Terrible Mother

Miscellany: The Righteous Indignation Edition

Before I launch into my typical miscellany-type post, where I bring together disparate scenes of my life, I would like to welcome you to the newly redesigned Terrible Mother.  And I need to give credit for the design to Sweet Blog, which did a bang-up job. 

Anyway—on to the miscellany.

A conversation with Friend R:

Me:  Do you have that recipe for no-knead bread handy?

Friend R:  Yeah, I can send it to you.

Me:  Does it work?

Friend R:  It must because all the hipsters have had the chance to go from "I love it because I'm the only one doing it" to "Everyone's doing it so it's not cool anymore” to "Damn, that's some good bread. But don't let my cool friends know I'm using it."

Me:  I didn’t know hipsters ate.  I thought they rode single gear bikes and bought uncomfortable furniture.

Friend R: Do you know what the newest trend in self-righteous hipper-than-thou cooking is?  Grinding your own wheat to make bread.

Me: What. The. Fuck.

Friend R:  The name dropping is insane. "My grinder's Danish because the Danes know some shit about grinding wheat." Right. They've been grinding wheat for centuries. When they weren't out raping, pillaging, and stealing other people's flour because grinding it yourself is a pain in the ass.

(pause)

Me:  The Danes stole flour?


***

I was invited to this potluck wherein parents from Thing Two and Three’s elementary school are together and discuss the merits of changing the cafeteria offerings to healthy (and likely organic food).  We’re each supposed to bring a dish that’s something we’d like our kids to eat at school.  I am totally behind this idea, but I keep thinking of making some anonymous-looking casserole and labeling it “Trans Fat Sprayed with High Fructose Corn Syrup!”

Am I a bad person?

***

A conversation with my mom, about her upcoming wedding:

Mom: So, my colors are off-white, champagne and…mermaid blue.
Me: “Mermaid blue”?  Is that a color?

Mom: Yes.  Sort of aquamarine.

Me:  I see.

Mom: So the girls I’m gonna get dresses for in the mermaid blue color.  But you can pick whatever color you want out of those three.

Me:  Okay.

(in the background, Thing One starts pantomiming choking herself).

Me: Thing One is really looking forward to that.

Mom:  Well, good!  And tell her we’re going to attach seashells to everyone’s dresses too!

***

Excellent Swimmer (a new character!) and I have three kids between us that go to the same elementary school.  It’s a new school, having been a combination of two other schools--Eastside and Potter--with two different demographics.  One day, we started talking about those demographic differences.

ES:  Yeah, I worry sometimes about the Eastside parents because they have more money, and you know how that goes.

Me:  Yeah, I know. 

ES:  Do you know anyone from Eastside?

Me:  Sort of.  There’s this one guy. 

ES:  How do you know him?  Work?

Me: Actually, we dated for awhile, I guess. 

ES:  You dated, you “guess”?

Me:  Well, he eventually came around to telling me he wanted me to be his “second wife” or something. Maybe second girlfriend?  I don’t know.  He’s married.

ES:  What?

Me: Yeah, I’m not kidding.  We went on three dates before I even knew he was married!

ES:  Oh my God!

Me:  Right?  So you’re worried all the Eastside parents are going to all be classist. But mostly I’m worried they’re gonna be polygamists.

(pause)

ES:  Which is worse?

Me:  Good freakin’ question. 

*tm

Marching Toward Insolvency

Last week, I opened a letter from the Oregon Department of Revenue. I had been looking forward to said letter because I knew it meant my state tax refund--which was to be $3845--was on its way to my bank account or my hot little hands. And who doesn't like tax refunds, I ask, especially when they come close to 4 grand?

The letter, however, let me know exactly where my money was going: directly into the rather deep pockets of the university where I finished grad school last year. I owe them money: two months' rent, three months afterschool care for Things One and Two, charges from the Health Center, and a short term loan added up to just over $5,000. I've been paying on it every month. Some months, that's $150, some months it's $10. It didn't occur to me that my refund would get applied to my account, and in some ways, it's entirely fair. I owe that money; those charges are legitimate. But I desperately needed that money and I'm not sure I can make it through the summer without it, and this is why: summer care for the Things Three runs just over $1500 a month.

