Sometimes , your best laid plans, your most honorable intentions , can become the biggest source of your torture . The unfortunate side effect of a goal taking forever to be achieved is that by the time you have actually achieved it , you have had far too many opportunities to sit around planning it out , right down to the smallest detail . The problem with this is , that more often than not , Murphy's Law comes into play , and well , just what exactly do you do then ? How do you respond ? You aren't God, you do not control the universe , generally you can't even control what goes on under your own roof . What happens when the life you planned veers terribly off course ?
As I have mentioned before , it took me years and years to become the parent of a living child . By the time she was actually here I had planned out every last little detail of the rest of our lives . I figured After I got pregnant , I would meet a lovely woman and we would raise her together . I would read to her every night , and take her to story time at the library and Barnes and Noble, we would get a membership to Gymboree and go every Wednesday morning for some lovely Mother daughter bonding , followed by a leisurely stroll around the mall. I would wear her in a sling as much and as often as possible, we would breastfeed and make our own organic baby food , and teach her sign language . We would be the best parents EVER ! We would grow our own food in the back yard , and she would have a name that stood for something ! I would name her after a strong woman like Eleanor Roosevelt , or Harper Lee , Maya Angelou or Helen Keller , maybe Indira Ghandi ???? Or name her a beautiful hippy style nature name like River, Rain , Meadow, or Journey . Maybe something rock and roll inspired like Rhiannon or Layla ?? Or I could name her Stevie, or Joni, Gloria , Sylvia , Ani ? She would come with us to the Michagan Womyn's music festival and other Womyn's retreats . She would grow up listening to the Indigo Girls and trying to inact social change . We would always be together , and I would be there every step of the way, every milestone , every little bit. Sounds lovely , doesn't it ?
Alas , the plight of the Pansexual , 'Choosing" your partners gender doesn't really work. Through a series of unfortunate events , I ended up staying with her father . After the ultrasound tech told him it was a girl , and he got finished being angry with me because our progeny lacked a penis , he decreed that there was only ONE name that was EVER going to be alright for his daughter. Period. She had to have the same initials as his father JAC , and this was not negotiable . And for his source he chose, not the history books, not good literature , and certainly not great literature. Alas he decided to name the only child I will ever have after a character in a second-rate Heath Ledger movie . I asked him why , he said , "Because she's a pretty girl. " "She's a stupid actress who can't act " I replied. " My daughter will be pretty " he countered, " I would rather she was intelligent !" I perried back . This went on for what felt like forever . At last , in an uncharacteristically generous move on his part , he decided that I could pick the MIDDLE name ( wonderful to have such rules thrown at you about the child YOU are carrying ) of course that was with the stipulation that it had to start with an "A" so it would work with his fucking initials bullshit. This worked out great for me because There were exactly NO effing A names that I liked. I ended up choosing an "E" name and spelling it with an "A" just to try and deal . Generally speaking , whenever I have to fill out enrollment paperwork etc for her just the act of writing it sets my teeth a little on edge and still makes me want to kick him in the balls. Honestly , there are still times when I want to have her name legally changed , she really isn't overly fond of it either and truly if I didn't expect a gigantic legal battle from him I would probably do it .
With regard to her birth , I expected a natural homebirth with him beside me all the way , holding my hand , wiping my brow , screaming "You can do it ! " much like in the movies. What I got was 56 hours alone in a hospital with around 6 hours of non-consecutive visits from him , during which he did little or nothing with the baby , and even less with me . At home it was much the same . I wanted very badly to be a stay at home mom (SAHM) and make sure I didn't miss a thing . Sadly , I made more money Than he did , and his paychecks basically just covered HIS car payment and HIS cell phone , this meant that if we were going to have a place to live ( other than his car) and food to eat etc , I had no choice but to go back to work , a fact that I would resent for a very long time , that played no small part in the distance that began to grow between us . When she was 6 months old , we yielded to family and societal pressure and got married ( which remains to date one of the top 5 biggest mistakes I have ever made in my life ). Then , a couple of weeks before her first birthday , he got fired . It was around this time that I discovered he had a felony on his record which made him almost un-hireable . This led to my having to work more, and more, and longer hours to make ends meet , which in turn led to less and less time with my precious baby . Before I had coped by coming straight home and taking her into the kitchen with me to make dinner , I learned to do EVERYTHING one handed , so that I could hold her as much as possible . After dinner I gave her her bath , then I would read Harry Potter to her and SD. That was our family time. After he lost his job , and he became the stay at home parent by default ( no money for daycare ) and I just had to work more and more , I didn't get home until 8 pm or after most nights , and she was already asleep . I had to live for my days off , which were few and far between , and it seemed she grew so incredibly fast during the week . The time came when even working at my hardest I still wasn't making enough to hold on , and we had to move in with my father, which is quite possibly the worst place on Earth for a child to be reared. That also put an hour long commute one way between work and home , and effectively cost me two more hours a day with my daughter . In case you're wondering , McDonald's would have hired him, but he was too good to work fast food. It was far better for me to be the family plow mule instead .
