Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

I was supposed to go to court today to plead to the judge to stop mr ex from harassing me, start paying me what he owes me, and stop preventing us from listing the house at a reasonable price. We came to an agreement during our mediation session on Tuesday so I will not have to go to court. (The post on that is still being mentally formulated but since I am so mentally drained, it’s taking some time.) But I thought that I would post the letter I had written to the judge at my lawyer’s behest. This letter would have been my opening argument in court.

* * *
I have been divorced from mr ex since August 2007. I have been separated from him since March 2005. It is unconscionable that we are still living in the same house.

I separated from him and divorced him because he is emotionally and verbally abusive. He has only gotten worse. Because we still live in the same house I am still an emotional and verbal punching bag for him. He has no stops on his mouth. He curses at me in front of our daughters, now 17 and 13. He insults me in front of them. It does not matter if I go into my room and close the door and lock it, he continues. It does not matter what I say or do, he continues. We are divorced, there is no reason for me to have to live in the same house as him.

We need to reduce the price of the house so that it can be sold. We will both still make money. I am being held prisoner because of his greed and my lack of money.

* * *

I have not slept in a bed since March 2005, except when visiting friends and family or on one weekend vacation. Since mr ex and I separated, I have slept on a couch in the living room, then on a mattress on the floor of the guest bedroom, and since June 2007 on a love seat.

That’s a lot of nights of discomfort.

That’s a lot of nights when I can’t stretch out.

That’s a lot of nights when I can’t roll around trying to find a comfortable spot so that I can go back to sleep.

That’s a lot of time for two girls, who are now both teenagers, but were 9 and 13 when we separated, to see their mother contorted on a love seat while their father stretches out on a king-size bed.

That’s a lot of time for two girls to see and hear their mother being verbally and emotionally abused.

That’s a lot of time for two girls to grow up watching what happens when love dies.

That’s a lot of time for two girls to think that this is normal.

My daughter is lovely, and she was lovely at her Bat Mitzvah. She chanted the Hebrew perfectly, she read her sermon at the right pitch and volume so that the congregation of friends, family, and congregants could hear her every word as she reflected on the Noah story and God’s covenant with man that he would never send a flood again (rainbows are a sign of this covenant); and that God commanded man to not murder, not eat a live animal, and to be fruitful and multiply. She was poised and graceful and intelligent.

And the two blessings that she received from the two rabbis who were there were so insightful about this wonderful young woman, and showed how she is appreciated by all who know her. One commented that she is an open, honest, caring person; and the other that she is a like a tent, for she is open and friendly, and providing the warmth of a tent to all.

Yes, during the service I could focus on this wonderful girl who is my daughter. I was with her and for her, and there were tears of pride in my eyes, not pain.

A friend’s father told me that she is stunning. Indeed, inside and out.

Wishing her happiness and fulfillment, and a long joyous life. 

My friend, who never met slime, knew who he was immediately at the Bat Mitzvah. She pointed him out to me and said, “That guy, he didn’t hold the door open for me. He’s your ex, isn’t he?” Yup, that was him.

In the robing room, right before the ceremony, the cantor, rabbi, ex, my daughter and I were standing there to recite a blessing and receive words of comfort and joy from the rabbi. The rabbi asked ex to move in a little closer, which would result in his being closer to me—but in no way next to me. His reply: “no thanks, trust me.” Slime, always slime.

I arranged two parties by myself: one a luncheon after the service, and one a party for the kids at night. I planned, shopped, purchased, cooked, shlepped, arranged, organized, cleaned up (with the wonderful help of my sister-in-law—my brother’s wife), and shlepped back home with no help from him. Oops, I forgot, he carried one box into the house and took some things in his car to the evening party, but my daughter and her friends did all the carrying. slime and louse.

He cursed me out this morning in front of both my daughters (well, by this time I was in my room with my door closed because I could see that he was in rant-mode, but their doors were open) because I did not agree that he would take the money gifts from my daughter's Bat Mitzvah and invest them. And once again he did not spare himself the opportunity to mock me in front of my 17-year-old who is both cracking up inside and erecting a strong and solid wall to the outside world. He should be proud of himself that he turned a teenager against her mother, against the person who encouraged the development of her mind so that she would be an independent thinker.

Tuesday is mediation. Thursday is court. Please please please let this be over soon.

Tomorrow my younger daughter will, in a religious sense, be recognized as an adult and become a full participant in religious life. (As she says, now she’ll try not to sneak bread during Passover.) This is for me, as well as for her, a milestone. While she had to practice her Torah portion, and the blessings, and write her own sermon, for me it has been a time to think about her finding her way as her own person out in the world (especially since this time has entailed even more driving duties than usual for me). It is a time to reflect on the beauty that is motherhood, and those who I have mothered. Even though I often dwell on the challenging aspect of things (because that is much funnier than the purely praising, and of late so much more in sync with my interactions), I will take a moment to think about this joint life-journey. Since I have two daughters, one 17 and one 13, this reflection comes from being at this game for over seventeen years.

