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Divorce karma
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The other worst part was that I was horrified by his behavior. What kind of kid would break up with his mother, or say such terrible things? What had I wrought?

Every secret guilt I'd ever entertained rose up and swelled to Godzilla proportions: Wasn't I perpetually dreamy, preoccupied? Hadn't I missed all the signs that my first husband was on his way out the door? Hadn't I sometimes skipped over sentences in bedtime stories so David would get to sleep sooner? And what about those bottles of formula I'd fed him unwarmed because he didn't seem to mind?

Between furious, futile calls to David's father, I prayed for clarity. I stopped eating for days, and I stopped menstruating, for good. Nobody's advice felt right. One friend urged legal action and another, whose perspective I especially cherish, said I needed to protect myself from David's rage and get on with my own life. In my overwrought state I took this to mean that I should give up trying to make contact and write him off until he was older.

I tried to imagine it; I have a gift for imagining the worst. My son was dead to me and I would bear it. This grief would not kill me, I told myself; I had survived grief before. I simply could not allow him to get away with such hurtful behavior, or let him rip my heart to shreds.

But I couldn't write him off. That would be unthinkable, like trying to breathe without my nose. I had to give up this battle. I remembered the words of my friend Jane, a grade-school teacher who exerts perfect control over her classroom but extremely imperfect control over her 16-year-old son. "Believe me," she said, "if you're going to raise a teenager, you have to eat a lot of crow, over and over and over. You have to accept things you never dreamed of." I waved my little white flag in utter defeat, having never felt so helpless.

And that night when I couldn't sleep, slung over a recliner in the dark of the family room and staring out at the snow, I got it. David is impossibly himself, I realized in a flash, headstrong and mouthy. He can be cruel and rash, and he will have to learn to do better or live with the consequences. He is also intuitive and loving and achingly honest, and I love him back no matter what. No matter what.

David has a right to be furious, I now saw clearly, no matter how innocent my intentions. His life has been complicated in ways he didn't ask for and didn't deserve. Suddenly it all seemed so obvious that I had to laugh. Something hard in my stomach went warm and liquid, and it felt like a blessing.

And the blessing spilled over to me. If I was stuck with loving David as is, wasn't I also stuck, as is, with my own impossible self? Could I find enough compassion for us both? What choice did I have but to forgive these two imperfect creatures who were doing their best in an absurd situation? I had no choice, and in having no choice, I felt freed.

I felt freed, too, to let David's father be himself instead of a repentant ally who would rally David to my side. I couldn't change David's father any more than I could make him stay in love with me, any more than I could keep my best friend out of pointless relationships, or get Don to see the urgency of putting away his tools. I just had to shake my head in wonder.

It was just about the time of this inner shift that David started coming around, slowly and erratically. He started taking my phone calls. Here and there he'd agree to meet me for coffee. We would talk about everything under the sun except the big issues, which we carefully skirted. I wanted to keep the conversations on an even keel, to step outside my usual mommy role, stop trying to fix him and simply come to understand him. And what a treat it was. This saggy-jeaned, gangly boy-man with spiky black hair who sat across from me at Starbucks was quite the storyteller, wickedly funny and astute.

"Don's a good guy, really," David admitted one night over coffee. "I don't hate him, I like him. It's just the situation. Any guy who moved into the house with a bigger dick than mine would have been a problem for me." I tried not to choke on my biscotti, and kept listening.

He went on to tell me how he'd written an essay for civics class in praise of slavery, even though he considers the practice abhorrent. "Mr. Connors said we had to write an essay against slavery," David explained, "and I told him he shouldn't be telling us what to think, that we should draw our own conclusions. He said he would fail me if I wrote pro-slavery, but I did it anyway, to prove a point. So he gave me an F."

"Pity the woman who tries to raise you," I responded, and we both laughed. I was beginning to think, in my better moments, that I was the right person for the job. Somebody, after all, had taught this kid to speak his mind.

Our visits have progressed from coffee to dinners out, to the occasional overnight stay. One magic weekend I drove him up to visit a school in New England and we stayed in a homey hotel suite. Sprawled on a pullout sofa in front of a fire, we watched a video together, laughing at all the same lines, and he allowed his head to rest on my hip. I thought I'd explode from joy, and from how much I'd missed that normalcy.

I'd give anything to have David back home, to have the smell of Tommy Hilfiger cologne in his room. But spending too much time around me still makes him jumpy; I have to exercise my flabby patience and hope his bad feelings will soften in time. Meanwhile, I'll take what I can get, and it's almost enough.
salon.com | March 16, 2000

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