“He was so upset that you didn’t come to his Orange Belt test.”
My ex-mother in law, looking perfect as she always has, this time in a bright yellow jacket and Gucci print shirt, left the clan I used to belong to and made her way toward me across the stuffy elementary-school gym. Her gentle jab was correctly put; I’d forgotten that Jake had a taekwondo test and, in the rush of my own life, hadn’t made it to the ceremony.
I muttered something confused, and for the thousandth time I questioned my decision, years ago, to let him go.
He’d come over to me first, after his band had finished its perfect versions of the themes from “Star Wars” and “Batman.” He hugged me, lightly and without emphasis, at 11 years old so tall that in an embrace the top of his head touched my nose, wearing chinos and a light blue dress shirt and tie, and new shoes. He wanted to know if I could pick him up a day early this weekend. I had to disappoint him — he may have had the day off on Friday, but that’s because it’s conference day, and as a teacher I have to work. And even though I’m pretty sure he wanted to be at my house so he wouldn’t have to go to day care, I still thought, “Why can’t I do this one thing for my child who, tonight, seems almost a stranger?”
Anyone who saw me at the concert probably assumed I was Jake’s grandmother. I was 42 when he was born, and despite my mother’s warnings that there would be doors closed to me because of his birth, I was ecstatic with this one more unexpected chance at motherhood. But things rarely work out the way you imagine. My marriage, always a little rocky, fell apart after he turned 3. Ever since, he’s shuttled between his father’s house and mine.
I tried the single mom thing, then gave him up for half the time. Finally, I gave his custody away almost completely.
My mother was right: Once I was no longer bound by the strictures of full-time motherhood, my life expanded and doors opened. I took the energy once used to entertain, discipline, feed, and clean up after a small child, and renovated a house, lost 70 pounds, completed triathlons and marathons, acquired a wide circle of friends, became a writer.
Of course, that wasn’t why I signed the papers giving his father the decision-making power that the presence of our child for all but two weekends a month, winter and spring break, and four weeks during the summer gives him.
I did that because I simply wasn’t very good at being a single mom of a single child.
Perhaps it was the age difference between us, or that I was too old to cope, non-stop, with his conversation and interests. Or maybe the one-hour commutes to the school at his father’s end of town finally got to me. I tell myself, too, that because my ex remarried, he and his wife are a couple, and can better share the parenting load.
Those are all excuses. Fact is, I like my freedom, and I pay for it with a hefty child support check. And so what if I have to explain endlessly at parties and parent-teacher conferences and staff meetings that although I have a fifth-grade son, and I am not a drug addict or a child abuser, he lives largely with his father and stepmother. I’m a big girl. And neither Jake nor I would ever give up our annual ferry ride across Puget Sound, our picnics in Red Rock Canyon Park, our trips to zoos and museums, or our cross country road trip last summer.
But at band concerts and award ceremonies and year-end graduations, I feel like a strange bird. He is of me, that beautiful, slender boy with the curly hair and bottomless eyes and questioning soul; but he is no longer mine. And as I watched him tonight, walking next to his handsome father and pretty stepmother, carrying his instrument, I again realized the price of my decision.
Eva Syrovy (evasyrov@msn.com) of Colorado Springs is a special education teacher at the middle school level. She blogs at evasyrovy.blogspot.com.