For comparison's sake, my car cost $1200 and is still running strong (knock on the drywall that surrounds my desk).

$1500 sounds excessive, doesn't it?, until you do all the math: divide 1500 by three, then divide by the number of hours each child spends at the center, then calculate the pay for each teacher and assistant, the cost of the fieldtrips and snacks and meals, and suddenly it becomes all too clear why it costs so much. This is a fairly good price for high-quality childcare, and if the center hadn't decided to continue charging me the student rate, I'd be paying over $1800 for the same service.

But this is the truth: after rent, childcare, electricity and car insurance, I'll have $112.60 left over. That's including John's child support (which he has started paying on time this month), and including the SSI Thing Two collects because he is autistic. Though because I recently received a fifty-cent an hour raise, the latter may be cut.

And that is $112.60 left over each month, not each week. I don't yet know how I'll cover gas and phone, or anything else we'll need like laundry soap and shampoo. I can't even begin to think how I'll pay for food. I've emailed the account manager at the childcare center (aka "Guido The Collector") and asked if an alternative arrangement can be made where I pay $1100 a month and roll over the rest until the fall so I can at least have money for food and gas.

That was yesterday. She hasn't responded yet, but I'm hoping for something because otherwise I don't know what I can do.

*****

Friday night, I drove the kids to Portland for their weekend with John. He has moved into Sara's house recently, and this was the first time I would see the place. It was lovely, a two-story row house with hardwood floors and plush carpet. In the kitchen there were granite counter tops and dark wood cabinets--something like cherry wood or mahogany--and it felt warm and inviting. The house only has two bedrooms, and the guest room is where the kids stay. When I took their things in, I noticed the furniture was the kind fashioned from pine logs and made to look homey. In the dresser, Sara had put the clothing she had bought the kids--four summer outfits and a swimsuit each. There was a credenza with new books on it, and there were flip flops and slippers. Opening into the bedroom was an immense bathroom with glassware decorating the counters and those little lights framing the mirror.

Sara's mom was visiting from Pennsylvania and though the two of them had already headed to the coast, she had bought new pajamas for the kids before they left. The kids were happy, ran around the new house excited and gleeful. John showed me around and was proud of the place, I could tell, and I worked at not begrudging him it. Outside, in my little car that cost less than one month of summer childcare, the gas tank measured just under half a tank. The drive was two hours back. I had $1.88 in the bank, no cash on me besides pennies, and I didn't know if I'd make it back. There was no way I would have told John this, walking through that house, him showing me the master bedroom covered in red and orange and black. He had just handed me the child support check, though I had asked for cash, because I knew depositing it in an out-of-town branch might result in a hold on the funds and I needed the money, I needed it Friday night and Saturday morning for gas and food.

There's something particularly unnerving about the minutiae you have to devote yourself to knowing, the institutional rules you learn, when you're poor. I hadn't known about my bank's specific rules regarding deposits until one weekend evening when I was in Portland, depositing a check, and needed that money. The protocols around these things are banal, and the banality can drive you, or the person you have to explain it to (aka, "the fanbase") insane. Is it very interesting? No. But this is where most of us who deal with some level of being poor* learn pretty quick: the only way of managing it is to learn the tedious ins and outs. It is sometimes the only leverage you have.

Thing One, the girl who is smart beyond her years, somehow knew about the gas, and I think guessed I wasn't going to say anything, and so she looked at John and said, "Mom doesn't have enough gas to get home." She said it flat, matter-of-factly, and I loved her and hated myself at the same time. If I had known she would have said anything, I would have swallowed my considerable pride and said something myself. Who the hell am I to put an 8-year old in that position?.

John, though, did what he needed to, drove to the bank and took out $20. "This is for my share of Thing One's medication this month," he said. He acted like it was an act of generosity. I did, too. Because I've learned a long time ago to be grateful even for what you should expect.

