As my 5 year old lives the life of every 5 year old in the last semester of Kindergarten, there is a lesson being learned in our house... that making friends is hard. Finding something nice to say, not being scared to talk to someone you don't know, not judging someone because of how they look, not being scared that you're too different, these are hard things for a girl to get her head around. Not being jealous of someone that has nicer things than you, not feeling silly because you walk to school and they go in a car, not worrying that some people look older than you or treat you like a baby... it's not easy for anyone. And by anyone, what I really mean is it's not easy for me.
And my daughter assures me it's easier to make friends after you try for a little while... but I've also seen my daughter eat her own boogers in public. Clearly I'm not trusting her judgment regarding anything socially oriented, and clearly we are up against different types of potential friendships to begin with.
And anyway, I have friends. I have amazing friends-- warm, caring, funny, smart. We all come from sorted pasts in one way or another, we get each other. They adore my daughter, and those that have children know that I adore their as well. And not unlike a 5 year old, I don't want to make friends at the school because I already have friends. Ones I know and have already gotten to know very well based on more than simply the common age of our children.
And if I'm to be really honest about the situation in all of it's immature glory, these women are fancy and married and older. Yes, that's all it boils down to. I can call it class issues or social anxiety or uncertainty of my place in a world of women that embraces a different set of family values and goals... but no, no, it's just this: I'm scared that they'll make fun of me.
I stand like an awkward shy kindergarten student outside of the tiny doors at the end of the day with my phone pressed to my ear chatting with someone or pretending to be busy with the crossword puzzle or some book that states clearly "I am not beneath you, with your husbands and your mini-vans and your tasteful and likely real Coach handbags... to the contrary, I don't talk to you because I'm wrapped up in my own intellectual world, one complex and deep and interesting, that you could never understand. It's not at all because I'm afraid you'll find out that I live in a dinky apartment down the street from your suburban homes. It's not because I'm afraid you'll ask about my ex husband and find out that her father and I were barely even romantically involved even before her birth, and that the idea of marriage was never even considered (at least not in any real seriousness by me). It has nothing to do with the fact that I'm afraid you'll discover that I have no degree that I care to use, and am going to start college again full time in the summer, and that for money I model nude for artists. No. no, it's not that. It's just that I'm deep... reeeeal deep."
It's not always easy, if I might add, trying to select a book that says that much in the 4 to 8 minutes that I am standing by the Kindergarten door of our elementary school waiting for my daughters release.
This all comes to mind because the daughter I refer to asked me tonight how grownups make friends at school. I didn't, and I don't know at all how to tell her the truth...
"Mommy isn't very good making friends with people that are different than me".
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Why I hate Valentines Day Weekend: A rant in 3 parts
Part 1.
Child and Mother are sitting in kitchen eating breakfast before the valentines day party at Child's school. Child is sorting her cards for class, and Mother is trying to go over a visitation schedule proposed by father ( not in scene).
Child: Mommy, what are you getting for Valentines Day?
Mother: You made me a card, remember? I love it!
Child: No, don't you have a Valentine to give you something?
Mother:Yeah, you!
Child: No, I'm going to be Daddy's Valentine.
(Mother swears inaudibly, then smiles sweetly at Child who has not noticed her foaming at the mouth and twitching with rage, or that the walls have started to ooze blood)
Child: So, you don't have a Valentine, huh?
Mother: Nope, I don't.
Child: So why doesn't anyone love you? Can't anyone maybe just like you even? Just for Valentines Day?
(Mother exits scene abruptly)
Part 2
So we've established that I hate with emotionally violent passion my daughters father, as well as that I ought never write a screen-play (which incidentally is one of the reasons I hate said babydaddy so violently to begin with: Who in the flip won't watch their 1 month old child for 1 hour after not seeing them for, well, that entire month, because "that's the day I have to work on my screenplay"? And the idea of slightly civil co-parenting was gone before the co-parenting even began... not to imply that it ever did, mind you). So moving right along, let's just focus on my motivation now... such as, what motivates me to hate this holiday, and how does that tie in to said babydaddy?
Glad you asked.
