More Than This March 2, 2010

A friend once told me that he had never understood 80s nostalgia until he watched Bill Murray sing a karaoke version of this song in Lost In Translation (apologies for the crappy quality — if you already know it, skip it):

I’m still not sure I understand — or hell, even condone — 80s nostalgia, but this song gets me, too. For one, it’s on Avalon, the album to which I may or may not have lost my virginity.  More than that (heh), however, is the song’s careful emphasis on what it claims to deny. “More than this,” mourns Bryan Ferry; the far quieter “You know there’s nothing” dangles, after the fact, like a question as opposed to an answer. The close-reading I try so hard to teach my students tells me that the order of the words does matter. “More than this … you know there’s nothing” is not the same as “You know there’s nothing more than this,” and Ferry adds to the ambiguity by lilting the “this” into a question. Surplus words fall out just before the fade, leaving us with only “more than this” and “nothing.” Do with that what you will, but it doesn’t sound too ecstatic to me. Add the metamorphosis of Dr. Peter Venkman into a drunken, lonely absentee dad, and watch all your 80s illusions crumble into unreconstitutable dust.

What was I talking about?

So, I’ve been on my own with the girls for just about two months now. Yes, I have friends, and I have family, and their dad has been back twice already, giving  me a few badly needed nights with my boyfriend, who would by now be canonized if he wasn’t an atheist (and, of course, still alive). But it is lonely work sometimes, knowing that it all depends on me, every bit of it, every day.  The wakeups and the meals and the kisses and the signatures and the signups and the deadlines (must there be SO many take-home projects?) and the dishes and the dogwalks and the birthday parties and the car repairs and the sicknesses and the snow days and the yeses and the noes — all me. All the time.

That’s parenting, you say. Yes it is. But let ye who is without spouse among you … well, you know the rest. Doing it by yourself is not the same as doing it with a partner who’s always present, who can cover when you have a cold or grab the kids if you’re stuck at work or maybe bring you a goddamn cup of coffee on a really tough morning. I know that I chose to have it this way, because the alternative — seeing my children only on vacations — was unthinkable. I also know that I’m blessed to have children at all, and wise, funny ones, to boot. Still, this is hard, in ways I guess I should have easily foreseen but simply didn’t expect. There, I said it. So sue me.

Anyway, this is for those of you who asked why I haven’t posted. All the wacky wonderful single mom anecdotes* I started this blog to share have been overshadowed by exhaustion, as well as worry about how they’re adjusting and where I’m going to live next fall. I talk to my boyfriend for maybe five minutes a night, if that, and usually to tell him that I’m too tired to talk to him. (Or I just text “Zzzzzz” and he knows not to bother.) I keep waiting to have a “normal week,” but I’m not sure such a thing exists any more. Looks like I’m gonna need a whole new kind of normal. Not more than this. Just different.

*I particularly wanted to share Lucy’s fantastic birthday invitation design, which featured a giant cupcake armed with a birthday candle chasing a band of terrified tiny people, but that will have to wait until I get a new battery pack for the camera. Seriously, it was awesome.

Backbeat January 12, 2010

I’ve gotten a bit of traffic from some other blogs, and it occurred to me that there may be people reading this who don’t actually know my pre-existing conditions, making it kind of hard to understand how they’ve changed. Basically, I legally separated from my ex, the father of my children, way back in 2003. We’d been married for over three years, together for seven. At that time, it took two years to file for a no-fault divorce in New Jersey. Now it apparently only takes six months; either way, it took us six years.

Why? Hard to say. We split custody 50/50 from the get-go, a situation that the girls handled amazingly well (contrary to some expectations), and I think we were reluctant to rock the boat by dragging up old issues or looking too closely at new ones. Yes, there were some conversations about getting back together during those first two years, but none of them ever lasted ’til morning. (And no, we never hooked up, which my shrink at the time said was probably a sign, and it seems she was right.) On a day to day basis, we got along fine, which meants lots of trips to zoos and museums and shows as a “family,” albeit an odd one. But it worked. Em and El’s fabulopolous kindergarten teacher told us that when she first heard about our split-week situation, she assumed that she’d be dealing with a kid who didn’t know if she was coming or going. Then she announced (she’s an announcey-type lady), “Em always knows what’s going on, and that you both love her. You guys are great parents.” I spent the rest of my very first parent-teacher conference snorfling back tears.