I cried on the way home (big surprise, I know, me, the girl that says Crying Is Okay). But it was hard to see John living so well, hard to know the kids had all those things I couldn't give them. Sara is great, and the fact she bought them clothes and books, found ways to make their living space there comforting and welcoming--that's not a small thing and I'm sure it wasn't easy, either. And Lord knows that John could have ended up picking a crackhead who didn't like children and chain-smoked and watched reruns of Bonanza (though, frankly, I am highly suspect of his Dating Prowess. How can anyone explain landing Sara AND me in the same lifetime, hmmm?**).

I used to believe that my intelligence, my ability to think and analyze, to teach, to write, to work hard, to raise bright children, my education, somehow these things at long last would earn me a living wage. But none of them do.

*tm

*It's hard to talk about poverty and being poor in part because the language itself is so absolute. I don't think I'm poor the way some people are. I don't, for example, qualify for welfare, and I live in a good neighborhood. I have a car. But worrying about food and electricity? That automatically gets you into the poor category, or at least the lower-middle class category. Period. End of argument.

**I know, totally self-promotional and egotistical there. But if you had just admitted to the Internet that you were poor, I would let you slide. I'm just sayin'*.

*"I'm just sayin'" is, seriously, the best reason ever. You can use it all the time! It supports any argument! It's genius!

Semantics

A few months ago, in the car, where all pertinent conversation in our family takes place, Thing One and Thing Two had this exchange:

"I would like to see Eight-Finger Jon again so I can play with his dog," said Thing Two.

"You can't call him Eight-Finger Jon anymore," said Thing One.

"Why not?"

"Because now he doesn't have eight fingers. He only has FIVE."

"So I can call him Five-Finger Jon?"

"Well, he has metal fingers now."

"I thought he had a hook."

"Mom," Thing One called up to the front seat, "does Jon have fingers or a hook?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe he has both."

"Well," said Thing Two, "we could call him 10-finger Jon if he has metal fingers."

"That's stupid," said Thing One. "Having 10 fingers is normal so why would you make a whole name out of it?"

"It is not normal to have 5 metal fingers and 5 normal fingers!"

"But no one can tell from the name it isn't normal."

This conversation lasted for approximately 7 more minutes, and resulted in much arguing, and no new nickname for Jon until I said "What about Bionic Jon?"

They loved this (a name Fort Awesome thought up a long time ago), with only Thing One adding "Well, I don't know how bionic he really is, but okay."

Somehow, I think Jon would have loved listening to this conversation.

*tm

Single Mothers' Mother's Day

Reasons It Is Better to Be Single on Mother’s Day as Opposed to Married, Partnered, or Otherwise Juxtaposed with A Man*:

Reason 1: No sentiments printed on over-flowered card stock celebrating your gentle spirit, ability to wash laundry and cook dinner, or the fact you’ve procreated.

Reason 2: No overpriced brunch where the strongest drink you can get is a mimosa.

Reason 3: You can buy your own Mother’s Day gift.

Reason 3a: Vibrators make a great gift.

Reason 3b: As do contributions to Planned Parenthood and NARAL.

Reason 4: You don’t feel the need to spend all day thanking someone for doing the most menial of chores in your stead, like bathing children.

Reason 5: You’re proof that single mothers don’t have to just survive; they can thrive.

Reasons Mother’s Day Should Be Co-opted by Feminist Moms:

Reason 1: Mother’s Day shouldn’t be just a day where society pays lip service to motherhood.

Reason 2: Especially when it’s lip service to society’s jacked up ideal of motherhood and what it should look like.

Reason 3: If one of my partnered friends calls me, morose, and for a good reason, with the news that her husband gave her an implement used for cleaning**, I am going to take up arms.

Reason 4: The single biggest indicator that a person or couple will go through bankruptcy is if they have children. There is something vastly wrong with a society when we devote a day to what we think motherhood should look like and be celebrated for (and for that matter, consider Father’s Day in the same vein), and yet families are living this startling fact.

