Fields of… huh?
Sunday evening, I sat on the green velvet footstool in the living room, the one that makes creaky stair noises like a Victorian house on a dark and stormy night.
Six pairs of hands were upon my migrainous self. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Massaging my tender head: Carol (the stepmom in this equation). My lovely oldest daughter, C., was attempting to unravel the sailor’s knot in my neck. David (my ex-) was diligently kneading the bunched-up bands around my shoulder blades (I had taken my wings off, for now. They snap on and off.)
Isn’t life weird?
The headache stayed with me for almost thirty-six hours exactly, but when I remembered my spontaneous "Here: let’s *all* massage her!" moment in the living room, I had to wincingly smile through the pain in my head. How lucky am I???
I’ve tried to describe my relationship to David and Carol to others before and faltered. Yes, David’s the father of my children (and he and Carol have one of their own too. Nevermind the fact that he has us ALL wrapped around his musical little fingers, that’s another story.) But at this juncture, this point on the road, this incarnation of our relationship seven years after our divorce, he feels oddly like… my brother-in-law. Not my bro-ther, someone I grew up with (I have two of those and love them dearly).
And Carol feels similarly like my sister-in-law.
Which actually works out perfectly.
But turns me back to a question someone’s asked me before about these modern arrangements: how can anyone relate to our stories if everything seems so hunky-dory? If the average reader is struggling with their respective "other woman", how the hell are they supposed to gain any solace from reading about our touchy-feely, slow-motion moments of perfection?
The answer is… they’re not.
Not all moments of perfection, that is.
Just recently, for example, I found myself under the effects of the little green monster, feeling jealous and inadequate when in came to how organized Carol seems to be when it comes to homeschooling M, the youngest beautiful Marine sister.
Fine, take a look at my desk and you’ll see I’m a fairly "everything in its place" person, but I tend to have a bit of a competing for space mind, with ideas and plans clashing wildly about, hoping for first place in line. The idea of approaching each and every days’ learning so methodically feels me with anxiety.
So when I heard about how Carol was doing it at their house, part of me thought, great. Now I get to fall flat on my face, trying to duplicate her efforts – inadvertently letting her create the standards by which we now are all judged.
It’s that sort of background, low grumbly voice in your head that you’re not supposed to publicly acknowlege. And yet it was there…. And I found myself feeling snide and small and competitive.
Granted, I was also able to sit on those feelings and work through them privately myself when we had our last family meeting. And lo and behold, they went away because Carol was just doing her thing and seemed to have no competitive agenda whatsoever. She just wanted to do a good job. And she is….
So that might sound like us running towards each other in a field of daisies in slow motion after all, but fear not, gentle reader, I’m sure there’s more ick to come.
Eventually.
1 comments:
Jill Davis Doughtie
said…
I like the fields of daisies in slow motion
stories. I know there are hard parts — lots of them. But there are so few of
the fields of daisy stories out there. I want more! 
