In the Harry Potter stories, Dumbledore would pull threads of memory from a giant basin called the “Pensieve.” I find myself doing something similarly as I recall stories of my children’s formative years, my family, friends and myself. In doing so, there are moments in my history that are tender and pleasant memories, or some where I find my face burns from humiliation or grief. When I think of my children’s father, there are all of the previously mentioned ones involving he and myself (meaning: the good, the bad, the ugly). However, since my children will likely be reading “my story” I have decided to use a selective memory whereby I will say nothing that would hurt them or degrade him. He is, after all, the father of my children and we co-parent together.
Some day I imagine we will likely be experiencing an indescribable joy, as we become grandparents in a labor and delivery ward, a shared intimacy that only he and I will have in terms of being blood-related. Yes, there will likely be new partners for us both (he’s got a head start on that one as he remarried a woman nearly three years ago), but we share a bond that I will never have with another human being. I look forward to that moment. I also look forward to my children’s weddings, if they choose to do so. I anticipate graduations and celebrations, and more. Recently we spent a weekend in San Diego visiting our son for the Parents’ Lacrosse Weekend for his team. Yes, we drove in separate directions after having shared a meal with one another, as he headed to his hotel and I to my friends’ home… but for a brief weekend, we could just be the mom and dad of Troy. It was special. I am sure there will be many more special moments we’ll share as both parents and grandparents in our future and those of our children.
I rarely, if ever, use the term “Ex” when describing him. It just seems to be such a disrespectful, negative term when summarizing the person I met when barely twenty-one, and to whom I was married within a year and wed for seventeen. The divorce took four years. Not that we didn’t plan on doing it, but the job of working full time, parenting, and all of life’s complications as you add children’s health concerns, sports’ teams and events to the mix, take time. These items just took up nearly most of ours. And then the uprooting of the family tree is time-consuming work. At its very core, we did not touch it. That is because at our family tree’s core, you will find that we both love our three children very, very much.
I always say any anger or ill will I have toward their father is far surpassed by the amount of love I have for my three kids. I would imagine he’d agree on that point. His love is greater than his anger, too.
And so, on occasion, and for their sakes’ I want to remember some of my fondest moments with their dad. One of my favorites was within months of our beginning to date. It was the fourth of July. Now, if you know me, or my family, you know that we have a very special relationship with our country’s birth date. We celebrated it with a collection of families for as far back as my memory will serve me. More about that later~
Anyhow, on Uncle Sam’s birthday of 1985 it was warm and we must have spent the earlier portion of the day with other friends and couples from the church we attended. I don’t remember all of those details, I do remember later, as the sun was setting. We drove Greg’s Toyota pickup truck with a cooler full of watermelon. We parked up on Fairmont Drive, and he off-wheeled onto the golden hills overlooking the Bay Area with a view of the City in all its glory. He had put the tailgate down and he was wearing his favorite faded blue Levi button down jeans. His hear was long and his bangs swept to the side of his face. He handed me my first slice of watermelon and we both hungrily bit into the cool crescents. They were perfect. He spit the seeds as he encountered them, which gave me license to join him too (this before we thought of the environmental impact this might have on the natural landscape of the region). As he got to the nub of the rind, he tossed it carelessly over his shoulder onto the hill located behind us. This was so uncharacteristic of him, I giggled. And then, after I had finished my first slice, I tossed it overboard as well and grinned like the Cheshire cat. This continued on for some time and as the juice dribbled down my cheek, I swiped it away with the back of my hand, tossing another rind toward the ever-expanding pile.
I don’t know why, but this act; throwing the rinds out onto the hill of Fairmont drew me closer than ever to him. The intimacy of this evening stays with me even now, some twenty-five years later. It is just one single strand from the Pensieve of memories I carry inside me regarding the father of my children, commonly referred to as my “Ex.”
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