I have only two orbiting stars. A daughter who is close and becoming a smart and mature woman on her way in months to her career as an ER Nurse. A son who is less. Takes three days to text me back his work schedule for Thanksgiving. Because, fuck you. Fights against himself with almost every habit and action and then regrets it and feels ashamed. A shame spiral.
A few weeks ago my daughter was returning from a work-study program in the Philippines on the same day my son had accepted a bit of hangtime for his 24th birthday. By early evening, the three of us were in my house. I ordered everyone’s favorite pizza, invited everyone to a movie, and lost my son to the screen porch and his cigarettes. Just like his hibernation over the Summer, chain smoke and blast random podcasts into his skull with high volume and noise canceling to mute the outside world. Unfortunately, it does not mute the mad thoughts. He’s mad. Really mad. And his parents are the source of all evil. Not very original.
He declined the movie. Left the pizza untouched. He was too immersed with his noisy mind. He did take two slices back to the sober house with him for later. The next day his mom, her husband and I had a meeting with my son’s coach.
“He told me, he doesn’t feel like he’s part of a family.” His coach is updating us.
There’s no way to counteract that darkness. I spent the entire day with him. He declined to engage with me and his sister. During a pause in the movie, I took him a tall glass of bubbly water and electrolytes. He had turned on the green halo of LED lights around the top of the porch. It was like old times. Isolated in a beautiful spot trying to disappear the rest of the world.
We are his tormentors. “Fuck heads,” is the term he uses. We are also his only lifeline. The problem is not his anger and isolation, those are symptoms. My son has never learned to deal with pain. His mom shielded him from life. Allowed him to get to 23 without ever having a job. I’m not off the hook, but I was stripped of my authority and 70% of my time with my son, when he was nine. The formative years, the time to discipline and boundaries were spent in a house that did not value emotional connection. A mom and step-dad both so far onto the spectrum of OCD and narcissism that my kids got very little hopeful or positive modeling about life, about being an adult.
In some poor choices, over the course of his teens, my wife coddled, protected, and meshed with her son, but not from a close emotional bond. She always wanted to be in control. As her depression and dysfunction bloomed she tried to counteract the pain with being too permissive. No boundaries. Also, no emotional warmth. Entertainment became going to the mall. Mom had a retail therapy habit that she gave to both my kids.
I’m forgetting Sid and Hunter, the rescue kittens. They have entered my life, home, love and are teaching me about care and affection. My daughter said, “They obviously drew the pet lottery, landing you.”
These kittens are showing me how I was as a parent too. Excited and enthusiastic about putting down good meals, rough-housing, jumping on the bed, exploring, and rolling in a ball of fur and kisses. I surrounded my kids with hugs and laughter while I was still their full-time dad. When I was removed the place got much more dark. In an attempt to counteract the sorrow, my ex-wife did stupid shit. The biggest blunder was allowing my son, when he was a junior in high school, to begin having his girlfriend sleep over on the weekends. No job to help pay for his fancy clothes. No responsibility to pay for gas or insurance. And was being allowed to sleepover with his girlfriend. In high school?
His brain was not ready for that kind of intimacy. Sex is one thing, fleeting, in frequent, novel. Sleeping the night together is a bit more intimate. He began to think that he “slept better when I’m with a girl.” It is a consistent refrain even today, as he points to any reason other than his behavior about why he can’t sleep much. His mom was providing zero comfort, warmth, or connection, so she farmed it out. The string of girlfriends came to and end with his car crash and his breakup with a girl “in recovery” who told him he was too intense for her. His addiction threatened her own recovery.
Now, he lives in a sober house, pees in a cup on Sundays, and goes to a job at Nordstroms selling men’s casualwear. He is going to learn to regulate his own sleep. The job keeps him almost within tolerance of being an adult. But he’s furious. He’s two classes away from a college degree in computer science. The end of school is near and he’s floundering on the edge of the unknown. He imagines the CS degree will provide him with a job. He’s got another awakening ahead.
