I swear, I didn’t make this up….
An actual uneditied email (except for the names) in response to my request that my 10 year old son have adult supervision when he goes to the public pool…and no, we are not drunk slobs who run around naked.
From: Brett Lewis
To: Becca Sokolov
Sent: Fri Jun 25 16:34:09 2010
Subject: RE: Supervision
At what age should your son feel comfortable telling us he wants to get your boyfriend a mixer for his birthday, because you guys like to drink margaritas all the time? How drunk will you and Joshua be while “watching” the kids in the pool and ocean while they are in your care?
You have no standing to dictate parenting to me, and I will not let you do so; just keep to yourself and keep trying to formulate some idea of how to be a decent parent, and I will continue to foster the growth, creativity, and independence Ben and Tillie so desperately need, as an antidote to your household. Instead, you teach them to lie everyday when you accept lies (“I’m too sick for school,” “I forgot”) and you are simply encouraging them to lie more by modeling disingenuousness for them even in your relationship with them.
Parenting quiz:
1. Why can Tillie offer a critique of the food at almost a dozen fast- and bar-food restaurants?
2. Why does Ben valorize drinking alcohol and the overconsumption of red meat?
3. Who let their four year old daughter shower in front of a grown drunk, unsupervised in her house?
4. Who lets their nine year old have unsupervised access to the internet?
5. Who spanks a ten year old for acting out, and then rewards him afterward?
6. Who doesn’t speak to the children in a natural tone of voice, without kiddie talk?
7. Who doesn’t model good eating, hygiene, and media consumption habits?
8. Who doesn’t think about how rest and quiet time foster creativity and preparedness?
9. Whose doesn’t expect their child to flush the toilet, put the seat down, and generally clean up after himself?
10. Who parents through subcontracting, overscheduling, letting the kids be abusive, and rewarding bad behavior?
ANSWER KEY: YOU
Thinner than Water
I had to have blood drawn this week. In general, I’m a pretty tough chick and a savvy patient. But I have a weak spot (read: irrational fear) for having blood taken. It was the worst part of pregnancy for me—I didn’t mind the bloating and the sleep disturbance nearly as much as the many needles that pierced my delicate vein and stayed there, rigid in the flexing tubes, shunting away circulating red stuff. Yikes—I got clammy just writing that.
I’m not sick, just in need of a check up. I’d put off the lab work for 2 months, and then found myself barred from registering for graduate classes until I proved I’d had my MMR shot. Now I need a titer to be able to attend school, so there was no more delaying.
It’s been years since I braved this, with Brett and Ben at my side. Ben, age 5, even called me a wimp. And he was right. I told Joshua he needed to come with me, but then I felt like a big baby and told him to never mind.
How hard could it be? I’d spent 3 days out of the last month with my dad, as he took in 7 units of blood by transfusion. The first time I went with him, we arrived at the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center and I looked away while they took a sample. No problem. Then we waited for several hours while they “typed and crossed” the blood. Dad dozed in the borrowed, double-wide wheel chair while I joined a conference call and took notes on the back of the patient information sheet. Piece of cake, but being with so many people with cancer gave the call a backdrop of heart wrenching. They were young and old, some bald, some disabled, some looking way too healthy to be there.
Most didn’t use a wheelchair…maybe a cane or a shuffling walker. But dad is the only fat cancer patient in the world. Honestly. Despite barely eating for weeks, he’s only lost muscle mass and has to carry his big, jiggly middle around while barely being able to feel his feet. The persistence of this belly makes me wonder if we’ve unfairly mocked him for not getting rid of it all these years. It resists even cancer.
When they finally called us into the transfusion room, I was ready to just sit on the other side from the IV and ignore the blood dripping into dad’s arm. My plans were shot, though. The “transfusion room” is a big, open space with cots and recliners, and no less that 15 people getting transfused. It’s like a reverse vampire suite. I had to leave for air.
Since then, dad has needed more and more transfusions, and no one can figure out exactly why. The chemo didn’t work so he stopped it weeks ago—that’s not it. He doesn’t seem to be bleeding anywhere significant—that’s not it. He doesn’t have organ failure. He is, however, the sickest person I have ever personally spent time with. And apparently his blood is ever-thinning.
