My first and second husband PART II

Divorce is both an ending and a beginning. While the possibilities of how things will turn out are both fascinating and terrifying it's a precipice we stand on for some time before we know where we land.

I was 27, divorced with a two year old (read last blog, Part I for details) and terrified yet fascinated by what my new world would bring. They say divorced adults act a lot like teenagers without most of the reservations we had as teens. I would say this is somewhat true, but will also spare you the details other than to say my sister Jeanine and I loved going out dancing on Friday nights while mom took care of our kids.

After a year apart Joe, my first husband, whom I was now divorced from, moved to town and life got more complicated.

I had settled into a routine with our son, Alex that included arriving at work at 6:30 am, leaving at 3:30 pm then riding my bike with him on the back through the parks in Boise. I lived in a lovely home on Bannock after a brief stay with my mom who graciously allowed us to live with her for awhile. I was saving for a house and I had two jobs.  

One was at a childcare center that was very expensive (I could only afford to have my son there because I was a teacher) and launched my career in early childhood. The other was at J.C. Penny's selling housewares which was my Friday night and weekend job that landed me downtown near my home on Bannock.

Repairing relationships takes many things, most of which are really, really hard, much of which simply takes time.

When Joe moved to town, I wanted one thing. A routine that was predictable and that Alex would benefit from. At first it was sporadic and I would arrive at his center (by then Alex had moved to another branch so he could benefit from some separation) and I would arrive to find out his dad had picked him up. Our first of many negotiations ensued.

It was the hardest thing we'd done to date. We sat down and worked out a schedule that we promised to stick to. We were all about Team Alex and while we didn't like the restrictions, we knew he was at the center of our decisions and worked hard to be adult about it.

Joe's parents had been divorced and set a wonderful example of communication and togetherness and compromise that we tried to follow. In fact one of my favorite memories of this time was when his parents called me and asked if they could bring Alex a gift. They knew I had a yard at the Bannock house and asked if they could bring him a swing set.

It was one of the most touching moments of my life.

They showed up in their pick up truck with a swing set for him. In a gigantic box that took all three adults and one toddler to heave out and carry to the back yard.

My Mother-in-Laws husband, Jon, spent an entire day putting it together in our back yard while Judy and I visited and she basked in the presence of her grandson. She expressed her fears that she worried I wouldn't want them in our lives anymore and how much they still wanted to be a part of our lives. We cried, we hugged, we made promises that were kept.

Healing occurred that day. Healing that was both important and necessary for our family to restore it's brokenness. 

By family I mean everyone. We put off telling our family because as the first married on both sides, we knew how disappointed they would all be. We knew that facing that disappointment and seeing it in our families eyes would hurt...and we were right. It did. They grieved and adjusted too.

When my mom told her best friend, who was the mother of my best friend and Maid of Honor, she replied, "I would do anything if my daughter could call and tell me she was getting a divorce."

Her daughter, our Maid of Honor had passed away in a car accident just a few years before.

My mom said this changed her entire perspective...there are worse things than divorce. 

It's odd watching your ex spouse date other people and there was always Alex to think of. How long do you wait before he meets someone? Should he ever meet someone? Should the ex be able to introduce him to other women and if so, when? These are all important questions that divorced parents face.

For us, it boiled down to trusting that the other person was firmly and forever Team Alex. That doesn't mean there weren't fears, or concerns, or jealousy or anger. What it means is we tried hard to trust that the other parent would make the best choice possible and that we had to let go because, after all, we'd created this.

We both ended up doing what the other wished we'd done all along. I had to work and build a career. I couldn't be at home, sulking, wishing for more involvement from my spouse. I guess it should've been no surprise when Joe sent me a huge bouquet with a congratulations note when I became the Director of the childcare I worked at. In the meantime, he was parenting more.

I was so proud of him each time he took his sons hand and walked away from me to their life together but it also broke my heart that I wasn't a part of it. To share your child with anyone, even if it's their biological parent just doesn't feel right. When you're away, you want them, when you're together you think about when you'll be apart and figure out ways to enhance your own life and fill it with meaningful things until you can be together again. It was both brutal and good for me.

