We will need to limber up for the advanced scheduling contortions set to begin on September 4th. Kindergarten means our little family-ish arrangement has to bid goodbye to the preschool on the campus of Tee’s university. Aligned calendars and an easy childcare commute have been blessings in a rather tumultuous chapter, and now we brace ourselves for a school-year timeline designed for long extinct agrarian families. Bring on the yellow buses, packed lunches, and after-school children’s warehouses.
Tag: co-parenting
Care Benefit
You fantasize about leaving. You will yourself into staying. When indecision presses itself against your eyes and forces them to face the cavernous night, you see no path through the knot of thorns. As you wander deeper into the thicket and feel too imprisoned to make any decision at all, you are choosing. Every moment, a choice. Every choice, riddled with unknown consequences.
Here is one more to consider: You choose to act with civility. Through the difficult conversations and the planning for life as a split family, you hold the best interests of your children close to your heart. You and your spouse put aside your own wild fantasies of fleeing, and you remain living close to one another. You share custody through a complex arrangement that attempts to shield your children from the upheaval of a divided life.
You split most expenses right down the middle. Without a fight, you take on the extra burdens of time, meals, finances. You forego activities that could further your own prospects due to the intricate inter-dependency of the fragile threads weaving together each month’s calendar. You breathe through your disappointment with the unchanged patterns of your former spouse (and, to be fair, yourself). You surrender short-term control for the sake of long-term peace. You drive further, and let the other parent be closer to the school or the day care, and pay extra for the gymnastics lessons your ex claims he cannot afford. You keep spreadsheets of health care premiums and soccer fees and co-pays and preschool expenses.
You trust, even in the presence of overwhelming doubt.
In your parenting agreement, you hash out how each holiday and year will unfold. You make plans for paying for college and for putting money into savings accounts and life insurance to make sure your children are cared for even if one parent decides to give it all up and hitchhike to Vancouver. You agree to review the plan every year. The judge stamps the whole thick tome. With that act, the state holds you far more firmly to a family arrangement than a marriage certificate ever did.
You are never rid of anyone. Do not be fooled.
Tax time comes, and you believe you have prepared yourself for this. Only one parent can claim the children as dependents in any single year. You were so very thorough. You made sure to write into the agreement that you will claim the children in the odd years and your spouse will take the even years. Every other year, you will receive the tax break.
The first year is no problem, because you were still married for most of it, and you are still on speaking terms with the ex. It is easier simply to stay married for filing and split the burden. Then, you begin to organize materials for the year to come. As you sort and sift through tax law, you pull the lid off a foul-smelling bit of news.
Only the parent who claims the dependent child can claim the childcare tax deduction. So, even though you will be spending thousands of dollars to ensure your kids have safe care while you are at work, you can claim none of this as a deduction. The government simply assumes all your income is yours, and you are single and carefree. Does that injury need an insult? Well, here you go: because your strained income has no chance of covering a mortgage payment, you also do not receive a tax deduction for home ownership.
It’s okay, though. You can start a flexible spending account to pay for dependent care. This is what your HR office tells you. By using a pre-tax FSA , you can reduce your taxable income by the several thousand dollars you will be paying to the day care. The income the feds see as your own will be a few thousand less, and they will come at your wallet with a moderately smaller shovel in April. Knowing the exact amount you will be paying for childcare for the upcoming year and tracking every single expense by way of receipts are tasks you can handle. You have learned through the divorce that your mastery of administrative minutia rivals that of the Queen’s personal secretary.
Alas, fate and the IRS have not exhausted their arsenal of gags. Just when you have completed your page of calculations and are about to fill out the paperwork the nice lady at HR sent you, you dig down a little deeper into the tax law. It turns out that you cannot use an FSA for dependent care expenses if you do not claim the dependent children. Even if you are responsible for those children, and even if the state has given its stamp of approval to a legal document indicating you must pay 50% of all childcare expenses, you are still not able to use a flexible spending account.
Every other year, from now until your little ones outgrow after-school care, the feds will haul back and punch you right in the gut. It does you no good to see it coming. Your armor is strong, but the smack will still rattle your bones.
You spit a few curses into the ether, toss the paperwork into the recycling bin, and take another deep breath. This is an even-numbered year. You will simply need to prepare yourself to get slammed with the tax rate of a single, unencumbered person. In order to do so, you will need to live as if you are anything but.