The truth is, he’s not my biological father—he adopted me after my father died of cancer when I was five. He married my mother a few years later, and I became his daughter, though not by blood. My sister says she’s the only one cursed with “the fat gene,” but I’m more worried about the melanoma gene. The doctor tells me I’m clean, that my dark skin was a blessing. And dad’s fair skin, not part of my DNA, turns out to be a curse. But man, those blue eyes…my sister got those, too.
His blood is thin now, and it has never run in my veins. But there was never any doubt that he was mine and I was his. I wish I could give him some of my heartiness, the health I’ve always been blessed with. But I can’t even give him a bag of blood. I went by myself to have that vial of blood drawn, and fainted right into my own lap. Maybe I’m not as tough as I thought. I hope dad is tougher.
Things I Learned from Tiffani (some of them too late)
1. How to seed a pomegranate without staining anything. (For the curious, you do it in a bowl of water. Genius!)
2. I was right about pacifiers….they suck! (And so does my 4-and-a-half-year-old, thanks to Tiffani).
3. When someone tells you that a former friend of hers spit on her on the street, find out why. Don’t assume that the spitter is the crazy one.
4. Be suspicious of women who talk to your husband about porn and sex shops.
5. When you are feeling bad about your body, a real friend tells you how beautiful you are. A different kind of friend notes that you have enough money for a tummy tuck.
6. Bad marriages are contagious.
7. If you feel like someone is judging you, they are.
8. If someone makes you feel like an outsider in your own home, stop inviting her over.
9. Short people CAN wear A-Line skirts!
10. If someone tells you other people’s confidences, she is not keeping yours.
11. If someone lies about your confidences to them, they probably lied to you about everybody else’s.
12. Women who think everybody wants them–from their male professors to their female hairdressers–really, really need to be wanted.
13. Shopping in the children’s department is an option.
14. You can read TMZ and People and still be alternative if you do it ironically.
15. Always log out of your email account. Always.
Spectator Sports
I’m sitting in my empty house, watching the BCS Championship Game. The fans are crazed–I have never heard a crowd with that energy level. It’s a paradox, watching sports alone. I get to concentrate on the game, but with no one to banter with, it’s hard to concentrate on the game. I learned to love watching football as a family when I was young, when my new dad moved my family to the DC suburbs and into Redskins country.
Football is all about the bond, to me. Dad taught me the plays, the penalties, the positions, and the formations. I showed him how interested I was by asking questions…”Was that a sack?” “What is the quarterback doing?” “Why did they call that penalty?” I may have been the only little girl in the metro area with a poster showing the ref signals for each penalty. I still know them all.
And more than one young man has been wooed by my ability to hang with the boys as a fan. (Not Joshua, though. I actually said to him one night: “Can you believe how lucky you are to come home to a girlfriend who is watching the World Series in lingerie?” He laughed, but was not appropriately appreciative, I assure you.)
As years go by, my family always comes back to the same formation, and we had a classic gathering last week for the end of the regular season. Sunday afternoon, huddled around the hearth and the television. Beers, chips, and lots of shouting. Sometimes cursing. We are great Sunday afternoon arm chair coaches. Mom and David, my brother, are the most avid, spending summers reading up on fantasy football picks and keeping up with four games at once on Red Zone. Unless it’s a Skins home game: then whoever is in town is huddled around the tow-able gas grill in the Gold Zone parking lot. OK, so it’s not high culture. But it’s warm, it’s engaging, and it’s a bond that always holds.
When Brett and I designed our “custody agreement,” I made the case for the bond, and somehow it held there, too. So from the Season Opener to the Superbowl, I get to have my kids for Sunday night football. That privledge has moprhed into having them all day Sunday, so Brett can meet his “significant work obligations.” (So many English professors work on Sundays, really.) Despite the fact that he needs it, Brett meets the “football clause” with disdain–Sundays are when I expose my kids to “artificially-induced football fandom,” “orgies of junk food and television,” and the like.
But Ben is ready to play. I started looking for a youth league near me, and was faced with a list of semi-pro, size-huge 9 year old boys. Until I found the JCC’s flag football league. Perfect! No tackling, and all Jew-boys. He should be safe for now, and I’m ready to be his chief spectator (and nail-biter).
