Out on the patio

I set up a second blog today, Hosea's Patio.  The idea is to use it as a place for some of my more philosophical-like pieces, the ones that really don't have anything to do with the main themes here.  Let's see how often I get around to updating it.

Unlike this blog, that one is public.  No harm I assume ....

Wrestling with failure 3, TLP and Narcissus

The next time I write something as horrible and self-indulgent as this, I hope to be reminded (or physically forced) to return once again to read this as a counterpoint.

His quality is variable, but there are times I really appreciate The Last Psychiatrist.

"Don't want to deal with the shit storm"

One of the peculiar things about Durmstrang is that they don't excuse students for Thanksgiving.  Rather, their idea is that students should invite their families to come up and feast on campus.  Thanksgiving is in less than a month at this point, so we have started making plans.  In particular my father has been e-mailing everyone in the family, asking which of a dozen minor variations (on the same basic idea) we all endorse.  I responded with a few pointers and then got this e-mail from Son 1 (only to me, no cc's):

Son 1:  I'd really rather not go to Durmstrang for Thanksgiving, or anywhere for that matter.

Hosea:  "Or anywhere" means what?  Stay at Hogwarts?  I think they lock the dorms.  Stay in [your grandparents' town] or [our town]?  But Grandma and Grandpa and Mom and I will all be eating Thanksgiving dinner at Durmstrang ....

Son 1:  Mostly I don't want to deal with the shit storm I know will erupt between mom and grandpa.

Hosea:  Right.  Got it.

I am hoping that they will both be on their good behavior because we'll be out in public among hundreds of other people.

That is a hope and not a promise, naturally.  And after our last trip to visit you at Hogwarts, I have to admit my confidence level is not at 100%.

But I'm not sure what else we should do, at least this time around. Normally we'd all congregate at Grandma and Grandpa's house.  But since Son 2 will be at Durmstrang, so will Mom and I (and therefore you); and so it would be a little awkward to tell the rest of the family they can't come, especially when the school mailed an invitation straight to Grandma and Grandpa.

If they behave badly, then I think we can say that in future years there have to be some restrictions.  But right now ... I don't have a good alternate plan in mind.  It's awkward, and so I hope for the best.

If you have any more practical ideas, please let me know ....

Son 1:  Besides being somewhere else? No.

What can I say?  The kid's got a point ....  (sigh)

 

"I'll remember this"

It's Friday, and I decided to knock off work early.  Son 2 has been home all week, and he goes back to Durmstrang this Sunday.  So I get home maybe a couple of hours before usual and stroll in.  Wife is sewing and looks up with displeasure: "I didn't expect to see you home this early."  I said, "Well, I can leave," and walked back through the house to see what Son 2 was up to. 

He was playing computer games, and obviously hadn't bothered to get dressed since waking up this morning.  So I told him, "Hey, it's a beautiful day and I'm home early. Go get some clothes on and let's go do something outside."  "Like what?"  "Oh, I don't know but we'll think of something. We can go for a hike or a walk, or we can go to a park, or ... hell, I don't know. But go get some clothes on and let's go somewhere."

About this time, Wife came storming into the back of the house -- mad, but I couldn't figure out at whom?  Maybe even she didn't know.

"What's going on here? You two are going out to do something? Every day this week I've tried to do something with you [speaking to Son 2] so we could spend time together; and whenever I ask you what you want to do you just say 'I don't know' and then you go play on that damned computer. And now you [speaking to me] come swooping in like some kind of savior, and the two of you are going to go off to do something fun together?" 

There was a lot more in the same vein.  Obviously she was upset that ... well, something.  At any rate she was upset.  Maybe it was that she hadn't had a perfect week of mother-son bonding with Son 2 to match the movie in her head of what this last week ought to have been like.  I see how that could inflict a narcissistic wound.  But how does it become expressed as anger?  Anger against whom?  Against Son 2 for not thinking of something they could do together?  Against me for coming home early and urging Son 2 to get dressed?  Neither of those makes a lot of sense.  And really, if it were indeed true that Son 2 didn't want to go anywhere with her (and not just that he couldn't think of a place), is she going to make that better by shouting at him?  Will that make her more alluring, or will it make more attractive the prospect of time spent with her?  Did she really reserve no anger at all for herself, for being unable to nurture relationships with the boys?  What can she have been thinking?