He is not taking any steps at enrollment that isn’t forced on him by his coach. He is fighting even his own future. He’s been written up twice at his job. His sober house is about to put him on a 7-day notice. And if he gets kicked out, I guess we find a different sober house. It was not healthy for me to have him in my house doing nothing but sleeping and smoking and eating my occasionally offered meals. He was a ghost of silent fury. If he is booted from his current living situation, I suppose he will need to find another sober house. If he loses his job, he will need to find another one. Nothing is easy. Nothing, not one step, is being taken without constant prodding by his coach. He’s on thin ice of his own making, and he’s smashing at the sustaining surface with a hammer. He is not taking any action to help himself, merely blaming his “fucked up parents” for his troubles.
I try to turn that over in my mind. The divorce. Losing me. Disconnection fostered by his mom’s hatred of me. Um, for the divorce she asked for? She demonstrated for him, over the course of his early teens, how to shoot yourself and then blame others for your own pain. My ex-wife was written up by my daughter’s school for tardiness and absences, two years in a row. I’d say she was struggling. I’m imagining he curses carried a lot of hate and anger toward me, the divorce, and how disappointed she was with her own life.
Her happiness is no longer part of my responsibility. In fact, neither is the happiness of my son and daughter. BUT…
Parents must show their kids how to handle difficult situations. Even in the crisis of divorce, one of us rolled with the punches, set up a new home, brought love, grandmother, cousins and my sister into the mix. My ex-wife grew dark and even more furious. Perhaps this is where my son learned this inner fury, even when directed at his behaviors.
Walking across Houston, celebrating my daughter’s 22nd birthday, I said to her, “I’m having a peak moment, right now. This is the end of your college days and the beginning of something amazing. What’s next for you? I am so happy to be here celebrating you.” We strolled with her arm looped into mine, just as I would do when walking with my mom. My daughter knows how to be close, and knows how to accept tenderness and affection.
“You’re the single most important person on the planet,” I said, earlier over a fancy steak dinner. “Ditto,” she replied.
We enjoy each other’s company. After the divorce she and I struggled by the distance. When she got her a phone we would text a flood of hearts and “I love you, love you more” responses. We stayed close.
My son, being the man of the house now, sided with his mom and became her champion. She’d been wronged by the divorce. (We lied and told them it was a mutual decision to get a divorce, it was not.) And as she struggled and grew furious and dysfunctional, he was her support team. My daughter was more of a nurturer. My son stepped up to the role, the impossible role, of trying to make his mom happy.
She was not happy. And, it’s not our job to fix her. But sons of depressed mothers will struggle. I did the same thing with my mom and her depression. My mom was a morbid and catastrophic depressive. My ex-wife is an angry and vindictive depressive. My son has taken on her vitriol and blame. Her favorite phrase is to “frame” something. Basically, it means to craft a lie about what happened and get your lie straight. The irony, is this term came from our couples therapy. The frame is the part of the story you made up, that you tear down and try to seek what is real and what you made up. My ex-wife flipped the therapeutic term into a defense mechanism. The truth is not as important as protecting people’s feelings. Or, more relevant, protecting her from having to feel any feelings of guilt or regret.
Here we sail together. My daughter is about to have her own apartment, a real job, and a future she’s been working toward for a long time. My son is trying to get kicked out of his sober house, imagining that he will be rescued. His mom is worried.
To go to Houston, I had to leave my new kittens alone for two nights. When I got home yesterday they were a bit frantic. We’ve settled down again, back to a playful trio of cats. I imagine that I’m a large Totoro for them. They like putting up a purr fest on my chest while I’m reading at night. The roar of their happiness vibrations warms my heart. I think that’s why they purr to heal us. Heal each other. Heal themselves. I understand that my influence at making them happy is pretty rudimentary. I am here, I feed them, cuddle and pick them up. We are happy.
It’s sort of how I have been with my kids. Cuddle. Care. Offer an adventure. Embrace. Release. Provide another adventure opportunity until one or both of them accepts. That’s the story of a divorced dad. You have to make the offers, lots of them, and then let go of the result. If your kid is too busy to come see you, it’s not your fault. If they don’t want to go to dinner, see a movie, hang out, that’s normal. As a single parent, you stay loving and optimistic and offer something different. Their “no” is not a rejection, it’s a testament to their individual lives, their dreams, and their plans with friends.
My daughter and I express our happiness and connection with purrs. My son has no purr.
fear : god > next | index