I got a taste of chief spectator last week, when my kids and I went to the northern NYC suburbs to meet Joshua’s family. It is a slippery slope, I know, but we made the most of it, especially Ben. When we arrived, I went to lie down in Joshua’s sister’s lovely guestroom. I saw figures moving outside, so I curled up on the wide, white windowsill and watched my boy on his first sled ride. And his second, third, and fourth. Then he became the hero of Joshua’s six nephews by riding down the hill STANDING UP on the skimboard-style sled. Snowballs flew, and his smile was whiter and wider than the snow. Maybe he can play with the big boys after all. And I, like always, love watching.
What the Children Know
I was listening to 9-year-old Ben tell me about Tiffani’s family moving into his dad’s house. He was in the back seat while I drove, which I find a very effective way to have these kind of conversations. I suppose he may be able to see me in the rear view, but I mostly feel like I can concentrate on what’s being said instead of trying to control my facial expression. And he’s freer with his words when there’s that distance.
“Ethan’s room is upstairs with mine. The only problem is, his room doesn’t have its own door, so he has to walk through my room. And it’s pink, but we’re gonna paint it.”
“That will be fun, choosing a color. Where does Emily sleep?” I tried to sound neutral.
“She’s in the room that was the sun room. She had to get lots of heavy curtains to keep it dark. And Tillie’s across the hall. I think her room was a porch at one point, too.”
So, there it is. They’re all bodged together in their “sweet little house,” as Tiffani calls it. And I press on.
“Where does Tiffani sleep?”
“She shares daddy’s room.” Then silence.
“Oh.” Think, think. I mean, he has to have questions. He’s not asking them. What’s the right thing to do?
“Did daddy tell you what made them decide to have Tiffani’s family move in?” I don’t know what answer I’m looking for. Something about love and commitment? An ending lease? A plan to get married? When I said to my $300 an hour child consultant, anticipating this day, “I don’t want the children to think that this is OK…” She answered glibly: “they will think it’s OK. Their dad is doing it, and that’s all they need to know. Your job is to make them feel as good as possible about who they are, and they define that in part by who their dad is …” So I’m supposed to say, if asked if I think it’s OK, “well, that wouldn’t be OK for ME, but it seems like your dad feels differently.” Different, it seems, is a neutral word. Not worse, not better, but different. I needed to learn it, practice it, use it.
“Nope.” It’s his fake sunny, cheerful voice, and I know I’ve reached our limits.
“OK.”
This put me in mind of the day we told the kids. We had been to the child consultant, learned the key phrases they needed to hear, how to answer their questions, and planned a time when they could go right from THE NEWS to the new home Brett was making for them. The only thing I couldn’t commit to saying was that Brett and I were still “good friends.” I was clear with him and the counselor that I would not tell that lie to my children, couldn’t really, because it was so implausible that we could be friends after what happened. I managed to say the right things, in a reasonable order, and even said, “Your dad will always be part of our family, and that means that I will always care about him.”
Ben didn’t say a word after that. Tears started sliding down his cheeks and he didn’t even wipe them away. He sat there, on the leather sectional, sobbing and sobbing and never said a word. Never asked a question. I’m not even sure he blinked. All I remember is those big brown and green eyes, pools of salt water with waves cresting over his enormous black lashes.
Tillie, too young to understand, had been jumping on the couch like always. It’s more of a gymnastics apparatus than a sofa, really. But when Ben cried, in this deep, soulful, wordless way, she cried too. I hugged them and we sobbed together. Brett never broke–no misty eyes, no quivering chin, no sniffle.
As he was sweeping them off to his rented house, he looked at me deeply. “You were great,” he said. And for the first time since I met him, I said, “Leave me alone,” and meant it. And he did.
Weeks later, Ben had a loose tooth and we were talking about the Tooth Fairy.
“Mom,” he said with his trademark half-smile, “are you the Tooth Fairy?” Oh crap. I remembered somewhere that when asked directly, it may be time to answer directly. At least that’s what they say about sex. Still, I dodged.
“What do you mean? Do I LOOK like the Tooth Fairy? I got no wings…” and I lifted my shirt and showed him my back.
“You know what I mean,” he insisted, still smiling crooked.