I stood in front of her and urged her not to yell.  She kept up a steady stream of vitriol -- I don't remember what all she said -- so that it came across as yelling even though her voice was more subdued.  She was carrying her sewing scissors clenched in her right hand, so that if she had suddenly lifted her arm she could have plunged them toward me.  And when she stopped talking she just stood there and stared at me with a slight tremor in her lip and gaze, the way she does when she is about to burst with sudden violence.  This time she didn't do it -- after all, I'm writing this post right now instead of lying dead on our floor -- but I've seen that look often enough to recognize it.

Son 2 made up an errand for us to go do, so we could get out of the house without it looking like we were having fun.  "I'm all out of BBs for my BB gun. I need you to take me to the store to buy more BBs."  I picked up on this and chimed it, "I also need to put gas in the car because it is nearly empty. So I'll tell you what, dear; Son 2 is going to come with me to get BBs and then we are going to get gas in the car."

Like a shot she asked, "And what are you planning to do after that?"  (Wife believes that all action is planned.)  I told her, "No plans," and finally we got away.

So we went to buy BBs and to put gas in the car.  After that I proposed going to a park or somewhere else, but Son 2 wanted to go home.  Actually, he said, he wanted to go out to a park or something, "But then Mom will be all 'Grrr! You went somewhere without me!' And I don't want her to be sad. So let's go home."  And what then?  "Well once we're home then we can go somewhere else again. But we will have come back, like we said. And we can invite her to come along."

I pointed out that strictly speaking this was blackmail -- emotional blackmail -- on Wife's part; but I also drove the car home.

When we arrived, Son 2 announced to Wife that he wanted to go out to a park or something to try target-shooting with the new BBs he had just acquired.  Would she like to come too?  It took her the longest time to answer; finally she said to me (not him), "I think I'm going to stay here. I guess you could say that I had my turn this week and now you get your turn with him. So you two just go and have fun. But I'll also remember this."  It sounded for all the world like a threat.

"Can't you two ...?"

Son 2 is home for a week.  I collected him from school first thing in the morning (Wife was still asleep) and we spent the day doing this and that.

Got home mid-afternoon and I said something to Wife that made her snap back at me and I snapped back at her.  Son 2 advised me sotto voce, "Don't say anything. Just don't respond."  I shut up.

Wife left the room and Son 2 asked, "Can't you two get through a single evening without fighting about something?"

I couldn't think of something suitable to say, so I just stared out the window.  Son 2 finished the thought: "No, you can't. That's why you're leaving."

And then added, "This is why I love Durmstrang so much."

Mutter, mutter

I came home from work and started to make dinner.  Wife was in the dining room with a big sewing project out, fiddling with one of her sewing machines.  And as she fiddled with the thread and the bobbin and such, she started muttering.  I couldn't tell if she was talking to herself, or if she was trying to talk to me while pretending to talk to herself so that I couldn't accuse her of anything overt, like complaining.  So I didn't pay a lot of attention, but as she went on it got more and more distinct.

This isn't threading right.... Now I just re-threaded the whole thing from scratch.... It's all because I have the wrong thread; if I had the right thread it would work the way it's supposed to. If I still had my shelf in the study I could just go get the thread I need. But of course I don't have the right thread because that bitch [this means D] put it all in storage and said I could get it out on a day's notice any time I wanted but of course now I can't. It figures that the thing her interference has prevented me from sewing is a project for my son.  [I have noticed that the boys never qualify as "our sons" in Wife's monologues, but always hers alone.] But of course she had to have her way and get rid of all my things. I hope she rots in the fires of Hell. It would serve her right for making my life a living Hell by putting my things where I can't get at them. And before she gets there I hope she has a long, lingering, painful death. I wish I could tear back her fingernails off of her fingers, and peel off her skin, and see how she likes that. Well at least there's one good thing: when she threw away all of my stuff she didn't make just one enemy -- she made three. The boys don't like her one little bit either. They'll never accept her as a stepmother. I'm sure as soon as you are rid of me... [This part must have been addressed to me -- right? Except she never looked up at me while saying it. So maybe it was addressed to me without her wanting to admit it, or maybe it was like those times when you are planning what you are going to say to someone and rehearsing it in your mind, while alone. Or maybe both at once. Sorry, let me go on.] ... as soon as you are rid of me you'll take right up with her again. But the boys will hate her and never accept her; and if you take up with her they'll reject you too. 