Last year, when making the visitation schedule for this year, he had a girlfriend who lived in the same state as him. As such, he had scheduled this Valentines Day weekend for her to be with me despite him also scheduling LAST Valentines and the 4 years previous to be for me. After much haggling and begging, I was able to get him to bend last year, and I had my first Valentines Day in 5 years... and it seems, my only one. His girlfriend is gone back to NY this year, he could enjoyed a 3 day weekend with his daughter and I could have... oh, I don't even know, but the point is that I could have things to do to choose from at all. And, our daughter could have been his Valentine, which is all she really wants.
But, none of that will happen-- because when thinking of the next years plans for he and his daughter, what he was thinking of was his girlfriend. His romantic plans were the priority, not my daughter.
He did, however, send her a giant box of chocolates and yogurt covered pretzels. A box of candy, though I seem to think MAYBE I've sent him 37 emails in the past 4 years begging him every holiday to pleasepleaseplease stop sending giant boxes of sugar to my house.
But he did. And I had to put it up and give my daughter 1 piece of it then, and one piece after dinner. To which she responded with tears and yelling that daddy said she could have it, and I'm a mean mommy, and she hates me. Daddy giveth the candy and mommy taketh away.
Thank you, Babydaddy, for another special holiday.
Part 3)
Ah, the beauty that is the ex boyfriend.
For example, the ex boyfriend that took me for White Castle hamburgers one Valentines Day because I didn't have a lot of money that year. Despite the fact that he was independently wealthy. But, I didn't have enough to get my share of a hot-tub room and go to a nice dinner... so he said "Then lets not spend a lot of money". And so I covered his table with candy and sweets, organic honey comb and a giant stuffed monkey to go with the other monkeys around the house. I gave him a miniature mail-box stuffed full of tiny hand made cards, one for every day we had been together, and each one stating something I loved about him. Every single one was different, a tiny piece of artistic license applied to our love. And he gave me a very small teddy bear holding a wooden heart, something impersonal and not at all thoughtful, something which would suit a 47 year old kindergarten teacher who is partial to her 12 cats-- along side a card that said that he considered me his Valentine every day-- the card said that mind you, he simply signed his name (and I don't believe he signed it love). We rented a movie later, and he took me to White Castle, and less than a month after that he came in on a beautiful unusually springlike day and dumped me out of the clear blue sky.
I kissed, said hello, he said "This isn't working".
I taped the ugly little bear in a box, spent weeks sobbing, and re read that hollow little card from valentines day over and over and over again looking for something human, something to imply that this was a mistake. Finally, I was rescued by one of my best friends, also an ex. He stormed in one night as I lay in my pajamas while my daughter was out of town, reading over old journal entries looking for some clue that this had been coming and said I wasn't this girl, that this 'The Way We Were' bullshit simply didn't suit me... that I'm stronger than this sappiness, and that's the thing to be most loved about me, and somehow ended up making it my idea to watch a horror movie. Because he's a good ex.
And he was a good ex, is a good ex, often. The ex boyfriend that is the super-good friend I could totally make out with on Valentines Day if I had a sitter, and even practically asked if we could, and actually asked if I would do something with him for Valentines day at all.. The ex who would take me to a movie and give me a great back rub and remind me that he still thinks I'm amazing, help you to remind myself that I'm still amazing. Until I remember the time he told me he loved me but wasn't in love with me, and the time he showed up an hour late for a date, trashed.... the two times he did that, actually. And how on one of those nights we were having a pre-Valentines day date, actually... and he left his gifts in the restaurant bar, and how as a matter of fact, that WAS the night he said he loved me but wasn't in love with me. And I remember too that despite me calling him my best friend, he didn't give me a Christmas Present. He had other peoples wrapped and ready to mail, or already had been mailed for weeks.... it was only me that he didn't bother with. And that I was so mad that I gave his gift to a different ex, one I don't even like, to spite him.