So I broke the news. Yes, I do occasionally play the Tooth Fairy. And it’s so darn fun. And I hope he will help me do it for his sister one day.
“What about Santa?” Shit shit shit shit shit. The Jewish mother is wholly unprepared for this. But I do remember that Tiffani’s son has known about Santa since age 7, and I’m thinking maybe Ben is past the age of knowing. I tried to remember back to my childhood, during which, despite my 100% Jewish lineage, we had Santa. I remember my brother and me coercing my baby sister into pretending to believe in Santa for at least a year after she figured it out so we could continue to co-opt the most lucrative childhood Christian tradition. It seemed to me she was around 8.
“Well, Santa is kind of the same way,” I admitted. “He’s part of the magic we make for children, and now you are part of the magic too.”
Hey, pat me on the back! That was excellent for a Jew! But, it didn’t matter. Ben burst into tears and locked himself in his room. He cried for a good half hour straight, not saying a word.
When he let me in, we cried together. There was no consoling him for a while. Once the spell is broken, the world is forever different. Not worse, not better, but different.
Things Brett Ruined for Me
Every day, I think thoughts or like things that annoy myself, because they are all about Brett’s influence. I almost attacked Joshua the other night for reading an old New Yorker magazine he found laying around. “I can’t believe I missed one!” I sneered as I snatched it out of his hand and into the recycling. Here’s a short list of things he ruined for me, to go with the Tiffani list from the summer.
- The New Yorker magazine
- The New York Times Book Review
- Punk Rock and Ska
- Yo La Tango
- Shakespeare (especially the Sonnets and the Histories)
- Indian food
- Coffee shops
- Professors
- Motorscooters
- Christmas
- Tillie’s hair (he keeps cutting it like the Little Dutch Boy, or, as Tillie says, like Maria in The Sound of Music)
- Ben’s knee (see Skinned Knee post. The scar is ENORMOUS)
- The Canterbury Tales
- The Lord of the Rings
- Roseville Pottery
- Arts and Crafts design
- Antique shopping
- My self image
- My relationships with my neighbors
- My memories of childbirth
- My belief in forever
- My freedom
- Superbowl Sunday (DAMN IT!)
- Tiffani
Some of these things are worth taking back. He can keep Tiffani. And the New Yorker subscription.
Things Reveal Us
I drive by our first house many times a week. In 2001, when we got word that Brett was hired at the college in Atlanta, we planned a frenzied weekend to actually BUY a house. Realtors took us through 37 houses in two days, and we bought a semi-renovated post-war place with a drive-under garage that reminded me of my Grandma Ruth’s. The roof had been dormered to add a second story, with a master bedroom and a kid’s room tucked into eaves. I loved the angles and knee walls of Ben’s room, and the way the raindrops sounded on the slanted roof just above us when the nights were wet.
The couple that bought our house keeps to themselves; I see their cars come and go, but I never see them. Then one day I noticed that their old car was replaced with a minivan. I figured they were having a baby. A week or so later, a big box from diapers.com was by the curb. Definitely a baby. Later, balloons tied to my old porch. When I ran into Jason, I finally had the chance to ask. “Looks like you had a baby!” I said through my car window.
“We had two! Twins!” he leaned down and answered.
“Wow, that’s a handful. What are you doing for their room?”
“They’re in the upstairs bedroom. Both cribs fit fine, and that way they’re close by.”
I pictured the L-shaped room that had been Ben’s. It had tiny doors that led to closets under the eaves and two sunny windows on each side. And it flitted through my mind to wonder if I’d managed to thoroughly clean the “booger wall” next to where his bed had been. I wouldn’t want the sweet little babies to be exposed to boogers from 2005.
Now, I have a cleaning service, so hopefully Ben’s boogers are regularly scrubbed away (and hopefully he’s now learned to use Kleenex). As further evidence that I am a bad person, I have a cleaning service, not a cleaning lady. I could be noble and say it’s so I don’t end up like Zoe Baird, kept from political appointments because of payments to undocumented household help. But that would be a lie—that’s just a happy side effect.