You must remember this: a family is not the arcane configuration prescribed by the church, the court, or the congress. The laws were written by people who believed in the binary relationship between victory and defeat, between innocence and guilt. They also are charged with protecting those who cannot protect themselves. This is not you, your ex, or your children. You know your immeasurable power rests within the bond you continue to cultivate in this new arrangement of your life.
You do not need to win in order to win. No one needs to lose more than has already been lost. Remember you and your children’s other parent were able to craft a bespoke agreement that will hold all of you in its intricate folds. Because of your willingness to draw your own pattern upon the fabric of your family’s life, your children will never need to know it cost you every bit of currency you had in your pocket to create it. They will only know the reward from this complete commitment of resource. They will only need to enjoy the true, simple riches of what this unfolding version of family provides them.
Yes, your children will believe they have been wronged. From time to time, your former spouse will try to convince you of that same half-truth. Maybe in April every other year, you will yourself indulge for a day or three in fear and doubt and self-immolation.
It is okay. Trust will win out. Soon enough, you will open your eyes all over again to the bright, beautiful gift of this new life. Your children will have two civil, loving parents living near each other and adapting to changing times together. This gift will be theirs to cherish and squander as they see fit, as is the privilege of all children who grow up rooted in abundant love.
Long Division
In Giovanni’s house, the first one appeared in the bathroom. The hair ties and citrus lotion live there. Then, two small ones sprouted up in the dresser. In those, my extra socks, a pair of pajamas, and a few earplugs took up residence. Just recently, I discovered a fourth. This is a deep one. The jeans fit, along with the aquamarine sweater.
No key yet. We are both still dancing a little on the outer edge of certainty. He says it is simple. “I want to give you a place you can feel at home.” And I do. The small fire crackles. The wide-leafed plants stretch to the ceiling. A single white towel is folded on a rack next to the tub; like the drawers, this one is mine. Whatever I need, he provides. In this liminal space, I have a home. His arms are never closed against me. It is good I still have to knock. I get to hear him invite me in, again, again.
From my perch on his brown sofa, I can see the bare trees outside. I do not look for long, not the way he does, the binoculars resting on the top of the headboard for him to watch the hawk he has yet to name. I only glance in a fleeting way. Get my bearings. Open my journal. Commence.
Writing is the only thing for me on these too-brief nights. He tells me to come anyway. “Write over here, baby. Whatever you want to do.” And so I take him at face value, which is new. A few minutes s of small talk, perhaps a quick bite. Then I just write. What he does, I do not know. It is his business. He tidies, I suppose, considering how well spaced the candles on the mantle, how gleaming the sink. Does he organize his work? His thoughts? Pay bills? Curiosity teases, but I am practicing trust. Vigilance is just control in sheep’s clothing. I turn back to my page.
On other nights after the journal is put to bed, it is all different. We talk, out at the bar or on a walk, and he unfurls like a bear from its winter sleep. I see and smell the whole expanse of his layered pelt, and I want to dig my own claws into its depths.
Balance is key. Too much of that, and I start to pick at the nits. Yank at the ticks. Knee him toward the river to find next season’s dinner.
I think it is better that we circle back to turning away from each other.
I am here in his home which he gently offers as mine, but it is not mine. He can putter, you see. Put his laundry in the dryer and empty the dishwasher. Meanwhile, back at my other home, the dog paces, itching for her walk. The iron is cold. The wrinkles set.
After a time with him, whether curled into our own edges of the cave or stretching out in the sun together, I start to fidget. I start to worry. Something is waiting. The sink at my folks’ house fills while the refrigerator empties. The fruit in the bowl shrivels and draws flies. I have to go home, freshen, replenish. Touch my books. Dig through my own drawers.
I have been writing for an hour. I am beginning to get edgy on the sofa. I set my jaw against Giovanni’s attentions, even while he brings the ginger tea.
My phone rings. Tee’s name pops up.
“Mommy?”
“Yes baby.”
“I need you to wake up at four in the morning and drive to Daddy’s house and bring my blue doggie jammies.”
“I do, huh?” This is unexpected. “Is it jammie day at school?”
“No. My blue doggie jammies are at your house.”
In the background, Tee’s voice, filling in the gaps. “The shirt is here and the pants are over there. We had a little bit of. . .” He is calm. I hear the smile. “Of being upset.”
I get up and walk through Giovanni’s apartment, stretching my spine. “Listen, baby, I know exactly where your blue doggie jammie pants are.” They are at my house, not here, but Bug does not need to know this. “I can bring them to you tomorrow.”
“At 4:00 in the morning, okay?”
I laugh. “I will bring them at 8:00 in the morning before I go to work.”
