There's a temp in my office who's some years older than I am and much more put together: her clothes--my God--and her earrings. She's got kind eyes, and a quick grin. I like her very much. I asked for her help with a project, and had a few hours to kill with her, and little by little, as these things tend to go, her story comes out.
She's divorced and has two teenagers--13 and 15. Ex-husband moved to Florida with girlfriend and remarried. The kids elected to go with him.
I can't get past that sentence, right there. When do children leave their mother? Assuming no abuse--assuming the normal, boring shit of life.
When they visit her, as they do a few times a year, her daughter is horrid: angry and mean, quick with "I hate you." Her daughter, she tells me, is adopted; she wonders if the adoption is somehow part of the whole scene. What do I know? When I adopted I hit the jackpot. I'm not telling her that. I just listen.
She was especially quiet this day, telling me these things. She'd had a bad weekend--had just put the kids on a plane to Florida on Monday, and was spent. Turns out she has an MBA and was top finance dog at a local company before she stopped to raise the kids. Then she tried real estate, since it gave her the flexibility to do the things having kids requires: piano lessons, soccer games, homework help. And then her husband leaves her, and her kids go with him, and she's tired of the toll being in real estate takes and is temping for $12/hour stuffing envelopes in my department. So now she has no career, because she gave it up to raise the kids. And no kids, because when her husband left he took them with her. And she looks at her life and you can tell she's lost. I want to wrap her up in my coat and bring her home with me.
She's angry that the workforce doesn't better accommodate women who need to step away for a term to raise kids. She's not saying what I'm thinking: that she didn't have to step out of the labor force--there are alternatives--and we pay for our choices (and I know this makes me a bad feminist, but be real.) I keep wondering, though, why isn't she angry at her kids, for whom she made those choices and paid those prices only to turn out little shits who follow the money and the power in the end. As if we're not allowed to expect anything in return, not even a little respect.
* * *
I feel so mortal these days. I look at the kids and have to blink back tears because I can almost see time passing before my eyes. It's terribly painful to love a child so much: it's painful that this kind of love has loss embedded in it from the start. One day they leave. One day we'll die, and probably not together, so we'll part, and whoever doesn't die has to deal with it. Entertaining another person's pain--never mind our own--is unbearable. Flashes of understanding: Japanese women walking into the ocean with their babies in their arms. The Hairdresser's Husband.
My sister told me that she takes such comfort in the thought that after her husband dies she'll still have me--the two of us together in our dotage, chatting over wine, laughing and rolling our eyes.
"I hope you're right," I tell her. "Sometimes I don't think I'm going to make it to 55, and I don't even know why I think that, but I do." And I do. All the time.
* * *
The kids have a new gig: the alarm goes off at 6 and they tear out of bed, grab their clothes, and head downstairs before I've got my teeth brushed. (They like to do it when I'm in the bathroom so I don't notice they've already gone down. Part of the fun of it.) By the time I get down at 6:12 they're ready to go to school: hair brushed, shoes on, bags packed. It's a game.
"Tomorrow let's try to beat our time," he says, and she agrees. His genes are wearing off on her: this kind of stuff doesn't come from my genetic pool.
I got to work and opened my bag and there was a love note from the two of them, snuck in there around 6:10, I guess.
I mean, it's a pretty decent life, I've got to say.
8 comments:
the hairdresser's husband. is that how you found me?
Here I sit with tears rolling down my old cheeks because you got a love note...
:o)
alan
i can relate to that woman's plight, on several letters. different sad tale, with a similar outcome. one never knows what the future will spring on them.
letters=levels. :)
thank you for posting =)...it had been a while and i missed you and i've been wondering about your dad...
i, too, can relate to the woman you speak of...right down to the real estate and the temping...except i know enuff not to be pissed at the nasty kids or the ex...i know the person to be pissed at is the one in the mirror...shit happens, and then you need to move on...as best you can...i hope a little of you rubs off on her...you're exactly what she could use right about now...
your little threesome is a magical, beautiful thing...thank you so much for sharing it, here...
it warms my heart, every time...
peace love and all that other fine stuff...
~ n
Inger, just a very poignant post like nobody other than you can write. Your that rare combination of wisdom, observation, intelligence and most of all compassion. I will probably outlive my spouse, and being childless face a future of isolation, as I open myself up to few. Maybe I could work as your Nanny/housekeeper, like Lana Turner's maid in her later years.
We can't be angry at others for the decisions we made. Disappointed with how things turned out? Certainly. Hurt? Certainly. But life is not a fair game where the good and just win. Not at all.
Something about having children makes you question your mortality. Although I say that and I have been doing it before Jade came along.
My problem seems to be that I absorb myself into the horrible things I see on TV. Girls beating up another girl at a slumber party and posting it on "Youtube". I cringe at that, worrying that my kind, little girl will someday be the picked on one.
I have more angst with her life then I had with my own...my childhood seemingly went off without a hitch.
Sometimes I really think I am not cut out for this parenting gig.
Sher
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