I am driving home. I have just dropped the girls off at D’s still-new-to-me place, just a few minutes’ away.
I turn right on Canal Street. I complete the turn and think Root Canal Street as I turn off my blinker.
This will take time. I feel cored, like an apple.
As I pass the Getty Station, two workers are talking, loudly. I hear one of them through my open passenger side window. He says, “Boy, if they only knew they had it made, hah?”
I wonder who they are talking about, if anyone knows when they have it made.
*****
Sophie is working hard on wiggling out a loose tooth. Last night she came to me in the bathroom, shaking, with bloody fingers.
“I feel all weird,” she said. “All shaky.”
“Your tooth?”
“Yeah. I tried to get it out with a marker.”
“Maybe wash your hands, and get back into bed? Maybe don’t touch it again tonight, if you can? At least not with your fingers?”
She said, “It’s really hard not to.”
I said, “I know. I really know. Just wash your hands, okay?”
The last time she lost a tooth (by her own force) she went deathly pale and began shaking uncontrollably, as if going into shock. My mom and I had piled her high with blankets and a hot water bottle.
It does not stop her from working hard on getting rid of this next tooth in line. This is the little girl who said to me the other day: “Let’s continue our deadly game.”
She does not shy away from the dark side, this one. She is convinced that a tiger is her totem guide, because she is losing only bottom teeth, and she dreams often of tigers. She is sure she is growing tiger fangs.
*****
Life, love — it all seems like a deadly game to me now. I say this without melodrama. I say this simply, with little hope, and equally little fanfare.
There is a divorce epidemic, I am now convinced. It is spreading like wildfire, like the plague. This morning, I bring coffee and donuts and children to his place. The four of us eat breakfast at his counter. When the girls run off to play, D and I talk about this epidemic, about all the couples we know who are splitting. We speak in hushed, amazed tones, although we too have been claimed by this plague.
I want to reach out and touch his familiar stubbly cheek, to say something of meaning, of substance. The words come and go in my head. They chase each other around in circles, trying to form just the right sentence, some gift to offer.
I can’t figure out what is too much. I always feel like I say too much, or too little. I can never find the middle ground I am looking for. Life feels short and painful and bloody, although D and I have a knack for staunching blood before it flows.
There are no words for what I want to tell him. I give up. I find my dirty pink sandals and slip them back on.
We head downstairs, as a family, to the art gallery.
I am proud of the work he is doing. He has made some very beautiful 3D pieces of late, and he and Sophie exhibited their pieces together in a salon of 3D work. Hers: a stuffed abstract bear made from soft floral blue cloth, hand-sewn and stuffed by her. “Clara,” she named her. “NFS,” the plaque reads. His: lovely batik puppets, koi fish and cranes. Also “NFS.” Of course they are not for sale. Who could part with such treasures? These animals will all live in harmony at David’s.
I am proud of them both. I am happy that Sophie is getting this opportunity to be a recognized, valued artist among adults. She is the youngest exhibitor ever at this gallery, and I am thrilled for her. David is not the youngest exhibitor, but I am thrilled for him too, to share this light-filled space and this experience with his firstborn.
Today he will take them to a local pond, and I will not see them for a few days. Today, I will have a phone interview and try to figure out what the universe would like me to do. I will try very hard not to think too much.
I imagine that D wonders what my life looks like now, but I don’t expect him to let on that he wonders. I wonder what his life looks like now. I see some puzzle pieces when I drop off the girls, but there are things I will never know. This is what one gives up, succumbing to divorce, releasing into the wild a love you once were sure you had made.
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This made me cry.
It is so hard for me to imagine that you are not yet with a book deal, or a steady, well-paid gig as a full-time writer. Your voice is so strong and at the same time, so vulnerable.
Jenn, I wish you so much peace, prosperity and happiness. Your world is so richly textured, and you observe it so beautifully, and with such humanity.
Thank you for sharing even your pain with us. Even your tears are gorgeous.
All the best
Amy
I have a boy who is very interested in blood and in the inner workings of a body—but certain encounters make him go blue and white and cold, and he has to lie down and have a blanket. He’ll be totally fine one minute, and the next minute he’s so white it’s scary.
Beautiful, wrenching post, as only you know how to write.
Sometimes (not always, thankfully) I have to side with Thomas Hobbes, who wrote:
The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
(Wish I could come hang out with you. We could make our own animal puppets. Or we could just drink.
This made me cry too.
Wishing you the best with whatever the Universe wants you to do next.
I’m sorry that you’re going through this. I hope you can build a life that later on you will look back on and be proud of. You just have to put the girls before all of your fears right now because they are your light in the darkness…
I too was choked up by this post. Your writing has such an indescribable quality – so much beauty yet raw and full of emotion.
I hope the writing gods and happiness gods and goddesses of peace look down at you and make it so.
It’ll be okay.
Do you ever have the desperate urge to tell someone that, or to hear it yourself, even though you know the words hold no guarantees?
I just want to assure you. I wish words could make it so, but it’ll be okay.
Jenn,
Tears, here as well. Your words cut deep. My best wishes.
Ken(38)
Your words just pull me apart.