“Okay, 5:00 then.”
“I’ll see you in the morning. Good night. I love you.”
The phone is already dead.
It is simple. The longing slices to the marrow, as clean and pure as the surgeon’s knife. I want to crawl into my little boy’s bed, with his daddy there or not, I don’t even care, crawl in and just be one one one family again. I would give anything for the unfettered faith, for the stupid oblivion of a shared name. This here, pinging between Giovanni’s apartment and my parents’ house, is uncomfortable. It chafes.
Karma is a beautiful woman without mercy. This in-between existence is my choice. It is abundance, and it is voluntary, and I have safe harbors and generous care on all sides. It is, as anyone looking in might point out, a gift to be so well loved. Yet, straddling two homes is slippery. The mind grasps and loses this here and that there. Where are my people? Where are my underwear? Every return to one place or the other requires checking gauges and adjusting mirrors.
Bug lives with this every day. We try to leave the big decisions far out of his reach, up in the ether where the grownup worries reside. No, he does not have one place of his own. But we do not force him to remember his various belongings. We keep double snow pants and winter boots, double swimsuits and raincoats. He can relax. We take care of managing his things and making sure someone is always there to pick him up school. Our job is to help him put something in his backpack starting with the letter T, which we all know is the letter of the week.
But all of this is only so much. It is only a fraction of the everything. Bug still asks, constantly, “Whose house am I staying at tonight? Who am I with this weekend?” He came into my room one recent Saturday morning to find me getting dressed. I explained that I was heading to some workshop or other, he became very still and asked with such a furrow in his brow, “But who will take care of me?”
I tried to keep my own voice casual. As if taking care of him comes as naturally as breath (which it does). “I’m taking you to meet your daddy because you guys are going to that basketball game.” I gave him a smile as I brushed out my wet hair. That was that.
The rub is that sometimes the jammies are split for no reason. Even to a five-year-old mind, the truth must flash like a sun dog from time to time, searing the eyes. His things belong in the one and only place they are not: together. Bug is right to be mad about this fragmenting of his parts. It is his right to be stung by the injustice of it, and to be sad, and to tell us so, and to ask us to help set it right. Sure, children lose their stuff, even in model families. But I get it. I get that sometimes, under all the okay-ness and the abundance, my kid’s legs quake a little from straddling two shifting worlds. Mine do, too.
“When you and daddy are not divorced anymore, we should get a new kitty.”
“Baby, that is never going to happen. Daddy and Mommy will always live in two different houses. And you have kitties in both your houses already!”
“Yeah, but when you are not divorced anymore. . .”
Around and around. He wants a different truth, yet truth does not submit to his will. I cannot solve this puzzle for him. I have said it here a dozen times, and still, the sting does not wear off the every-time-the-first-time realization of this frustrating fact. I cannot give him one home.
But I’ll be damned if I cannot give him his blue doggie jammies. It is an inadequate play at righting the universe, but it is the one I can manage. So, I leave Giovanni’s earlier than I had planned and return to my other place. This way, I am sure to pick up the jammie pants and put them in my backpack, and I will not forget to give my son this one meager reassurance about a whole and completely loved boy in a fractured world.
In the morning, Tee and I speak in his foyer. We are cursory but kind, moving with intention against whatever hurt we may be feeling. “What time is tomorrow’s pick-up?” and “Will you meet us at the metro?” and “What are your thoughts about that Tai Kwon Do place?”
Yes, yes, and pretty okay, I guess.
We build the bridge between us, one slat at a time. We sink the pilings, hang the wires, check the blueprints again and again. We calibrate our exchanges to hold the weight of what we are attempting. Bug steps out between us, crossing safely over the abyss. He does not have to think about what lies below, and can run easily over that expanse. My prayer to a capricious god is that my boy barely feels the sway, and that no matter how suspended he is (as all of us are) above some unknown chasm, he only ever has the sense of a solid foundation, unshakable, beneath his feet.
Everything is Built on Sand
Tee’s name popped up when the phone rang, but it was Bug’s voice on the other end. “Mommy, can I stay at your house tonight?”
Unprecedented. While Tee and I have been sharing Bug’s time exactly 50/50, he always, always, asks to stay at his Daddy’s. Sometimes just reminding him that he gets to spend an entire weekend with me will reduce him to tears.
At the house we share, Bug has his own room. Bunk beds, toys everywhere, free rein in that one space. At his daddy’s, he also has bunk beds, toys everywhere, and free rein. What makes his room at his dad’s house unique is that he shares it with Tee. His favorite man sleeps deeply right under him all night, and that man does not stir awake when Bug climbs down into the warm comfort of the big bed in the wee hours.