While I have spent 17 years putting my daughters’ needs above mine by wiping, cleaning, cooking, driving, talking, folding, registering, arranging, listening, attending, watching, purchasing, bandaging, and coddling, I can’t say that I have put them above me. Was I supposed to? And what does that cliché mean? Does it mean that I should have esteemed their minds more than mine? Should I have let mine atrophy in order to develop theirs? How does that work? I let my personality wither to grow yours? Isn’t that counter-intuitive? Don’t young girls, especially, need strong mothers to be strong themselves—to put their heads through the ceiling, if need be?

Perhaps because I had to fight against a controlling husband I did not lay on the ground to be walked on by my daughters (well, not full-body walking, at least). I couldn’t let everyone try to diminish me or rewrite who I am, now could I? But is that really the way to go about being a parent? A mother? Giving yourself up for them? Letting the career go or change or transform or take a hiatus, yes, I did that. Letting my fashion sense become even drabber since either they were spitting on me or I am I spending on them, yes I did that. Not go out to play with friends, well, I did that less often but I still did it. Closing the door, sometimes just the figurative door and sometimes the literal door, to escape them and escape into me, yes, I certainly did-do-that. How can that possibly be seen as a betrayal of my role?  

----You know, I’m still drained from being called crazy and stupid. Not from their father, but from them. I thank my daughters for giving me the opportunity to bring forth my knowledge and understanding and love. And to find my knowledge and understanding and love through our relationships. I thank them for letting me get to watch them grow and try to keep them safe as they find their way. But they are teens and I am stressed from this bitter post-divorce process, and so I feel that I have failed. But I tried, I did. I have done all I could—can. And that, too, is the message. We can only do as best as we can, and hope that the rays of love and concern have been transmitted.

Sweetie, I love you and wish you joy and happiness in all that you do. Mazel Tov!

I lost it this evening. Sometimes all the encouraging words and thoughts and wishes for a better future are not enough to overcome a present that is just painful. Okay, I don’t have a life-threatening illness, and I appreciate that, I really do, but screaming out in pain from something my child says to me is mighty painful.

I was already drained after agreeing to let the rabbi in ex’s family deliver a few words to my daughter at her Bat Mitzvah. Yes, this is the man who I turned to after slime kicked a bag at my head and asked him to please talk to slime, that he is out of control. This is the man who at that time was studying for his doctorate in pastoral counseling who told me that no, he would not talk to him because he “doesn’t want to take sides, he loves us both.” So the very notion that he really will be there is bad enough, but that he will speak churns at me. Sure, I could say no, you don’t deserve any respect at this venue, but I know my daughter would not be happy about that, and that she would remember that he spoke at her sister’s Bat Mitzvah. Perhaps I am still an enabler.

Then there were the hours spent buying food for the big event at three different supermarkets after work. And no, I do not ever expect to get paid by slime, but my parents have stepped up instead of the man who was supposed to be by my side. (I wonder how father’s feel when they discover the man to whom they entrusted their daughters have so debased that trust?)

When I walked in the house, four hours after leaving work, I realized that I forgot to tell my daughter to walk the dog, since I had not been able to walk him the morning since he was in slime’s room. So after getting one daughter’s nastiness about my yelling, I was blindsided by my other daughter.

After telling her that no, she can’t have my car to buy something for her camera so she can take pictures this weekend, and no she can’t have my credit card she turned  so very nasty on me. Her survival instincts are truly horrific.

“You put shit on his car.”

“What?”

“There was shit on dad’s car, obviously you put it there.”

Here’s where all self-control and bladder control is lost. First I asked her, calmly, if she really believes that, then she said yes, there’s no other explanation for it otherwise. That’s when I slammed the utensil that was in my hand on the chopping board, and screamed so loudly or deeply that, I guess, all internal passages opened up and I started peeing. Then I crumpled onto the floor and was just a scene from some movie where “woman loses it.”

Yes she is 17. But that is an excuse for some things, not this, not believing all the things he says to her about me. I am her mother. I have never done anything to hurt her except to be her mother. (And if she finds this when she is older and is embarrassed, good for you. And if she finds this and is embarrassed by her mother, then good for you.)

I am too tired now. Too tired of this ridiculous home situation. Too tired of how trying to get out of a bad marriage has resulted in a far worse divorce.

Please, please let me have a little light in this tunnel. 

Last week, my daughter and I met with the cantor of our synagogue to rehearse her Bat Mitzvah, which will be on Saturday. We were going over the logistics of the event when we hit a bump. A traditional part of the service (at least as practiced at my synagogue) is to physically pass the torah from generation to generation as a sign of the transmission of the learnings of the torah from generation to generation.