I tried to be a good provider , doing my best to supply their needs before my own . I went without things like orthopedic shoes for work , and a winter coat , to make sure she had a coat and weather appropriate shoes etc. I would show up to work in hand-me-down jeans with four sweaters on and a scarf just trying to stay warm, my shoes on several occasions had holes worn clean through the soles. I was written up more than once for uniform violation because of this . The best I could do was cheap shoes that wore through too easily and provided no support at all , pounding the pavement of the nursing home in these shoes for 10-18 hours a day not only wreaked havoc on the rhumatiod arthritis I had been diagnosed with a decade earlier , it gave me plantar fasciaitis , the gift that keeps on giving . Eventually SD just couldn't stand living at Hectors anymore , so we moved to the only place we could afford in our situation , one of Hectors rentals ( did I mention he was a slum lord ?) It was $200 a month ( though to his credit he almost never collected the rent)
and it was swiss cheese with a door . A two-story colonial built in 1919 with no heating or cooling system whatsoever . The whole house would shake whenever the wind blew , and when the temperature outside dropped , the water in the downstairs toilet would freeze. It was THAT cold. No amount of space heaters in the world could keep that place warm . Eventually we resorted to the three of us living in one room upstairs , we put quilts over all the doors and windows to hold in the heat , and plugged all of the space heaters in . Wednesday had to sleep between us in the king bed just so our body heat would help her stay warm. SD STILL wouldn't go work at McDonald's. I wondered just how much worse it would have to get before he would go to work.
When tax season came , HE decided we should take MY refund and move to a different town ( not really closer to my work, but I would later discover closer to his girlfriend, one of them anyway ) We Moved into a townhouse on Valentines day weekend ,he got a job with a construction company . He got fired, but he found another position relatively quickly . By March 22nd , I started Nursing school ( trying to work a little further up the ladder at work ) by March 28th (while I was in the throes of school all week and double shifts on the weekends ) I learned from Wednesday ( who was three at the time ) while we were driving to church , that He had been bringing his girlfriend over to the house while I was at work , in front of her and carrying on . We separated April 1st, and our divorce was final December 16th. In the end , that relationship had cost me my dignity, my autonomy , my pride , but much more importantly it had cost my ability to have more children , and it had cost me seeing my daughters first step, hearing her first word , seeing her pull up for the first time , so many precious firsts that would never be again, AND I MISSED THEM . I missed out on the first three years of her life while I was working . His laziness, arrogance , and stubbornness robbed me of precious memories with my daughter that I will never get back , and i hated him for it . More than the affairs , or anything else , I hated him for all that time he stole . It was my time , my time with her .
All that hatred and anger just festered up inside me , but I promised myself as I navigated the divorce process , that I would never speak ill of him in front of our daughter , my best friend Bill was a wonderful support during this time . I did my best to try and move on , to keep up with school , and work and motherhood , and to be the best single mom I could be. But , invariably when I was dropping her off he would say or do something stupid. I learned to bite my tongue and vent on the way home. Even when he introduced her to another 'girlfriend' practically every weekend she was there , I took it in stride , and tried not to think about the fact that I couldn't really date because I had her all the time except the weekends when I was working all the time, no sitters, no money for sitters , no playing the field for Quiser , meanwhile he was busy putting his pickle on everybody's plate. Yes, I know. Still bitter . It's not usually easy to be the bigger person. Eventually he took a job in Wyoming and was only in state one week a month , and would only take her for three days of that week , if that ( i'm sure the rest of the time was probably spent screwing everything with a pulse) this lost me my childcare while I was at work , I couldn't afford to pay anyone , and the only people I could trust who would watch her for free lived two hours away . I had to cut down to three shifts a week from four just to allow for time to get her there and back and honestly the gas for the driving ate up most of my paycheck . I was back to living with my Dad ( which I hated for a multitude of reasons ) every night I cuddled up with my baby and dreamed of a way to make things better for her, for us. June 28th , there came a major game changer . Bill revealed that he had feelings for me ,and asked me to marry him. I said yes , and ultimately , it did cost me my Job, my professional license and my nursing license , which was a very steep price indeed. But it gained me the ability to be a SAHM at last and spend quality time with my daughter , and make a better life for her , which is the best reward I could ever get , getting to raise her with my best friend was just the icing on the cake !
