIS HOUSE at the beginning of the year.  I even know where his is.  In the kitchen, next to the microwave.  You’re welcome, I’d say, except that–whoops!–somehow, I rarely get thanked.

And I don’t ever ask whether someone else could call the school for me, though it IS much easier to have another person dial some numbers and leave the kid’s name on an answering machine than to hang up and do it yourself.  Even if the person you ask to make the call has been rudely awakened on one of her rare child-free mornings.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Shel Silverstein:

How Not To Have To Dry the Dishes

If you have to dry the dishes
(Such an awful, boring chore)
If you have to dry the dishes
(‘Stead of going to the store)
If you have to dry the dishes
And you drop one on the floor—
Maybe they won’t let you
Dry the dishes anymore.

A caveat:  I’m used to the dropped dishes by now.  Sometimes I can even just laugh and say “no” when my ex (the sly dog) feigns incompetence, the better to stick me with an awful, boring chore.  What drives me right up a fucking tree are the wee inconsiderate acts that strike me as not only lazy and annoying, but also bizarrely unparental.

Why does he show no interest in the kids’ grades or evaluations or what-have-you?  Why, when they’re sick on my watch, does he only rarely call to see how they are?  Why can’t he transact a simple permission slip, a note to the teacher, a fucking birthday party invitation without calling, texting, sending me a tedious e-mail?  Why does he bombard me with communication about stupid, obvious shit when the kids are with him, and yet vanish from the face of the earth when they are not? Why do I often find myself piecing together strange narratives that are just this side of worrisome–you got stung by a bee when?  And Dad was…where?  And then your coach drove you home and what?  For how long?  And wait–you were at whose house for supper?  And your brother was…with you?  Or with Dad?  And when, exactly, did you last see your brand new winter coat?

Why does he make a huge deal about having to “cover” for me for two lousy afternoons (because he is so very busy with work, you see) when I’m out of town at a once-yearly family meeting that I’m required to attend, and then call the day after I get back–the very next working day, mind you–at twelve thirty in the afternoon (!) to remark that he is about to leave his house for work (!!!) and should he drop yesterday’s forgotten mittens off on his way?  (My ex-husband is a scientist.  He makes his own hours.  When we were together, they were very long hours, and I am still conditioned to expect that he will work from morning till night every day at his lab.  But the truth is, he has not worked that way since we split up, which was nearly exactly when he got tenure.  I don’t blame him.  No one wants to work horrible post-doc hours, or trying-to-get-tenure hours, and he has earned the right to a mellower schedule.  But here’s the rub: these days, my ex-husband reverts to his extremely busy, overscheduled self only when it is inconvenient for me. It happens over and over again, and it’s so extreme and so predictable that I bet I’d even find it funny if my head didn’t accidentally explode before I remember to laugh.)

If my ex-husband wanted a true fifty-fifty custody arrangement, he is one of the very few working parents I know who could easily tweak his hours to suit his childcare obligations.  I haven’t explained this to him per se (see under: Dream Cottage, Fatal Mistakes), because I’d actually like more time with my kids, not less–but trust me.  His teaching and mentoring obligations are minimal; his ability to fix his own schedule is nearly unlimited.  So what’s the problem, you say?  If I secretly want more time with my kids, if I’m used to being the primary parent, and if I welcome the authority in a way–sounds like I’ve got it made, right?  Why, then, am I so pissed off?

And while we’re at it, we should point out that it’s entirely possible I brought this whole state of affairs on myself. When I think back to our married days, the division of labor in our house (which worked very nicely for us) came roughly down to this–I was Head Parent.  He was Backup Parent.  We made a decent team.  No one seems to talk about this very much, but if you are a female who has decided for whatever reasons to spend a few years hanging around with your kids, you sometimes start to cop a little attitude about it.  I know I did.  Call it what you will–power trip, or earned competence–I was, and still am, pretty sure I’m better than he is at managing the kids.  Never mind that we started out on equal ground (grad students, same university) when we married; the minute our older son was born, I glommed on to that fat bald baby as if my very life depended on it.  My husband, somehow, managed both to love the baby and to spend long hours at the lab.