About this time dinner was ready, and I asked her if we could take the sewing project off the table long enough to eat.

Sure, I'll just go ahead and move it even though I have gotten nothing at all accomplished on it today. No problem. 

Whoa.  Hey babe, it's not that big a deal.  There's no law that says we have to eat dinner even, ... I mean, if you don't want to.

But no, she cleared away her project and we ate.  Conversation was desultory.  I tried to find innocuous and entertaining things to chat about, but I couldn't find many and Wife found ways to resent all of them for the troubles they caused her.  She did mutter some more -- not sure if it was to herself or to me -- about how little she had gotten done today.  I guess that means on this sewing project.  And as she described her day, that in turn seems to have been because she didn't actually sit down to work until very late in the day -- almost as if she didn't so much want to do the project as to get credit for doing it.  She has also talked about how she is going to clean the house from top to bottom before Son 2 comes home on his next break (this coming weekend), because the last time he was here for a mere 24 hours his allergies flared up and he says he has no allergic reactions at Durmstrang at all.  So maybe cleaning the place would help.  She asked me to pick up some super-duper carpet cleaning product over the weekend, which I did.  And I set it down in a prominent, highly-visible place.  But she hasn't done anything with it yet, and probably won't before Son 2 comes home. 

Then just before she went to bed she asked me, "How much of your decision to divorce me was based on your conversations with D?"

I oversimplified some and said, "None. Why?"

"Well I just figured with all that time you spent sitting up talking with her, she probably told you how much better off you'd be without me. And I know you've kept in touch with her since then."

"Yeah, well mostly when we've had something to talk about it has been something one or the other of us read and wanted to discuss. Haven't heard from her lately."

"Did she ever get the job in [a nearby big city]?"

"What job?"

"She talked about getting a job teaching teachers for such-and-such an organization."

Well no, in fact, she's not doing anything of the kind.  She's in a different state in fact.  But all I said was, "If she's doing that then I don't know anything about it."  Which is true at a literal level, I guess.

There was some more, though I don't remember quite what.  Wife repeated some of her earlier remarks about flaying D alive and peeling off her fingernails.  (Wife has a very vivid imagination when it is fueled by her hatreds.)  And then she went to bed.  But I couldn't help thinking that it's remarkable her anger hasn't dissipated even a little bit in nearly four years.  It's still there, still coursing around and around and around her head and heart.  It's sad, really.  Here she wants to condemn D to Hell, and she doesn't realize that by indulging and savoring and preserving her anger and resentment she has condemned herself to Hell here and now today.  What an awful way to live.

By now you must have gotten tired of my repeating the point, but listening to her repeat her mutterings compulsively over and over reminds me of nothing so much as reading the speeches of the damned in C. S. Lewis's The Great Divorce....  It's a depressing thought.

Telling the boys

The next day -- we're up to Saturday the 6th at this point -- we drove to Durmstrang for their Parents' Day.  I won't describe the whole day, except to note a couple of things.

The first is that ... well, you may remember a number of posts (such as here and here) where I have described Son 2 in ways that make it clear he is a little offbeat.  And indeed, every where he has ever been -- at every school he has ever attended -- he has always stood out.  He has been the kid no-one could quite figure out, the kid who was different in ways nobody could ever put a finger on.  He has always seemed just a little bit odd.

But not at Durmstrang.  We watched him interact with his teachers and peers, and there was nothing unusual at all.  He didn't stand out.  He was just a normal kid.  And it's not because he had changed in any significant way.  But the school is obviously right for him, in ways that may be too subtle for me to identify.

We made time to talk with his advisor, to give him a heads-up that we would be telling Son 2 about our divorce some time over the weekend.  And his advisor was very helpful.  The school had said that parents could sign their kids out for five hours Sunday afternoon.  But the advisor said, Hey, no problem, of course you want him to be at home for something like this.  Just sign him out and we will expect him to be gone Sunday night.  Bring him back Monday afternoon.  I'll tell people he's got some family stuff going on, and they don't need to know any more than that.  He's a really good guy.

