A Long Ride on the Hellish-Go-Round

So in spite of it all I had a delightful Christmas.

Scott and I opened a bottle of wine, laughed our heads off, exchanged lovely, meaningful gifts. He wrote me a beautiful card. Talked way past midnight. Made an effort to get to know each other as adults, and parents, and career people, and friends, as opposed to teenagers, and progeny and members of the marching band and college bound boneheads. And listened critically to each other's stories about our once happy marriages and how they little by little, year over year, incident after episode disintegrated to the point of bonds being put asunder. How we arrived at this place where only Facebook could connect our dots after so much disillusioned wandering of the Earth’s crust.

He did not seem like a stranger, even after looking like one for the better part of 30 years. Sure, I’d have stopped him on the street if I’d seen him – and did think about knocking on the door of his parents’ beach house when I’d walk past (not knowing they’d moved to another when I was still in college…) and would have been thrilled to have seen him at another of our friend Roger’s magnificent Christmas parties if Roger had been inclined to throw one once he found the love of his life and settled into married-no-party-throwing life. But none of that happened. At least not very often. And certainly not in the last dozen years.

Marriage and motherhood and moneymaking had consumed me. And on most days, I felt like I was challenged to put one foot reliably in front of the other without doing a face plant, and was silently and solitarily enduring the miseries of a marriage in disintegration. It's hard to reach out and find old friends when you don't have a friend in your marriage and reaching out would surely get your hand slapped.

Every day was the same: Get up, get groomed and dressed, get little people groomed and dressed while Daddy takes care of himself singularly and without distraction, pack lunches I’ve made or diaper bags I’ve packed and other essentials I’ve thought to bring into the car, and drive to the day care that I found and engaged to care for our children and/or the schools I dealt with teachers and principals about. Work all day accomplishing executive level achievements and cultivating meaningful, lucrative, important relationships, occasionally giving thought to what I’d need to do to get dinner on the table and what my sweet children might be doing while I toiled away at something I hoped would be rewarding, or what housework could be shoehorned into the fading hours of day, or what appointments the children might have that I’d need to attend before putting on my pajamas and checking backpacks and packing lunches. Give baths, comb out tangly hair, read stories and sing songs and play little learning games with each child to wind down their days before placing them lovingly into crib or bed with lovey toys and butterfly kisses and smooches on chubby, freshly washed cheeks before retiring to the kitchen to begin the prep for the next day’s round of Working Mom’s Hell. The only consolation being a glass of chardonnay while smearing peanut butter on bread that I’d cut into the shape of a heart or a smiley face.

Who would have known that Scott was on that same hellish ride too – and that when his second marriage seemed to be a far more horrible sequel to the first, and they were strangers in their own home, that he had started looking for me?