I wonder, does he know how much you still love him? Is it pride that stands in your way? I have no right to ask these questions and I know that. They are questions I ask myself…. about you. I have divorced and I never felt this way. I was so DONE. So OVER. So DEVOID OF FEELING…. it was final and tangible and sort of packaged for acceptance.
Yours is so…. not.
Be well, honey.
Best recommendations for loose teeth–tongues, apples, carrots. No fingers, or at least until it’s flapping in the breeze. I know–it’s hard to resist the appeal of the tooth fairy and her gifts.
I wish someday that all this pain and uncertainty will just be experience that makes your writing richer. As though it could be…
Hauntingly beautiful. I hope the universe answers your questions soon.
“There are no words for what I want to tell him.”
I think you just did, I would assume D still reads the blog.
You’ll know its truly over when neither of you feel it appropriate for you to enter D’s place. I suggested long ago that you take an extended separation before making the final commitment to divorce – I feel this true even more so after reading this post.
Sophie’s reaction to blood sounds familiar… I seem to remember a certain lab partner in college biology who would get sick and pale with the feel of blood in her own arteries.
I love you, Jenn. I wish I could be there to be a shoulder to lean on. Or take a boat ride with you in the harbor.
Hi Keri, I think there’s a multi-generational thing about blood in our family. I usually turn weak at the mention or sight of veins and IVs and so does Jenn. We are just hilarious to watch when we have to go for blood tests. I’m getting better at it; Jenn is more vulnerable. Sophie seems okay with IVs though and actually has quite an affection for one of the larger veins on my hand which I can hardly stand to look at. Jenn, stop reading or you’ll faint!
My thought on all this is that, when I was about Sophie’s age, I used to accompany my grandmother/babci to the doctor’s as she was constantly tested for her diabetes. Watching all that poking and prodding left its mark. I must have passed my phobia on to Jenn, eh? Oddly, I don’t mind needles at all if they are injections. “Putting in” is fine; “taking out” is the problem.
Once again, Jenn, your readers have responded to your unflinching honesty. You are surrounded by love. Think of these supportive words as spoonsful of peanut butter, finding their way into that empty core. Nourishing and sustaining.
Sophie’s little homemade bear touched my heart last weekend. I’m glad she’s able to share her cuddly creation with a wider audience. She may be learning the art of surrender from you and David.
Love, Mom
your writing is so honest & raw. i think it’s what most keeps bringing me back.
i wish for you peace, & joy, & a heart that is whole.
(oh… & a buttload of money.)
Jenn, I can’t say more except to say that I know exactly what you are feeling. I know, because I’m living it. I’ve fallen victim to the divorce plague, and you somehow manage to capture my feelings better than I ever could. Cored, like an apple. As though a central, supporting piece of you is missing, as though you’re hollow on the inside.
I hope that the Universe brings good things your way. Desperately I hope that for you.
Be well.
It is an epidemic. One I will never understand, one that never makes sense especially when it happens to you. I made it with four little girls in this big world. They are almost grown now, and I have two little boys and a wonderful husband that have somehow filled the hole, almost. I still have a hard time wrapping my brain around it all, but there is healing. I do pray for you even though you are not sure of God. He was the only one who brought me comfort when my flesh and my family were ripped in half. I wouldn’t have made it without believing someone was there listening to me when I was crying out.
I love your writing. Thanks for sharing and putting what so many of us feel or have felt into words.
Beautiful writing Jenn. You are so honest, and raw, and brave, and talented. Thank you for that.
Really exquisite post.
I just left a similar post on your mom’s blog as well. I don’t know for sure how I happened upon your blog. I just want to say that I am so in awe of your family. Of course, we don’t know what it’s like behind closed doors, but I marvel at how your support and love for each other outweigh all the difficult things that your family is going through. I’m sure it’s not always easy. It probably is difficult much more than it’s easy, in fact. But as someone on the outside looking in, bravo to you all for doing Hannah, Sophie, David, Jenn, and The Mater proud. In the end, when the dust settles – and it will – the memories of these times will undoubtedly bring, among many other things, much respect and gratitude for you and David and they way you have chosen to deal with this chapter in your lives.
I’m finding myself crying at work. As a child of divorce, it’s so interesting to see it from the parents viewpoint.
I’m so so sorry you have to go through this.
But honestly, your kids will be ok. As long as you and David are ok, your kids will be fine.
Really.
You write beautifully. Thanks for sharing…
the writing is great. who knows, maybe the silver lining in this awful experience will be your book. maybe once you heal, people could benefit on a guide that recognizes the bittersweet moments but what will also help propel you forward. it worked for eat, pray, love.
there is no staunching that blood flow, is there. the blood we pour from our open soul-wounds.
you’ve made such a courageous decision, and when the blood begins to coagulate, even just the tiniest bit, and your fangs start to grow in, you’ll not even notice, really.
then you will, and it will be so far from here, and you’ll just be so amazed. as you’re already aware, i’m certain.
i love your voice like air and water. only, some days, i starve myself of both because it is the purest air and water i’ve ever encountered.
please. please know your strength, your beauty, your power. please see it. i wish so ardently to be able to mirror it to you. somehow.
I’m crying. This is the first time I have commented. I have just recently found your blog, and I love how you write. You write how I feel, how I think. I used to write all this too…I don’t know wy I stopped, really.
I am sorry for your loss.