So Sunday afternoon we signed out Son 2.  He didn't especially want to go home and was a little confused about why we were signing him out.  Our explanation that we wanted him to come back so he could see his brother (who had a few days off, you recall) didn't make much sense to him.  But home we went.  We collected Son 1 from the train station (he had visited with Brother after signing out of Hogwarts, and so took the train to our town instead of coming back with us) and drove home.  And once we had all piled out of the car and into the house, I asked the boys to come out to the living room.

No point in dragging it out.  "Your mom and I are separating. You know we haven't gotten along for a long time, and so I have asked that we live apart. This isn't your fault -- it has nothing to do with you, really -- and there are a lot of details we haven't worked out yet. So right now we are both still living here. It's going to take a while for us to figure out who lives where, and how we handle a hundred practical details. But this is where it's going."  There was probably more ... I don't remember exactly what I said, and Wife had a few things to add from her side.  Son 1 sat in a chair opposite us and said nothing.  Then he got up in the middle and walked back to the study to log onto the Internet and do something else ... and we had to call him back until we were done.  Son 2 was curled up on the sofa: maybe not exactly in fetal position, but he was clearly very upset.  (Wife later told a friend of hers that he rolled his eyes at everything I said, but I couldn't see it from where I was.)  Interestingly, he was the only one with questions, and they were all practical ones. 

• Mom's Social Security isn't enough for her to live on, so how will she pay her bills? I'll pay her spousal support. That's one of the details we have to work out is to figure out how much. But basically every month I'll send her a check for $x, and that will supplement the Social Security she already gets.
• Mom can't live on her own, because what if she faints? Excellent question. We haven't figured that out yet.
• Well maybe she could get one of her friends to live with her. Mom? Could you get one of those friends you go walking with, to move in and keep an eye on you? Wife said she didn't think so, but we would think about this and figure something out. (In passing, I wonder if he meant Boyfriend 6 and Boyfriend 7? Sometimes Wife will say she is meeting one or the other "to go walking" for the exercise. Was Son 2 really being as wide-eyed and naive as he sounded just then? Or has he figured out what her relationship with these men really is, and concluded that maybe one of her lovers would be a good person to share living space? I don't know, but I sure wouldn't rule out the second one ....)
• ... and so on.

Then we were done.  Son 2 went back into his room for a while.  I couldn't tell if he was talking with Son 1 or talking to himself or quietly crying.  When I next saw the two of them, they were on the computer together looking at cartoons on YouTube or something like that.  The rest of the afternoon they pretty much ignored the two of us.  We all had dinner together and the evening wound down just like hundreds of other evenings together.  We didn't talk about it any more.

Monday I didn't go into work.  And really, none of us did a lot until it was time to take Son 2 back to Durmstrang.  He hadn't brought any stuff with him, so there wasn't much to pack -- just a couple of things he had realized he would need, that he collected in a shopping bag.  Son 1 had no interest in going: he wanted to stay home and play on the computer.  And I heard Son 2 muttering sotto voce, "I don't think Mom wants to come along. Why would Mom want to come?"  But of course Wife did want to come along (here Son 2 sighed silently) and so we clambered in the car and drove him back.  We were met by the Headmaster and the Head Nurse, who just wanted to assure us that Son 2 would have all the support he needed.  And then he was gone -- back to his next activity -- and we returned home.

For better or worse, they've been told.  At this point there is nobody from whom it is being kept a deliberate secret any more.

Time to press on.

Wife freaks out, slaps me, leaves, returns, threatens ....

I started this post a week ago.  A week ago last Friday, in fact.  (That means Friday the fifth.)  The weekend hadn't even started, and already it was full of drama.  I'll try to keep it brief.  I'll also keep all the time references as they were when I started.
__________

This was the first day of Parent's Weekend at Hogwarts.  Last night we drove to my parents' house, five minutes away from the Hogwarts campus.  The idea was that Wife and I would sleep there, spend today at Hogwarts visiting Son 1's classes and talking to his advisor -- partly about Son 1's abysmal grades, and partly about what support he might need when he learns we are divorcing -- and then drive home, skipping the second day; then tomorrow we'll go visit Durmstrang, which is having their Parents' Weekend the very same weekend as Hogwarts (only Saturday-Sunday instead of Friday-Saturday).