Generally, the grandparents, parents and then the child stand in an arc and the rabbi holds the torah and walks by them as each person reaches out and touches the torah—as a sign of participating in the passage. The cantor asked me if I would be okay to stand next to mr ex. I said No. I did not look at my daughter to see her reaction, this event is also for me, and I do not want to stand next to him. The cantor then asked if my parents would be okay standing next to him. Her tone indicated that she figured that it would be okay, to which I emphatically said NO. Last time they were at my house mr ex yelled at my father and told him that he would call the police because my father is trespassing. No, no I do not want my parents to stand next to him at this solemn occasion—or any occasion. This time I looked at my daughter, her eyes were teary, but who knows, it could be from the allergy that she seems to have to something in the air at temple since the renovations there were finished.

And so the cantor suggested that she will talk to the rabbi and perhaps mr ex will stand on the other side of my daughter, the side reserved for the non-Jewish parent. Yes, put him over there: make him as an outcast, which is what he has made himself by his behavior.

* * *

My mother reminded me that my ex-sisters-in-law and their families might be there and that I need to be nice to them, for my daughter. And I told her again that I hope no one comes near me because I do not want to be nice to them. Although I know that I need to be nice to them, I do not want to because it will feel more like betraying myself than being a good mommy for my daughter.

* * *

Have I commented that mr ex makes twice as much as me but pays nothing for the girls? I know, I know. My court date is November 6th. So much excitement in my life.

Anyway, he told my daughter that he would pay 50% of the costs of the Bat Mitzvah. I presented him (well, I presented the kitchen table) with an accounting and then provided the info for hiring a DJ. What I have paid so far is twice as much as the DJ, and this does not include the food I still need to buy as well as all of the paper products and decorations. He has not mentioned (or given notification to me through her) about paying 50% again.

There is a place in hell for people like him, but I wish it were here, on earth. Only problem, he has no conscience so nothing touches him.

"I have to watch my cholesterol because it's high," I said to my daughter as I took my pill.

"Is that because you eat too much?" my daughter asked, but it sounded more like a statement to me.

I looked at her. "I don't eat too much. It's genetic." Hey, I have to cover for myself somehow. But really, I don't. And I am still a potato chip-free zone.

* * *

"You know, you're not doing anything by not taking a bag at the store."

"We each need to do what we can, and together that can have an impact."

"A bag."

"Every bit helps. I need to feel that I am doing something."

She's back to her ipod.

* * *

She has to do a political poster for someone running for office in Virginia; she is doing one for James Gilmore, Republican former governor running for the Senate whose slogan is: Drill Here, Drill Now.

"I think he did some good things. Like making women wait 24 hours before having an abortion. That's good that they think about it."

Steam coming out of my ears, breathe, and then response. "Every woman thinks about it long and hard before having an abortion. It's not something that any one rushes into."

"You're so closed minded."

Back to her ipod. Back to the opera and the fat lady singing for me.

* * *

People keep telling me that in the future they will appreciate me. But it's darn hard in the present.

“I don’t have a tone.” Pause. Continuation, “You’re just calling me to take out your anger on me.”

No, that was not part of a conversation that I had with one of my daughters, that was the part of a conversation I overheard in the school parking lot on Friday afternoon. A girl, together with five of her friends, was walking across the parking lot, as I was walking to my car. I couldn’t help but smile when I heard her talking to, I am sure, her mother; it was such a typical-sounding discussion, one that I could be having later in the same day.

Aren’t we supposed to take our anger out on our spouses? Isn’t that part of the traditional role of a spouse: mood deflector? I wonder if this girl’s mother is a single mother. Geez, the more I get into single motherhood, or the more their father steps out of the picture except to yell at them to clean their rooms, I realize how draining it is to be (or attempt to be) a positive influence on your children when you are mentally and emotionally drained. It’s hard to be understanding when you need someone to coddle your ego and body. It’s tough to get the tone out when you have no one with whom to decompress.

On Friday I came home from work, after picking up my older daughter and buying another box of invitations for my younger daughter, and just collapsed on the couch. This was after a confrontation with one of my more difficult behavior-wise students who gets extremely defensive when you ask her to stay on task and who has not learned not to talk back, and I have not learned to let that go, with anyone, especially not my students.

A few minutes after we got home my older daughter went to a friend’s house—she drove herself; my younger daughter went straight from school to volunteer at a haunted house at the local high school. So I was home alone and should have used that time as my time to decompress, but it’s hard to do that by yourself all of the time. It’s hard (yes, I am whining) to be your main support system. And so when they both got back and wanted something to eat and all I had to offer was the noodles and chicken cutlets from the previous night’s dinner I was not up to their complaints. I was actually talking to my mother while yelling at my daughter that that’s what there is and what do you mean you don’t like chicken cutlets you told me last week to make them!? On the phone my mother is telling me to calm down, and in here, at home, I am losing it. Eat the damn cutlets.