Bug’s request would have been more of a surprise if I had not known the big news of the day: Ms. Song had announced she would be leaving on an “adventure.”
Ms. Song is Bug’s touchstone. A Mary Poppins in mom jeans, she has been the most constant presence in his world for over a year. It is a rare thing to stumble across a sharp-minded and big-smiling person who teaches preschool because it is her calling, not just because it is all she could get. Every day, Ms. Song greets every single child in her class with a big hello and a hug. She calls the children by name. She requires the same joyous and personalized attention of every staff member in her classroom. Her gift is the ability to attend with precision to each child’s unique capacity to manipulate scissors, pronounce Rs and Ls, and channel strong feelings into words and positive behaviors. Ms. Song knows the kids.
And she is leaving. A new teacher starts next week. Bug gets about seven months with this next one before the big transition to kindergarten.
Parents want to shield their children from the sting of loss. Even knowing it is important for young people to learn how to navigate disruption, the instinct is to create stability. Even false stability, at times. What parent can stand watching a kid’s heart break? What parent does not want to rush in to balm the wound and whisper promises impossible to keep?
Adaptability is a requirement for thriving in the world as it is, and parents have an important role to play in helping kids learn the mechanics of it. Still. It hurts to see our little ones grappling with big feelings. Against that squeezing desire to protect is the knowledge that kids learn life is not so certain and nothing lasts forever. They learn it despite us. Often, they learn it because of us, even when we think they are not paying attention. They are paying attention. They always are.
The desire for things to stay fixed is as powerful as it is common, and its power can be crippling. When the pink slip lands or the divorce papers arrive or the landlord announces she is selling the place, even the strongest among us feels seasick, no matter how well equipped we are for the ride. The urge is to deny or to hide. Nuanced language and the experience of survival can help us handle the upheaval accompanying transition. As for handling it well? That is a talent that few master.
Children learn how to deal with change by watching grownups. Do we fret and avoid, or attend and apply care? Do we give voice to our feelings to the point of wallowing, or do we decide, that’s enough, and climb back on board? Do we practice straddling that uncomfortable threshold, both by bidding farewell to what is behind us and by welcoming what is to come?
What do our words and behaviors teach our kids about resilience? About adaptation?
Usually, Tee and I stick to our schedule, but we agreed to let Bug have his wish this one night. A room of his own may not appeal as much as one that is shared, but it is still his. Sometimes, a person just needs to touch familiar things to know they are not slipping away. At least, not for the moment.
I picked Bug up at his one house and ferried him over to his other house. On the way, we spoke lightly about the idea of “mixed feelings.” This is a familiar refrain, but, like those lullabies, it bears repeating. I tell him I have mixed feelings when he goes away for Christmas or summer break. I am happy that he is having fun with his cousins, and I am sad to not be with him. People can feel several things at once, even if they are very different things. I remind him that it is fine to be happy that Ms. Song gets to go on an adventure and also sad that she is leaving.
I remember when I first introduced this concept to Bug when he was just about three years old. He pondered for a few minutes then piped up, “Like pistachios!”
Uh, really?
“Yeah! They are salty AND crunchy!”
Exactly.
The five year old in the back seat offered no such clever analogy. He simply absorbed my words (I have to hope) and changed the subject to our weekend plans.
Back at home, he proceeded to torment the dog, chase the kitty, ignore his grandparents (after checking their whereabouts), and jump on the furniture. Same bedlam, different day. I noticed, though, that he called out to me repeatedly throughout the evening. “Mommy? Come look.” And, “Mommy, where are you?” And, “Mommy, help.” With his talismans in hand – his flashlight, his pirate sword, his box of coins – he managed to settle down next to me, listen to a chapter of Peter Pan, and hum along to the three songs I sing before bed. It was a late one, but he made it to sleep. Eventually.
Ms. Song and the school have done their best to make the transition smooth. The low-drama announcement preceded a few farewell rituals. The kids and teacher alike created little memory boxes with tokens of one another. Ms. Song is leaving behind her bear puppet, Oso. The kids can talk to him if they get sad, and he will send the message to Ms. Song.
Come Monday, though, Ms. Song will be gone. For the moment, Bug’s mommy and daddy return to their rightful place in things. Perhaps we are not just his touchstones, but the cornerstones of his forever shifting world.
Shannon E. Williams 