I was a better parent by far, and so was he. Our respect for one another was growing each day.

I did buy that house and as parents we struggled along and did our best and when I asked Joe if he wanted to take a parenting class with me, he agreed. Alex was having some behavior issues and we wanted to co-parent in such a way that we would all benefit. We blamed ourselves. If everyone is doing the same thing, then how could we lose?

So we signed up and off we went. There was a single mom who was a widow. There was a couple with the grandma who was too lenient. There was a mom and dad and the new step-mom parenting 3 kids together. We were a motley crew, but our collective goal was to have healthy families no matter what those families looked like.

Toward the end of our class, we got the proverbial question, "Now why are you guys divorced?"

It was said often and we didn't always have an answer. We were both dating other people and when we had our party at the end, a round robin of games, he brought her. I'd met her and he had reassured me that she was wonderful with Alex. She seemed nice enough.

So we played and played and played games all night and the winners of each game kept ending up at the same table and those winners were consistently Joe and Lori. She was in another room, playing different games, working hard I'm sure to reunite with her boyfriend who was having a blast with his ex wife. 

Is this where I admit that I was wickedly enjoying her angst?

It was only a few short months later that we went to my sister in laws wedding. Both Alex and I were in the wedding and so was Joe. Odd to think we were all up on the alter together being altered together in that moment.

After the ceremony the family priest asked my mother in law what was going on between us during the wedding ceremony while Joe's girlfriend sat in the pew watching? She saw it and wondered too.

While I was aware of the moment, to me it was one more step toward healing. Sure I looked at him as if to ask, "What happened to us? How did we let this happen?" He looked back with the same question in his eyes. 

Sure we succumbed to the moment that everyone does at a wedding where we feel hopeful and loving toward everyone and excited about futures and were misty eyed doing that.

Sure we were in the wedding photo's but also careful not to stand near one another for fear of giving anyone, including ourselves hope.

The next day, the girlfriend flew out, and I was putting Alex down for a nap. Alex kept asking for his dad and Joe overheard so he came in and laid down on the other side of our baby, now almost 4. Alex was basking in the joint attention of his parents which hadn't happened before as far as he could remember. Then something happened.

Alex took my hand that he was holding and he took his dads hand that he was holding and he slowly and deliberately brought them up above his body and put them together. The adorable smile on his face when our hands met had us all giggling, albeit nervously. It wasn't long before we all fell asleep.

Love lies in many places, but it always lies where our children do. 

A few short days before, Joe had taken us to the wedding (2 hours away) and was now driving us home. On that ride home, he said, "Promise me that if we're still doing this five years from now you'll think about marrying me again."

What bravery men have. They are usually the one to muster the courage to ask a woman on a date. They are the ones who ask a woman to marry them. Even harder, they may be the person who asks a woman to marry him again. That's putting your heart on the line. That has to be many moments made up of sheer terror.

I said "No." I didn't shout it, I wasn't angry, I was resolved and not ready to possibly fail again. I reminded him that when we were married, I wanted to go to a counselor and he didn't. I said that if we were to try to do it again we couldn't do it without help. I knew he would not go to counseling with me, so I had a valid excuse and thought the conversation was over.

The next week he called me and asked me if I could meet him at Milt Klein's office. I asked him why and he told me Milt was a counselor and he had set up an appointment for us.

He called my bluff.

I cried and railed against possibilities I wasn't ready to consider again. He had a girlfriend after all and what if we tried and failed again, what about our family, but most importantly, what if we got Alex's hopes up? What if I got my own hopes up and we failed again? I did not feel ready for that. I was the don't-look-back-be-realistic-girl.

Joe is a salesman and a really good one. He told me he broke up with the girlfriend. He suggested we not tell anyone including Alex. He told me it could be our little secret and if it didn't work, no one but us would be the wiser. I wasn't sure my heart could take it but I foolishly, I thought, said yes.

It was then that I started sneaking around with my ex husband unbeknownst to anyone but him.