It's a two-and-a-half hour drive, so I wanted to leave as soon as I got home from work.  Wife had been fighting with plumbers all day, so she was already primed for battle and running late.  I tried to be patient, or at least tried to act patiently, until we were already an hour past the time we'd planned to leave; and then I confess my half-hearted imitation of a patient person fell apart pretty sadly.  I picked things up to dump them in the car, asked Wife fretfully if she had anything more she had to take, and made myself a general pain in the ass.  So Wife got rattled and disorganized and ended up leaving her glasses behind.  But finally we got under way.

Wife can't stand to sit silently, so she talked most of the drive.  She complained about the plumbers, she complained about the house, she complained about me, she complained about the divorce ... in fact, she complained about pretty much anything she could think of.  At a couple of points I thought her remarks were interesting, though not perhaps in quite the way she intended.

For example, at one point we were talking about a subject I had already discussed with her at considerable extent in e-mail.  Not wanting to repeat myself, I asked ...

Hosea: Hmmm. Well, I don't know how many of my e-mails you have read, but ....

Wife: I haven't read any of your e-mails! You should know that. I don't have your password and in any event I would respect your privacy. How dare you insinuate that I have been reading your e-mails?!

Hosea: No, actually I meant the e-mails I have written to you. It never occurred to me about that other. Gosh, interesting you should jump to that conclusion .... Does this tell me where your head is at?

Or at another point, she started complaining about my proposed terms for the divorce, and suddenly said, ...

Wife: You know, I really resent the way you are trying to use visitation with the children as a way to extort my agreement to a plan that is clearly not in my best interests.

Hosea: Huh? I'm not doing that at all. What are you talking about? I've proposed a plan that I think is fair. You don't like it -- OK, that's fine, you should propose another one. But I'm not trying to extort anything, and I'm certainly not using time with the children as any kind of lever. Why would you even think of such a thing? Is this what you are planning to do to me?

It wasn't a fun drive.

We got to my parents' house.  They weren't too thrilled to see her -- at any rate, my mother made herself scarce in the kitchen and my father made the kind of dull, toneless chit-chat that he makes when he knows he has to but wishes he were somewhere else -- but of course they asked us in and offered us a slice of pie for dessert.  (My mother makes the best pie on the face of the planet, and I'm not interested in hearing how good you think your pie -- or your mother's pie -- is by comparison.)  But Wife was disagreeing with everything anybody said.  My father complimented her on something she was wearing, saying it was a very pretty shawl, and she snapped "It's not a shawl."  Then it was something else.  And something else.  Finally she got so mad at something she thought my dad had said -- though he hadn't, and in fact we were talking about something totally different anyway -- that she got up from the table abruptly and left.

I followed her into the other room to tell her that she was objecting to a nothing: nobody was talking about what she thought we were talking about, nobody had said what she thought had been said, and in any event none of it was worth getting mad at.  I told her that her overreaction was so extreme as to be laughable.

Wife: If you were standing over here where I could reach you and said that, I'd slap your face!

Hosea: No problem, I can move.

I walked over to within arm's reach, meanwhile also calling my parents into the room as witnesses in case she did something really bad.  She spewed venom at me for a while -- sorry, I'd give a transcript if I could remember it but I can't.  But it was so disconnected from any sense, and so far over the top, that it was very easy to laugh.  So I did.  And so she slapped me.

Not very hard, really.  And I have to admit I laughed at that too.

Wife gathered up her tote bag and bolted outside.  As she climbed into the car, I followed and asked her where she was going.  "Anywhere I want!!"  And she was off.

