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Posts Tagged ‘divorce’

What a world, what a world.

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , , on September 24, 2012| Leave a Comment »

No, I’m not wicked (or at least I try not to be).  No one threw a bucket of water on me to make me melt.  I just feel like I’ve been melting the past few days.  I caught something from one of the students in my class.  That wiped me out for the weekend.  Homework for the boys is getting heavier (a good thing, just a time management thing).  Work is sort of settling into the new semester, but there are always new technological challenges to face.  And comparatively speaking, while there was great sadness for me today, I know there are others feeling this sadness even more strongly at this moment.  My heart and prayers go out to them tonight.

There are families in this world that have experienced divorce.  My husband’s family has had a few divorces.  The interesting thing is that the family never exiled the ex.  The ex-daughter-in-law, the ex-sister-in-law were still daughters and sisters.  There is divorce in my family’s history too.  I’m still the daughter, still the sister.  That’s as it should be.  Other relationships don’t have to end because two people can’t live together or remain married.

I’m glad that today I could be there, in whatever small capacity it was, to lend love and support when these special people from my life needed it.  So while I have been feeling like I’m melting, today’s events reminded me that I’m not.  I’m loved.  And blessed with family in so many ways and from so many unexpected places.

When my sons are older, I’ll explain the whole history behind this other part of the family.  For now they know the most important part-more people who love them.

 

 

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It was 1983 again

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , on March 1, 2012| Leave a Comment »

It was a surreal day because Doc Brown had come to my work with his flux capacitor and took me back to 1983.  My history teacher  from ninth grade was at the career fair today.  Of course now he is an administrator and hasn’t been in the classroom for years.  I was thrown back to the early 80s and the misery that was my life in ninth grade.

What an awful year it was.  The history class was the high point of each day.  It was an ancient civilizations course and was fun and challenging.  We studied Egypt and we went on a field trip to a natural history museum, though I don’t recall if it was in NYC or Philly.  It was a great way of escaping the stress of my life that year.  Looking back, there have been harder years, but that year still makes the top ten of hard years.

My parents had just separated and with it my whole concept of normal changed.  I think that is one of the hardest parts of divorce for children.  The normal they relied on disappears instantly and it never comes back.  The daily schedule changes-it’s now just Mom there (in most cases and specifically in my own).  While it may sound sexist and stereotypical, without the “Dad”, the house feels less safe.  This can create a new sense of fear and paranoia and for me it did.

And then suddenly it’s a big deal to see your father.  You become aware of this phrase “visitation rights” and the term “custody”.  I had never really paid attention to these words before.  Sure, I had probably heard them in a movie or television show, but because it wasn’t a part of my life, I didn’t make a connection to it.  Those words had no meaning until they directly impacted me.  Things were tense between my folks and my father became less than cheerful to be around.

My history teacher became the positive male role model in my life.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say father-figure, but I do wonder if I would have become really bitter toward men if I hadn’t been in that class.  He was nice and supportive.  I didn’t have that at home from my dad anymore so it was nice to have it come from somewhere.

School always came easily to me.  I was bright and I loved learning.  I still love learning though at times I don’t feel as bright as I did in my youth.  A year later, in tenth grade, I had become officially bored with school and was planning to drop out and take the GED instead of two more years of not being challenged.  But, in ninth grade I had a history class that was interesting and awesome.  This history teacher made it that way.

I loved learning hieroglyphics and about the culture.  The religious structure within the society, the burial rituals, the architecture and the many developments the Egyptians had made in their civilization were fascinating.  I began to get a solid sense of how old the world was and how short my life on earth would be.  This was the year when I came to understand my mortality.  Thus began my desire to contribute something of value to the world through my existence.

Many ideas of what I would contribute have come and gone with the years.  As some of them have faded, it has been an exercise in letting go of a dream, but still keeping it alive.  Dreams don’t have to die even if you aren’t pursuing them.  I searched though for some time to figure out what would be of value to others.  I had my own ideas, but many were not filled with truth or with the right purpose.  And then, boom, I figured it out.

And now I have to go tuck them into bed.

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Big yellow dog

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 28, 2012| Leave a Comment »

If you had asked me two weeks ago how much I would miss my dog, I would have said a lot.  Ask me today and I cannot express how much I miss Brigs, though I’m apparently going to try in this post.  This house feels so very empty without that big yellow dog.  I think I was trying to fool myself that it wouldn’t be that hard because he hadn’t been upstairs for a year.  But even being downstairs, his presence was felt everywhere.  I still see him sprawled out on the family room floor.  I still hear his his metal collar clanging with his dog tags.  I still hear him.  And I have wept like a big ol’ baby, huge wailing sobs.  Not around my sons since I think it would scare them, it’s startled me a few times.