No one ever said, “I’ll take Drosophila; you handle midnight croup.” But divisions of labor are insidious; as his career trumped mine, I got a tiny bit proprietary about raising the kids.  The fact that I have ten million younger siblings and an affinity for babies in general skewed things even further.  And then there was the whole science (with its eventual potential for a living wage) versus humanities (with nothing of the sort) scenario.  It made sense.  It made us both happy. I chose the baby (O lucky me!), and he chose the fly lab.

But now we’re divorced, and since I’ve had to abdicate part time, I want that time to be as free of petty child-wrangling as possible.  Oh, I’m far too anal ever to detach completely.  My spine still tingles every day at the exact time the school bus arrives, no matter where I am, and I keep a fairly accurate running tally of their games, their dentist appointments, their lessons, tests, art classes, parent-teacher conferences and the like, whether I mean to or not.  But I’d like to be able to remember a science project and then realize, with a happy little frisson of freedom, that someone else might deal with buying the posterboard and coping with the pipecleaners.  I’d like to just assume someone’s getting the birthday present for the party that’s set to occur on one of my “off” weekends.  I’d like to chill out a bit, is what I’m saying.  Problem is, unless their father steps up, I can’t in good conscience let go.

It’s no fun standing on a street corner in the freezing cold, desperately shouting into your cell phone, heart pounding, a hundred miles from home on a day that isn’t yours, listening to your children’s father freak out because he was a few minutes late to meet the bus and now your younger son isn’t there and he doesn’t know what to do, or whom to call, or what happened, or how to fix it.  There are the frantic few minutes of utter panic and impotent worry, and then (after the kid is located–he’d gotten off a stop early to walk the rest of the way with a friend, and came around the corner a few minutes later, no big deal) there’s the impotent rage.  What if I hadn’t answered my phone?  Why should I HAVE to answer my phone?  What, exactly, was I supposed to do, given that I was Not On Duty and also Out of Town?  Why wasn’t there a fucking apology for nearly giving me a heart attack when a) he should have been on time and b) he should have called the school transportation number right off the bat, not his ex-wife’s cell phone, if she was miles and miles away?

Once upon a time, consoling-windows friend and I went away for a long weekend, just the two of us.  On the last morning of our trip, we were peacefully drinking coffee when her husband called her, a little bit grumpy, from his car.  A long conversation about the logistics of getting various children various places–it wasn’t terribly difficult to figure out, but it did require a bit of planning–ensued.  When she finally hung up, before she’d even finished rolling her eyes, the phone rang again.  “I forgot to ask,” her husband said.  “Are we out of half-and-half?”

So, are the coals ready?  Rakes poised?  Here we go.  I’ve decided not to think of my ex-husband as my children’s father any more. Instead, he’s their au pair. A treasured family retainer, the best babysitter money can buy.

Oh, but I’m obnoxious and condescending, aren’t I? Listen. That’s the sound of steam NOT coming out of my ears. I swear to god, I’m calmer than I have been in ages.  Think about it.  If he’s the au pair, what do I care what he does on his days off?  He can go to work at five p.m. if it suits him–it’s none of my business.

A babysitter doesn’t necessarily think to ask how the kid’s science test went, or even whether the strep test came back positive.  I’ll tell him, of course, because he’s intimately involved with the kids, and should be kept in the loop as far as their welfare is concerned.  But I won’t get resentful if he doesn’t ask.  After all, he’s just the au pair!

“Well, he’s not my favorite person in the world, but the kids really like him, and that’s what’s important.  And while he sometimes doesn’t have the best instincts, his heart’s in the right place.  Really, I think he’d do anything for them.”  Try saying that instead of “What the hell is wrong with him? He’s supposed to be their fucking parent!”  Which one gives you an aneurysm? Which one makes you feel cozy, peaceful, and reassured?

“He still needs a fair bit of direction,” I’ll tell my friends, all of whom will be secretly plotting ways to hire him away from me.  “But it’s good if he comes to me if he has questions.  I’d much rather know if he’s wondering about something than have him guess, and possibly guess wrong.  I’m the parent, after all.  He’s an excellent babysitter.  I’d trust him with anything. Well, almost anything. And god knows it’s so hard to find good help, especially these days.  If it weren’t for my au pair, who takes the kids…well, let’s call it a third of the time…I don’t know how I’d ever get any work done.  Or any time to myself, to do as I please!”

I’ll just lie down on the coals now, to make it easier for you, shall I?  Rake me over them, rake me on over.  I’ve got so much inner peace, I probably won’t even combust right away.