The One with the Wobbly Lips

This morning my daughter was having a fight with her brother.

"Mommy", she whined, "He called me a baby". 

"No he didn't", I said, very aware that we were already late for school and that such an accusation would take at least five minutes of careful negotiations and intricate semantic compromises, to resolve. 

"Yes he did", she answered. "I saw. His lips were wobbling, noise was coming out, which means he was talking."

This somewhat surprising observation hit a sore spot. Daughter had unwittingly described most of my conversations of late - wobbly lips and random sounds. I just can't seem to think anymore. For example I was having a rip roaring fight with (Almost) Ideal Man the other day (yes, I know that this seems to be a commonly re-occuring theme, but I am embracing the Man-Hating Bitch that lives deep inside the People Pleasing Doormat, and she is a whole lot more fun). I won't disclose the reason for our altercation as that will make me sound selfish and probably a bit unethical, but suffice to say the plot could have been pulled straight from day-time television. In fact, given the way that I am functioning at the moment it probably was. 

During this particular round of heated exchange I had reason to say "Don't you understand, I am fighting with you because I am angry with you, not because I don't care about you". Revolting, I know, but it obviously seemed like a good, if somewhat dramatic, thing to say at the time.  I did have an awkward feeling that someone else's words were coming out of my mouth, like a ventriloquist act, but the conversational slaughter had moved on, and before I knew it I had slammed the phone down and unfriended him on Facebook. 

Later that evening I was watching reruns of Friends. Lately, in an attempt to numb myself I have, like a pre-menstrual woman falling on a stash of five year old cooking chocolate found at the back of the cupboard, been gorging myself on old episodes of my favourite sitcom. I'm never sure which episode I am up to, so I often find myself watching one that I had seen the night before, coming to the realisation long after I am willing to expend the energy in changing episodes. That night was no different, and I found myself watching Rachel and Ross reconciling after the "we weren't on a break" debacle for the second time in as many days.  

And then I heard it. 

Ross: You were the one who ended it. Remember?

Rachel: Yes, because I was mad at you. Not because I didn't love you. 

And in that moment I realised that I had, in one final stand against post-divorce burn-out, outsourced my thinking. And I was filled with a sense of relief. I knew that whatever I was saying to other people had been quality checked by the committee that wrote Friends. And people liked it, right? I vowed to pay much closer attention to the dialogue, and even consciously memorise a line or two. And if anyone gets offended at the quality of social interaction with me, they are more than welcome to drop off "Big Bang Theory", or "How I Met your Mother". Given my current situation you will forgive me if I give "Two and a Half Men"a miss though - I'm not sure I would find anything useful there. 

Epilogue

Clearly I am watching the right kind of television, because Almost Ideal Man and I made friends after a long and drawn out drama, and have been reunited on Facebook in a gesture that could have been used in any sitcom of note. And if he watches enough sitcoms himself, he might get to drop the 'Almost ' again - particularly if the main character buys lots of expensive gifts for his dearest friends (See the one where Joey buys the big screen TV and leather arm chairs for Chandler). 

Of Cabbages and Kings

Once when I was younger Over-Protective brother came to my rescue. I was in the car with him and the woman who was to become his Ex-Fiancé. They were young and in love and therefore volatile and prone to explosive fights that played themselves out publicly and with gusto. I was sitting in the back seat of what was then considered to be a Very Cool Car, when one such fight broke out and Ex-Fiancé demanded that she be let out of the car. Over Protective Brother screeched to a halt and they both flew out, leaving the front doors open, keys in the ignition, engine running and me sitting in the back seat feeling like I had just witnessed an accident- trying to avert my eyes but being strangely compelled to watch.

Four guys were walking down the street, and must have thought that the universe had just bestowed upon them a heavenly gift. A Very Cool Car, doors opened invitingly, all ready to be driven off. Two of them jumped into the front, and in their excitement they missed the small detail of me sitting in the backseat - they heard me before they saw me. At around about the same time that Over-Protective Brother heard me, and came running back to the car. A scuffle ensued, Brother landed a couple of punches, and the guys ran off with a newly acquired mistrust in the universe. The story quickly became part of family lore, and as with all accounts of history, it is the victor who chooses the version. And so it became the story of how Over Protective Brother saved me from four potential hijackers.

Recent events in my family have, however, led me to reconsider history, and to ask the question “Do you get credit for rescuing people from a situation you created?” – Can you Protect people from your own mess? How thin is the line between being the villain and the hero? And who gets to decide? 