Why, why can’t they acquiesce? They have no documented behavioral issues, so what’s the deal here? Someone eat the food I prepared with care, love and thought. Someone say thank you. Someone remember that I am trying. Someone please tell me that the cutlets are great. No, not you mom.

I took my daughter to the DMV to take her written test for a driver's license. I paid for her driving lessons. I drove her to her lessons and back home. I took her out to practice. I took her to take her driver’s test. I paid for her driver's license. I paid for her driver’s insurance. I took her back to the DMV when she lost her driver's license. She uses my car when she wants to go out.

Her father uses her as his personal driver when he is not in the mood to drive. Besides driving him to his office in DC on occasion (I think he works in DC), she has been the driver when they go on mini-trips, so far she has driven to the Shenandoah Valley and Philadelphia. Glad to see that his need to control a woman has changed.

She is now driving him to the supermarket, after I picked her up from her SAT class and she said she was hungry.

Why do both of my daughters think that my blogging is silly? Why do they assume that I am merely complaining about my life? Why do they think that writing about my life has no value?

(And no, they have not read this site--the address is a state secret.)

Home: The “For Sale” sign is still in front of the house, although the price has been reduced. slime finally agreed to reduce the price by about half of what I wanted (which is what the realtor recommended minus a bit)—and that was before the economy tanked even more. His agreement was probably just a ploy to show the judge that he is cooperating in the sale of the house. Let’s just reduce the price to practically foreclosure level and be done with it. No one has been by to visit, and I have gotten very lax in keeping the cleaning up to ready-to-show-in-a-half-hour status. Who wouldn’t be tired of maintaining a home at show quality for almost a year and a half?

I dread the idea of having to clean again because I detest living here. I detest that things have worked out so that I have lived in the same house with a man from whom I have been separated since March 2004. I don’t want to rant about my fault, or his fault, or my lawyer's fault, or the economy’s fault, or fate’s fault, all I want to do is rant at the injustice of this living arrangement.

Court: The court date is coming, it is November 6th. My lawyer (who needs to rise to bastard level) suggested that I write a letter to the judge to explain what it is like for me, and especially my daughters, living in this house, all of us together. I am beginning to compose that letter. Maybe threads are starting to show here.

slime: I think he gained weight because every time he walks around I hear the floor responding with a creak. So even when I don’t see him, I hear him. And if it’s not the floor, it’s his throat clearings because he never gave up cigarettes even though he promised me that he would before we got married many years ago.

Oh, and if I have to be exposed to the way he disregards his daughters, especially his younger daughter, anymore I think I will finally break down. It was her birthday the other day, I did not see a gift nor did I see a cake from him. Not that my cake was the best ever: it was a delicious defrosted Strawberry Shortcake from Trader Joe’s with imaginary candles. She is so sweet, she even made a wish and blew out the candles, and my older daughter held back and did not mock me and my candle improvisation.

But worst of all for me is when he calls my older daughter into his room, and then has her close the door so that they can have a private conversation in his bedroom (the master suite). It seems to me that this is a monologue, since I rarely hear the mumble of her voice through the closed doors. This arrangement feels weird and makes me uncomfortable for her—and me. It feels unseemly, because it feels as if he has made her his surrogate wife, in the talking aspect of things. And that is unsettling.

School/Work: One colleague recently resigned for an unspecified reason, but apparently she is an alcoholic. It is so upsetting to see someone you know and respect having such a hard time; I wish her complete healing and a successful recovery.

I’m getting a bit overwhelmed with all of the data we English teachers need to collect for the higher-ups. I broke the silence at a meeting today and said that I “philosophically oppose a test for Night” and that “we are supposed to be focused on writing, which is what everyone says the students need to improve.” But really, who cares about my protestations, my students need to be bubbling scantrons to prove that they have learned something from the stream of teachings that comes out of me on a non-stop basis.

My students are now writing essays on something important to them. I am so looking forward to reading their essays, especially since I only need to read 50 of them since my co-teacher will be reading our joint classes’ essays. A few were on tee shirts, and stuffed animals, and trophies. I explained the assignment discussing the rocks I collected on my spring break vacation to visit my friend in Monterey; what a joy it was to walk on a beach in the company of a friend without any responsibilities for a week; no wonder those stones make me feel good. I hope this assignment makes them feel good too. I mean who wouldn’t want to spend a few hours thinking about your favorite tee shirt and where you got it and what it means to you?

Dating: No boys on the horizon. Apparently someone emailed me from match.com, but I didn’t want to spend $30 to sign up to read the email that I have already decided would not be worth the investment. And may I say that I posted on match more than a year ago and this is the first email in just about forever. It could be a good sign, but it could also be a waste of time, hope and money and I don’t feel like wasting two of the above. I broke down and checked out Craig’s List, and emailed one man; but it turned out that I had met him for one coffee date. His response to my repeat email was that I should be ashamed of myself. (He knew of my blog, where I had written that he had been nice but in a worse home situation than mine, so no thanks.) So I really think that I shall stay away from there. Lurkers, there are too many lurkers.

