Looking back

Lots of people have been taking their children to college for the first time, or sending a child off to high school or heck, even taking their first born to kindergarten. Seeing these people hit big milestones like that with their children reminds me of what it was like for me when my children no longer lived with me.

That happened a few years earlier than usual because I got divorced. I barely made minimum wage so I couldn’t afford to pay rent on something large enough to hold me and two teenagers. I firmly believe that if a marriage fails, the kids shouldn’t pay for it with instability in their home life and getting swapped back and forth between homes is nothing if not unstable (I know from personal experience). Plus I had two sons who needed a good male role model. What all this adds up to is initially the boys didn’t live with me.

I won’t lie, there are times even today when I wish I didn’t agree to let Rick have custody. Sometimes I wish I’d fought like a she-devil instead. Even though both sons ended up living with me later on anyway, I’ve always feared that they felt abandoned by me. I hope not, because nothing could be further from the truth.

I cannot tell you how awful that time was for me, even though I believed it was the best decision for them. Initially I still lived in the same town they did, so I saw them a couple of times a week. The following year, I moved to Kansas City, about 40 miles away, for a job that paid a wage I could live on and dig myself out of the divorce debt. I drove back every week to have dinner with them or hang out with them and I went to their school activities, but I never made them come stay with me. They were teenagers with busy lives and a lot of activities.

That was a bleak time. All of a sudden I had no part in their daily lives. I was in their lives, sure, but not part of the daily, mundane details. Moreover my opinions about those details weren’t wanted by their father. Even though our divorce was about as civil as those things can be, we both still had raw feelings so it’s not surprising he didn’t want to hear from me. I’ve never felt more helpless as I did when Rick told me he was letting the boys stay at home while he and his new wife and her children drove to Texas for spring break. I was appalled and also positive that my boys would go a little nuts while the house was empty. Sure enough, they did—and Rick was surprised. I wasn’t, what do you expect when you leave two teenagers alone like that? I guess he forgot what he was like as a teen.

I kept a journal then and I wrote over and over again about feeling as though I were a mother with no children. I felt entirely disenfranchised as a mother, almost as though I’d been stripped of that title. I began to realize how little control and influence we parents have. We think we have a lot even when they are teens but we don’t. I saw clearly that I hadn’t lost it when the boys went to live with their dad, in reality I hadn’t had it nearly as much as I’d thought I had. If I were to be entirely honest with myself, those days had ended as the boys left their toddler years behind.

But Rick still thought he had that ability—almost that right—and I watched from the sidelines of our children’s lives and saw his frustration with them grow. People talk about the teen years as being so awkward and difficult and I think that’s because so many times the parent struggles with realizing that molding/controlling/guiding role is ending whether they want it to or not. The relationship has to change because the child is becoming an adult and some parents struggle with making that shift.

The only benefit (and I hesitate to call it that) is that I started to see my sons as the adults they were becoming while they were in their teens. But I think I paid too high a price for starting the lesson early.