In fall of 2004 I finished my Ph.D. and began teaching at NYU. It was strange to be back in the city, a place I’d lived on the edges of — but never IN — for most of my life. During those urban hours of the week, I felt free. I started experimenting with online dating in 2005. You’d think that having kids would be a stumbling block, especially on an “edgy” site like Nerve; it turned out that my Jersey address was much more of a dealbreaker than my momhood. The fact that I wasn’t technically divorced raised some eyebrows, but I never made it far enough with anyone for it to be a real issue to anyone other than me. And here’s where I really wish I could just link back to my Nerve blog, which I’m sure exists on a server, somewhere, languishing away, unread. Let’s just say that I had more than my share of adventures, and leave it at that.

If for anyone who’s doing the math (but why would you?), I met my current boyfriend, BEB, in January of 2008 — almost five years after the ex and I separated. And that’s most likely what set the boat in motion for divorce. I told my ex about him in April, and he met my girls in June — a huge step that, due to my shared week situation, I’d never before had to make. It went fine. It still does. At six years my junior, BEB is hardly a father figure, but they don’t need or want him to be. So what is he? Well, they’ll be seeing a lot more of him now, for obvious reasons, so I guess we’ll figure that out.

Oh yeah … I keep forgetting that the reasons maybe aren’t so obvious. The whole split-week, semi-family thing came to an end when my ex moved to northern California last week. For work, and for other things. He spent many good years in CA before we met and his family is in Washington state; he’s always wanted to go back. So he did. And here we are. The girls will spend summers and some vacations with him and the rest of their time with me. I’ve gone from being Somewhat-Single Mom to Super-Single Mom, basically overnight.

How’s it going? I don’t really know yet. I love seeing the girls every day, and must admit that having all their stuff in one place really cuts down on some stress; no more library books and boots lost in the limbo between our houses. No more evening playdate pickups at which I’m appalled to see what their dad let them out of the house in; no more hair neatly combed on top and totally matted underneath. Lots of snuggles; lots of giggles; lots of love. They talk to their dad every night, and so far they seem okay.

How am I? No way to tell, really, until school starts next week, and I add the commute to the extra shopping and the itis of missing my boyfriend. We met up with him in the city this weekend for the Planetarium and lunch at EJs; had hoped for a mini-makeout session during “Journey to the Stars,” but it wasn’t to be. (Hey, AMNH: With all the celebrity voices you could have chosen … why Whoopie? Seriously.) We got a few good gropes in, but it wasn’t the same. I miss him. ALL of him. Ahem.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E January 6, 2010

Thank you, Tammy. R-I-P.

Except for the keyterm, the song isn’t really appropriate, since my divorce is amicable, and both my kids can spell; now only the dog is out of the loop. (“Should we take Maisie for an H-I-K-E?”) But I signed the final papers yesterday, so the word is on my mind.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to observe that, if they made getting married as complicated as getting divorced, far fewer people would do it, and the ones who did might take it more seriously. Yet no one sits down with a lawyer and hashes out assets and taxes and where to spend which holidays before a marriage; they’re too busy choosing barware at Crate and Barrel. My first advice to any soon-to-be-weds? Do a little of both before, and maybe there won’t be an “after.”

I highly recommend mediation. As long as everybody can play nice (no fighting, no biting) and you have the same basic priorities, it’s a lot cheaper and faster; we did the whole thing in two sessions for @ $300. Unfortunately, New Jersey makes it so damn difficult to file for divorce that we ended up needing a lawyer just to push the paperwork through court for us. That will cost a lot more than mediation, but it’s worth it. The bureaucracy is enough to make a bleeding heart liberal like me into a libertarian. (Well, almost. OK, not at all. But you know what I mean.) I can’t even imagine how complicated it must be if the parties involve actually have money, or own stuff, or hate each other. Shudder.