The rest of the evening was a lot quieter, but none of us knew what to expect.  Was she going to a motel?  (Could be.)  Was she going to try to drive the two-and-a-half hours home, late at night in the dark?  (I thought this unlikely.)  Was she going to drive off a bridge, or into a tree?  (Not real likely, but I couldn't rule it out.)  Or was she just going to drive for the state line and then keep going as far as she could go?  Nobody knew.  My mother went to bed.  My father and I talked about it for a couple hours.  ("Has she ever done this kind of thing before? Just fled like this?" "I don't remember, but she sure has talked about it." "Has she ever threatened suicide before?" "She's talked about it but never done anything.")  And finally we too turned in.  I made sure to sleep lightly and in my clothes, so that I could wake up and be ready if she came back in the middle of the night to do anything unpredictable.

But she didn't.

The next morning she called while I was eating breakfast.  The first words out of her mouth after I said "Hello" were to complain about the motel where she had spent the night, because they didn't give her a wake-up call.  So when was I planning to leave for Hogwarts?

I don't know, maybe half an hour.

Wait for me.

I'll wait the half an hour or a couple minutes longer, but not forever.

Just wait for me -- I'll be right there.  Click.

In fact she got there in just about half an hour -- pulled up in front of the house and waited for me to climb in.  Then without a word she pulled away to drive to Hogwarts.

A couple of minutes down the road, she said suddenly, "Don't you ever do that again! If you ever just stand there and laugh at me again. I'll beat you to a pulp. Go ahead and call the police -- you'll be filing your complaint through a straw."

I don't remember what I said back, but it was pretty inconsequential.  Later in the day, as we were walking around Hogwarts attending Son 1's classes, she said to me, "Of course I would never really do anything to hurt you, but please never laugh at me again because it is the worst thing in the world to me."  Mind you, I never really thought she was going to beat me to a pulp.  The fact that I weigh approximately twice what she does, that she has done nothing for years to strengthen her muscles, and that she still doesn't have her gun ... all these things make me feel reasonably secure.  But I also understand that she has real trouble coping with being laughed at.

At the end of the day we met with Son 1's advisor.  We discussed some plans to bring up his grades, and also discussed what kind of support he might need after learning about the divorce.  And then we left.  Later my dad said that he asked Son 1 how Parents' Day went, and Son 1 simply said "Disastrous."

As Wife and I drove home, we talked about laughter just a bit.  (She brought the subject up.)  I tried to suggest that being laughed at is no big deal.  She didn't get that at all: how could it not be a big deal for someone else to mock at you, to think you are so petty and worthless as to be laughable?

But I am laughable, I told her.  Good Lord, you can't think I take myself seriously.  Nor should you, nor should any of us.  If someone mocks me -- hell, let him.  I mock at myself, why shouldn't he?  There's no human alive who isn't silly enough to deserve a good belly-laugh, if you only look at us right.  Let it go, relax over it, and have a good laugh.  Taking yourself seriously is a lot of work, after all ... who has time or energy for it?  Why bother?

She didn't see it that way.  No surprise, I guess.

Son 1 is growing up

Last weekend we had both boys home briefly.  Hogwarts had a four-day break, and Durmstrang ... well, they didn't exactly have a break at all but we checked out Son 2 for a day so he could be home with his brother when we told them we were divorcing.  More about that story in another installment.

But in the meantime, Son 1 told us he wants to spend all or most of next summer visiting an old friend from his grade school, who moved away some years ago but with whom he has kept in touch by Facebook.

Moved several states away.  Maybe a thousand miles or more.

She's a girl.  Let's call her Lilibet.

Back in grade school, Son 1 was really sweet on her.  He didn't show it overtly, but this was back when Boyfriend 4 was living with us and B4 snooped in Son 1's journal; he then brought back the news that Son 1 was really, deeply, intensely devoted to her.  Of course, that was years ago, right?

She hasn't asked her mother about this yet.  It's just an idea they both had while chatting.

No, it's not like they talk a lot.  Just casually on Facebook.  Besides, she dropped her phone in the toilet recently, so they have been really out of touch lately.  (Which means it's not just over Facebook, right? And it's often enough that the loss of a phone makes a big difference ... right?)

And why next summer?  Well, she's one year older than he is, so it's the last summer before she goes away to college.

So can I go?