A different ex, one who only ever bought 3 new pieces of furniture for our home in the past 7 years that we had lived together, and within less than a year with his new girl had made the trip to Chicago for Ikea, the trip I had suggested and begged for for years. And I just know that they are going to be making out on what should be our Ikea rug, cuddled up and watching our reruns of the Gilmore girls and the new episode of Greek. And I'll know that this is their second Valentines day together, and I'll remember the pictures splashed across facebook of his year previous. He'd never been so proud of me, he'd never taken me out for a heart-shaped cake. I can't even remember having ever done ANYTHING for Valentines day. He could say it was because he'd always been in the restaurant business, but he was that year too... in 3 months he had found something worth finding a few hours, and this year he would again. And I put in so many years, and he never found that time, and now every year at least for a while, I have to remember last year when that was what I saw. When I saw all I never got to live in almost a decade, given so effortlessly for someone bigger, better, more worthwhile in only a few months time than I could ever have been. It's jsut the facts... what wasn't for one is for another. And I don't think anyone could help it, when you have to know that much time was lost, what you were never worth in 7 years, what some stranger could be in a few short months... It just makes you feel so small.
Or, it makes me feel small. Very.
And all of the Ghosts of Valentines Day Past that haunt me in the few days that a Valentines Day Weekend make me feel small really... and they're just going to keep coming, I'm going to become more and more haunted by the year, as all of us women who have opted out of the safety of marriage must at some point-- but there are times that I don't know that I'm made for this. It's true that I think that I think marriage is a little like giving up on the newness in life being wonderful anymore, but if there were a time that I'd given up on life having the potential to get better, this may be it... this fucking 3 days of candy and hearts and all the scorching fingerprints on me, from all the men I've ever been burned by.
And, that is Valentines Day Weekend. I love being a single mom, being single in general. I would generally be happier chewing on a scant cup of dirty sand with cigarette butts in it than be involved with anyone this year. But, I would also prefer be a part of some alternate universe that is basically the same, but that doesn't include Valentines Day or any of the self-inflicted pain there inclusive from the day that we allow our self-worth to be measured in love letters and Sodas, and remember how we've fallen short in so many years previous.
Child and Mother are sitting in kitchen eating breakfast before the valentines day party at Child's school. Child is sorting her cards for class, and Mother is trying to go over a visitation schedule proposed by father ( not in scene).
Child: Mommy, what are you getting for Valentines Day?
Mother: You made me a card, remember? I love it!
Child: No, don't you have a Valentine to give you something?
Mother:Yeah, you!
Child: No, I'm going to be Daddy's Valentine.
(Mother swears inaudibly, then smiles sweetly at Child who has not noticed her foaming at the mouth and twitching with rage, or that the walls have started to ooze blood)
Child: So, you don't have a Valentine, huh?
Mother: Nope, I don't.
Child: So why doesn't anyone love you? Can't anyone maybe just like you even? Just for Valentines Day?
(Mother exits scene abruptly)
Part 2
So we've established that I hate with emotionally violent passion my daughters father, as well as that I ought never write a screen-play (which incidentally is one of the reasons I hate said babydaddy so violently to begin with: Who in the flip won't watch their 1 month old child for 1 hour after not seeing them for, well, that entire month, because "that's the day I have to work on my screenplay"? And the idea of slightly civil co-parenting was gone before the co-parenting even began... not to imply that it ever did, mind you). So moving right along, let's just focus on my motivation now... such as, what motivates me to hate this holiday, and how does that tie in to said babydaddy?
Glad you asked.
Last year, when making the visitation schedule for this year, he had a girlfriend who lived in the same state as him. As such, he had scheduled this Valentines Day weekend for her to be with me despite him also scheduling LAST Valentines and the 4 years previous to be for me. After much haggling and begging, I was able to get him to bend last year, and I had my first Valentines Day in 5 years... and it seems, my only one. His girlfriend is gone back to NY this year, he could enjoyed a 3 day weekend with his daughter and I could have... oh, I don't even know, but the point is that I could have things to do to choose from at all. And, our daughter could have been his Valentine, which is all she really wants.
But, none of that will happen-- because when thinking of the next years plans for he and his daughter, what he was thinking of was his girlfriend. His romantic plans were the priority, not my daughter.
