Last week's blog explored whether or not my kids could be happy with divorced parents. I hacked up a few hundred words of ruminated rumblings, and ultimately came to the conclusion that yes, they could be something that -- at the very least -- resembles happiness despite the fact their parents live across the street from each other. So that's it: we all live happily and non-nuclearly ever after, right? Not quite.
Just when I think things are chugging forward like Thomas the Tank on a particularly Useful Day, I get flattened like a penny on a rail.
Yesterday, my son came home from the first day of school and seemed his normal self: excited but a little unsure. Luckily, he's in class with his best buddy, his teacher is a family friend and, best of all, he got a pin with his name next to a bumble bee. I asked him a few questions, and although he was brief in his responses, I decided it was a Good Day.
And then the teacher called.
She told me the kids were asked to draw a picture of their family, and then they went around the room, sharing their work and introducing their stick-figured family members. However, when it was my son's turn to share, he passed.
I felt the blood drain out of my face or the blood rush into my face or maybe both at the same time. I wanted to disconnect the call. I wanted to cry. Instead, I thanked her for telling me about it and asked for her to continue to report anything -- anything -- that suggested my son might be struggling with our transformed family.
For the record, his teacher couldn't have been kinder with her words. She told me that she, too, has a "different" family because she is both a mother and a stepmother and that she is very supportive of our family structure. I appreciated this immensely.
After the call, my son and I started to make soup for dinner, and while he was rolling out the matzoh balls, I asked him about the family picture.
"Don't want to talk about it," he said.
So I let it go for a few hours, the whole time feeling like The Den's Crappiest Mama Bear. I asked him about it again later.
"I just felt shaky," he finally said.
I wasn't exactly sure what this meant, but I didn't like it. I tried to get more info, but unfortunately, I never did get him to say any more about the picture. However, I reminded him that it was OK to draw picture of me and his dad on the same page, even though we didn't live in the same house. I told him we were, and always would be, his parents and his family. This seemed to please him, although I'm not really sure.
"Tomorrow I am going to draw robots," he said, confirming that one is never certain what a 6-year-old is gleaning from intense conversation.
We ended this conversation without resolve, even though I wanted to feel like we solved and healed and grew from the experience. Maybe a little, but this is going to take a long time. This changing process is not comfortable for most people, myself included, but most real life situations -- unlike TV shows and films -- resolve in bits and chunks. Slowly, and at times, making us a little shaky.
Molly Snyder started writing and publishing her work at the age 10, when her community newspaper printed her poem, "The Unicorn.” Since then, she's expanded beyond the subject of mythical creatures and written in many different mediums but, nearest and dearest to her heart, thousands of articles for OnMilwaukee.
Molly is a regular contributor to FOX6 News and numerous radio stations as well as the co-host of "Dandelions: A Podcast For Women.” She's received five Milwaukee Press Club Awards, served as the Pfister Narrator and is the Wisconsin State Fair’s Celebrity Cream Puff Eating Champion of 2019.