Reason 5: Mother’s Day should be about the realities of motherhood (parenthood). So why do we spin our wheels with quiche and roses? Our own second world nation lacks high-quality, subsidized childcare. And that, to quote the inimitable Katha Pollitt, is why “in Europe childcare was developed as something would be beneficial to children, like nursery school; in this country, it’s seen as something for women—women, who if middle-class shouldn’t have jobs and if low-income shouldn’t have kids. Daycare in America is about feminism.”

Why someone hasn’t co-opted Mother’s Day and turned it on it’s head before now surprises me. The Republicans co-opted “family values,” so I think it’s only fair we get Mother’s Day.

*tm

*I purposely didn’t include lesbian partnerships in my critique since the few lesbian-partnered friends I have don’t fall into the same traps us hetero girls seem to face.

**One of my good friends, years ago, got a new washing machine for Mother’s Day and called me upset to tell me about it. Granted, it was expensive. Granted it was new and nice and was even the water and energy efficient model. But it’s not a gift, really. I mean, something for the house? Something that supports housework that benefits the entire family? Please.

Admission

Last week, despite the soccer spreadsheet snafu, we got to Thing Three's soccer game early. There was only one other mother there, a woman I've seen a few times. She stood out before because she was so well-dressed, even at the school field where Thing Three's practices are held. She wears neatly pressed DKNY jeans and sweaters. She has a new pair of Danskos on every time I see her, and each of her ears is punctuated by a large, yet tasteful, diamond. She is thin and tan and elegant in a way I'll never be. She was one of the women who flat out ignored me that first practice.

Saturday, though, she smiled at me and said hello. Then she introduced herself and we made small talk. She asked about Thing Three, and noticed Things One and Two. "She's lovely," she said about Thing One. "She looks just like you." She was being genuine and kind, and I wondered, briefly, if it was because no one else was there. I looked at her kids, her toddler son with his mop of hair and in the tiniest soccer gear I've ever seen. I mentioned that he was cute.

"Yeah, we just came from his game." Then she crossed her arms. "The women at his games...I dunno...."

"What?" I asked.

She looked at me, eyes squinting. "It's so cliquey," she said. "I think they don't talk to me because they know I'm a stay-at-home mom. And they all have these careers." She was being honest in a way that pained me. Because you know what, it doesn't change for any of us mothers, does it? Doesn't matter how much money we have, or how many pairs of cute shoes, we still think everyone is judging us.

I think I'm officially one of the soccer moms now. And I don't much mind it anymore, so long as I can keep my tattoo and advanced degree and hip Neko Case t-shirts.

And my fledgling collection of vibrators, of course.

*tm

Soccer Photos, Part II

I'm sorry, I can't help it.

Thing One, kicking some ass:

Thing One going for the ball (she's on the right):

Thing Three, running for the ball:

Thing Three, having a lively conversation on the field, during play time:

And, finally, no soccer photo spread would be complete with pictures of Thing Two. However, these are not of the boy playing soccer, but of the boy hitting on a little girl at Thing Three's soccer game. They are playing their respective Tamogotchis in these photos:

*tm

Soccer Mom Infusion

The past week has been rough for one reason and one reason only:

Soccer started.

To be fair, I should have known better than to sign up all three of the Things for soccer at once. But what was I supposed to tell them? That only one kid got to do soccer each season? That seems like the American Single Mother version of the "only one of you gets to eat today," and so, no, I couldn't do that. And it seemed to me at the time that I would be able to set up a carpool or find some other parent, some other mom, to pick up the various Things and take them to practice. We live in a particularly liberal city, in a particularly community-minded and oriented neighborhood, and we espouse things like helping others and whatnot.

So when only one mother, out of 20, responded to my fun and quirky and humorous email looking for someone to take Thing Three to soccer twice a week, I was a little crestfallen. But I thought everyone else was just busy, I mean, I'm busy for god's sakes, so I thought it would work itself out.

