Complicated Co-parenting

This is a photo of my son Vinny crossing the finish line at the Down and Dirty Mud Run in Lewiston, Idaho. Vinny is 11, and I had accidentally signed him up for the 4.5 mile race that includes several obstacles, instead of the Mini Mud, which was a four-hour open event where he could simply participate in obstacles. Oops.

A few of my reasons for registering for the event were selfish: I love running, and I wanted to do the 4.5 miler. But mostly, Vinny’s father, whom I’ve been divorced from for five long years works for the group that sponsored the race. I knew Eric would be there, and I wanted to see him. I’m pretty sure he didn’t want to see me. It was Eric who filed for divorce after I admitted to having an affair, a mistake that made him feel tossed aside, insignificant.

Looking back, I think I had the affair because I had been feeling tossed aside and insignificant in the marriage, but didn’t have the skills or faith in Eric to tell him. So, instead, I lit a fire underneath our relationship, which sent him running. I even dated the guy with whom I’d had the affair (it was a disaster), adding insult to Eric’s injury.

It’s only been in the last year that Eric and I have started talking about our breakup. He’s shown me his wounds, and I’ve acknowledged them. I’ve told him numerous times how much I regret the affair, the break up, and that I want him back. He won’t relent.

 

Eric has said although he’s not ready to be friends, that’s what we should be working toward. Friends. How strange that word sounds. We were friends. Best friends, for twelve years. And yet, we destroyed the foundation on which all good marriages are built. For, if you’re not friends, how can you expect to be lovers? Partners? Soul mates?

A few good sources tell me I should be grateful Eric wants to be friends. I know they’re right. But I feel anxious. Friends to me means no kissing. No intimate hugging. No love making. Ever. And Eric and I were great at those things. We were also great friends who shared secrets, gossip, and personal stories. Still, something in our dynamic made me unwilling to go to him when this guy at work started bugging me. And while I kept the guy at bay for weeks, he finally broke through to the vulnerable, overworked, underappreciated mother who devoured his attention, flirting, and dirty talk. After it was too late, I knew I was headed for disaster.

What keeps me sane right now is that adorable boy in the photo. He’s honest, funny, and cares deeply for everyone in his family, even his circle of friends. Eric and I conceived that boy when we were deeply in love. And though we may not be now, we work  hard to get along because we so love him.

I have no idea what the future holds, and it scares me to my core. My sources say I need to live one day at a time. Move the mountain one stone at a time. Breathe. Keep running, one foot in front of the other. Live in the present.

On Marilyn Monroe and Childhood Sexual Abuse

Fifty four years ago today, Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her bedroom from an overdose of pills meant to treat her depression. (Her death was ruled a suicide, as you may know.) I remember the first time I saw an image of Marilyn Monroe: it was on the Child of the 50s comedy album by Robert Klein. At the time, I spent many afternoons in the bedroom with my step uncle “Reggie.” We’ll get to that in a minute.

Reggie introduced me to Cheech and Chong, Robert Klein, Aerosmith, and Rush. During one afternoon while listening to Klein, I studied the album cover as he talked about putting a coin in a vending machine and getting a button with the now famous nude image of Marilyn Monroe. (If you look at my featured image, I’m talking about the two identical pictures just off center to the right in the collage.)

After I was made aware of Marilyn Monroe, I started to hear her name all the time and see images of her in cartoons, advertisements, magazines. There was even a pictorial of her in one of my father’s Playboys, which since I’m a child of the free-wheeling 70s, lay right on the coffee table in our living room.

I was struck dumb by the beauty Marilyn possessed. Sure, her hair was bleached and straightened, nose fixed, but even now, looking at the photos of her when she was simply Norma Jean, I found her breathtaking. My favorite film with her, Niagara, is worth a watch.

Fast forward to my early 20s. I had joined the navy after the death of my beloved older brother, left my hometown Binghamton, New York, and was lucky to get stationed at a weather center in Monterey, California. (Not far from Watsonville where Marilyn had once been named Miss Artichoke.) I visited Hollywood, saw Marilyn’s wax figure, and got the chills when I placed both hands in her hand-prints at Mann’s Chinese Theatre. I loved her.

I started reading books about Marilyn, biographies, anthologies, even an autobiography. She’d been abandoned by her birth mother, just like me. I’d never lived in an orphanage, but had a severely abusive stepmother. Marilyn was raped and sexually abused numerous times during her childhood. I’d never been raped, but Reggie started performing oral sex on me when I was four. His sister also molested me. The more I read about Marilyn and her problems with men, I started to wonder about myself–a woman terrified of commitment who eloped at 21 and dumped the guy three months later. In one book, Marilyn is said to have done the same thing in Mexico. (Some folks says it’s not true, but I believe it.)