And that is about a week in the life of.

Apparently I have been stuck in fashion exile at the high school for too long, because I went into Washington DC today and saw that the world now wears knee-high boots. Not only are they wearing knee-high boots, but they are tucking their pants into their boots. As I pondered the impossibility of getting my calves into those boots, the realization that a layer of pants would also need to go in made me want to run back to the safety of the suburbs. These were not boots with room, these were boots made of “stretch leather” which would never stretch to fit me. Glad I never get a chance to notice how out of fashion I am, because then I would also feel how out of shape I am. And that would be bad, especially since I have not had a potato chip since my epiphany at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains more than a month ago.

I was temporarily interrupted from watching the booted ladies pass by my car as my daughter and I waited until it was time to try to crash a Bat Mitzvah party (explanation coming) as a woman in black pleather tights sauntered past. Not only did she have on pleather tights (yes I said it), but apparently when wearing this garment there is no need to have a shirt or topper to the tush. Yes, her shirt and sweater and scarf ensemble did not go beyond her hips and if you are not familiar with female anatomy, let me notify you that that left those parts of her body that she has in common with Sarah Palin covered by a thin layer of pleather. Did I mention that they were black and that she looked very good in them, if that’s your thing, of course. And I am big enough (in more ways than one) to admit that. But really, pleather tights? Who comes up with these ideas? Please, please, don’t let this fashion statement trickle down to Target because I don’t think the world needs more pleather-tighted women on the march.

My daughter and I are wimps, we chickened out on crashing the elegant Bat Mitzvah at the fancy hotel (even if it was a daytime affair and so not officially “fancy” according to my mother, the maven). We were going to hear the DJ who will be dj-ing at her much less plush party in two weeks, but we’ll have to go on the info we garnered from outside the room and from previous discussions and his picture. (Yes, my daughter had no second-thoughts on going for the young, but very hot male DJ, instead of the 30-something slightly overweight female DJ). And, no, Wolf Blitzer won’t be there for my daughter as he was for that girl. Oh well, life goes on.

Another insight from our day in DC: my daughter has no conception of what it means to find a parking spot, since she is a burbian. I parked down the block from the hotel and she had the nerve to look at the address and note that rather than parking in front of 4300 we were in front of 4400. I just looked at her, and ached for her knowing that she would never have a true sense of accomplishment at finding a good parking place. How could I have failed in not making her understand the geometry of parking?

From the party, we drove through the Saturday hordes in Georgetown and then onto the ever-present traffic in that part of Virginia which is not part of the “real” Virginia and is, in fact, communist, to take my daughter to a Bat Mitzvah party to which she was invited.

While she was there I went to the mall across the way (also in the not “real” part of Virginia) to see if I could find a magic dress that would make me look like I did twenty years ago. Alas, they had sold out. So I guess I’ll keep the dress I got last week and succumb to getting a modern-day girdle to suck in some of my stuff so that I could look almost ready for pleather.

From the Mail Online, October 17:

“Madonna is building an extraordinary divorce case against Guy Ritchie, claiming he was a cruel and verbally-abusive husband who would belittle and ridicule her in front of others.”

“Her lawyers say that 40-year-old Ritchie's comments made Madonna feel worthless, unattractive, unfeminine, insecure and isolated during their eight-year marriage.”

“After a period of time, Madonna says the constant put-downs created a distance between them and that she felt totally isolated in the marriage. That's when the love started to die and when their sex life also suffered badly.'”

Can I just say: Oh My God! Is no one safe? Even taking into consideration that she and her lawyers are preparing her custody case and are building her husband up as an abusive man—Oh My God! Madonna claiming that she was verbally abused. Is no woman safe? Or, why are so many men incapable of dealing with strong, independent women—one at a time, of course?

Ladies, there’s a reason why there’s a ceiling above us in the work world, it’s because it’s there at home. Hubby Bubby must have his ego coddled when he gets home. What about us? I wonder how many more men get their meals served to them when they come home compared to the number of women who benefit from the same treatment—both of them after a day at work? And I don’t want to hear about some division of labor where he mows the lawn and she cooks. There is a huge difference between something that is done daily to something that is done occasionally.

Today at lunch in the teacher workroom a teacher in her mid-twenties complained (in her upbeat way) about her 30-something boyfriend enjoying the dinners she prepares but finds no available time to reciprocate. No, I won’t say that this is a case of "meal abuse," but the scales are surely not balanced, and it has been percolating in her, otherwise she never would have mentioned it in such a public forum. (Twelve English teachers who can facilely turn a brief episode into a telling anecdote is surely a dangerous place to reveal secrets.)

And we have a similar situation in politics. What are the attack ads and negative comments if not a form of verbal abuse writ large? But I will not dwell here except to say that calling someone names when you are 40 is as bad as when you were 10, only when you’re 10 it’s called being a bully but at 40 and 70 it’s called politics. I guess it’s the bullies who are able to bully themselves ahead.