Friend Two ended up taking Thing Three to soccer that week, and when I went to pick the youngest thing up, I felt a little odd. Only two of the other mothers (out of 20! 20!) talked to me, and one of them was someone I used to work with. The second was the mother who had emailed me, and she seemed a little weird about it. She volunteered to pick up Thing Three for one practice a week, and I was grateful for that, and told her so, but then she kept repeating that she could only do it once a week, not twice. Which was fine, really, but I could not understand why she kept repeating it as though I was going to take advantage of her.

That was Wednesday.

Thursday included me becoming the Soccer Mom Vicarate as I fandangled my way out of work 90 minutes early, picked up Thing Two, drove to some impossibly remote wooded nature park, only to discover upon arrival that I could not locate the soccer field. Since Thing One's practice started shortly, and because I was the Vicarate of Soccer Motherhood in question, I had to drive back into town, pick up Thing One and four of her friends, load them into my little station wagon along with Thing Two (and breaking numerous moving vehicle codes*), and take them to soccer practice. After which, I ran home, changed into jeans and a t-shirt, gave Thing Two a snack, and then headed back to the soccer field.

You know something? I'm only part way through this entry and I'm damned tired of typing "soccer." I could type that stupid word in my sleep.

But nothing compared, not really, to Thing Two's soccer scrimmage on Friday. The coach's wife offered to pick up the boy from after school care, which was a relief to me. The scrimmage started at 5:00, and because I am a minion of The Government Employ, it can be near impossible to scoot out early**. So I showed up, Things One and Three in tow, around 5:20. And then the other moms did that thing, the worst form of punishment any one of us could inflict on another:

They ignored me.

And when I say ignored, it's not like I'm saying they were bad at small talk or something. I mean they didn't make eye contact. I mean they didn't look at me, didn't even acknowledge my presence. It was hot, so I had changed from my work clothes into crop jeans and a t-shirt and cute sandals. I didn't look like them, but it wasn't that I looked that dissimilar to them. And even still, it was though I didn't exist.

It hurt more than I care to admit. And as they were talking, I could hear myself constructing the story later for friends, how I'd make fun of them, their L.L. Bean tan shorts and crepuscular-colored polos and Teva sandals. And how I'd tell them about those mothers, and how, when they relayed to each other something about a lingerie party in someone's home, which seemed to scandalize them, they kept saying "panty party" and "naked lady party" in a stage whisper.

And I hated how much I wanted certain things they have. One talked about a house that was on sale in her neighborhood. "Not bad for the size," she said of the price. "I think it's 650." As in $650,000. I don't even know how to relate to that. Not even a little. I'm scraping for gas money every week, managing my incredible cost-to-income ratio with credit when I have to, with charity when I can't even manage that.

Finally, maybe 25 minutes in, I cooed at a baby, said how cute he was. And things eased up a bit. Another mother, the one who picked up Thing Two, came over then, talked to me. We had decent small talk. And I noticed how all of these mothers, how they regard me, how they appraise me, because that's the precise word for it. Fatally Hip Single Mother says she thinks they're threatened by us: the single moms with advanced degrees, an endless array of funky shoes and glasses, and the way we collect hip turns of phrase like a macrophage collecting dead skin cells***.

Sometimes, when we're a little drunk, and she's so inclined, Fatally Hip Single Mother will add, "And they're just jealous because they know we're getting NEW SEX! As in sex without a stupid husband you've been married to longer than you've owned your Volvo!" And when we're drunk enough, "Volvo" sounds vaguely erotic. But that's another story. For a different blog. One ending in "xxx," methinks.

I don't want to hate these women, I don't. It feels like giving in to some stupid cultural body politic, some idea that we women should spend a good deal of our lives being snarky to one another. But I also don't have any idea how to reasonably bridge the gap. None. I'm just this young girl to them--I'm 33, but let us labor under the pretense that I look younger--shut it, Friend R--and I've got three kids and I'm single and I go around doing lame things like wearing my Teaching Fellow t-shirt, which I realized later I put on because I wanted them to know I was at least the educated version of a single mother, not the dumb-knocked-up-at-17-smokes-and-drinks-Diet-Dr.-Pepper-while-pregnant version. And so how can I even bridge the gap, relate to their lives, which I think of as small and petty partly because I can't fit in there?

