Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—EVERYTHING: PART TWO IN FOUR PARTS

 1.
When I was about four, story goes, Ben and I were playing "Dark Room" in the hallway, which consisted of us scurrying around on the hardwood on all fours and me declaring, "I'm an Aardvark!" while we chased each other back and forth until we'd had enough or Ma put an end to it. On this particular day, story goes, Ma and Dad took us into their bedroom and told us they were going to get a divorce because they didn't love each other anymore.

The way my dad always told it was that Ben and I started laughing and went back to our game.

"While we went back into the bedroom and cried," he added.

That story puzzled dad every time he told it. Later, when I was in grad school for psych, he asked what I made of that, being a budding therapist and all. "Do you think it was some sort of coping thing, Rox? I mean... is there something Freudian about that?" Dad looooooved Freud. Almost as much as he loved Jung. "Eileen, what do you think?"

Ma couldn't remember. "I'm sure they were scared shitless, Leonard," was all she could come up with.

In reality, as far as I can remember, the divorce was a nonevent. Everyone on the block was a latchkey kid with divorced parents. You were weird if your parents, at least your biological ones, were raising you together in the same house.


2.
Tonight while reading books to Jude, he pointed out that he was cuddling his "diverse" teddybear. I looked over and smiled, wishing I could be more awake to take in the sweetness of it. Another night of books, another stuffed animal to love. "Do you know what a diverse teddybear is?" he asked.

Well I thought about that.  I think I know what that means... but why does he? Isn't diversity a bit advanced for kindergarten?  Wow, that Barton sure is progressive! Of course, on second thought, I wasn't surprised to know that diversity was something being taught at his school, and I began imagining the context for this teaching. I looked at the teddy bear for signs of "diversity."

"Do you?" he asked again.

"No, honey, I don't. What is a diverse teddybear?"

"It's when your parents live in two separate houses."

Ah. That kind of diversed.


My kid is so pure with language. I hope he never stops doing it his way. The other day on the way to school he begged me to turn up the "radio-ator" so he could hear "Baila Baila Baila" as loud as it would go.  He says something pure like that every day, which I wish I had time to celebrate as hard as I'd like to each and every time.  Lately he's been saying, "Mama hug me up!"

And tonight he told me, quite matter-of-factly, why he has a diverse teddybear.

I can't help wonder if the pain I feel his or mine. I can't help wonder a bunch of things, honestly. I know what I know... I know my life. But I can't help but wonder all kinds of things, all sorts of what ifs. What if Ma hadn't asked Dad for a divorce. What if we really were sad... And I can't help but wonder about this morning. Jude asked if mon homme was coming over in that predictable anticipatory voice I both fear and love, love because I want everyone to get along and love each other, fear because Too Cute Face and I riding out a storm, forecast unknown. 

I tell him no, not today. "It's a school day, honey."


3.
Fifteen years ago I was at a psychodrama retreat on the Oregon Coast. It was my first of many to come, but I don't remember too many details because it was a complete awakening, albeit a traumatic one.  Where I'd been before that I'll never know, living something of a "half-life," I suppose, as my trainer put it. The few things I can recall: I realized I was on the verge of divorce, I felt the most intense sadness I had ever felt in my life, and one of the teachers said one of the most important things I have ever and will ever hear in my lifetime: "Unexpressed grief kills."


4. 
Two weeks ago when the ENT doc told me he could see nothing in my ears, up my nose or in my throat, I refused to leave his office. "What do you mean there's nothing there?" I argued. "How do you explain the plugged ears? The dizziness? The truck-drove-over-my-face feeling?"

"I don't," he said and recommended Sudafed. I felt the pain and anger well up as he left the room.

Moments later on the phone with Too Cute Face, he listened empathetically as I vented about the appointment. "I'm so sorry," he said, among other kind things. "I'm so sorry it still hurts so much." I know he didn't mean it, but that actually made it worse. But the good kind of worse. The kind that reminds me I needn't be such a stranger to empathy, but the kind that is still hard to integrate so it makes me cry.

I cried a lot that week. A lot of old grief was kicking around, looking for a way out.  Miraculously, my sinus hell gradually went away. I should have been listening to it a little harder, perhaps.




What is your divorce story? Or diverse story for that matter? Or (un)expressed grief story?


PS: Is that really snow I see outside my window? Good golly, cry me a river.