Tuesday of last week, I worked till almost 6:00 pm; I was reviewing a draft document written by one of my employees, and I wanted to finish it up because it had been sitting on my desk way too long. So anyway, along about 6:00, Son 2 and I left the office; and as we were walking to the car, I called Wife on my cell phone to say we were en route.
She picked up the phone on the first ring, and I heard an deafening, inarticulate shriek. Of course this worried me, and I asked her what was wrong. I got a torrent of words that came out so fast I couldn't understand them. I asked her -- through the shrieking -- to repeat it: what was wrong? On the third try, she finally slowed down enough that I could understand her. This afternoon she had tried to balance her checkbook for the first time since we separated our accounts at the end of July -- and she couldn't make it balance. She was beside herself: weeping, wailing, moaning. I talked to her for several minutes (many minutes) and reassured her I would help her with it -- maybe tonight (if she could stay awake) or maybe on the weekend. I repeated -- over and over -- that it would turn out all right, that I had total confidence that we could solve this. I refrained from using any affectionate pet names to help calm her, such as I might have done in earlier years, because somehow they seemed out of place; but otherwise I was as comforting as I could be. There's no way the world will end over one unbalanced checkbook, and there's no way we can't find the problem and fix it. Just put it all away right now, and we'll tackle it together. It will be OK.
During all this time, Son 2 and I were standing in the parking lot of my work. When I finally got off the phone, I opened the car for Son 2 (who was looking a little impatient) and said, "I'm sorry you had to wait. Mommy was pretty upset."
He replied, "Ya think?" [It's an expression he picked up from D, ironically, after her two visits to stay with us.] Then he added, "You only told her, 'Relax, don't panic, everything will be all right' about fifty times ...." But he wasn't mad. He was just playing at being long-suffering, and perhaps teasing me just a little. He chuckled and added that of course he hadn't really counted how many times I had said it, but was just making a point. At any rate it seems that he wasn't panicking.
I often worry about Son 2, in particular, getting sucked into Wife's craziness because he is sensitive and because he has long seen Wife's well-being as his personal responsibility. I have to remind myself that he is also capable of being totally dispassionate about it all ... and that he is getting more so all the time.
Who will help her balance the checkbook when you are not there, or at least calm her into believing the problem can be solved?
ReplyDeleteSeems it will likely fall to Sons. And I'm not saying this to make you feel guilty. Not at all. Just to prepare for ensuring that they have as much childhood as possible with their new arrangements.