Mother delays acceptance of new life as a co-parent

March, 2024

“Just throw their clothes in the backseat,” he said like a grump. “And don’t forget their backpacks.”

“What a mess,” I said even grumpier. “There’s barely any room back here for their bags, let alone the boys!” 

I didn’t even greet him. He wasn’t my husband anymore, so now it was more of a side eye, mumbling of a pathetic hello, the one you give an ex-boyfriend at the Friday night football game, and all of your friends glare at him for you, in solidarity. Sometimes we never grow up. 

Our two boys jumped eagerly into the messy backseat and gave me a cheerful goodbye, not at all matching Mom and Dad’s attitude. We were new co-parents, and they were excited for a weekend at Dad’s. The spring weather matched their lightness. Their dad and I had worked hard enough that they were not nearly as consumed with the acceptance of an unexpected future as we were. We were haunted, they were doubly spoiled. 

You can only realize in hindsight that a child with two homes also has two bikes, two bedrooms, twice as many vacations, outfits, and holidays. We scorn a divorced family yet fail to realize the reprieve and the indulgence that comes from a choice two parents make to not stay in something that turned loveless. Boom goes the atomic family, but a burned ground beneath them is not dead. It’s another chance. 

“I’m so excited for you boys,” I choked with a heap of guilt in my throat that would take years to settle. “You’re going to have such a fun weekend, and I cannot wait to hear about it!” My lips puckered and my eyes twitched as I burped up the souring guilt and spent the next three days introducing myself to its taste in my mouth. I couldn’t believe my forthcoming weekend would pass without them, emptied because they were with him and not me, and every other weekend thereafter would be the same. 

At first, I calculated the hours they would be in my life moving forward. I counted the hours in a week and then the hours in a year and then cut it all in half and cried. Then I would pacify myself by counting the hours that another mother might be away from her own children whenever she traveled for work or took a weekend away. Maybe it was comparable? Maybe it would be ok? 

I also tended to the hours they were in my home like a delicate baby bird, never to be tousled. I was over-compensating, and it was unrealistic: I can’t clean my house in front of them; I'll clean when they’re at Dad’s. I better not discipline them, for I’ll turn into the lesser parent. I better always cook the most elaborate dinners and desserts that take too long, so they enjoy meals here more than there. We must always have the most fun, the best family activities, and I will exhaust myself, all in the name of atonement. 

I used to be so independent, so unbothered and willful in my motherhood. I would rock and nurse and sing to my babies, but then I was the one who took the weekend trip away and didn’t think to count the hours. I didn’t care if it was frozen pizzas for dinner or if I had to tell them no. I had a confidence my boys could aspire to until I glorified my motherhood so desperately that I was dependent on it to make me whole. How could I be anything without them?

To make a change in your life is either to veer left and let your hair down, or to cry in the car, persecute yourself every mile thereafter and never change at all, in the end. I took too long to learn the difference, which condemned me into this purgatory of transformation. I was hauling backpacks and snowpants and summer shoes and winter shoes to and from their dad’s house for months, but had I even made a step?

First, I fear I grieved wrongly, if there is ever such a way to get it wrong. Even in the hell of divorce, I made a fool of myself, nearly mocking my own suffering – my pain a farce. 

“How have things been going?” a friend said coyly, with a grimace and in nearly a whisper. Already, how could I not feel like I did something wrong? 

“Oh, things are going just fine!” I lied. “How are your kids doing?” Always revert the focus to somebody else, always wither privately. Be impeccable. 

I treated myself so poorly so as to pretend to be ok. I didn’t want my boys to see me unsure, I didn’t want anyone to think I was unsure, dreading humiliation. But there is no healing in impersonation, only someone else to please. 

To define myself as a co-parent took me years to say out loud. I would tense up in fear of judgment while in the meanwhile worry constantly whether my boys were ok. I lacked trust and acceptance and chose pity to start each day – What will they do without me! What will I do without them! – but to endure is not nearly as becoming as it seems. 

Like a grief that lives on, only changes over time, co-parenting is the most heartbreaking journey I have ever taken on. It is maximum effort, relentless respect for your parallel parent that you never want to give in the first place, exhaustive concession of control, argumentative text threads on coordinating, and perhaps the scariest clifftop I had dangled from in my life. That’s a long way down, I thought, and instead of climbing down gently rock by rock, I assumed I had to jump and die. But you can’t confuse grief with pity. You must wallow but then reap what’s still there. You can sob but then water the newness with your tears. I had to climb back up the other side of the cliff at some point. 

In the same way a mother could never fathom the nuance of raising an infant and then a teenager and the omnipresent worry that nags in between, the practicalities of co-parenting could only reveal themselves in real time, when there was no other choice but to figure it out and affirm the life you opened up for yourself. Just go in grace, even when it’s unpredictable, and that’s when everything will feel better.

When I stopped feeling sorry for myself, there were people around me. Friends were welcoming, understanding, respectful, and thoughtful. “Are the boys at their dad’s this weekend? Can I take you out to dinner?” Neighbors shoveled the snow off my driveway for me and brought bread to the door. I fell in love with a new husband; my boys fell in love with another dad. “I have two dads and one bruther,” my six-year-old wrote in his notebook. At parent teacher conferences, there are three chairs, and at basketball games, there are three grandmas. Divorce can mean more, not less. 

Eventually, I was compassionate toward the weekends they kept going to Dad’s, and I bathed in the weekends they were with me. My god, I felt blessed. These boys are so beautiful, so resilient and insightful, and would I have seen this beauty were it not for counting the hours I have left as their mother? Do I appreciate time differently? 

I take care of my children more slowly now than I used to – do not hasten the day – and I do the same for me. We are more than our motherhood, and I don’t think I knew that. It mattered most to me that I folded every shirt, that I made every bed, and that I helped with every math assignment. It is me, I am their only mother, and this is all I am. Now, I am privileged to be in their life, helping with their homework when I can, cooking their favorite meals when we are together, and watching them race from the school bus to our front door when it is my day. They are so happy, and I am so lucky. I am not less, their life is more.

I met myself in this renewal. A wife in me died, and I resurrected as a better mother, and that’s when I realized that I should welcome this kind of excruciating transformation one hundred times over. I think you really meet yourself when you’re mad about it – reluctant, fidgety, and annoyed by the responsibility you suddenly have to do something about yourself and with yourself and not for anyone else. Maybe I didn’t even know myself before, I was so faithful to a perception of me. Now I am bare, fallible just like everybody else, and I wonder what took me so long. 

I honor every way in which I have been a mother, sometimes going so far as to sneak in the guilt like a woman not quite yet sober from who she used to be. I drink from the trough of expectation and binge on the shame I once fed myself until I come clean again and say yes to that dinner with a friend. I’ve gotten the hang of it now. The boys go to Dad’s and then they go to Mom’s and sometimes we all meet for dinner and ice cream at Dairy Queen and laugh when our youngest gets a pretzel instead. Who skips a hot fudge sundae at Dairy Queen?

“Thanks for dinner!” Dad says to us as he gets into his car that’s still a pit. His parenting is not mine to judge anymore. It never was. 

“Thanks for coming! We’ll see you this weekend,” I respond kindly. Many days are not this buoyant, but today is, and that will do.

I am malleable and youthful and still getting to know just how many mothers I will be.