Marilyn was unfaithful to every husband and lover. I’ve had many struggles with infidelity as well. The current psychology on childhood  sexual abuse tells us this type of behavior is not uncommon–the adult often tries to “work out” or repair what happened to them in the past, and that can lead to repeatedly looking for love in all the wrong places. A very smart writer I met once said, “A kid who’s been sexually abused is the world’s sex object.” The statement is both astute and heartbreaking.

If you’re lucky enough never to have endured sex abuse as a child, it might be difficult to have empathy for people who have. In my life this has been true. I’ve had family members say, “It was experimentation, get over it.” “That’s just an excuse because you were unfaithful.” One callous soul said, “You must have enjoyed it, because you never told your parents.”

Indulge me for a moment if you will. Imagine yourself at four. Or your child at four. (My uncle was 11 when he molested me. Chances are he was molested too, or at the very least exposed to inappropriate behavior.) Reggie bribed me with quarters so I would let him have his way in the bedroom. As I grew older, he gave me record albums or other presents. He said, “Don’t tell your Daddy because he’ll think you’re nasty.” Thank goodness, at age nine, I told him to stop. But the damage had been done.

Over the years, as I learned more about childhood abuse, I grew to feel empathy for Marilyn Monroe. She married for the first time at 16. Although marrying young was not uncommon at the time, I still see it as her getting the hell out of her current situation. In many of the books I’ve read about her, authors describe her as sexually frigid and a woman-child. When I hear “She slept her way to the top,” I prefer to see her not as a soulless woman using sex to get her way, but as a wounded child who believed the promises of men who offered her a better life.

Although I am in my late forties, I am still a hopeful child. Not long ago, I believed the promises of a man, even left my happy marriage. Now, I’m alone and missing my ex-husband and the amazing life we had. I’m grateful for the therapists I’ve had who’ve tried to help me heal from my past. I have a fabulous one now and we’re doing EMDR. It’s not over; and it’s not easy. Today, I wish to say, Rest in peace, Norma Jean. I’ll always be a fan. ❤

 

 

Poem for my Brother, 1966-1987

The Prankster

You’d just turned 21, bought us the Beck’s Beer
we sipped while we waited for the drop-off

at my place, listened to the Stones. You had
silky hair like Mick Jagger, wore a leather jacket

from Dad’s shoe repair shop, dingy white Pumas.
We laughed about our childhood, how you played

tricks on me, like saying you were adopted or
that the shell tasted better than the egg.

We planned to run Dad’s business until we died.
You left to buy one more six-pack, Ruby Tuesday

playing on the stereo, and I was happy to wait
for you. You patted my shoulder, said, I’ll be back,

three words that became a broken promise—
Hours later, after I guessed you’d caught up

with a buddy, forgot to call, our uncle phoned
to say they found you one block from the store,

motorcycle mangled, brain stem snapped in two,
you never felt a thing. Eighteen years old, grief

dropped over me like a veil. I took a cab to our
grandparents, thought of when we were kids:

you made a noose out of plastic, tied it around
your neck, pretended to hang yourself–head slumped,

eyes bugged–from the top bunk. When Dad came
in, he popped you on the head with his knuckle.

I sit at our grandparents, watching the door,
waiting for you to waltz in like so many other
times to tell me that this was all a joke.

Missing My Father

Since You’ve Been Gone

I stand in the kitchen, pour olive oil
into a warm pan on the stove, then garlic,
the aroma rising like yeast, making me
want to call you—as I did during
the decades we lived apart—me
in the navy in California, you at your
hotdog stand in Florida. If you answered
drunk, I’d make an excuse, “Someone’s
at the door,” so I could hang up quick.
But if you were sober, you might tell me
a story: like when you were a kid, riding
beside your buddy in the back of
DiRienzo’s Bakery truck, bringing
bread to the neighborhood folks, your
spaghetti-thin frame, the inhaler
in your jeans pocket, all those loaves
still warm from the oven on the shelves,
you took one and packed it like a snow ball,
and as the driver skidded around
corners, you took bites from the dough.

You’re not there anymore to answer
my call, but I have your recipes, and
your grandchildren, each with your skinny
arms, they sit at my table, pasta filling
their plates, fresh bread in their hands,
they bring the red sauce to their mouths.

The Deep End of the Pool

When talking to people, I’m not interested in staying in the shallow end of the pool. Blame it on the writer in me, but I am intensely curious–fascinated–by other people’s lives. I also am happy to share experiences from my own life as a way to connect with others. From time to time, however, I have found that sharing my experiences, especially the less than pleasant ones, leaves people feeling uncomfortable and not knowing quite what to say. Recently, I was reminded of some phrases that get under my skin.

