Our divorce was a nightmare
We got divorced. It was a nightmare. She stood holding a suitcase by her side and with her hands on her hips she shouted at me all the reasons why and she packed all her things in boxes and all of her things meant all of the things in the house, it got emptier and emptier as she explained that she was never coming back and I didn’t say anything I just cried and stared at her and when I woke up I had tears on my face. This is before we had kids. I wiped my eyes and rolled over in the bed and put my hand on her side, watched her breathe, nuzzled her shoulder, fell back to sleep.
That dream echoed one of my earliest memories, related to my mom’s divorce from my biological dad - and I just realized that’s how I think of it, my mom’s divorce. I don’t know how old I was. Three? Four? It’s hard to know because it’s a memory of a time when I didn’t know my own age. Some of my aunts and uncles came over and boxed up things and in my memory it was a happy time, lots of grown ups I knew and liked moving around in our house and the packing was like a funny game. My memories from that time in my life are mostly images, no story arc, no dramatic structure. Sitting in a mud puddle in the rain with another kid, using empty coke cans to pour water on each others heads, laughing. A birthday cake shaped like a rocket. A bird released from where it was trapped in a heating duct in the basement ad it flew big circles around the basement then out a window. As I type this I think at first that all my memories of my biological father are from after the divorce but then more come bubbling up. He and my mom shouting at each other, throwing laundry from a basket at each other. Clean? Dirty? I don’t know. I laugh while this goes on. He fixes french toast, shows me how it’s made, smiling, and a spark flies off the pan and hits my cheek, I run to the white couch in the living room and bury my face in it, rubbing the ridged fabric against the skin to distract myself from the sting. Him putting a record on, showing me how the arm lowers the needle, dancing around the living room.
At one point I have said that I can’t imagine getting divorced. Now I can. I don’t mean I want to, quite the opposite, I just see how it can happen. Before I had kids divorce seemed incomprehensible. Part of what made that nightmare so terrifying is that in the dream my marriage was over, I felt that with concrete certainty, but I didn’t know why, didn’t know how it had happened. I get it now. Relationships - and individuals - fray at the edges and they can unravel.
I saw that possibility the other day on my wife’s face. It was her turn to sleep in. Sleep is the most important, the most terrible fucking thing in the whole stupid universe. Our kids had been up at night. I got up with them that morning. My turn.
Our house is small. My youngest kept circling back, a vulture turning around carrion, to her mother - to the door blocking her from her mother. Being out of direct line of sight contact with mama often brings tearful shouts, occasionally rising in pitch and intensity to screams, howls, “mama! mama!” as she slaps the door with the flat of her little palms, scratches the door with her fingernails, tries grab and turn the doorknob. I distract her with dolls - dolls hopping, putting on dresses, falling down, pooping, peeing - and tickles and pointing out squirrels outside and singing songs I made up like “monkey monkey monkey” and “hoop bop bah dah.” Our living room is awash with distractions for her, sitting as it does under a three feet high flood tide of toys and crayons and costumes and kids’ books. Each object and effort keep her attention for, at most, fifteen minutes at a stretch.
My older kid tires of playing a supporting role in the drama of her younger sister’s need for mama, begins to demand some meeting of her own needs. “Read to me!” she say, repeats, then shouts as she steps one foot onto my knee - I’m sitting on the floor having a rabbit jump up and turn loops in midair - and steps the other onto my shoulder, “ow!” I say as she picks up her other foot bringing her full forty pounds down on my shoulder. She leans her torso forward so her chest rests on the top of my head, puts both hands on my other shoulder and pitches her weight forward so she dives over my head and slides down the right side of my body, buffeting my neck as I try to grab her to slow her fall, imagining a faceplant and another broken nose. I can’t read while serving as a jungle gym this way, nor can I really entertain the younger kid unless she enjoys the sight of my almost helplessness - which, I admit, must be pretty funny to see, if you hate me, and I am sure my kids do. (If you’re not sure what a five year old child climbing on you is like, go to a pet store, pick out a big bag of dog food, hold it over your head, look up at it, drop it on your face, then try to catch it before it hits the floor and splits open.) So of course the littler one’s screaming again now.
