HURDLES OF LIFE

‘Have you met our daughter?’, she looked down at the baby and seemed to take great pleasure in making sure I was aware that she also had a daughter with him.

‘Yeah’, I was distracted as I was trying to connect with my own daughter who was standing directly in front of me, yet seemed so distant. She knew I met her daughter as she yelled at her husband when he took the baby to my place a few months back. So, I knew this was not a genuine question.

This was not a planned meeting. I didn’t even know Saffron had a track meet today. I simply went for a peaceful walk after work to unwind and think. Something made possible this week as my son decided to do his Tuesday and Thursday kickboxing classes online, directly after coming home from school. A decision which frees up two evenings during the week.

Earlier, as I crossed the parking lot to walk to the middle school track, I noticed the large white car with the familiar black roof racks. It drove right past me and up the curb where it parked. I continued down to the track and walked three laps whilst listening to music before walking towards the high school track to see if I could catch a glimpse of my daughter.

I watched the events for a while and then took a photo of my view to send to my son, letting him know I was at the high school. I also sent the photo to Saffron along with a text saying ‘Good luck!’, but later noticed that my text disappeared, only to be replaced by a message stating that notifications were silenced. Then I saw her walking up the stairs from the track and go directly to the three people approaching her.

My older daughter stood next to her father and stepmother, with the baby in the middle, looking at me as if I was some alien ready to snatch her away to another planet. I looked at her father with eyes that said ‘What the heck?!’, my shoulders shrugging in the process. He stood there wearing a yellow sweater, jeans, and flip flops with socks and returned the look of a deer staring at the headlights of an oncoming car. He did not want to be in the middle of this dilemma. One he created with his wife.

I asked my daughter what she did for the meet and she said ‘the 800’. She seemed to pull away which made me upset. ‘I told the girls to go to you’, he cried in defense. I’m sure you put a lot of effort into that, I thought, my sarcastic nature surfacing. I kept looking at my daughter. Nobody was moving, except the baby who started walking away.

‘This is not working. Sage and I are leaving Austin’, I said and then walked away. I was angry, frustrated, and sad at the same time. I was at a loss at what to do anymore. I’ve texted the girls, invited them over for dinners, and suggested we go out to coffee or the mall. The older one used to send back one or two words in response, but lately she has simply ignored my efforts. Her sister is much more responsive to both me and her brother but I know things are not easy for her either.

A few minutes after I walked in the door, my phone rang. He never calls me. Yet, he proceeded to talk at me, offering explanations and suggestions. I went into my room and closed the door.

‘You feel rejected, you feel upset… then she ignores you more’, said the psychologist within him. His voice is unusually calm during this call as he continues with his speech. Must be all the therapy sessions. Or the numbness towards a situation he knows will never fully improve.

No, she ignores me because she was conditioned to do so. After so many years of brainwashing, our child no longer knows what or who to believe.

‘Kids end up with two sets of parents…it’s normal these days’, he is trying to make a case for something, though I’m not sure what.

He goes on to explain they have a blended family and that ‘you had that with Mario for a short while’. I did, but you and your wife did everything in your power to sabotage it until we no longer had a blended family of our own.

‘You are the biological mother…you need to work with Frannie together’, I heard him saying and seriously could not believe I was hearing those words.

‘Are you kidding me? I am not going to talk with her!’. I was insulted that he even suggested this after everything she and her older son has put this family through.

‘She has a really good feeling about the girls and she would be happy that you and the girls have a relationship’, he kept talking at me without stopping to listen to me. I wondered if he was on some kind of medication.

I’m sure she has a good feeling about how she will destroy this relationship even more, I thought. But lies always have a way of emerging at some point in the future. Unfortunately, not soon enough for my son and me.

‘In this moment we have to work together…’, he was still talking. I remember how he loves to talk but not listen. How many years have I said we needed to work together on this family and now he decides it’s time? I asked him why he didn’t text me last night when he found out about our daughter’s track meet. ‘I was busy doing other things’, he responded. So much for working on things together.

He went on to say he’s getting old and wants peace. That his wife was in a good mood tonight at the track and that our daughter actually wanted to spend time with me before I walked away. I wonder if he really believes the words that come out of his mouth.

The fingers of my hand were doing the ‘blah, blah, blah’ gesture as my face screwed together into a look of bewilderment at his next words.

‘Let’s forget what we did in the past… we all made mistakes in the past. I want to look forward. I want to rebuild this relationship…’, his voice trailed off.

I noticed he used the term ‘we’ and not ‘I’ when he referred to mistakes made. Never admitting directly to anything. Always speaking in general terms. Certainly, we made mistakes. And I keep making the mistake in believing things have changed.

The only thing that has changed is his realising that he is unable to raise the girls without his wife’s help as he works most of the day and into the night. Except, now that she is working, they need someone ‘to share the responsibilities’ of the girls. Enter the biological mother. The one who ‘gets’ the girls only when it’s inconvenient for him to care for them. Or when they jet off to Germany or California but decide to leave them behind.

‘She’s a manager’, he explains. I ask why that is relevant and he replies that she is busy with meetings all day.

‘I’m busy too. I also have a job’, I reply in vain. ‘Or do you think I sit around all day eating bonbons?’. I don’t know why I bother to engage in a conversation with him as it goes nowhere. And that is when I see that staying in the vicinity of this toxicity is doing more harm than good. Nothing will change.

I ended the call and let him know I needed to go have dinner with our son, something he rarely had time to do when our son lived there. At our dinner table, as I was taking with Nona and asking her advice on what to do about this unfortunate situation, I heard my son say ‘I’d rather be poor and have time than have a lot of money and no time’ in reference to his father being too busy for everything in life. For him, his sisters, and me when we were married. Money was always most important and still is. Nothing has changed.

The lessons my son has learned, and continues to learn, will help him overcome many hurdles of life. He is well aware of the things he needs to do as he grows into an adult and becomes a father himself. We continued with our dinner and talked about our moving away from here where we can both get a fresh start.