But back to Madonna. Poor, poor Madonna. I mean who could she turn to for support? (No, not Victoria’s Secret.) Where does someone who is an icon turn for help? But come to think of it, I am an icon too. Don’t my children see me as an icon? Didn’t I have to pretend the verbal abuse from my ex-husband away for a while, as if confronting what was being said to me in front of them would diminish my status in their eyes. It took a while to realize that the very act—in their presence—was enough, already, to lose some of my status; status that I could only get back when I confronted or stood up to my abuser, my EX-husband.

My “nothing,” “ugly,” “fat,” “leech,” “useless friends and family” is like Madonna’s “worthless, unattractive, unfeminine, insecure and isolated.” Peas in a pod, the two of us. But, no, unless the pod can contain the millions of women who are abused—verbally, emotionally, physically. In Virginia, where I live, a husband can verbally abuse his wife with impunity; there is no law that restricts what a man says to his wife, except to threaten her life (glad they have that caveat). I sent letters to the editor to the Washington Post about verbal abuse, but they didn’t think it was important enough to cover (that was a day after a woman and her children were killed by her ex-husband who had been emotionally and verbally abusive); meanwhile, every time I publish a post here or at places such as Midlife Bloggers or Blogher or iVillage about verbal abuse, there are too many responses from fellow sufferers—past and present.

Enough. Guy—and guys—zipper it! If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all because words hurt. Words hurt and betray and wound.

Madonna, if you need an understanding shoulder to cry on, I’m here for you.

I’m sitting at my dining room table reading comments to a posting on blogher (The Shift of the Mommyblogger) about mommy bloggers and mothers who blog and how we adjust how much we say about our children depending on their age and our concerns for their privacy and right to their own lives and their right to a relatively humiliation-free adolescence (as if that’s possible with blogger-moms). And as I read the comments that have accrued during the day, my younger daughter comes downstairs and sits on the couch near where I sit.

She starts to do her homework, after having woken up from a big girl nap (she’ll be 13 soon) because she stays up too late and occasionally needs a nap to catch up (she surely is my girl). Her new phone rings (yes, I got her a fancier phone than mine, but not nearly as expensive as the ones she had been eyeing)—it is her BFF. Now that’s a shock.

But the tone, the tone of the call is not giggly or conspiratorial (yes, they have gotten in trouble at school for their school-girl pranks). There’s a “really” and some actual listening going on. Then she says she has to go and they hang up.

She turns to me and tells me that another friend’s mother just died. And I stop breathing for a moment. And she says, “I feel really bad for her. She was really close to her mother.” And after some “oh sweetie” insight from me, she says “I bet she won’t be at school for the rest of the week.” And we pause; I say that “her life will never be the same again,” and we pause again. But that is as much as she can take, because she asks for dinner and goes to watch Hannah Montana. But I know that this is in her, will stay in her. A friend of hers died last year after a lifetime of fighting cancer and every time we were in temple she would say his name and ask people to pray for him.

Life can be shocking in how it stops us in our moppy paths and forces us, even if for a moment, to create an ethereal connection with someone we never knew, with people we never knew we needed to care about. My heart goes out to her friend, and her friend’s father and family, and the mother for whatever it is that she felt as she left this life.

The beauty of life came back to my daughter and me a half hour after this. She complained that I didn’t know something, she complained that the pencil I gave her was not sharp enough and did not have an eraser. But I went over to her and told her that I love her. And her friend (BFF) just called to ask about homework.

And only I sit here, in a deadened mood, saddened by this woman’s passing, by a mother’s passing, by a daughter’s loss. And it occurs to me that maybe writing our blogs or our postings about our children is not only a legacy of who they were for them to look at when they are older or for us to remember, but they are a legacy of our love for our children. This is another way that we show we love them, by thinking about them, by bragging about them, by analyzing them, by mulling over their choices. Blogging about our children, no, it’s not invading their privacy, it’s invading ours.

So what else is new?

mr ex has taken the girls to see a movie, and I am home alone again. While I should be doing things (such as grading one last class set of autobiographies about the exciting lives of 9th graders and moving laundry from place to place), I am compelled to do nothing when the emptiness descends, or nothing that is visibly useful, or nothing that benefits anyone but myself. Yes, that’s it. When I am alone I feel compelled to be about me.

I don’t go to therapy. I don’t meditate. I don’t pray (at least not in the way that I think you’re “supposed to”). I don’t do yoga. I don’t find my center in a proscribed way. But as with everything else, I have managed to find my way. What I do is mentally wander. While doing that I might do the dishes. I might even dry the dishes and put them away, or just skip the drying step and put them away wet (it’s not that I have unlimited free time, any way, the dishes can dry themselves). At times I have even found myself sitting opposite my computer and reading and writing. But doing what I am supposed to be doing, perish the thought—that would be a waste of centering time.

