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.