Personally I blame it all on Fairytales –the overwhelming architecture for all of our relationships. From the earliest possible age we tussle over the power to cast ourselves and others in our intersecting stories, trying on characters, discarding them for others that feel more comfortable, then more exciting, pulling in a supporting cast as the narrative road twists and turns.

And as my family finds itself in the centre of a new type of drama (Over-Protective Brother has fled the country, becoming Angry and Indignant Brother, and nobody is talking to anyone else) I have come to realize that the only important thing is to always be the star of your own show, because it is too easy to become simply a prop in someone else’s story. Princess, Crone, Fairy Godmother or Witch, it doesn’t really matter – it’s the power to cast yourself that, in the final analysis, is the thing to keep your eye on. And so back to the story of my rescue from the hands of the car thieves - I prefer the story of a young girl put in danger by the selfishness of two fiery lovers, who are returned to their senses by her cries for help. Brother vanquishes the villains, but is shamed and filled with remorse, and swears never to put others in such peril again. And they all live happily ever after. Well, I can dream, can't I?

Oh the Places You'll Go...

My daughter may have an imaginary friend. She either has an imaginary friend or a speech impediment. She keeps asking for a child whose name is Huggi or Aggi, neither of whom me or anyone else in the nursery school have ever heard of. She could, of course, be asking for any one of the children in her class, but her delightful lisp and awfully cute tongue thrust make it impossible to know. I was delighted at the prospect of an imaginary friend for her, and thought it something to be encouraged. Imaginary friends have a lot of up-sides - they don't have painfully over-elaborate birthday parties, play dates do not require actual arrangements, and if the mother sucks I don't have to have a stilted cup of coffee with her. And it makes me slightly more interesting during the interminable birthday parties where I have to make actual stilted conversation. 

I made the mistake of discussing this new complexity with the over-enthusiastic and, I have to say it - childless, nursery school teacher. She is a thoroughly intimidating, highly animated person who, in the mold of her satirised counterparts,  talks to the parents like we too could pee in our pants at any minute - with an anxiously paced, high pitched tone of forced jollity. She also seems to feel quite strongly that nobody actually knows how to parent adequately, and she has taken on the task of re-educating us with a martyred enthusiasm.  This, of course, is the secret code that unlocks the full capacity of my people-pleasing rocket bomb. "I am good" I am saying when I bring the extra big box of tissues and twice the number of required packets of raisins (don't ask).  "I am worthy" I am screaming when I bring lots of shiny silver coins for the charity box on a Friday. " I am not like those bad mothers" I am hollering when I let her take my daughters dummy out of her mouth and don't head-butt her like I would anyone else. 

So when I mentioned the possibility of my daughter's imaginary friend to her, I was doing so with a certain amount of pride at what I imagined was evidence of her eccentric precociousness. "Don't worry",  Bossy Teacher said to me " This often happens when a child is going through something traumatic, like a divorce. It will pass when she has sorted it all out. Don't feel bad".  I should have expected a response like that. This is the same woman who basically told me that going through a painful divorce while holding down a corporate job in order to be the breadwinner for your two traumatised children is not a good enough reason to keep Daughter off the three year old party circuit.  

Leaving the school utterly deflated I started thinking about the possibility of this hypothesised relationship between the trauma of divorce and the need for an imaginary friend. All my many years of training in social work and psychology have led me to believe that nothing in our psyche is that simple or linear. I preferred my version - where the imaginary friend was a sign of  a quirky personality and incalculable intelligence. But Bossy Teacher had pushed one of my buttons, and something was ringing uncomfortably true. 

There is definitely something in the barren just-divorced landscape that leaves you vulnerable to the more fertile plains of the imagination. I thought of friendships that I had forged in the filthy trenches of this battle field, and I began to feel a sort of identification with my daughter. I thought in particular of Irresponsible Friend and Ideal Man (see my earlier blogs if you have no idea what I mean), two people who had been through startlingly similar breakdowns of their marriages. We connected with each other in a post-traumatic haze, and bonded over slightly drunken analyses of our doomed relationships. I have thought them both quite heroic, wounded but immensely strong. I have spent an inordinate amount of time with both of them, and bored my friends and family with my endless chatter about their activities and states-of-mind. 