Who can be centered when there are daughters around who always want me to do something for them, or want me to cease what I am doing, or want me to move from where I am? Who can be centered when there’s the presence of an ex-husband in the house? Who can be centered when time is not mine? So when no one’s around I soak up the sun, figuratively. I guess I could go outside and take a walk when it’s too draining inside, which I do sometimes, but often that feels like I am wasting time and not using time. And I want to be a user. I want to feel the deliciousness of each minute that is freely mine. Savor each minute as I would a touch on the small of my back. Savor each minute as I would a compliment that reaches into me and touches the internal small of my back. The deliciousness of being alone, when I know that I will be able to become centered, is beyond the sensation of the richest chocolate frosting licked from…

Did I say that my mind wanders at times?

* * *

Taking a break from me for a bit, I’d like to tell you about my neighbors and their dogs. We have lived drive to drive at the end of a four-house street for about six years, with a four month hiatus when they tried to sell their house (and they rented it to a family of home-schoolers in one of the best school districts in the country who let their guests park their cars on my lawn), to no avail. (I guess that is a sign of how bad things are: the husband is a real estate agent and he couldn’t sell his own home.) Anyway, onto discussing the three dogs that they have called theirs. 

When they first moved in they had an old lab and a young German shepherd, Sam. After the old dog wandered off a few times, they decided to get an electric fence. For some reason they only bought one collar. One would think that they would put it on the young German shepherd, and they did, for a while. But after the old dog wandered off again, they decided to put it on the old dog so that it wouldn’t wander off into the woods that run alongside our houses and just lie down and die. I guess the electric fence company was resisting selling them another dog collar.

So the old dog lived outside and in the garage. He had apparently become stinky in his old age. The young dog was at home, until they discovered that their youngest child was allergic to dogs. At that point he, too, barked the garage home. Responsibility for the dogs rested mainly on their somewhat mentally-challenged 10-year-old son.

One day as I was weeding (in the days when I cared enough to stop, unlike today when I care enough to notice, but not enough to bend down to pull), Sam wandered over and started sniffing me. Now, as someone who has grown-up in a petless home and with a dog-fearing mother I can safely say that the dog fears have been transmitted in my DNA. My dog, a Maltese, is just too small and too cute that he passes under all dog-fearing radars. Not so with Sam. I yelled. And the son came and got him, because the dog was not going back to the garage on his own.

Around this time the old dog did manage to crawl off and die. Perhaps they buried the collar with him, because it did not go on Sam.

By this time we feared going outside. Sam would be forever getting off his leash (I guess they didn’t realize that you need to hold the leash and not just put it on the dog) or go beyond the range of where he was supposed to stay on his own volition. He would be sniffing visitors, or causing visitors to stay in their cars. As my ex-mother-in-law commented, "isn’t that the Nazi dog" (German shepherds)? And that is the way he started making things feel down here at the end of the street.

That is until one morning at around five-thirty when Poops and I were walking up our street to get the newspaper. It was fall, it was dark, it was chilly. We were in our own little world: Poops was doing his smelling-peeing routine, and I was thinking about how clear the sky is, so I didn’t see Sam running up the street until he was right next to me, or rather Poops, who he was clearly more interested in. I screamed. “Get this dog!” And out of the darkness I could see the son running towards us.

“His leash slipped out of my hand” he stammered.

I was too shaken up to comment. Poops almost had a heart attack; he’s not overly fond of big black dogs since a few months prior he had been “greeted” so enthusiastically by a Rottweiler that was wandering freely around the neighborhood that a toe was broken and he needed to be in a little dog cast.

A week later a new home was found for Sam with someone who had experience training German shepherds.

Then came Walter, some kind of non-allergenic dog. No electric fences for him. Only a boy and his dog and a leash. Needless to say boy was constantly running around the neighborhood looking for his missing dog. When they moved back from their four-month hiatus it was without Walter.

I thought, good, they know that they can’t take care of a dog. But no, this morning I saw those orange electric dog-fence flags around their yard. Walter was back. Maybe this time they will figure out how to train him.

My only overt comment on my neighbors and their dog-caring abilities: if this is how they care for their dogs, I wonder what they’re doing with their children? And if one son riding his tricycle into my garage door is any evidence, I see no difference.

Back to me: Let’s all visualize a SOLD sign for my house!

* * *

Man in the Class (MiC) and I seemed to have found a groove this week; and even when we were “Mr’ing” and “Ms’ing” each other over the kids’ heads because we didn’t quite agree on what the other had said during class (okay, it was mostly me “Mr’ing him, but I am the teacher with experience), we were absolutely respectful of each other and the decorum we wanted to maintain in the classroom.