I have to admit that I think slowly when I'm asked a question like this, so I probably said something like "Ummm, ... we'll think about it."  He asked Wife separately, and she tells me she said, "Well why don't you have Lilibet come here instead? Her father lives nearby and she only sees him once a year. So maybe she'd like the chance to see him too." [Her parents split in a really vicious divorce back when Son 1 knew her in grade school, before her mother moved away with the kids.]  I don't expect Son 1 to take up this offer, because neither boy ever wants to bring friends home.  Maybe it's because the place is so run down and decrepit, or maybe it's because Wife and I fight too much, or maybe it's because they find us embarrassing in other ways.  Or most likely all of the above.  Anyway, I'm sure Son 1 won't be asking Lilibet over here any year soon.

Then I forgot all about it until Wife reminded me a couple nights ago.  And then I really did begin thinking.  You're sixteen years old; by that time you will be nearly seventeen.  You want to spend the summer with an eighteen year-old girl to whom you were passionately attached as a child, and who has been living Somewhere Else now for nearly half your lifetime.  Her mother is a single parent, so I assume she'll spend a lot of time at work, out of the house.  And this upcoming summer is a "last chance" to spend this time with her because somehow everything will change when she goes away to college.  Have I got that right?

Isn't this more or less the same thing as asking, I'm head over heels in love with this girl so can we spend the summer fucking like bunnies?  Of course I haven't said any of this to him at all yet.  He's already back at school.  But it has been going through my mind.

I guess Son 1 is growing up.

And I think I am going to tell him No, he can't go.  But I am trying to figure out what else to say.  There are a lot of things going through my head, but I'm not sure how many of them are useful.

First, whether they are planning it this way or not -- and I'll assume that the idea has crossed their minds -- the situation plainly has sex written all over it.  Three months together, at that age, with that much emotional background and inconsistent supervision?  It's obvious.

What then?  Sex creates a bond, even if there was none before.  Son 1 already has an emotional history with this girl, at least on his side.  (I have no idea how she feels.)  So sex will cement it even further.  Is this a bad thing?  In Disney movies, maybe not -- it's what lets the Prince and Princess ride off at the end of the story and live happily ever after.  But they are teenagers.  Are they really ready for Happily Ever After at this point?

Not likely.  Lilibet will be on her way to college; Son 1 will be too, a year later.  The same college?  Yeah, right.  But what's the alternative?  Surely not marriage and children, not at that age.  In another century, they would have been plenty old enough.  But our society isn't set up to handle that well these days.

So spending the summer together means intense romance, sex, and then break-up and heartache.  Doesn't sound promising.  And God forbid she should get pregnant.  Any way you look at it the situation has peril on all sides.

Now that I am actually writing this, though, I find myself asking the question, What if he doesn't go?  Is that better?

To my knowledge, Son 1 has never had another girlfriend (though he has had friends who were girls).  Why not?  Maybe he has, and just hasn't said anything.  (Son 1 has a gift for privacy, though I shouldn't complain because so do I.)  Or maybe he hasn't had the right opportunity or met the right girl.  (He's still young.)  Or maybe there hasn't been room in his heart for someone else because he has been carrying a torch for Lilibet all these years ... a torch that may have started off as a little boy's passion but that has never had the chance to grow old or cold because she has been Somewhere Else all these years.  If he doesn't go, will he just keep his heart inaccessible, occupied by the idealized image of a perfect and inaccessible Lilibet?

I can't rule it out.  You may remember that I moved a lot as a kid.  And when I was Son 1's age, I didn't have a girlfriend either.  In reality that's because I was so cripplingly shy.  But I comforted myself with memories of the little girl next door back when I was in first grade.  Did she even remember who I was at that point?  Probably not -- why should she?  First grade was a long time ago.  But did I still remember her fondly, and cherish her memory far more sweetly than I would have if we had actually grown up together?  Oh yes.  Her name still makes my heart flutter, just a bit.  But I can't say I wish a similar destiny on Son 1.

Would it be so bad if he ended up with Lilibet, living Happliy Ever After?  There are the superficial answers that say, How can you know if you are right for each other without getting out and seeing other people?  I don't know how seriously to take those.