1.”I must be lucky because…” As in, I am not in the crappy personal situation that you confided in me, which sounds way worse than my own, which I might even be hiding from you because I don’t want to be judged, so instead I’ll say how blessed I am and not share anything.

If you’re a parent, you probably recognize number one. You can’t sit near other parents without hearing about how unique, amazing and intelligent their kids are. And if you say, “Wow, I wish Janie got along better with her kindergarten teacher,” or “Thomas hasn’t been bringing home his homework,” more than likely you’ll get, “I must be lucky because Arthur and Amy love all their teachers and have straight As.” Back to the shallow end

2.”You must be really strong…” As in, I could never survive if I lost my brother, or husband, or father. I would just kill myself. Gosh. How do you even wake up every day and laugh and smile?

Losing a loved one is not a choice. Telling someone, “I would kill myself,” is insulting at best. Don’t say it. Just hug your friend. Ask them if there’s anything you can do. And please, please, don’t say, “I must be lucky. I have never lost anyone close to me.”

3.”I don’t know how you do it…” As in, I could never be a single parent. My husband is wonderful, and I just couldn’t get by without him.

This is a kiss through a veil, a back-handed compliment. It’s as though the person making the comment is waving their Happily Married banner right in my face. And, just to be clear: my ex-husband and I share custody of our son, and just like a couple who are still together, we talk, negotiate and sometimes argue. We live five-minutes from each other. We attend basketball games and parent conferences together. And when things get tense between us (since our divorce was less than friendly) we call a time-out and discuss things in private. We may be single-parents, but we collaborate as a unit, because we can. We have a choice.

I think kindness goes a long way. And if you don’t know what to say to someone who makes you uncomfortable, why not admit it?

 

Smoking With My Brother

You left us at 21—brown leather jacket and
blue jeans, feathered hair parted down the middle,
freckles, the bright green eyes you got from
our mother. I never wondered if her leaving
broke you, smoking and drinking by 12,
popping pills by 13, dealing drugs in your
Windsor knot and dress pants to the stoners
at our catholic school just down the block
from home. You worshiped the Doors,
danced with the gangly arms and wild heart
of a rock star, and Dad imagined you’d run off
to join a band and never come back—like her.

After your wreck on that rainy night, we found
your box of poems, foretelling a life that would
end before you aged. “Never trust anyone over
30,” the hippies once chanted, and you would
have raised your fist right alongside them.

Dear brother, this year you would be 49, far
too old to trust—and yet, I would still follow
your hunched shoulders all the way down
to the creek slithering behind Grandma’s,
pack of lifted Winston 100s and box of matches,
I’d perch beside you on a flat rock, light
the cigs against the wind, and not yet knowing
how to inhale, but so you’d think I was as cool
as I believed you to be, hold the smoke in my mouth
as long as I could stand, the stale taste of tobacco,
cotton and paper mixing on my tongue, pretend.

I’ve Been Away Too Long–So, Here’s a Poem

Barbie Dolls on Drugs

I was twelve and you were six, and we spent
every Tuesday night together for a year.
Your mother at Weight Watchers, your
father driving truck, we watched the Wizard of Oz
so often we knew the script by heart, and when
we tired of TV, we invented games. You had
a huge playroom with the Barbie Townhouse,
and a whole town of Barbies. One was the mother,
and one the daughter who stayed out all night,
came home naked, platinum blond hair
a tangled wreck. Mama Barbie screamed,
“Where have you been?” Daughter said,
“I don’t even know what’s going on.”
They slapped faces with right-angled arms,
and Daughter pulled on a sparkly gown
and hopped away with her plastic suitcase.

Days later, your mother asked to talk
to me, said, “No more Barbies on Drugs,
please.” If she would have been nosier, she
might have discovered I got the idea from
the live show I watched at home, starring
my teenage brother and young stepmother,
sparring, yelling, my brother’s frequent
vanishing acts. But I know now your mother
was trying to keep your dad from disappearing.

All these years later, you and I are still
best friends, and I’m both sad and grateful
for my youthful ignorance–your house was an escape
from my own, where I dropped in a video tape,
air-popped some popcorn, and sat with you
to watch a young girl find her way back home.

Exile — Poem from Suede: A Collection of Poetry

Exile

As soon as I showed signs of rebellion—

drinking, missing curfew, talking back—

my parents sequestered me to my

second story room where, in winter,

I could see my breath. It was an exile I came to love:

four windows, the moon peering like a voyeur

through pink floral curtains—so far—

yet close enough that I could steal its light to sketch.

In summer, a small window fan chopped my friends’

voices from the streets below, drew up that second flight,

a light breeze, so I could breathe.

When the smell of dinner wafted up the stairs,

I trudged to the kitchen where my stepmother,

sipping tea, said, No one wants you here.