I have a service because I don’t want to deal with people. I have enough emotional entanglements without worrying about whether my cleaning lady’s car was broken into, or whether her kid will graduate from high school, or any of the other drama tinged with guilt that accompanies such relationships. I never even see the women who clean my house…I leave a check, and I come home after work and see if they did a reasonably good job.
One day I was late and the women were early. Joshua was here, too, and we were bustling around getting coffee and briefcases together while the ladies unpacked their supplies.
“Sorry we’re in the way. I’m Deb,” I shook her hand.
“I’m Ebony. I’ve been cleaning your house for a over two years now,” she said.
“REALLY?” I’m sure my eyes were huge. They leave a note every other week when they come, but I never really registered that the same name was there. I really am a bitch.
“Yeah,” she answered, and looked at me deeply, “I’ve seen how much the kids have grown just by their things.”
And it struck me. This woman knew all about my life. And I had never, ever met her. She saw us slowly move in. She saw the furniture arranged and replaced and rearranged. She saw our old dogs get more and more frail and then disappear from our lives. She saw our puppies go from the tiny crate to the medium crate to the big crate, as their barks deepened. She saw the crib give way to the big girl bed, and the rattles be replaced by dolls. She saw Ben’s bubble bath turn to “grown up soap,” and even saw the deodorant on his counter. She saw Brett’s belongings move slowly to the basement, and then out altogether, along with half of our stuff. And she saw me begin to fill the void, making the house feel like a home to me more than ever before.
“You’ve seen it all change,” was all I could manage.
“Yes, yes I have. And it looks real good now.”
I have never seen her again, but she probably still sees the things that reveal me.
An Open Letter to Brett’s Family
I wrote it, but I didn’t send it, just like all the others. I am at the end of my rope, but I guess no good will come of dragging his family in. Here it is anyway…
Bill and Liz,
I am writing to you confidentially, and if you can’t honor that, please don’t continue to read.
Every interaction with your son is exactly like the one below. He treats me with such loathing and disdain, it is hard to believe that he is the same man I married. I hesitate to ask him simple questions, because his answers are always (and I do mean always) couched in these terms.
I am concerned about the atmosphere that this attitude towards me and all I do with the kids (including religious education, extra curricular activities, medical care, involvement with my new friends, and interest in professional sports) can not escape the attention of my astute children.
And his refusal to partake in anything “scheduled” leaves me trying to cram a lifetime’s worth of activities and appointments into the half lifetime I am now afforded with my children.
I am sure you are hearing many tall tales about me, but I assure you that I am the same mother to the children I ever was, better even, and while you might not always agree with my parenting, I certainly have not been anything like the neglectful, junk food wielding, sedentary mother he keeps telling me I am. And as for his latest contention that I am “subcontracting out” my parenting, I have had a babysitter exactly 3 times in the last year: a Springsteen concert, a business meeting, and Yom Kippur Eve services.
As he and Tiffani move toward living together in the coming months, I am deeply concerned about what Ben and Tillie will be expected to do and feel toward me. I am confident in their love for me, but I fear they will be made to feel ashamed of it.
I also am a person, the mother of your grandchildren, who deserves to be treated at least as a human being, if not treated with respect. I have not heard of a single other divorced person behaving this way, and I don’t know what it is he wants from me. He got what he wanted; I was left to rebuild my life without my husband and best friend in a city I am only mildly fond of, hundreds of miles from my family.
I care for and respect your family. I don’t know that there is anything to be done, but if there is, and you can see it, please help me and the children live in peace.
—– Original Message —–
From: Sokolov, Becca
To: Brett Lewis
Sent: Tue Oct 20 13:28:12 2009
Subject: Re: Flu vaccine
Brett,
The children had the nasal spray vaccine for H1N1 this morning. I have not had them vaccinated against seasonal flu, because that would have required an injection this morning. Most of the current cases (and the serious disease) is caused by H1N1. If they have any side effects that last into Wednesday, I will let you know.
—– Original Message —–
From: Brett Lewis
To: Sokolov, Becca
Sent: Tue Oct 20 20:53:32 2009
Subject: Re: Flu vaccine/unmindfulness
Yes, do keep an eye out for side effects, since according to the CDC the stabilizing medium for the nasal vaccine hasn’t been at all widely tested on the young or even the middle aged, and one state even bans it for toddlers and expectant mothers. As for the seriousness of H1N1, according to the CDC’s Dr. Daniel Jernigan, “There is some increase in the rate of hospitalization for younger children and for adults, but it is not up at the levels that we would see for seasonal flu.”