But I do worry that Lilibet may suffer from depression.  Back when she lived here, when Son 1 and she played together and we visited with her mother at school events, I remember exactly what she looked like.  She was a sweet girl, and pretty, but her affect was slow and her eyes never smiled.  Even when her mouth smiled, even when she laughed, even when she looked genuinely happy ... there was something in her eyes that said that at some deep not-even-conscious level it was all an act.  I don't know if it was something innate, or if it was brought on by her parents' divorce, or if ..., or if ....  But I'm sure I saw it.

In fact, I have to wonder if her depression is part of what made -- makes -- her so attractive to Son 1?  In his book Against Depression, Peter Kramer says that studies have shown men are more attracted to depressed women than to healthy women.  (All men? Some men? The men in at least one study? I don't remember. I read it a long time ago.)  Nobody knows why, although my private theory is that seeing depression in a woman makes men want to take care of her, in the same way that seeing a woman cry exerts an almost irresistible pressure on us to dry her tears at all costs.  Or maybe it's just me who feels that way.

But if Lilibet is truly depressed, then I have a whole raft of other concerns.  I want to tell Son 1, You can't make her better just by loving her.  If she has a cold dark hole pierced in the middle of her soul, you can't fill it from the outside no matter how much warmth and light and love you pour in.  You can help her, but not in a way that will let her graduate to being free from needing help.  You can brighten her afternoons -- or her nights -- but not her lifetime.  And you can encourage her to seek medical help, but even that is likely to be only a palliative.  If you sign up for this ride, you can't assume that it will ever get better -- not permanently, at any rate.  And as romantic as it sounds to say that love will see you through all the storms and trials of life, ... sometimes it won't.  Look before you leap.

Really.

Any suggestions how much of this I should really say?

Comic interlude: Son 1's progress report

It's nothing to do with all the serious, depressing shit I've been writing about lately, but we got Son 1's first month progress report from his Junior year at Hogwarts.  His grades are awful.  Just catastrophic.  I mean, his teachers all comment that he's bright and contributes really well in class ... but then they add that he doesn't turn in his homework, doesn't come in after class to clear up things he hasn't gotten, doesn't do that well on tests.  Ugh.  This weekend is Parent's Day, and we'll be down there anyway.  We are going to meet with his advisor about it.

And then I opened the comics page of today's newspaper and saw the following cartoon.  The age is wrong -- Son 1 is sixteen -- but it captures the spirit of the situation just perfectly.

Getting what you want, part 3

I'll keep this brief.

Wife's response to my explanation here about the moral benefits of the education that the boys will be getting at Hogwarts and Durmstrang was to write me a long e-mail in reply and then also buttonhole me over dinner over the weekend to talk at great length about it all.  But her message, over and over, came down to this:

You're basically telling me that schools are far better at raising kids than parents are. In that case, by far the majority of kids are going to be majorly fucked up, because a very small percent go to boarding school.

And my answer, phrased in a hundred different ways, was this:

No, I said nothing about who is the better parent for our boys.  The teachers at these schools are simply specialists in educating this particular age-group, in the same way that a pediatrician is a specialist in childhood diseases.  Sending them to these schools when they are adolescents is no different from sending them to the pediatrician when they are sick.  And I never said that other kids will be "fucked up" by living at home.  Maybe they will learn these same things in some other way.  I can't know that.

But of course it took longer than that, because we each repeated ourselves a lot.  I don't think she was convinced.

No lawyer yet?

Wife mentioned this weekend that she hasn't secured an attorney yet.  But it's not just laziness.  She says she has approached three already, and none of them has been willing to take her as a client.  Isn't that odd?

I know at least one of the attorneys she has contacted, ... a woman married to one of Wife's former bosses, who therefore knows Wife personally.  Wife tells me that our assets were too small to interest this woman; but hell, does that really matter?  I thought lawyers were paid by the hour, not on a percentage of the client's assets.  So naturally my own theory is that she took one look at the name and said to herself, "I don't want to have to deal with her. Forget it!"

Does that explain the other two?  I have no idea.  I don't know who they were.  Maybe (for that matter) Wife might have invented them.  Or maybe they knew her personally.  Or maybe ... well, almost anything.

But what happens if Wife can't get competent legal counsel?  Does she just take the advice of her friends, who will tell her "Oh, when my hairdresser's brother's niece got a divorce, this is how it worked for her ...."?

I have no idea.