Back in my room, I sketched John Lennon—

imagined that he’d written “Mother”

just for me—and Marilyn Monroe,

another girl left by her mother who made me think,

someday, I might see my name across

a marquee. But at sixteen, freedom

and fame were as distant as the stars.

So, I stole a Valium—yellow and round—

from my stepmother’s jewel box, held my breath

and swallowed it down, then lay across

my bed spread, drawing the moon.

A Glimpse Into Wilson’s Disease

The Assumption

My husband Harly thought he had the flu,
felt lethargic and never wanted to eat.
I just thought he was lazy. After hauling
bags of grass seed all day at the local plant,
he’d flop down on our couch, slather Vicks
on his chest, cuddle with our baby girl
and watch Barney. He stayed up late into
the night playing TechnoBowl, chest pains,
tingling in his joints, then fell asleep, TV
blaring, lamps aglow. He never left the house
except to work, and when he pressed his calves,
he left fingerprints. After his stools lost color,
we saw doctors who dosed him, told him eat less,
walk more. It was a nurse who noticed
the golden hue of his eyes and skin, insisted
on a blood test that showed a liver gone bad.

I drove us back to our modest home in our town
of a thousand. Harly sat in the passenger seat,
sniffing—a twenty-seven-year-old man
who would need a specialist, tests, a transplant.
But right then, all he needed was to hear
the radio play Tom Petty, to rest his head
on my chest. He smelled of sweat and soap.
I’d never seen him cry in the time we’d been
together, but over the next six months,
as he watched his baby girl scream through
her own blood tests, his brother lose his life
to the same disease, his own body wither
from broad-chested and strong to brittle
and thin, I’d wipe them away, one by one,
as they blended into his yellowed cheeks.

What Not to Say After a Funeral

When I was a senior in high school, I took a class called On Death and Dying. During one particular class period, the teacher, Mr. Jones, asked, “Who in here has had someone close to them die?” A few people raised their hands. I was
not one of them. At 17, I still had both parents, grandparents, siblings, and had never lost anyone. Within a year, all that would change.

In May 1987, my 21 year old brother Tony was killed in a motorcycle accident. I was 18. Suddenly, all that abstract information about Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and the Five Stages of Grief came flooding back. Mr. Jones showed up at Tony’s funeral, and I remember thanking him for the class. I told him I would be a wreck (as if I weren’t) without having all that knowledge.

The aftermath of Tony’s death was far more painful. My father leaned on his wife for strength, and my younger brother was 11. So, I felt as though I had no one to turn to who understood the depth of my pain at losing my beloved brother. Tony would have been the person I leaned on had our father or grandfather or younger brother passed. I’d heard the word “Sorry” from hundreds of people, hundreds of times, so it became empty. And I became angry that everyone else was able to return to their everyday lives.

Over the next several years, when I talked about Tony’s death to people who had never experienced the loss of a loved one, I was stunned by some of the responses I heard. “You must be strong. If my sibling died, I’d kill myself,” or “Everyone dies. You need to get over it,” or “I know just how you feel. I once lost a cat.” I listened to these comments in silence, judging these ninnies in my head.

Exactly ten years after my brother was killed, I lost my young husband to a genetic liver disorder. I wrote “Harly’s” eulogy, and invited two of his cousins and one of his best friends to speak at the funeral. I played a couple of his favorite songs from the 80s. During the eulogy, I tried hard to keep from crying as I relayed the last six months of his life in his struggle against Wilson’s Disease. I did the best send off I could to honor my 27 year old husband. Tony’s death a decade earlier probably helped me emotionally when dealing with Harly’s death and the grieving that followed.

Once again, however, I was ill-prepared for the comments that would come after the funeral. “Wow. My husband and I have had our problems. But I’m so lucky to have him,” and “Your eulogy sure was negative,” and “Why did you have an open casket. We didn’t need to see him,” and “You must be strong. If I lost my husband, I would kill myself.”

Now, in the defense of these folks, no one knows what to say if they’ve never been through this, right? So, looking back, and it’s been 27 and 17 years, respectively, I can say, no one meant to come right out and pour Tabasco sauce into my open sore. At the same, I like to hold on to a statement said to me as I stood outside the funeral home talking to friends. Reed Herres, a long time friend of Harly’s, walked over to me, and said, “I don’t know what to say. So I’m not going to say anything.” And then he hugged me.

You might think because I’ve been through the death of a sibling, and a husband, and now my father, that when I attend a funeral I know just what to say to the grieving. Nope. I find myself at a loss for words just like so many others. Every person grieves differently, and every loss is a new experience. Depending on how well I know the person, I tend to follow Reed’s example and offer a hug. Then I lean forward and ask, “Is there anything I can do for you?”