It’s a shame to be just concerned enough to go with the moral panic, but not serious enough to think through the nature of the vaccine, and you don’t seem to have been committed enough to cause the kids the momentary pain that the more useful vaccination shot might cause them.
You may get final say on medical stuff, but I wish you would approach it a bit more mindfully–and before you go through your standard mantra about how you have some special insight because you work for CDC, let me remind you that you are a lobbyist, not a doctor; we read the same news.
Boys in the Basement
We bought this house because of the basement. There is an identical house around the corner, fronting on the park. But that house has a finished attic, and no basement, and this house has a finish-able attic and a HUGE basement. Brett and I sat on the floor of the other house’s attic, looking at the floor plans for both. The house with the basement had a bigger guest room, more accessible for older relatives. It had a big, sunny room for Brett’s office, with a door between that space and the other room, which would be our children’s play room. We decided and signed the offer. Now the house is mine, not Brett’s. But the basement is still just a little bit his.
A couple of days after the 2008 Superbowl, when Brett dumped me suddenly, I told my now-ex-friend Tiffani that I hadn’t slept in days. “He lays there next to me, and I just wonder—will he look at me? Reach out and touch me? And then I feel afraid and desperate, and I just can’t close my eyes. Maybe I’ll sleep in the guest room.”
“Don’t you go to the guest room!” Tiffani was vehement. “He needs to go to the basement. He started this, he’s the one who wants space. Don’t you go anywhere.”
So I told him to go. And I slept, fitfully, but better than eyes wide open. He asked me pathetically if he could come back upstairs about a week later. “Are you coming back as my husband, or because the room is more comfortable?” I asked pointedly. He stared at me dumbly. “Then you can’t come back to my bed.” And he never did.
He made a little apartment for himself down there. He came and went after the kids’ bedtime out the French doors. And he fucked my best friend on the sofa bed we bought for our parents to sleep on when they visited their grandchildren.
Brett lived in the basement for seven long, long months. When he left, I stayed out of there for a few weeks. Then, I found myself in a quandary. Paul was being shipped out of town, with two days notice. The very two days I had the kids. A proper goodbye was absolutely necessary. I had counted on Paul being in Atlanta through Election Day; disappointment and fear at having to face my new life loomed.
So, how to have a few more nights with Paul? Obviously, the guest room. It had no furniture, and the first night he snuck in, I ended up with rug burns that you can still faintly see on my upper back. We were smarter the second night. I met him on the porch in a tank top and shorts, and we shared my beer while we looked at the stars. We eventually did end up in the guest room, with a blanket on the floor this time.
I had the baby monitor in the room—somewhat disconcerting to my young friend, but he was good humored. Then we heard a cry. I threw on my tank top (backwards) and ran upstairs. Tillie was up—an extreme rarity. Damn my luck. I calmed her and settled her in with her binkie and blankie. Arriving back in the basement, I found Paul wrapped in the blanket, waiting for me.
A few minutes later, having laughed off the interruption, the baby monitor crackled.
“You’re fan-TAS-tic!!” the gleeful voice of Bob the Builder sang. “Good job! You’re fan-TAS-tic!”
Tillie was playing Builder Bob’s workshop. What a great background for our final liaison! We laughed and tried to ignore it. Then: “Uh-OH! Try again!” Great, Builder Bob is calling the plays on possibly the last sex I’ll ever have. Is this what being a single mom is all about?
Eventually, Tillie went back to sleep, silencing Builder Bob, and I got to say goodbye to Paul without the cartoon play-by-play.
The guest room is furnished again, and I’m slowly organizing the rest of the downstairs. As Yom Kippur ended last week, Joshua and I stayed up after the kids were in bed. We finished cleaning the kitchen, and headed to the guest room. We talked and kissed and made love and held each other. No Builder Bob, and no goodbye.
Brett descended to the basement as the beginning of the end. Paul met me in the basement for the end of the beginning. But I think Joshua belongs upstairs.
