September 5th. Another Wednesday

Stone
Stone
Sep 6, 2018 · 4 min read

I wrestled with activating my debit card with Ally.com on a chilly Wednesday morning as autumn colors silently greeted me. I was late to see a two bedroom apartment not more than a stroll away from my son. I needed it because I recently became a divorced dad living more than an hour away along a river far from my pride and joy. The musty place overlooked the hills like the one we shared before our divorce petition a month ago.

I picked up my son from his kindergarten. It was September already and his birthday was a month away. He wanted to go straight home. I was nervous to enter that ghost house where we were once upon a time a family. The Lego store didn’t interest him one bit. I asked him about a drawing he drew behind his homework. It was a picture of “Daddy and Me” by the river. There was our cottage. There was the gate. But what was hanging over his head? I asked my son after we entered that house no longer mine. He said it was a pair of broken hearts. My heart broke once again as I felt my son’s broken heart mending through paper and crayon. The news that daddy would never live as a family in the same house with mommy still tears at mine.

That was probably the fourth time I entered our house after my wife asked me to leave. It was eerie to touch my past life as a museum whose urns and busts I would love to steal along with my son. But, I didn’t. I was unemployed and living on my father’s retirement savings. Humiliating and humbling are two ways to look at a tragedy. It was very difficult to choose humbling as I read her lunch menu plan for my son, which I no longer do. I played Legos instead. I even tried hide-and-seek. He grew tired of it after just one game. He just wanted to be with his daddy.

My soon-to-be ex-wife came home from work as if in a tragic sitcom about a tragically mismatched couple. I wondered if I was caught in a delusion about a working man who filed for divorce from his wife who was unable to bring home the bacon. I wondered what delusion ensnared her. As she greeted my son I was on the phone talking with a landlord hidden from view. I heard her ask him if he was in the house alone. The air in the house turned sour. A long kiss and hug for my son. A quick hug was all I could muster for my wife.

I was tragically free. I drove home as the sun was setting. The smell of redwoods and sage made me glad to be alive if only as a father and no longer me. More husks of former lives like a rattler undergoing a divorce from his scales. Nirvana clashed with the perfumed air of sage and redwoods. There was no traffic at this hour, a small blessing on many small blessings today some as young as five years old.

My evening was spent waiting for a call from my son. Then after thankfully reheating Carribean curry chicken that sat in my car all afternoon. Dr. Strange helped while away the time until I came to you because it was better than thinking about this morning’s email from you-know-who (YKW). You know the one who wants all our money, our house and asks for a deep apology for the suffering I’ve caused. Yes, she wants also her employee stock plan of course. Yes, she would like me to leave our marriage without a cent. She asks for full repayment for my therapy bills for the month of July and August. She asks for repayment for attorney fees I spent to represent me in front of the district attorney for a police report filed by YKW. Yes. Yes. Surrender to know the peace in the broken pieces.

As long as she doesn’t want all the pieces of our child, I’ll remember that I will always have my son. Shanti. Surrender. Listen to Fado De Cada Um. If I cannot be a gypsy, then remember I always have a home if we have a son. If we have no son, there is always the sun and moon who’ll cry with us. If I bleed money because our marriage was torn in two, let’s not think of the loss as repayment but rather as a ransom for freedom paid in full to a wife whom I cannot fathom. Or perhaps it is just a scar peeled too soon.

Let’s not do it again. Let’s head into Thursday with half a heart that is still mending. Together, my son, we are whole. I can finally be your father without her voice interrupting our moments together. As long as my son is by my side even if it is half the week and alternating holidays, I have a purpose. Perhaps that will teach me to be an honest 50-year-old man. How refreshing honesty must be. Must be like the river-soaked skin of my son sitting on my lap. This is honesty in all its stillness.