Both Sides Now...

Somehow it is the middle of May. Betsy is off to Washington D.C. next week. I swear that it seems like just a couple of years ago that I was in Washington D.C. with my friends.

(I was just getting over a cold when we were in D.C. and so the last stages of a cough always take me back to those three days with my friends in which I felt like such a teenager, an actual teenager with a social life.)

Watching Betsy be fourteen is a delight. She is so very much like me anymore. It’s all a bit strange because for all the years that we were the family of four, Betsy was such a tomboy and such a daddy’s girl. For all that I have changed so much during the past almost 4 years, Betsy has changed too-it all took its toll on her as well, but she and I have come to this new place where, as she says just about every day, “we are so much happier.” Which is very true.

In the beginning all of this change was overwhelming-the experience of Nick leaving for me and the girls was very jarring. Everything happened suddenly, and our world flipped upside down, and there were new people and an entirely new routine and there was just so much to mitigate. Betsy’s personality is to be pleasing and so she tried as hard as she could to act like none of this change bothered her, but the reality is that change bothers Betsy more than any of us.

The other day she and I were talking and she said, “I remember that I always wanted to be with Daddy. But then it’s like that doesn’t make sense.” Listening to her try to make sense of all of this change helps me to understand why it’s so difficult for me to find the right words sometimes-the words to describe what living through such a profound change does to you. Because you come out the other side and you feel like your old life was forever ago and also just yesterday.

It feels like a fraud to forget-to not acknowledge the good parts of the old life, the parts of life that we remember still with joy. Because that’s the bit about all of this that is so profoundly difficult, and I think is particular to divorce-there are all of these memories that exist that contain really wonderful, happy memories, but it’s all wrapped up in memories of the way that Nick left. It slants everything, and I’m sure that there are people for whom getting divorced was not a terrible trauma to live through who think that we seem overly dramatic.

It’s all a dance, and watching Betsy helps me to realize that I’m not the only one who remembers the good while struggling with what to do with the damage of the bad, and that coming to these realizations is difficult.

I am so very lucky to have these girls to go through this journey by my side. Because frankly, there are bits of this life that we live that only make sense to us. I don’t know that I am even able to write it down in terms that explain-the best way to put it would be, we remember, quite happily, bits of life that existed prior to Nick leaving, but we always come to this realization that life now is better. And I can’t explain how that can possibly be true, but it is.

The thing of it is, we had all of these wonderful years that we were a family. And I don’t want to deny that part of my life. But I also want people, particularly the people who have reached out to me about being in a similar situation, to know that life on this side of being divorced is actually really wonderful. I would have given anything, about 4 years ago, to have someone say to me, “It will be okay. It will be glorious. Life will twist and shift until you can remember that it was happy before, but that you know that it’s happier now.”

Change is still not my favorite, and never will be. But I’m not scared of change like I was 4 years ago.

These precious girls that I get to raise, they just keep teaching me all the things. I don’t know how I was so lucky to get to be their mom. But I’m grateful for every single second of it.

In the Songs of Yesterday...

Oh, gracious. So many words.

I went to a concert.

It sounds trite and simple.

For me, it’s a big deal.

I have a thing about crowds. I hate them. I tend to panic. I’ve taught my girls, when we walk into a large room-like the movie theater-to immediately find the exits. I don’t know why that’s my own particular quirk, but crowds send my heart racing and my blood pressure rising. I leaned on Nick a lot to help me with this particular issue-he knew to squeeze my hand harder, to help push me through a crowd of people-and of course, now it’s only me. Even worse, it’s often me with the girls, which means I am the adult and then expected to know how to navigate the circumstances I get us into.

Last year, in the year of being brave, I tried out many things and conquered many fears. This particular fear is one that I’m not certain can exactly be conquered-mitigated is likely a better word. I’m always going to feel slightly panicked in a large group of people, I’m always going to figure out two ways out of a room, I’m always going to do my best to avoid masses of people if I can help it.

But I proved to myself this past weekend that I can navigate an entire concert experience, including being surrounded by drunk people, one of whom vomited on the girl in front of us right as the concert was beginning; I can lead my girls through the streets of Cleveland in search of my sister, who did the driving so that we didn’t need to park the car; and generally, I can be an adult in yet one more situation that is something I really enjoy-listening to music live-but am rather terrified to deal with.

The concert itself was most fun. My girls love the New Kids. Debbie Gibson has been my most favorite singer since I was 11 years old. (I have every one of her CDs and Debbie was my very first concert ever-Michelle and Tanya and I went and saw her in Wheeling when Tanya turned 12. Tanya and Michelle were neither one even necessarily Debbie Gibson fans, but they endured my complete fangirl love with perhaps an ironic gleam in their eye, which sums up nearly everything they ever did because I asked them to.)

Tiffany, Salt-n-Pepa, and Naughty by Nature were the other acts, and the girls and I had a blast singing so many songs that we love. Betsy said that she loved it and wished it would never end, while Felicity leaned over at 10 and asked me how much longer it would last. Which encapsulates their personalities perfectly-Betsy always wanting me to know how much she loves me, and Felicity feeling comfortable enough to tell me that she’s ready for this whole thing to be over. I’m grateful for both, the yin and the yang of their personalities, and of the fact that we are all three us-we do everything together, the three of us, and it’s been the best side effect of life falling apart and not exactly fixing itself.

Many people, having been alone for coming on four years in a couple of months, would have moved on to at least one serious relationship. But that’s not how it’s working for me, and even though there are definite disadvantages to that, one of the best side effects is that the girls and I are a unit, we do everything together. Sometimes I think that’s my biggest stumbling block-I have this rich, full life 90% of the time, and then on the weekends that the girls are gone I wish to the depths of my soul that I had someone to hang out with-as my dear Felicity has pointed out, I need a friend. Which is not at all to say that I don’t have friends, because I do and I love them so much, but all of my closest friends have young children and are not just available for me on a rather boring Saturday night.

Anyway…I have gotten extremely off topic.

The entire weekend was lovely, if jam packed full. The girls and I watched my niece Mallory in her high school’s production of My Fair Lady on Friday night. The cast was absolutely amazing, and all the more so because they were working with a shoestring budget. The school district that my nieces attend cannot pass a funding levy, and so their arts programs have been cut to the bone. It was quite a visual to me, having watched John Glenn’s production of The Music Man in an auditorium just a few weeks ago and watching this production of My Fair Lady on folding chairs in the gymnasium. I don’t have all the answers to the school funding question, but I definitely think that what we do as a state is not sustainable. As a person who loved the arts programs provided by my school, I definitely think that they are not extra or unnecessary programs-they are, for some kids, a reason to participate in their class.

April and I also saw A Bronx Tale at Playhouse Square-it was so good, April and I neither one knew anything about it going in, and it was a lovely and moving piece of theater- and I took the girls to see Ugly Dolls, which was cute and had a good message about loving someone who isn’t perfect. And I got to have a galley boy from Swenson’s, which is my all-time favorite sandwich. So overall, excellent weekend.

Yesterday I took the day off just to sleep and watch soap operas and it was lovely. So much of the time, I get so caught up in my checklist of life, it was nice to just have a day all to myself to do whatever I wanted. (Always having to give myself permission to do that, you know.)

And today, the sun is shining, “Here I Go Again” is blaring through my speakers, which seems most appropriate, and all is lovely and shiny and new.

"Like a drifter I was born to walk alone.
Cause I know what it means,
To walk along that lonely street of dreams.”