He did, however, send her a giant box of chocolates and yogurt covered pretzels. A box of candy, though I seem to think MAYBE I've sent him 37 emails in the past 4 years begging him every holiday to pleasepleaseplease stop sending giant boxes of sugar to my house.
But he did. And I had to put it up and give my daughter 1 piece of it then, and one piece after dinner. To which she responded with tears and yelling that daddy said she could have it, and I'm a mean mommy, and she hates me. Daddy giveth the candy and mommy taketh away.
Thank you, Babydaddy, for another special holiday.
Part 3)
Ah, the beauty that is the ex boyfriend.
For example, the ex boyfriend that took me for White Castle hamburgers one Valentines Day because I didn't have a lot of money that year. Despite the fact that he was independently wealthy. But, I didn't have enough to get my share of a hot-tub room and go to a nice dinner... so he said "Then lets not spend a lot of money". And so I covered his table with candy and sweets, organic honey comb and a giant stuffed monkey to go with the other monkeys around the house. I gave him a miniature mail-box stuffed full of tiny hand made cards, one for every day we had been together, and each one stating something I loved about him. Every single one was different, a tiny piece of artistic license applied to our love. And he gave me a very small teddy bear holding a wooden heart, something impersonal and not at all thoughtful, something which would suit a 47 year old kindergarten teacher who is partial to her 12 cats-- along side a card that said that he considered me his Valentine every day-- the card said that mind you, he simply signed his name (and I don't believe he signed it love). We rented a movie later, and he took me to White Castle, and less than a month after that he came in on a beautiful unusually springlike day and dumped me out of the clear blue sky.
I kissed, said hello, he said "This isn't working".
I taped the ugly little bear in a box, spent weeks sobbing, and re read that hollow little card from valentines day over and over and over again looking for something human, something to imply that this was a mistake. Finally, I was rescued by one of my best friends, also an ex. He stormed in one night as I lay in my pajamas while my daughter was out of town, reading over old journal entries looking for some clue that this had been coming and said I wasn't this girl, that this 'The Way We Were' bullshit simply didn't suit me... that I'm stronger than this sappiness, and that's the thing to be most loved about me, and somehow ended up making it my idea to watch a horror movie. Because he's a good ex.
And he was a good ex, is a good ex, often. The ex boyfriend that is the super-good friend I could totally make out with on Valentines Day if I had a sitter, and even practically asked if we could, and actually asked if I would do something with him for Valentines day at all.. The ex who would take me to a movie and give me a great back rub and remind me that he still thinks I'm amazing, help you to remind myself that I'm still amazing. Until I remember the time he told me he loved me but wasn't in love with me, and the time he showed up an hour late for a date, trashed.... the two times he did that, actually. And how on one of those nights we were having a pre-Valentines day date, actually... and he left his gifts in the restaurant bar, and how as a matter of fact, that WAS the night he said he loved me but wasn't in love with me. And I remember too that despite me calling him my best friend, he didn't give me a Christmas Present. He had other peoples wrapped and ready to mail, or already had been mailed for weeks.... it was only me that he didn't bother with. And that I was so mad that I gave his gift to a different ex, one I don't even like, to spite him.
A different ex, one who only ever bought 3 new pieces of furniture for our home in the past 7 years that we had lived together, and within less than a year with his new girl had made the trip to Chicago for Ikea, the trip I had suggested and begged for for years. And I just know that they are going to be making out on what should be our Ikea rug, cuddled up and watching our reruns of the Gilmore girls and the new episode of Greek. And I'll know that this is their second Valentines day together, and I'll remember the pictures splashed across facebook of his year previous. He'd never been so proud of me, he'd never taken me out for a heart-shaped cake. I can't even remember having ever done ANYTHING for Valentines day. He could say it was because he'd always been in the restaurant business, but he was that year too... in 3 months he had found something worth finding a few hours, and this year he would again. And I put in so many years, and he never found that time, and now every year at least for a while, I have to remember last year when that was what I saw. When I saw all I never got to live in almost a decade, given so effortlessly for someone bigger, better, more worthwhile in only a few months time than I could ever have been. It's jsut the facts... what wasn't for one is for another. And I don't think anyone could help it, when you have to know that much time was lost, what you were never worth in 7 years, what some stranger could be in a few short months... It just makes you feel so small.
