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.

Why Celebrities Name their Children 'Apple' and We Should too.

My son is named after my late father. It was a sentimental gesture on my part, a sentiment that has now largely passed.  My father had an overly affectionate relationship with alcohol you see, an affection that was costly to both him and us. However pregnancy does very strange things to one's hormones, and a sublime pre-birth rush of progesterone led me to believe that the continuity of the family tree and the embedding of history in the current narrative was a vital part of blah blah blah. And so as all the male family members gathered around him on his eighth day of life to perform the Jewish circumsision ritual (we are not going there), he was bestowed with this somewhat rickety legacy. I was emerging from one hormonal dementia and entering into another (the Big Post Natal D), and was not yet of sane mind. So it still seemed like a noble idea.

It just so happened that Cheating Husband had an uncle with the same name. He was not a particularly salient character in our day-to-day lives, so we had never really made the connection between his, my father's, and now my son's names. Until the day he killed himself by flying, head first, into the ground at a meaningful speed while participating in a motorbike race at a local track. My son was about two when this happened, and the sombre mumblings of the mourning adults filtered through into his strange toddler world. Somehow Uncle and Grandfather became conflated, and his name took on greater significance by being somehow linked to this adventurer of a man who died so dramatically. As he grew older and more verbal, he started regaling anyone who stood still long enough with stories about the origins of his name, and no amount of hushed correcting from me could convince him that it was not his grandfather that died while racing motorbikes. Quite the contrary actually. His grandfather died in a grungy hotel room whilst in a deep sleep. I do see how that is a much less compelling story, and my son, with his inherited flair for the dramatic, was having none of it.

One day a couple of months ago my son and I were chatting about this and that. "Mom", he said, "you know the man who died at the motorbike race? The one I'm named after?". "Yes dear" I replied, far too exhausted to begin the very involved process of explaining his genealogy to him. "Well", he said "Did he at least win the race?"

Oh, I wanted to laugh. I wanted to laugh, and I wanted to cry, and I wanted to howl and to celebrate. Because he had let me off the hook, my brilliant son. It doesn't matter, really, the legacies and stories I syphon ever so carefully into the pages of his book, because those are my stories, laden with my guilt, my battles, my ghosts. He just repels them, turning a drunken grandfather into a heroic uncle, a tragic death into a simple race unwon. With a puff of air he blows away the dust of the ghosts clambering to fill his space with their musty, worn out tales. Cheating Husband and I cannot create the world in which he will live.  His words are like the clanks and the bangs of pots being hit with metal spoons - come out come out wherever you are, we are playing a different game now.

You Have to Know When to Hold 'Em

Apparently my hairdresser is now the one thing that stands between me and social humiliation. This is quite ironic given the way in which we met. Cheating Husband had just fled the marital home and had taken up in a flat down the road. On the one occasion I had been into his post-apocolyptic home, Desperate Floozy's stuff had been neatly packed into one side of his bathroom cabinet (Yes, I looked. Of course I did). And while any of his goings-on with her had firmly become "no longer of any interest to me", her goings-on with my two children still fell firmly into the 'Only if you want the She-Bitch in me to Unleash the Wrath of my Very Expensive Lawyer ' territory.

It was amidst all of these goings on that my daughter fell ill. I am embarrassed to say (but, like the death of Johnny the Daschund, I feel it better to get these things out of the way right up front) what was a simple ear infection was treated with an obviously ineffective combination of Calpol and a flustered and insistent faith in the universe, until on Old Years Day it had turned into a medical emergency (yes, yes, I know. There is nothing you can say that I havn't already said to myself and accused Cheating Husband of). And just in case I was not doing sufficient guilt and self-flagellation, the Doctor mentioned several times that this should have been dealt with sooner. He booked her into hospital and promptly fled to the jollity of a New Years Eve party, leaving me and Cheating Husband in an uncomfortable silence.

By Day seven of what transpired was a 14 day hospital stay, Cheating Husband and I had fallen into a comfortable shift system that allowed us to pass fleetingly in the hospital hallways. My daughter was feeling much better and hence was bouncing off the walls of her small, solitary ward. I was on duty, and I took her to play in the open spaces of the reception area, where a doting staff awaited her visits eagerly and entertained her for minutes at a time. A family was sitting solemnly in the stiff waiting room chairs, talking in hushed voices, when my daughter burst noisily out of the lift.  Immediately she made towards them , charming them, amusing them, and pulling me into the intimate space of their vigil. We exchanged war stories- theirs a sick father, husband, grandfather. Wife was there with Son and Daughter-in-law, a couple my age, with their two children in tow. We fell into easy conversation. I was Jewish, they were Jewish. My mother arrived and joined in. We started a game of Jewish Geography - "Aren't you so-and-so's cousin, that ones friend, his mother? Really?".  My daughter had wondered off, fruitlessly trying to engage a somewhat grumpy man who was not falling for her Shirley Temple charm.

Me: Come to Mommy darling.
Daughter-in-Law: (Sounding Surprised) Are you her mother?
Me: (Sounding Smug): Yes.
Daughter-in Law: (Hitting on something) Then who was the woman she was with this morning?
Me: Woman? No, you must mean man. She was with my husband this morning.
Daughter-in-Law: (Who clearly hadn't been paying nearly enough attention to sick Father-in-law) Yes, thats right. Tall man, shaved head. They were with her in the coffee shop this morning. Together.
Me: (Feigning recognition). Oh her.
Me: (Giving up and accepting my fate as the entire family now looked on with keen interest). She must be the woman my husband has been having an affair with for the last year.

"Oh", she said, "I did wonder". And in that moment she became the first person in this entire mess who had taken my husband's infidelity in her stride.  She held a Social Royal Flush in her hands. She knew that I had nothing - a motley mix of cards that made no sense at all. And not for even one fleeting second did she think of throwing them down, nor did she make me feel that my hand was anything but bad luck of the draw. I fell in love with her. A few weeks later I hauled my cheated on ass down to her salon, and spent a wonderful few hours not feeling humiliated. I  told her to cut me a fringe and dye my hair blue. She refused, telling me that nothing screams Forty Year Old Woman Having a Nervous Breakdown more than blue hair.

And that, I have come to see, is the real sisterhood. Not a squawking gaggle of outraged friends, but the women who can stare down a husband's infidelity without flinching, and protect you from a lemming-like instinct to wear your heartache in ways that would just make everyone uncomfortable. They are the last stand, the real warriors of the feminist movement, as they quietly guard the perimeters of the Casualty Ward, never, never letting Them see the wounded.