*tm

*I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm super neurotic about things relating to moving vehicles ever since I worked in auto claims. The girls soccer practice is literally 1 1/2 miles from their after school program through sleepy little streets lined with trees and tulips. And all the other parents pile the kids in, put various children on the laps of other children, make them buckle the whole pile in. It nearly gives me hives thinking about it--really, you work one fatal car accident and suddenly you start thinking about how each object in each car could become one of those severe angels you see sometimes in ancient boiseries--but the Other Parents kept doing it without batting an eye. So, much to the chagrin of Nancy Reagan, I gave into the peer pressure, and loaded the kids up. Lord help us all.

**Government Employ is difficult to describe fully. I get great benefits and a fantastic retirement program, am a union member and get about 92 paid holidays a year. But getting off work 30 minutes early to catch the kid's soccer scrimmage? Not so easy.

***I hate you, Fort Awesome. Hate.

The Power Principle

Last week, after the conversation I had with John in which he chanted "Fair!" at regular intervals, I decided I'd have to confront him. This always scares me, has always scared me since we first started dating. There are two reasons for this: One, I dislike confrontation if it has to do with relationships, especially romantic relationships. I'm a whiz at debating topics and theories and ideas, and I can confront just about anyone on those terms. But anything approaching a confrontation with someone I am, or was, romantically involved with? It's tough. I do it, but I hate it.

Part of the reason I've always hated it with John is that he is capable of turning the argument around in two seconds by attacking something about me, using something about me that is unrelated to the issue at hand as a means of gaining ground. I never feel safe confronting him, and I still don't. What could he possibly say to me? Anything. Anything. He has before.

But I knew I was giving him a terrible amount of power over me, and I knew I couldn't keep it up. I had to do something. Fatally Hip Single Mother gave me excellent suggestions* about how to approach the conversation, and I used them. I didn't get angry at him. I calmly stated my position. I didn't attempt to correct his "erroneous" thinking (or what I see as his erroneous thinking). Instead, I reminded him of the parenting plan we created, his obligations under that plan, and the fact it was a legal and binding agreement. When he spouted off about "fair!" I listened, breathed in, and then said I understood how he felt. And then I said, "but these are the facts as I see them: I have the kids 12 days out of 14. Those two days are the only 48 hour window I have to rest and regroup. You are legally obligated to take them for those 48 hours." He hemmed and hawed. He protested and whined. He claimed that he couldn't get off work early. I held my ground. "If you can't get off work before a certain time, I understand, but then it's your responsibility to make suitable arrangements. You cannot pick them up late and then drop them off early."

John hemmed and hawed some more.

And then I said, "And the one time I tell you that you need to pick them up on time, you need to do that. You need to be responsible enough to figure that out. I have more than fulfilled my obligations here."

John said, "I don't know what I can do."

I realized he didn't. He is irresponsible in a very specific way and lacks the ability to problem solve in certain areas of his life.

"Alright," I said, "I'll arrange for a sitter to have them from 5:30 or so until you can pick them up that Friday. But you will need to pay her. That is your responsibility."

"I don't have any money."

"And neither do I. And when I allow you to be flexible for months and months and then ask you to pick them up on time, for once, it is your responsibility to make that happen. I'll arrange for the sitter. But you're paying for it. I am not paying for a sitter the one time I need you to actually follow the legal plan."

He finally agreed. We also found a compromise for the weekends, so that if he gets them later, he drops them off later, with the standard being that I have 48 hours child-free. He implied, repeatedly, that I was being petty. I didn't argue with him on that point, just calmly repeated "I have a freelance career I'm starting, a full household, many responsibilities, and I need that time."