Snow Days (and Rain Days)
It’s September in Atlanta, and I have been scrambling all evening to find childcare for my two school-aged children tomorrow. The city is partly under water—it’s been raining for days and days. Last year this time, signs screamed at me from every plumbing fixture: “The Chattahoochee is down XX feet! Use less water!” The drought was years long. Well, it’s over now.
Look, if the school is flooded or the buses can’t get down the street, fine. But I live in Decatur, a city of four square miles. Can we really not travel our children that far? It’s not like there are dikes at mile two, about to bust, and we’re all sandbagging.
Plus, a rain day just doesn’t hold a candle to a snow day. We tried some hot chocolate today, but the fireplace was empty. It’s 75 degrees outside with a thousand percent humidity. My air conditioning has been running double time to dehumidify the place. “Go play in the rain,” only works for so long, and mud angels are right out. My hair is huge.
Growing up outside DC was the perfect snow day childhood. It snowed a few times every winter, but not often enough for our Northern Virginia county to become proficient in snow removal. Any sign of snow closed us down. That meant a day of cartoons, hot chocolate, video games, reading, and occasionally—if the snow actually stuck—snow play. Once in a while, the snow would be measured in feet, and we would spend days in snow forts dug from the back doors, throwing snowballs across the bushes.
Since moving to Atlanta, I’ve seen real snow three times. One was New Year’s Eve, the year we moved here. Our friend Claire was visiting from wherever she lived that year, and she spent 6 hours on the tarmac at Hartsfield trying to get out on New Year’s Day. Brett finally went on a rescue mission to get her once they let her off the plane.
The next time I saw snow was purposeful. Feeling lonely for home during my horrid year of getting unmarried, I reveled in Paul’s stories of snow around the world. He had traveled widely, grown up in New England, and did lots of winter sports. Sigh. A hot tub at a ski resort. A sled ride. The quite of a snowfall. Why do I live in this place without winter?
So I researched nearby snow. There are mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina, as you may know. Some of them are high enough to get snow. I wanted my kids to sled; I found a sledding area with man-made snow (you can’t count on Mother Nature for snow in North Carolina, no matter the elevation). Joshua and I had met a month or so before, and when I mentioned it, he was enthusiastic. He’s a Texas boy (yes, a Texas Jew), but lived in Boston for years.
A strange thing happened. All of a sudden, a trip was planned. How could this have happened? I didn’t search the hotels, make the calls, rent the car, print the maps. I just showed up. How could that be??
Joshua had rented a cottage laid out like a suite, with two separate sleeping areas so we could play by the divorce rules. I brought Ben’s friend Sienna, who had never seen snow before. It rained and fogged, but we sledded with the four kids, all wearing borrowed or bargain priced snow pants, hats, boots, and gloves that they would likely never need again. We hiked in the fog (no need for snow gear without the fake snow), and the two nine-year-olds climbed waterfalls together and proudly posed for photos as the spray covered them. We played on the old fashioned playground, me with two girls in my lap and my boy spinning the metal merry-go-round.
This outing sent Brett right over the edge. I had cavalierly violated our divorce settlement, since I was not to spend the night in the same house as an unrelated man with the kids around. I guess you could see it that way, but with the separate suites, four kids, and three dogs, it was far from a sexual escapade. And coming from him and his constant companion, it was hard to feel like I’d done something harmful to the kids. Still I felt guilty, and Joshua got the same harangue from his ex.
Back home, a few hostile weeks went by. And then, one amazing day, the kids needed their snow gear right here in Atlanta. The snow was heavy and wet, not great for much, but definitely white and definitely cold. A genuine snow day, right here in the town without winter. It was my day with the kids, and I felt so lucky. I don’t know what I would do on a snow day without them. I’m sure it would involve lots of crying and imagining Tiffani making the perfect snowman. Our lopsided snowman, with Tillie’s carefully placed chocolate chip buttons, was a much sweeter sight.
A frozen day with everything muted was just what I needed. And as time passes, I worry less about who makes the perfect snowman, or what makes Brett flood me with his rage.
Tomorrow is a rain day, and the drought is over. And maybe the drought of snow days is over, too. This year, I’ve seen more days where there is a background hush, some slack in obligations and judgment, and pure joy of my children. There’s something here that will raise the river, but slowly.