On Back to School Night I almost gagged when he told the parents that we both check our emails obsessively and that they shouldn’t be surprised to see a response at 2am—at this I lost my listener status and yelled out “not me.” I am surely trying not to do too much work from home this year; I need to maintain a separation of work and home. While the number of essays I grade makes me break this rule on occasion (Sunday mornings are usually my paper grading time), I really do try to maintain the separation. Perhaps because I really do see myself as a writer, I have never been 100% committed to any job: I was never my work.

But back to the classroom. There have been far too many deer in the headlights looks from 14-year-olds when they realize that there are implications for blowing off their homework. Yes, if you don’t do your homework 0’s will be inserted in the gradebook and the grade will reflect that, and not the fact that you had intended to do the homework, or that you left it at home, or that your printer broke, or that you, yes, forgot about it but would have done it. Do you not get it? I, of course, break with department policy and grant them a week to get things in; I mean who wants to see kids grounded for a lifetime after just the first month of high school? Surely not me.

I have four Asian girls with very similar first names; it took me a month to distinguish between the names and the girls. Every year there seems to be a name that repeats itself in a few classes, as is the case this year. And, for some reason those kids with the same name always look similar, making my life complicated in the “needing to distinguish each child for his uniqueness” way. 

On a truly positive note where I will ignore students from last year who did not say hello to me when they stopped by my room to pick up papers from last year, a couple of students did yell out to my class “she’s the best freshman teacher!” Yes!

I think that I will end this update on that note. Have a great week.

* * *

Another year has begun, and with it another notification that a student’s father has cancer. Another year and another family drama that should be the purview of a soap opera and not the stuff of a child’s life. Another year and another student with a father deployed in a war zone, and another with a brother deployed. And yet, another year of kids who come to school everyday, leaving aside their family dramas, big and small, and expecting to be met with respect, every day. Resilience, it’s putting on the happy face and trying to let it permeate the soul without even trying. Resilience, it’s believing, no, it’s knowing, that tomorrow will be a better day.

* * *

My mother has informed me that her leg spasm was not, in fact, a result of my venting to her. She said this in both a detailed phone message (they are usually very brief, my mother is not a technology maven, so she really was stating and giving a message) and then again, when I spoke to her the next day. I appreciated her saying this; I take it as her way of saying: “keep bringing it on daughter, I can deal with your venting, I’m here to hear the venting, and I will continue in my role as Vent-Receiver-in-Chief, leg spasms or not.”

A good friend of mine has been telling me for years that not only is she unable to vent to her mother, but if anything, her mother vents to her. She is the ventee not the venter. While she can analyze why this is the situation, you can still tell that this pains her, she has no one with whom she can mentally curl up and be mothered. Most of her life has been that way: being the responsible child compared to her mother who needed mothering, and the responsible sister cum mother, too.

I think about this because the two of us talk a lot about our daughters and how we are interacting with them. (Her daughter is 17, and mine are 17 and 12.) It seems that the way we have been daughtered determined how we have mothered our daughters. My more laid-back approach surely is a reflection of my understanding that they know I will be there to catch them and to coddle their egos and bruised selves whenever necessary, because that has been my experience. But rather than think that she is better mother than I am (why, why do I do this to myself all of the time) perhaps her more intense involvement in her daughter’s life is because that is what she would have wanted—needed, even—and so she is giving her daughter what she was lacking. It is not that one style is right, or even better, but it suits our own experiences.

Perhaps there are parenting styles like there are body types. And maybe the whole nature vs. nurture argument is passé, since how we were nurtured was determined by nature (that gene pool that we got from mom and dad) which naturally resulted in a certain type of nurture.

My friend has told me that whenever her mother brings a gift for her home, it always comes with a companion doilie, or rather a piece of antique lace. The bitterness with which she talks about the doilies and her mother’s concern for not scratching the surface of a table is especially evident after a discussion of how her mother is, well, unavailable for venting. The doilie and her mother’s attention to it is what she would have liked. And so to ensure that her daughter does not have the bitterness from mothering that she has, she has become a doilie for her daughter.

My mother still insists on using coasters. Me, I never use them (except at her house, I don’t want to get one of her looks). If you get a ring you get a ring. Life goes on.

* * *

This morning, while reading far too much election-related material and attempting to do some writing in between commenting on new and “old” revelations at my favorite café, my friend, who is separated from the virtual twin of my ex-husband, came in. She was full of more heart-wrenching drama of the tribulations of what her nasty husband is doing to her and her daughters. Tears were barely stopped by coffee shop napkins; my goodness, how do our lives devolve to such a state that in our forties we wonder, we honestly wonder, how life could have gotten so bitter. And we wonder, too, if it will get better.

And thanks to comments from readers of this blog, I was able to transmit some of your encouraging comments to her. I was your vessel to tell her: yes, it will get better; yes, this will end; yes, you are loved by your friends; and, yes, you deserve better. I thank you for making me believe that for myself, and for her, and for all of the women who are drowning in tears wrought by their once-loved ones—listen, listen to your friends and let their words drown out those spewing from the evil man in your life.

* * *