I find a book both kids like but not today - today neither likes it. Today neither kid likes anything. What they want is a new attempt at entertaining them so they can howl at that attempt’s failure. I can tell this by the clench in my jaw, trust me - once you have kids you develop telepathy in your ground down teeth, your aching back, your clenched jaw.
Small kid demands a book for babies, a book she is really too young for. Big kid demands a book for older kids, a book at the edge of her own ability to concentrate and be read to. They hold their books and sit in my lap, all elbows jabbing, book corners poking, heads like rocks thrown by chimps, thumping everything nearby. “Hey!” “No!” “Move over!” “Book!” “Move!” “Read!” “This is uncomfortable!” “Daddy!” I take elbows in the ribs, heads to the chin click my chipped teeth together.
I hug one girl in each arm, separating them. I kiss each on the back of the neck, a ticklish spot, but learn this is not a time for tickling - tickling is a game of losing and retaking control, and right now they both want to keep and take more control - “no!” they both shout together. For the first time this morning they agree on something. I get them situated on each side of me, one book per lap, thinking maybe I can read enough of each book in succession - a page for you, now a page for you - to keep the screaming quiet enough that my wife might get a little sleep (we have both, I think, learned to sleep through more and more, not so much that we can sleep through louder sounds as we can unconsciously tell different kinds of sounds: ordinary child friction can sometimes be slept through, while genuine distress can’t) when the bedroom door opens.
The bedroom is right off the living room which is also the playroom in our small house. My wife steps out with eyebrows as heavily weighted and cut with lines as deep as I think I’ve ever seen on her face, her mouth a pinched, flat line. It’s a look I imagine I would have on my own face if I were using a brick to hammer a former employer’s face into bloody jelly. (Everyone has that fantasy, right?) It’s a look that says let the army ants, the zombie hordes, the planet-smashing comet, whatever the fucking apocalypse is you can just fucking bring it because why fucking bother anymore I am so done with all of this shit. This is the face I have when I am ready to fight unfair, to say things I know will hurt long after the fight’s over, when I want to score points in cheap games that make it harder to reconnect once I’m done being mad about work, job hunting, bills, my unmet aspirations, extended family, receding hairline, dwindling bank balance, and expanding waistline. This is the face of great distance between two persons who want only greater distance because their nerves are raw and the air - let alone contact with another human - burns like rubbing alcohol. This is the face that expresses the possibility of divorce as fallible humans confront circumstances bigger than they are.
“Uhhh… good morning?”
She breathes out through her nose fast, propulsively. “Morning.”
“There’s tea for you on the counter.”
Another nose-breath. “Thank you.”
She heads for the caffeine. I stand, start to follow her then remember that sometimes giving someone space closes distance and crowding creates more of it. I roll my youngest - “mama!” with arms reaching out - onto her back, “no! mama!” then do the same to my older kid - “hey! what are you-“ and I tickle their bellies with the big toe on my right foot. “What nice new rugs!” “Rug!” says the littler. “We’re not rugs, we’re your daughters!” says the bigger. “Talking rugs, what a great idea!“ Both are laughing now. "Hey girls!” I look around like I don’t know where they are, cup my hands around my mouth like I am calling to them from far away, “come see these cool new rugs! I guess your mama must have got them, they’re really neat!” “Daddy! We’re right here!” “Right where?” They keep laughing. They stay laying down. They don’t charge after their mother.
My wife walks back into the room, holding her tea cup in both hands. “Good morning,” I say again. “Did you get any sleep?” “No. I kept meaning to get up but I was so fu– uh, so very tired that I just wanted to keep laying there.” “I’m sorry. I tried.” “I know. I heard everything.” “I really wanted you to be able to sleep.” “I know…. Also, good morning.” She smiles now.
My shoulders relax. I smile back. Threat level drops from yellow to blue then green. My guess is our lives will all ease up in two or three years. We just need to hang in there for about another eleven hundred days. She sighs then sits down. Both girls run to her, hug her legs, begin to scramble into her lap. She’s still smiling. She’s better at coming back down to earth than I am. Anything unraveled today has been sewn back up.
“I want another cup of tea,” I say, “can I make you one too?”
“That would be lovely.” Both kids are in her lap now, smiling, looking together at the same book about birds.