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Don’t Worry — Your Kids Will Tell You Later

I was hanging out with my three adult children over the holiday weekend, enjoying relaxed conversation about whatever, reflecting on their childhoods mostly, and the talk made natural twists and turns, ups and downs, the way conversations do. I mostly stayed out of it as the three twentysomethings reminisced about various adventures along their pre-teen and teen years. I enjoyed hearing their easy reflections of memory after memory. But then it veered slightly as they talked about missteps — the times they remembered with their dad — and I knew all I was supposed to do now was nod.

I cupped my hands around my warm coffee and tried to think of whether or not to say anything at all. Should I defend? Deflect? Agree?

See, this is the stuff they don’t tell you about when you are divorcing or divorced. That you’ll be privy to the moments when your kids, as adults, will open up the Pandora’s box that was their childhood and let you stare inside at the things you could not see when it was happening.

“Oh yeah…every frickin’ Sunday. If you had any plans, forget it. It was church and then of course football, that ruled the day. God forbid any of us wanted to go anywhere. Not happening.” (This is my youngest son.) “Better make sure you could fit it in around whatever he already had going on because no way in hell did your plans mean anything at all.”

(My daughter) “That’s not nearly as bad as the hours and hours you’d have to spend waiting for him to get out of a rehearsal. Or saying goodbye to everyone at rehearsal. Standing there in the parking lot on a Monday night talking to whoever, not even caring that I still had, like two hours of homework to do, and he has to discuss whatever thing with Mark.”

“Oh my god, yes. Every single week.” (My oldest son)

“Last one, every time.” (Daughter) “But you weren’t even around, Daniel, to remember — remember when I was directing Triangle Shirtwaist, for the Act One play in the fall? With JR? Oh man, the worst. So, dad is upstairs or whatever at his class, and he finishes like an hour before I’m supposed to be done, and he comes down and legit asks if I can just wrap up my rehearsal an hour early because HE’s finished. As if he would EVER do that for any of us. He has no concept of how many hours we sat around waiting for him. No concept at all.”

“Oh, no way.” (Oldest son) “I totally get you. He made us stay at the theatre the night before your college graduation, knowing full well that we had to drive like four more hours, made us stay there until midnight or whatever, even though everyone knew we had to go. It was unbelievable. And then we were still the last ones there, and we were only driving halfway that night. To be late for your graduation in the morning. Whatever.”

These snippets go on like a tennis match, the ball lobbing back and forth, once in a while over to their youngest brother who concurs, adds a small piece of confirmation. The instances they are focusing on today all have to do with the times their dad was late, the times he prioritized his work over theirs, his calendar over theirs. I know I could add fuel to their fire, keep them talking for hours, rile them up.

But I don’t.

I sip my coffee. Once in a while, I nod or chuckle. Each item they bring up is true and sad, but I can’t help but wonder what they talk about when the subject is me. See, these times when their dad made them stay at rehearsal until he was good and ready, or demanded a truncated rehearsal because he was ready to go, I was busy with the third child, or I was in class at grad school, or already home, making dinner for them. Sometimes, I was proving a point — YOU do the heavy lifting, pal.

Because I was the primary caregiver, scheduler, and all-around taxi while I was working full time and getting my second graduate degree, there was a year where I decided to make it his job to schedule the dentist appointments. Our dentist was in the neighborhood, literally about 6 blocks from our house. I asked my husband to schedule the kids’ appointments for after school, on a day when he thought he could take them.

The kids went 14 months with no dentist appointment before I finally couldn’t stand it any more and made the appointments myself.

So I stay here with them and try to imagine what it is they say when I am the target of their childhood memories of shortcomings.

Later in the evening, when my daughter and I are out for our nightly walk, we chat about many things, but I finally say to her, “Y’know, it was hard for me to hear the things that were so difficult for you guys when your dad really didn’t pull through for you. The times that it was just so disappointing. I mean, it rides the cusp, right? It’s not like he was super-neglectful, but I feel like maybe I should have been more in tune, should have picked up that slack more. I know about the major things. The time he left you at the SATs for hours. The fact that he never came to teacher conferences. Those ones I get but hearing about all of these, what, micro-disappointments I guess you could call them? I just feel like I missed them when they were happening.”

She reassures me immediately.

“Mom, look. I’ve been over this a hundred times in therapy. Both with dad and by myself. He knows. He just doesn’t want to do anything about it.”

I go a little further, and ask what I am really after. “I guess, though, I would sort of want to know that stuff. What you guys think I messed up on. In case I owe you an apology, or so I can do things better moving forward.”

We keep walking, and she’s quiet for a little bit, but soon says, convincingly, “Don’t you think we’ve been able to say that all along? Like, the whole way?”

I imagine the hundreds of conversations, walks, texts, all of it over the years — the years of driving the kids places, traveling with them, calling her on the phone while she was at college and talking for an hour or more, only to call the next day, and the next. Staying on campus an extra day, hiking with my son or sons, standing with them in the kitchen chopping vegetables or washing dishes, all of it, all of the commutes and folding laundry, all of the mundane tasks interwoven with talk. And realize she’s right. I laced those conversations with difficult questions, with attempts at improving our existence, and I still do.

I have a long way to go to improve my parenting, just as every parent does, and every parent will, but that’s because the day I became a mother I reckoned I would be a mother until the day I die. I can work at being a better mother if I want to. And I want to.

They don’t tell you when you get divorced that you will now have a window into the ways that the other parent succeeded and failed, and that you can use that as a weapon or a tool. I prefer building.