You write an email to me. I prefer we keep things only in writing, nothing by voice. You close in on my adjustment period, saying you want to begin taking the children every other weekend…”whatever courts usually say is fair.”
There is no court; you still have not filed. Why have you not filed?
Still, you want to take them, even if only for a time. It is three of every 14 days that you expect. But they themselves are willing to give you only one of every seven, preferring their own beds at home every night, and you apathetically accept. One day of the week is not enough to bring out my claws, so I hug myself and swallow.
You know I have never been a mother that needed a break from her children. I have always cherished my time with them because I am constantly aware of how limited it is, that they will one day be grown and might live away from me. My children and I never spend nights apart.
I did nothing to deserve losing time with them, especially not weekends. You now want in on what I protected, what I have held close to me and never risked losing like you did.
You chose to protect her. You chose yourself. You chose a new start. You left.
But now you want to reel the children back in, like undersized fish you decided you should have kept, scars where you unhooked them and threw them back.
They sometimes fall asleep on the couch, with my fingers running through their hair. The youngest often places my hand back on his head when it slides off as I doze.
They still make me confirm every germ will not kill them, that they will not die, that they are healthy and fine. I still have to constantly calm my little one’s nervous tics, and I witness his rote prayers while looking in the air, whispering, “…Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Amen” with a kiss to his thumb, releasing his stress into the air. Your secrets and threats did quite a mental number on him. I do not want him open to you again. They all still sting from your betrayal, and it’s not because we talk about it much.
I’m the one who kisses their foreheads and cheeks goodnight. The older ones return for second kisses just to make sure someone still guards their sleep. And I do.
This was not my choice, but you want me to also lose a bit like you have. I do not deserve to miss them as you do, not even for a day a week.
But I should step back, step back and see that it is not about me. It is not even about your demanding that everyone, even your children, respect your decision despite the pain you have inflicted. It is not even about enabling you as you feel your way through, blind in your selfish transition. There is a reason it is dark out there. And you want our children to serve to light your way.
In the end, I know that, for me, Saturdays are about the children and their knowing you’re still around, that they still have a father out there who misses them, who still supports them. They need to know they still have a father who lives somewhere warm, sleeps in a bed, and is wanted, still belongs somewhere. They need to know that their father, who is a part of themselves, is not floating lonely in the vastness of the universe like an untethered astronaut, forgotten by his rocketship.
So I smile as I kiss them goodbye, and they wander out to hug you hello, and you drive off with them. I will not focus anymore on the unfairness or the fucked-upness of it all. It does no good.
It is just the dogs and me, in a quiet house, the ticking clock. I don’t want any sounds when the kids are gone. They’re the only noise I want on Saturdays.
I don’t want to visit anyone else without their company; it doesn’t feel right after all these years — not yet, anyway. (We’re still a pack, after all.) Instead, I feel like a meditative monk as I work in quiet solitude — things to learn to repair, chores to do, and hobbies to rediscover. I riffle through drawers here, start a new book there, make a weak soup, refuse to punish myself further with cleaning.
This is not how Saturdays should feel. All this time, no one but myself, forced “me” time. I decide to think of my kids’ and my time apart as pre-empty nest training for me. I realize that they’re fine and entertained somewhere else at this point, and this takes some of the dullness off. Still, Saturdays are going to take some getting used to.
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