My best friend imagined that Irresponsible Friend was in fact The One, and that we would eventually come to recognise the deep and abiding love we felt for one another.  Over-Protective Brother loved him, seeing in him the Man I Should Have Married. In fact we stopped speaking altogether about three weeks ago when he would not apologise for leaving Darling Niece to babysit until four o'clock in the morning. What he did instead was to deploy a well-used tactic of his that he picked up at Stanford Law - when blamed for something: deny, deny, accuse. I didn't do anything wrong (deny). Nothing I did could be defined as selfish (deny). You are the one making trouble (accuse). And as silly as the entire episode was, I had become hyper sensitive to men who can't own their own shit, and I decided to bail (it is a very useful tactic though, and I must confess to using it once or twice myself to rather good effect). In retrospect I can see that he had not changed at all. Our relationship mirrored those of all the others in his life. But the breathless terror of the New World is like an opiate, pushing us down, down the rabbit hole, where we can believe that all good things are still possible. 

So I suppose I do understand how imaginary friendships can get built in the aftermath of divorce. I am now a little scared to look at my relationship with Ideal Man in direct light, for fear  that he may disappear in a puff of reality too.  In fact in what may turn out to be a terrifying "Sixth Sense" twist in the tale,  I have a growing suspicion that he occupies a world where I cannot exist, making me the imaginary friend. And while that does open an infinite number of short term possibilities, it doesn't bode well for my longevity. But hey, at least I will have Huggi or Aggi for company.If I could just figure out who it is. 

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The other night I lay next to my three year old daughter, stroking her cheek and singing a discordant rendition of Piano Man (pretty much the only song she doesn't beg me to stop singing). I was trying to soothe her into a sleep she had resisted with commendable tenacity. She opened her sleepy eyes, looked up at me and mumbled something which I imagined to be one of her random, heart-stoppingly touching endearments - Thank you mommy for buying me this toy (while clutching a plastic scrap bought years before, probably for her older brother); You are beautiful mommy (pulling my eye-lids open at 5 a.m.); will you marry me mommy (while walking down the aisle of the supermarket trying to pick a breakfast cereal). What she in fact said was "I wish I didn't have you". Unsure that I had heard correctly I took her dummy out of her mouth and asked her to say it again. Yes. Very clearly. "I wish I didn't have you". Followed by the kicker - "I wish I had my daddy".

Now before you all roll your eyes or reach for your tissues, be assured that me and my children are mutually adoring. We hug a lot, tell each other at least 15 times a day how loved the other is ("I love you all the stars and planets in the universe" "I love you all that plus one" "Well I love you that plus infinity" "Well I love you all that plus one" etc). It has, in fact, been argued that it might be useful for my children to have me surgically removed at some point, in order to allow them the opportunity to form healthy attachments with people who are not their mother.

So when my daughter fired this last bullet into the dying salvo of our bed time struggle, I was not overly distressed. The divorce was new terrain, with lots of interesting spaces to push the boundaries. And, possibly the slightly more difficult to swallow, I am sure she has a certain amount of ambivalence. She loves us both, but can't be with us at the same time. There are inevitably times when she will be with me, still love me, but wish she was with him. Damnit.

But I am old friends with ambivalence myself. For a long while there were periods where I still loved Cheating Husband, despite the Apocalypse he rained down on our family. My heart betrayed me a thousand times, as I somewhat reluctantly felt pity for him when once mutual friends conducted angry character assassinations, and my enraged mother snubbed him violently, in only the way a Jewish Mother Scorned can do. Here was a man who had, quite simply, broken me, and yet I insisted, once when escorting me home, that Over-Protective Brother and Cousin who is a Policeman remain in the car outside and not come in and beat him up.He had been beaten up, several times, into bloody, messy pulp. But these day dreams were mine and no-one else was allowed to go there.

I was discussing this state of involuntary ambivalence with a friend of mine the other day. His Cheating Wife desperately wants him back. Six months after turfing him out of the marital home to pursue a seedy relationship with a married man, and leaving him completely annihilated, she came to her senses (he is an utter darling of a man with all of the necessities of a Good Husband)and tried for a reconciliation. He had fortunately, by then, passed that dangerous stage where you will do anything just to have things go back to the Day Before (granted some of the techniques he used to achieve this are a bit dubious, but certainly infinitely preferable to Cheating Wife) and he declined, somewhat too politely for his mother's sake (she is not Jewish, but as protective). But he is still, every now and again, struck with a profound longing to return to the marriage that felt like home for so long. He finds these long moments of ambivalence very disturbing, in a way that you would not be familiar with unless you have ever had a strong craving for a fresh glass of strychnine. At these times our long discussions always wind there way to the same conclusion - ambivalence is, in many ways, the hardest part of divorce, for everyone.

I happen to mention to Ideal Man that I was writing this blog, but that I wasn't really sure how to end it because there were a number of points I could steer towards, and I didn't know which one to choose. He pointed out that maybe that was precisely the point. And that this would be a good place to end.