Or, it makes me feel small. Very.
And all of the Ghosts of Valentines Day Past that haunt me in the few days that a Valentines Day Weekend make me feel small really... and they're just going to keep coming, I'm going to become more and more haunted by the year, as all of us women who have opted out of the safety of marriage must at some point-- but there are times that I don't know that I'm made for this. It's true that I think that I think marriage is a little like giving up on the newness in life being wonderful anymore, but if there were a time that I'd given up on life having the potential to get better, this may be it... this fucking 3 days of candy and hearts and all the scorching fingerprints on me, from all the men I've ever been burned by.
And, that is Valentines Day Weekend. I love being a single mom, being single in general. I would generally be happier chewing on a scant cup of dirty sand with cigarette butts in it than be involved with anyone this year. But, I would also prefer be a part of some alternate universe that is basically the same, but that doesn't include Valentines Day or any of the self-inflicted pain there inclusive from the day that we allow our self-worth to be measured in love letters and Sodas, and remember how we've fallen short in so many years previous.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
To whome it may concern
Yes, I realize that blogs have been better kept up by trained monkeys. In fairness, I have moved, brought the child I brought into the world to her first day (and all subsequent ones) of kindergarten. I have cut the cascading curls from my mid back, and now have a rather disgraceful mop of wakes that stop promptly before the chin-- not short enough to keep under a hat, not long enough to keep in a pony tail. I have seen an abysmal breakup, a tooth extraction, the tragic loss of my favorite pair of black heels, the ones with the round toe and ribbon cuff.
All and all, it has been a hard year.
There has been one upside, however: My pending return to the scholastic world. Yes, at 30 years of age I will be purchasing a backpack, writing papers, walking with boys to class. I want to feel enthusiastic about it, but all I can think when thinking about it for more than 20 minute chunks of time is "wow-- this is going to be sooo lame".
Which of course I realize to be what is actually lame.
One of my concerns (besides turning in papers on existentialism that have been drawn on in crayola and perhaps mommies lipstick if she feels like mixing mediums) is how I can get my own schoolwork done after said small artist has gone to bed... which is about what time my downstairs neighbor likes to let her mullet down and crank the 'Cops' or perhaps The Doors Greatest Hits on repeat. At first, I used to disturb her by pounding on the floor by midnight for some reason, but don't you worry-- she's since figured out that she can simply turn the volume up higher so as not to be distracted by my bizarre thumps and stomps and "Hey, shut the fuck up!" And that's a relief, I would hate to be a bad neighbor, but I'm thinking if I want to get papers done, I will need to cut the power supply to our home and do it by candle light at least a dozen or so times in the next few years.
And no, I don't need anyone to let me know how very lame that is.
All and all, it has been a hard year.
There has been one upside, however: My pending return to the scholastic world. Yes, at 30 years of age I will be purchasing a backpack, writing papers, walking with boys to class. I want to feel enthusiastic about it, but all I can think when thinking about it for more than 20 minute chunks of time is "wow-- this is going to be sooo lame".
Which of course I realize to be what is actually lame.
One of my concerns (besides turning in papers on existentialism that have been drawn on in crayola and perhaps mommies lipstick if she feels like mixing mediums) is how I can get my own schoolwork done after said small artist has gone to bed... which is about what time my downstairs neighbor likes to let her mullet down and crank the 'Cops' or perhaps The Doors Greatest Hits on repeat. At first, I used to disturb her by pounding on the floor by midnight for some reason, but don't you worry-- she's since figured out that she can simply turn the volume up higher so as not to be distracted by my bizarre thumps and stomps and "Hey, shut the fuck up!" And that's a relief, I would hate to be a bad neighbor, but I'm thinking if I want to get papers done, I will need to cut the power supply to our home and do it by candle light at least a dozen or so times in the next few years.
And no, I don't need anyone to let me know how very lame that is.
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