And you know? I felt an odd sense of power, something I've hardly left a conversation with him feeling. I stuck up for myself. I stuck to the outline in my head, remembered that I only needed to accomplish a and b. So that when he kept turning the conversation to old arguments (he always says that I promised to move to Portland and I haven't) I didn't take the bait. As soon as I realized I didn't have to change his mind to get what I wanted, everything sort of fell in line.

I did it. I actually did it. I'm sort of surprised by myself. And happy, too.

*tm

*suggestions, not advice, FYI. Because advice would be wrong.

Fair and Safe

Monday morning, Thing One threw up at school so the secretary called me. Despite Ike's protests that vomiting wasn't that serious, I picked up the eldest monkey, took her home and spent the day with her. What became readily apparent was that she didn't have the flu--no fever or cough--and while her stomach was upset, she kept down soda and popsicles, and eventually a bagel. I could tell something was upsetting her by the way she stayed close all day, wanted to lay with me on the couch and watch me knit. Thing One is 8 the way other people are 21: she owns being that age and rules it with a kind of elementary-school confidence. So the mother need was unusual, though I thought it was likely just something more about the Girl Wars at school.

Then Tuesday night at dinner she broke. "Papa said he was going to marry Sara," she cried. "And that if Sara wants to, they'll adopt a baby."

There are a handful of times when I've been rendered speechless. This was one of them.

Thing One put her head down on her plate--empty because she had refused to eat much for the past two days--and sobbed. "Why does he need another baby?" she asked. "He has us. He has us."

There have been times when Things Two or Three get upset and cry about their dad, the divorce, any of it. And I've told myself that those times are hard because they lack the verbal acuity to voice their feelings. I realize now that isn't true. Watching Thing One grieve--she's the kid who, at 7, cried and said, "I want you to live together again, but I know you can't. And it makes me sad."--is a special kind of pain. I can't tell her everything will be alright because she knows better.

At the dinner table, I scooted my chair next to hers, put my arms around her. I rested my forehead on the back of her neck. At the nape her hair is still baby soft, thin and light and fragile. "I'm sorry," I said. It seemed like the only thing I could say that was true.

"I don't understand," she said. "He moved away from us."

"I know."

"If they adopt a baby, then it will get to see him more than I do. And he'll like it better than us. He won't be able to help it." Thing One's chest heaved when she talked and her body shook.

Right then I wanted to hurt John. I wanted to shake him hard. Look at this, I wanted to tell him. Look. This is what responsibility fucking looks like.

John didn't admit to saying anything at first, though now he says it was all a side comment, nothing important.

Last night, I asked him to switch weekends with me, since I have something going on in late April. He agreed, but noted that I would need to take them two weekends in a row. "Well," I said, "you'll be here Easter, so I'll get a break anyway."

He was quiet.

"Because you and Sara are taking them out, right?" Last year, when we were going through mediation and creating a parenting plan, he had argued to alternate Easters. This was because last year, when I asked if he wanted to come over for Easter, he snapped at me. "I'm an atheist," he said. "Why do I care about Easter?"

It was dig against Jon, who was in seminary. When I made plans for Easter that didn't include him, though, he was angry and then sad. So he wanted to alternate the holiday, argued for it in mediation. And now it's as though he can't remember why.

"I'll be there for a few hours," he said.

"I know. I'm just trying to calculate how I'm going to do this without a break for two weeks."

"Well, I'm not taking them three weekends in a row. That wouldn't be fair."

Fair. The word stuck. Fair. I had just asked him if he could manage to pick them up early that Friday in April, at 5:00 pm. He had sighed, said he'd have to check with his boss to see if he could get off early, but he wasn't sure, and wouldn't know until maybe that week. Fair. The word doesn't carry any meaning with me anymore. Does he want to talk about fair?

Nevermind that he does not pay for their prescriptions or doctors' visits, though he promised to, and Thing One's asthma medication runs $95 a month easy.

Nevermind that he does not help cover their soccer registration fees or uniform costs.

Nevermind that he does not pay child support on time.

