Ex Marks the Spot

My teenage daughter hurt my feelings the other day, and this bizarre thing happened. The light in the room shifted, there was a faint static, and a tremor ran through my body. Suddenly, I was channeling my brother-in-law’s Jewish mother (odd, since she is still alive and well in Louisville).
“Sophie,” I heard myself lament. “Can’t you see this from my perspective? I carried you, I gave birth to you, I nursed you and took you to work with me, I breastfed you during meetings in front of rowdy young sales guys, and then I quit the job to raise you—which was not always a cake walk, I might add.”

You see, Sophie was easily the most stubborn child in world history. “How did this happen?” I remember thinking to myself back then, during the car ride home after a particularly harrowing tantrum at Grandma’s. “We’re reading all the best parenting books, we’re raising her with love, patience, and respect, we’re doing everything right, and still, she’s plotting to destroy us.”

Sophie, three years old and unnervingly silent in the back seat, read my thought and promptly pulled out a tuft of her baby brother’s hair. “I’m gonna win this one,” she screamed, as her father pulled the car over and I unclenched her fist from the baby’s wispy golden locks, one chubby finger at a time.

Even Sophie remembers some of the highlights of those years. But she insists her vexing tendency to pull out her brother’s hair was not entirely her fault. “I always had a reason. And besides, it comes out very easily,” she explained recently. “It’s very poorly rooted.”

Only during the aftermath of my marriage to Sophie’s father did I gain insight into my daughter’s dogged resolve to take life by the throat and shake what she wants out of it. I gleaned this insight through basic (if belated) observation of my own and my ex-husband’s behavior. If I had wanted a docile, easygoing child, her father and I should have had personality transplants. Of course, I never really wanted an easy child. I loved the feisty one I got as if she were an aching piece of my own heart, fragile and exposed, pounding mightily, forever seeking shelter within the safe cavity of my ribs.

Last week I had coffee with my ex-husband. Those who know us will undoubtedly be stunned to hear this. Three and a half years after our separation, we are still not the “let’s chat over espresso and biscotti” sort of ex-spouses. We are the “isn’t it nice that we’re so flexible and reasonable with each other, but you make one false move and I’ll make you regret it forever” kind of ex-spouses. We’re both Aries, and evidently, Aries-to-Aries matrimony does not make for tidy divorce.

“Your mistake,” I told Sophie’s father as we sipped bad coffee and took turns picking off each other’s scabs, “was that you grossly underestimated my obstinacy.”

“Not at all,” he said. “I’ve always known full well how obstinate you are. We’re two of the most tenacious SOBs on the planet.” Yes, thank you very much. How else would we have gotten so much done in our eleven-year marriage? Two postgraduate degrees (his), two book deals (mine), and three kids plus several foster children in four different houses (ours), just for starters. It takes a stubborn streak to get things done. But to mix it with conflict is to concoct one bitter, obstreperous cocktail. We have this perverse and unreasonable resistance to control. Under the wrong circumstances, we behave like poorly trained cairn terriers, who must stupidly insist on having everything be our own idea. We like to win more than we like to admit among more evolved company.

My ex-husband and I had arranged this coffee talk in hopes of further improving the way we work things out on behalf of our kids. And toward that end, we didn’t get all that far. Instead, we sidetracked ourselves by reminiscing about all the horrible things we’d said and done to each other during our breakup. He even shared a few gruesome ideas he hadn’t managed to carry out. We both laughed. Only as our meeting began to close in on itself—bound by the expectations of those who waited at home, worrying—did we gingerly reveal our ugliest scars and most enduring regrets. All the while making sure to point out repeatedly how much more perfect and idyllic our lives are now. Hey, what did you expect? Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.


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