In order to get rid of him , I had to not just pay for his divorce class, I had to pick him up and drive him to it . I also had to pay for the entire divorce process ( a fact I still find rather lame and pathetic , but since I am no longer legally bound to him, I have learned to deal with it , with a smile even .) As his 'romantic' exploits became more time consuming , he wanted her on the weekends less and less , and I was stuck trying to explain to a three year old that loves her daddy that Daddy couldn't take her for the weekend because of insert excuse here.Yes, I made excuses for him. Many , many times. I didn't want her to hate him . Then the Piece D'Resistance came when Just two months before our divorce was to be finalized , He announced to our three year old ( without saying a damn word to me so I would have a clue why she was so upset ) that he was moving to Wisconsin to be with a girl he met on the internet. Parental abandonment, just in time for Christmas, and once again, as usual , I was stuck holding the bag. Not feeling mounting resentment for him at this point was pretty much impossible. After this point , I learned that the two of them had started talking on Facebook the previous December , when we were still married, and divorce hadn't even been mentioned yet . I also learned that She had just graduated high school . They met on one of the multiple Facebook accounts he had kept from me , and he wonders why I still don't trust him .
Since his move to Wisconsin , his parental interaction with her has been paired down to two weeks a year , a week at her birthday, and the week before school starts . In the interim he sends the odd package in the mail , and calls a few times a week . As usual , I am stuck holding the bag . When he knocked up his girlfriend , I was the one stuck explaining to a very scared barely five year old , that he was not 'replacing her' . I was the one who had to talk about her getting a baby brother and make it sound as exciting as possible even though my heart was being ripped to shreds trying to understand why/how the least responsible person I know is allowed to sling little bastard babies all over the northern united states like a fucking lawn sprinkler , but Bill and I can never have more children. I had to explain to her every day why I can't give her a sibling , while trying to make her happy about a little brother 6,000 miles away . A huge bitter seed was planted inside me, and it grew and grew and grew . I saw posts on her Facebook where he brought her flowers and I wanted to foam at the mouth. I didn't even get flowers the day I gave birth to his child ! She posts about foot rubs , who is this person she is living with ? Certainly not my ex-husband ! When they announced the gender , the inner voice in my head said " it's got a penis , are you happy now asshole ! " When they announced the name , I wondered if he had actually let her pick , or if this was another totalitarian baby naming . In short , was he being as much of an asshole to that poor child as he had been to me ? In this way I continued to feed my bitterness , and it just grew and grew , like a canker.
For the last three years , I have been a SAHM . But the entire time , I couldn't really enjoy it the way I always wanted to because my bitterness got in the way . Every time I looked at her , all I could think about was the time that was lost, the time he stole . Every time I said her name , all I could do was curse him for stealing my rights as a mother to name my own child ( yes, I know she is part his too, but there should have been some fucking compromise there ) . I fed this rage and bitterness, and I allowed it to fester inside my heart ,and taint so much of the time I had been given . Until the other day , when something amazing happened !
February 7th , Wednesday will be six years old . and the other night she came running into the kitchen while I was cooking dinner screaming , " Mommy look ! " She directed my attention to her mouth , and then proudly showed me her first really wibbly-wobbly loose tooth ! " Help me pull it ! Help me pull it ! " She cried . I tried , but it was not quite ready yet. She shrugged it off and continued to jump up and down excitedly talking ninety to nothing about showing everybody at school , and getting money from the tooth fairy ! She was so excited ! We even made plans to make her a tooth pillow together , and she hugged me and kept hugging me so tight I was sure i would bust ! That's when I realized I was crying . They were happy tears , because in that instant , I had realized something . This was a first ! It was a first , and I was here ! I was the person she came running to ! I was the person she just couldn't wait to tell ! Me ! AND HE IS MISSING IT ! Suddenly I realized that the rest of her life was going to be full of firsts ! The firsts weren't over ! Far from it ! And the best part is that I'm the one that gets to be there ! She will not remember if i was there for her first step , but I am here now, and she is old enough to remember ! I will be there for every single first that is to come lord willing , and she will know it ! This , right here , right now ,this is OUR time here ! ( So I guess we're Goonies ?? That's okay! We are Goonies together , and there is no one else I would rather be Goonies with ! ) I have a daughter ! A brilliant wonderful crazy Goonie daughter ! and I don't ever have to miss another moment of her life , he can't take that away from me ! No one can . This is our time ! What a wonderful revelation !
I am now working on letting go of the past , and savoring our Goonie Future . Wish me luck ! :-)
( The tooth is still in place, and the pillow isn't finished , but will post pics of both when they are )
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