My first and second husband: part I

Not many people know this but my husband and I have been married off and on since 1980. 

When we do tell our story we often hear, "That's so cool, what a great story." while all I can think of is how hard it was and how it's not a cool story at all.

Joe and I met in 1977 at his Halloween fraternity fundraiser, he dressed as Frankenstein in his platform shoes making him 7 feet tall, when he grabbed me and said, "Whatcha doin' after the show?"

After the show I went on one date with him before summer happened. When we returned in the fall of 1978 we saw each other the first day back, went on the hill above our homes and talked for hours. When we came down I knew without a doubt I would marry this man someday, whether he knew it or not. I was going to be the bride of Frankenstein.

In 1980 at the ripe old age of 21 we got married. We each had some school left, but we knew what we wanted and we began to plan our future. We talked about kids (4 was our magic number and the names all began with J's). We planned that I would teach school all year and be home with our imaginary kids during the summertime. We had it all figured out.

We settled in to finish our degrees and had to establish rules with his frat brothers who would show up at inopportune times for newlyweds, so we had a signal; if the outdoor light was on you could knock, if it was off, leave us alone. 

We lovingly called these the salad years, when in reality we couldn't even afford salad and they should've been called the Top Ramen years. We both had retail jobs, lived in a one bedroom, one bath house, were full time students and we had so much FUN.

After graduating we moved to Boise for "real jobs" which happened for him, but not really for me. I couldn't get a teaching job and worked for an insurance agent who got rich because I became his personal assistant who went through hundreds of files and filled his calendar for $4.25 per hour. Joe worked for a retail store located in many states and became what they lovingly called, "The Wonder Boy."

After two years of unsatisfactory work for me and no teaching job in sight we decided a family might be in order. We'd been married for three years and it was the natural next step and I couldn't imagine, and still can't, a higher calling in life, so we got pregnant.

Alex was the best thing to happen to us. We understood and appreciated our parents in a whole new way. We reveled in him and marveled at what we'd done. We couldn't have been more in love with him and our own love deepened. Parenthood was the bomb. We thought we had this thing called family down.

Then it started. we had a bouncing baby boy and we moved 5 times in the next 2 years.

Each move took me further and further away from career and family and each move "Wonder Boy" had a familiar home in his workplace and I had to start new. He drifted off to work each day where he was the hero while I was isolated in new homes, trying to make new friends, and feeling resentful that he was never around. We were young. We didn't see alternatives, so...we divorced after almost six years of marriage. 

The grief I feel when I say we divorced is still crushing. It means we failed. It was the death of our dreams together. It was the death of my dreams as a young wife and mother. There was nothing cool about it whatsoever. I was suddenly alone, scared and unemployed with no job prospects in sight. I moved near family in Idaho. 

Whenever I said "I'm divorced" I felt like I was actually saying, "I failed". I felt like a walking failure and was frantic to make my world right again.

The panic I felt is still with me at times. I couldn't read a book, watch TV or engage in small talk very much. I was driven to make things better and frivolous things took too much energy because I needed to restore my world and that of my son.

That first year was one of the most brutal years of my life that could only be trumped with the year following my dads sudden death when I was 16. Not cool at all.

If you've ever been divorced you know what I mean. It's an ever increasing club we belong to but each person has their own experience nonetheless. I think it's the grief of the dream you had when you first married or committed to that person that is the hardest to overcome.

This does not mean you should be afraid to commit. Did you hear how much fun I had? Did you hear that I had a son? Can you feel that I'm horribly sad and the only reason I am is because of all the love I experienced as a result of this commitment?

That first year I was divorced I was determined not to look back. It was over, and I moved on with a determination that propelled us forward into owning my first home, running my first childcare center and owning my first car. I had to make things better and by God I would. I grieved, I worked hard and I changed. 

Alex and Joe on a visit in Nevada Alex and I, year one

One thing I would praise about my husband ex or not, is that he was, and still is, a great dad. I had no doubt that he loved his son more than anyone else ever could (besides me of course) so after a year apart he moved to Boise to be near his little man and there  begins our story...again.