Flash Mobs and My 15 Minutes of Fame

Sitting at a trade fair yesterday, myself and some of the other exhibitors had become thoroughly bored. It was the afternoon of the last day, and the manic rush of setting up and raising our expectations had been followed by four days of overwhelmed buyers politely trying to navigate their way through the maze-like shrine to all things commercial. There were two young girls (now that I am 40, when I say young I mean 26) looking after a stall across from us, and they wandered over to watch some YouTube videos we were playing on my lap-top. Somehow the chain of recommended links led us to a series of videos related to the kind of marriage proposals where competitive men spend too much money trying to find their 15 minutes of fame - largely by implicating huge numbers of bystanders in ostentatious displays of love. One of the Young Things asked me to find a video of a flash mob proposal that had taken place in the food court of one of our local shopping malls. They knew the couple concerned, and hadn't yet seen it.

Watching the group of dancers performing "All you Need is Love" against the red and white backdrop of the Wimpy (a local McDonalds-type restaurant) as the potential groom made his excruciatingly slow way down the escalator, the Young Things were all a twitter. "Oh my God how embarrassing", "Oh no, look at how stupidly she is dancing",  "This is so corny", "I would totally say no if that was me". Inevitably their conversation turned to other kinds of proposals they had heard about, and the kinds of proposals they would feel inclined to say yes to.

Driving home half an hour later, I started reflecting on how oddly similar life's great announcements are. These two cynical Young Things discussing marriage proposals will turn into two judgemental Young Things discussing the best wedding speeches or aisle dances (seems dancing up the aisle with 15 bridesmaids is a -thank God-new trend of those keen on upping the wedding day stakes),  and how so and so told their husband/mother/friends that they were pregnant.

I laughed as I realised that I now find myself firmly in the stage where me and a certain group of my friends are discussing "How I found out he was having an affair". And while the content might be less cheerful and rather embarrassing for others to watch, I can honestly say that my Discovery would have impressed even the Young Things.

Cheating Husband had gone to my mother's place to do an EFT as our internet was down. The money transfer was the deposit for the the three day get-away we were leaving for the next day, and so it could not wait. Obviously this seemed like a really good time for him to exchange love letters with Desperate Floozy, and in an act so loaded with unconscious intention that it would have made Freud proud, he left an e-mail open. For my step-father to find.

My step-father dutifully called my mother. She was panicked and didn't know what to do. Should she stop us from leaving for the game park the next day? Should she let us go and give me three more days of tranquil ignorance (I say this sarcastically, because by this stage Cheating Husband had already made a 'you are an inadequate wife' pre-emptive strike and I was definitely not happy)? Or should she phone my older brother? In an act that I still, to this day cannot fathom, she chose C - call over-protective older brother. My brother, in turn, was faced with some difficult decisions, particularly as by this time me and Cheating Husband and the kids were happily watching giraffe eat leaves in the Pilansberg. Should he come and fetch me and the kids and whisk us away to safety? Or should he phone my cousins? Yup, you guessed it, he chose B.

By the time I arrived home from The Getaway, I had an audience of eight (very lovely, very caring, but very there) family members, all anxiously waiting for me to get the news. Granted not a shopping centre full of people, but enough to feel like it was a community event. And like with the YouTube videos, what follows next is not that interesting so nobody really watches. Once the big moment has passed and the onlookers have shuffled away, you are left to deal with details. The wedding venue, bridesmaids dresses, table settings, seating plans. The baby shower,  nursery colours, baby names. Who will sleep on the couch tonight, how do we tell the children, who gets them on the weekends?

I suppose I can be grateful that he did not serenade me with the news, singing 'I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It' while being carried down an escalator. I have a new found appreciation for privacy and the limits of social networking. I wonder what my next Grand Announcement will be? I suspect the next round of big news for me and my friends is 'Ex is Getting Married'. Great. I wonder what what he will pull out of his hat for that one? And will it go viral?

Its Not Me, its Him.

My son lost a tooth two days ago. We are well used to this routine, and Cheating Husband dutifully reminded me that the tooth fairy was due for a visit that night. I, of course, promptly forgot all about this and my concomitant need to go and draw money from the ATM. I was reminded only when my son started making flurried preparations for his nocturnal visitor. This was already about two hours after his supposed bedtime, and it was easily the coldest night of the year. I briefly thought of selflessly making my way to the 24 hour shop down the road. Fortunately this thought was swiftly replaced by the self righteous notion that all domestic fuck ups do not necessarily have to be borne by me. This time it was the Tooth Fairy's chance.