Nevermind that he can drop emotional bombs like "I might marry Sara and adopt a baby" and then leave without having to deal with the repercussions.

Nevermind that he never shows up on time for his weekends.

It was then that I realized that 5:00 pm is the time he's supposed to pick them up. That's the agreement. That's in the stupid parenting plan we made. And he's broken it for months now because he gets off work later than that, sometimes as late as 8pm. What's worse is that it has become so regular that I've allowed him to redefine the terms so that 5:00 pm is early. I spend every other Friday driving up to Portland to drop them off, or I hire a sitter so I can go to a reading, and then I drive them up Saturday morning. He drops them off early on Sundays too sometimes. I get 48 hours of child-free time every two weeks, and even that he tries to cut in on. "I appreciate you being so flexible," he says frequently. And I fucking let him get away with all of it.

This is what I do. I wouldn't let my friends get away with this, even my male friends. If Friend R were to ever pull something as crappy as this, I'd box his cute little ears and then I'd be done with him. I never have to worry about this, though. My friends are loyal and good and kind. They take care of me and they take care of me well. But while I wouldn't tolerate such behavior from my friends, the men I'm either romantically involved with, or were, somehow get carte fucking blanche. And part of the reason is that they're sort of emotionally crippled or something. They always seem unaware of what they're doing or what they've done.

Fair.

The Nefarious Poet and I have been trying to repair our friendship, despite what happened at AWP. He said he wanted something "safe and manageable," and I missed him, missed just talking to him, missed that connection, the way he got me, understood me. So we started emailing. But his words stick the way John's do.

Safe? Safe? No one gets safe, NP. Who would want safe? No relationship, not even a simple friendship, is safe, let alone this one. And I don't want safe. It's not worth my goddamn time. And it isn't worth yours either.

Last weekend Tim-Tim told me, over dinner at an Italian place, that pouring anything more, even friendship, into the Nefarious Poet was useless. "He's like a piggy bank with the plug pulled out. Whatever you put in there isn't going to stick."

After NP sent me a photo of an ex-girlfriend making eyes at the camera for him, I began to see Tim-Tim was probably right. Like John, he doesn't know any better. It's fair and safe. Everything fair and safe. Fair and safe. Meanwhile, the balance goes on my account, it's my job to deal with the fallout, to deal with the repercussions, to hold up the illusion of fair and safe for these men. I can't do it anymore. And I don't want to.

*tm

(listening to a playlist which includes the not-oft combined "Irreplaceable," by Beyonce, "Chan Chan," from the Buena Vista Social Club Soundtrack, "Jackson," by Lucinda Williams, "Someone to Pull the Trigger," by Matthew Sweet, and "Black Sheep" by Martin Sexton, among others).

Remainder

Last night I helped Thing One finish her math homework. She's learning division, but they're still at the stage of using remainders. I had forgotten about remainders until I saw her mark one with a capital R. I miss them. They make more sense now. When did we start to think we could figure everything out, carry something down to the last digit, the 1000th place or the 1000000th place?

It never works. There are always remainders.

"What's zero, really?" she asked, halfway through.

"It's not really a number," I said. "It's an idea."

"What does that mean?"

"It shows absence. It symbolizes what isn't there."

Thing One thought about this for a minute. "Yeah," she said. "Like it's a circle around nothing. Like, 'look, here's nothing!'" She laughed.

I nodded. I thought about the Chudnovsky brothers who built their own computer to calculate pi. When I last read about them, they had calculated out 2 billion places, with still no pattern found, no final number. There has always been something strangely comforting to me about that, about them. The faith it takes to keep going. The fact no end is in sight.

"I like the remainders," I said.

But Thing One had already gone on to the next idea. "Zero is like tomorrow. Like the word tomorrow."

"What?" I said.

"Tomorrow is an idea, too," she said. "So it's like zero. There isn't a real tomorrow. You never get there."

Remember how I was all "Thing One isn't as smart as I was, wah-wah-wah"?

Now? Now I have to DESTROY her!

*tm