7: Ho Ho Ho
Originally emailed on Dec. 10, 1997
Hello there.
So Miss Munn, Junior Therapist in Training, says to me the other day, "How does it feel to have weekends without the boys?"
I said, "Well, I don't trust it. If Sam breaks up with Michael, who's to say he won't just revert to his old ways? The boys are enjoying being with their dad so much that I worry about what it will do to them if he drops the ball again."
Miss Munn said, "Ms. Reissinger, how does it feel to have weekends without the boys?"
I said, "I don't know what you mean."
She said, "I mean, what's it like to have two or even three days all to yourself?"
I said, "I get a lot done, and that feels good. I can concentrate on my homework, and clean up around the house without it being trashed again two minutes later. That's nice."
"Is anything else nice about it?"
"I don't know what you mean," I said.
"Louella," she said, and I knew she was getting serious because she violated the no-first-names policy, "I wonder if it feels good to you to have your kids go away for awhile."
I said, "I miss them when they're gone."
She said, "Of course you do, but do you also like it? Do you look forward to the weekends when you know they'll be with Sam and Michael?"
I said, "I don't know what you mean." But I do. She wants me to say I love it when the boys are away and the house is quiet and I can sleep in as late as I want and go to grown-up movies with Nona & Harriet. She wants me to say I like not being a Mom for a weekend and maybe I'd like it all the time. She's on a real anti-motherhood trip; she's thinking about her exciting career as a psychotherapist and she thinks kids would only get in the way of her doing exactly what she wants to do, and she's trying to get me to say I regret having kids because that will validate her feelings that she doesn't want them. I bet she feels guilty, selfish, because she doesn't want kids, and she wants me to say, "Oh, it's miserable to have children," because then she can smugly say to herself, "See how Louella is trapped by her children, living near the poverty level and going to school in a program she doesn't love just so she can make a living some day, having to think all the time, day in and day out, about what's best for the kids and what they need, never able to think about what she wants." Well, I'm not going to give her the satisfaction, no matter how hard she pushes or how craftily she tries to trap me. She doesn't understand how wonderful motherhood is, and she won't until she tries it, and this is just another way she's too young and too inexperienced to be a good therapist for an older person like me.
But Student Mental Health is all I can afford, and she does help me sometimes. If I can just avoid being caught up in her agenda, I'll be fine.
I'm enjoying Ed much more than I'm enjoying Miss Munn. We've been seeing each other almost three weeks now. I still haven't let him join us on a family outing, and I haven't let him sleep over, either, if you know what I mean, but we're seeing quite a bit of each other in little bits and pieces. It turns out he's doing his student teaching at Sam and Mark's school, so when I go to pick the boys up after school I sometimes drop in and say hello, and Ed usually calls in the evening to see how my day went. He's very thoughtful; he doesn't call just to talk about his day, though he does like to tell stories about the kids he's working with, but instead he always starts by asking about me. And instead of just saying, "How was your day," he asks, "How did your presentation go? Did you finally get that experiment to work in chem lab? Did Professor James return papers today? Is Sammy over his cold?" You know, as if he has been paying attention to my life, and cares about what I care about.
And he's not pushing me, although he claims to have had his eye on me for several months and he is "really hoping this will go somewhere." I'm not willing to gallop ahead; dating him hadn't crossed my mind until Harriet pointed out that she thought he was interested in me, and that wasn't long ago. Michael and Sam are moving fast enough for all of us, talking about moving in together and window-shopping for matching rings. Too much change too fast won't be good for any of us.
The boys go to their dad's this weekend, though, and Ed and I have plans for Friday night (dinner at Harriet & Nona's to "meet the family"), Saturday, and Sunday morning. This is the most time I've spent with him in one chunk, and, while I still don't plan to spend the nights with him, it feels like a big step forward to plan a weekend together instead of just a meal and a movie. So far he seems too good to be true (did I mention that last Sunday he filled my freezer with home-cooked thaw-and-heat meals because he knew this was exam week for me?), and I'm hoping to find a couple of flaws this weekend. I need to humanize him a little before I can let myself fall for him.
Harriet and I are planning Christmas together. I have the boys that day, but Sam wants to be with them, too, so we've decided to do a pseudo-family thing with everyone coming here for gift-opening and breakfast. Harriet is worrying about the breakfast menu. "I could make quiche, but everyone's had my quiche. And they've had my special buckwheat-blueberry pancakes, my home-baked muffins, and Harriet's Special Spicy Hot Cereal. What's left?" She's spending hours going through cookbooks, but I know where her desire to surprise everyone with something new is going: we're going to spend Christmas Eve rolling pastry paper-thin and buttering the layers. Nothing but home-made croissants will satisfy Harriet's need to be the super-chef.
I, on the other hand, am stressed about how to keep the kids from getting too materialistic when they've got Dad and his boyfriend trying to impress each other with how much they love the kids, Mom trying not to be outshone by Dad and his boyfriend, Grandma and Grandpa sure the poor little poverty-stricken darlings need one of everything to brighten their hum-drum lives, and Harriet and Miriam, whom I manage to keep pretty well in check eleven months of the year, sneaking out for toy-buying binges whenever I'm not looking. I caved in and let the boys register at Toys R Us even though I think children registering for the gifts they want is a revolting capitalistic perversion of familial love, and everyone has been diving on the registry like gulls on a garbage heap. When I picked up a copy last weekend to do some of my shopping, there was nothing left but crappy stuff like Lego blocks and crayons. I want the boys to know that money does not equal love, but that's a hard lesson for them to learn when every adult in their life is acting like it does, and when I find myself so afraid of looking chintzy on Christmas morning that I'm willing to participate whole-heartedly in the buying spree.
I hope your holiday season is a time of rest and spiritual renewal. If mine can't be, it would be a comfort to know someone's was.
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