So my favorite pen and I signed and initialed about a thousand pieces of paper and sent them winging off to California. When they come back, they go to court. Then I go to court, which is basically a formality, one which I am sure will fall on one of the two days a week I teach. And then it’s over.

What isn’t over? My relationship with BEB, which began two years ago today.  (That acronym dates back to the blog I was writing for Nerve  at the time, which seems to have been deleted. Thanks for the warning, guys.) He’s been a saint through all of this, and I’m so, so lucky and grateful. So raise a glass to all our jukeboxes past, and jukeboxes yet to come. UPDATE: A big bunch of roses just rang the doorbell! Whee! Hope the cat won’t eat them.

7.5 more days of kid-free break before classes start again. I should really spend most of that cleaning and reorganizing the house, but it’s hard to get started. (EDIT: 9.5 more days! Thank you Dr. Martin Luther King! Er … not just for this.) Maybe I’ll plan a party to motivate myself. Kind of like the conference-paper strategy for dissertation production: there’s nothing like the fear of shame to make the hard work happen.

Hello to All This January 4, 2010

I didn’t need to think about resolutions this year; they found me instead. As of yesterday morning at around 8:30, I am a bona-fide single mom, living full-time with my daughters Em (9) and El (7). Nothing so unusual, really, if up until yesterday I hadn’t been a — what’s the Latin for fake? — part-time single mom, which gave me the freedom to have a job and a boyfriend in New York City, 60 miles from where I live, in the half of the week when I wasn’t home with the girls. In fact, my whole post-married life has been pretty much predicated on that halfness. Half momtime. Half me-time. Half city. Half suburb. Half brunch and bloodies and beer; half oatmeal and oj and coffee. (Actually, coffee crosses the line. Blessed coffee.)

This blog, and this year, is about making that halfness whole.

It won’t be easy. There are some major boulders in the way, such as New Jersey Transit’s notorious unreliability. A whole extra house worth of little girl crap in my hallway. A dog who sees boxes and thinks the apocalypse is nigh. A semi-temporary cat who expresses his displeasure creatively, using food eaten minutes or hours before. The fact(s) that I have no washer/dryer, must park my car five blocks from my house, and will probably have to move come summer whether I want to or not. (I mostly want to. But where? Egad.)

On the plus side, I have my girlies. My family. My boyfriend, who, in spite of working ridiculous hours, is still somehow on board. (THIS JUST IN: POSSIBLILITY OF SEX IN EARLY FEBRUARY! WOOO!) My friends, real and virtual. And coffee. Sweet coffee. I almost put red wine in this column, but that seemed sort of grim. We’ll see how it goes.

However, the real reason I started this blog is because I need to make writing part of my daily life, as opposed to a clandestine thing I sometimes do in the shadows but never really commit to. I’ll be 40 (AIIIEEEE!) in four months, so it’s now or never. Not sure I’ll ever finish the academic book, but I have a good idea for a novel that I want to start on, and I’ll be chronicling that process here. So those of you who have been reading me in other places for a while now, or maybe told me back in 1989 that I should write a book (hey, Em), or don’t really care about writing but wish me well in general, or just like to watch literary train wrecks in slow motion should stop by and egg me on once in a while, OK? (You can comment here or on the Facebook links, but please do comment.) These posts won’t be essays like the ones I write here, more like musings as I figure this all out. Which will happen, right? Right. And pictures, as soon as I find the gd cable. Everyone loves pictures!

And there it is. Full-time mom. Full-time teacher. Failed half-time hipster.* (Too-old-to-be) Aspiring writer. Stick around and see what happens.

* I said a temporary goodbye to Billyburg by getting awesome bangs here. When I do them myself, they’re more mom and less metal, which is probably a good thing.