Brigadoon carried a lot of weight.  And I don’t just mean on his body.  I had a lot of emotional history attached to him.  I got Brigs while married to my ex-husband.  It was toward the end of the marriage, I just didn’t know how close to the end when we went to pick him out.  The puppy was next in a series of steps-married? Check.  House?  Check.  Yellow lab?  Check.  My ex even had the name Brigs picked out before we found a breeder.  Had to be a yellow lab and had to be a male.  I had no choice in the type of dog.  This had all been decided by my ex before we were even married, before dating for that matter.  He had set a goal at some point of having a male yellow lab when he was married and had a house.  I did get to participate in selecting the dog and we picked Brigs.

Brigs was positively adorable as a puppy.  Very sweet, very even-tempered.  I got a bunch of books and worked with him every day to train him.  This was not supported and I had an uphill battle ahead of me.  There were a lot of things that happened after we got the dog that shined a light on the major problems we were having.  Until it was more than just us, I hadn’t seen them.  The breaking point happened when I came home one day to find Brigs soaking wet in his crate and my ex watching television with a scowl on his face.  It seems that Brigs played in some puddles in the backyard (water dog) and got muddy.  My ex tried to rinse him off with the hose which the puppy interpreted as play.  My ex lost his temper with Brigs, hit him with the hose, and eventually stuck him in the crate.  The look on Brigs’ face when I had gotten home was so sad.   An argument between the ex and I then happened.

On so many levels I owed this dog so much.  My ex and I had been discussing children by this point and seeing the reaction about a muddy dog made me wonder what type of reaction would happen about a muddy kid, which even then I knew was bound to be a regular occurrence.  The inability of us to calmly discuss matters about the dog made me wonder how we would ever come to mutual decisions about children.  It couldn’t always be his way.  My voice, my opinion, didn’t matter.  While he may have intended some things to seem like compromises, it felt more like ultimatums.

The experiences with this little puppy made me re-examine my marriage and where we were and if we were actually trying to travel a path together.  The reflection brought forth the answer that we were not sharing similar visions except on a superficial level.  There were other factors, but they don’t need to be explored in such a format as this.  The point is that this dear sweet dog gave me the courage to accept that this marriage was not healthy and that changes had to be made.  The changes I suggested were refused so I accepted that it was over.

As we began the messy, ugly chore of separating our belongings, several items became bones of contention.  My Highlander sword.  That practice of ultimatums came out again.  I could have my Highlander sword OR the rest of the weapons I had collected.  I couldn’t afford to start over in my collection and so the crowning jewel of it was sacrificed.  It went this way for many items.  I let many things go by keeping my eye on the big picture.  But when it came to the pets, they all came with me.  The cats and hamster were mine in the sense that I brought them to the marriage.  The dog was technically ours, but I stated I was taking Brigs.  As he challenged me on this, I simply reminded him of the rainy day episode and said the dog comes with me.  My ex agreed.

I walked out of the marriage with basically what I walked into it with, but with a lot of debt added in because of stupid choices I agreed to over the two and a half years we were married.  I walked out without some of my optimism and that took a long time to reacquire.  Brigs helped with that because he was always just so damn happy.  His tail was always wagging and he seemed to smile when I came home to our tiny apartment.  It was a bear to find an apartment in my teeny budget that allowed dogs his size.  I only got into the place I did because I had the crate.

Brigs loved his crate!  He would go into his crate when he wanted a nap and close the gate behind him.  It was his way of saying “do not disturb”.  When he was done having his “me time”, out of the crate he’d come, tail wagging.  During those behind-closed-gate naps he would snore like nothing you’ve heard before.  Lips flapping, whole body wiggling at times, chasing bunnies with his feet running in air.  Brigadoon’s happiness and optimism helped me as I moved forward.

I also lost a lot of trust as that marriage ended.  I questioned motives, I looked for the “catch” from what people offered.  Brigs loved unconditionally and with total trust.  He helped me relearn trust.  He taught me so much about unconditional love.

But, being a human, I still had emotional memories attached to Brigs.  He represented so much about changing my life.  His existence in my life made my marriage today possible.  He helped make being a mommy possible.  And then to top it all off, even though he was four when our first son was born, he adapted to a baby so quickly.  Brigs loved having brothers!  He would position himself in front of the nursery door when I put one of the boys in for a nap.  He would guard the door!  He was protecting them.

He protected me.  Always being happy to see me protected me from becoming cynical.

As he got older, and I started thinking about the fact that he would not actually live forever, I wondered how I would feel when Brigs was gone.  I had no idea how many memories would wake up.  I had no idea how much release would come-a feeling that that marriage was really over.  Done.  Dead and buried.  Brigs was supposed to mark the beginning of that family and instead he marked the end.  And he went on to add so much to this family-to my hubby’s life, our sons’ lives, my life.

Oh, I miss that big yellow dog.

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