I found an unused card (that had escaped prior use by slipping behind my bedside table) and wrote a pitiful note from the Tooth Fairy explaining how she had, unfortunately, dropped his money somewhere along the way to visit him, but that she would return the following night with cash in hand. Vaguely dreading his disappointment in the morning, I snuggled under my duvet with the sure knowledge that even if he was upset, I could not possibly be blamed.

The following morning he awoke eagerly (as he only does when some fabricated creature has forcibly entered our house and left cash or gifts for him) and ran to find his school shoe (his slippers having disappeared about two days before the first real cold front of Winter). He opened the card and read the message aloud. My heart stopped as I waited for his response. As usual, it came completely from left field.

Son: Mom, how could the Tooth Fairy have bought a card from the shops?
Me: I don't know. The way we would I suppose.
Son: Thats preposterous.
Me: Well maybe she made it herself?
Son: No. Theres a barcode here. That means it was in a shop.
Me:  I dont know. She has her ways.
Son: Well how did she write on it if she is so tiny. How could she hold the pen?
Me: (Getting irritable). I don't know, I'm not the tooth fairy.
Son: Well, apparently you are.

I stumbled, unsure of whether to confess and shatter his childish naivete, or to stand firm and lie. I basically chose the latter so as not to have to take responsibility for the still-missing money. "Why", I asked him "would parents possibly want to lie to their children about something like this? What would be the purpose?" This had him stumped, and he ran off eager to tell his little sister about his windfall.

It had me thinking though. Why do we let the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Father Christmas take credit for all the lovely things we do for them? For the money, the chocolate, the gifts? It didn't seem fair when parenting is such a battle field, and I am the soldier that is constantly shooting myself in the foot.

The answer came to me as I yelled at him half an hour later. "Father Christmas won't bring you presents" I blustered. He looked at me with the calm of a child who knows Christmas is still five months away. "And he will tell the Tooth Fairy not to bring your money" I added. He stopped walking along the back of the couch (the one situated in front of a large sheet of plate glass) and sat down. And then I realised the beauty of the deal my fore-parents had struck. For three days a year we buy stuff for which we get no credit. In return we get an entire childhood of a 'bad cop' that is not us. A bad cop with a smoking gun. I was filled with a renewed resolve to keep them believing for as long as I could. Until young adulthood if I could.

Men. You Can't Live with Them.

I have a very good friend who has also been going through a somewhat messy and unwanted divorce. It has been a wonderful friendship because he is male and I am not. This gives both of us very useful access into the minds of the opposite sex. Or as we alternatively know them -  "Prey" and "the Unnecessary Evil". He also affords me a much needed, ongoing ego boost by unwittingly revealing the gaping chasms between male and female morality. In other words, he completely reinforces any notion that I may have that Men are Pigs. On the downside, he has a lot more fun than me.

Yesterday he asked me if I knew of a good baby sitter who would be available at short notice. I immediately thought of my beloved niece who is at that awkward after-school-but-not-really-working-yet-still-trying-to-find-myself-phase. In other words she would do pretty much anything legal for a couple of bucks. I had a moments reticence when he told me why he needed a babysitter - to take a date 15 years his junior to a nightclub. The same date, might I add, that had resulted in him arriving at my 40th birthday party three hours late the previous week, inducing an SMS rant that left him afraid to approach me when he finally did arrive (I had imbibed a fair amount of inhibition-reducing substances by then). But I chalked it down to a flare-up of his mid-life crisis, and patronisingly believed that he would be home, passed out from exhaustion, by 11 o'clock that night.

I awoke this morning to an SMS from my niece's mother that stopped just short of accusing me of selling her daughter into a slave-trading racket. I have compassion for her position - it was after all four o'clock in the morning when she wrote it, and she had just pulled a BB Gun on the security guard who wouldn't let her into the boomed off area in which my friend's house was safely ensconced. As was her exhausted daughter. Apparently my friend has more staying power than I realised.

And while this unfortunate series of events is somewhat unusual, the world view that generated them is not. I have seen a distinct pattern amongst the divorced men I know (granted it is only three of them, Cheating Husband included) to jump back into the 'saddle', so to speak. No long, tortuous months of boring introspection for them. No overwhelming sense of physical vulnerability. No period of abstinence to mourn or grieve. Their stages of loss seem to read something like Anger, Much Better Now, I'm Ready for Sex.

 If I sound anything but envious, I am not. Its all very well occupying the high moral ground, but it gets pretty boring with just woman up here. I want to be down below, with the men and the feminist sell-outs, drinking and bonking my way to a happy recovery. If I could just get a frontal lobotomy and lose 40 IQ points.