by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
You’ve been telling me how to be a woman all my life. You, with your glittering perfection and your attractive bar of expectation and your promises for love and acceptance and significance, if I’ll just do this.
Just this being perfect. Just this juggling everything—home, love, family, career—and making it all look easy. Just this flaunting your definition of a perfect body.
I see your expectations in the eyes of my sisters. I see them in magazines, where models have hourglass figures and smooth skin and sculpted limbs. I see them in the heroines you splash in the plot lines of television shows and movies—those strong women who are always great business women and yet loving mothers and caretakers at home with their perfectly groomed and well behaved children.
I see your expectations everywhere, because, somewhere along the way, we all bought into your idea that perfect is synonymous with woman.
Perfect body, perfect life, perfect job, perfect careers, perfect husband, perfect home. Perfect, perfect, perfect.
The story you tell is an alluring one. That I could be loved and celebrated for being perfect is an attractive thought. That I could do it all and do it all well enough to call it easy is a daunting yet coveted dream. That I could be made to feel desirable for wearing a perfect body even after six babies have stretched and torn and marked this one is a lovely idea.
But what you don’t always say, what we have to often discover for ourselves in ways that feel disappointing and terrifying, and, sometimes, shameful, is that your story is no more than a pretty little lie.
Being loved and celebrated for a perfection that doesn’t exist is nothing more than being loved and celebrated for wearing a fake skin and fake smile and fake attitude that everything is just fine the way it is, even if it’s not. We reinvent ourselves, sharing only the parts we think the world will find worthwhile and beautiful, and our real selves with its thoughts and mistakes and black struggles are buried beneath the weight of a life that wears perfection like a shell but cannot hold up to the shaking storms. Hiding our imperfections means we lose, all around.
Doing everything and doing it all well is an impossible feat, so of course it will never look easy, of course it will never look simple, of course it will never look as wonderful as we’re promised it will look. Because there are always snotty noses to wipe and dishes to wash and toilets to clean and emails to send and a partner to please and time to give and papers to sign and work to do and hearts to mend and sleep. This kind of life, trying to find balance and make it look easy, will mostly make us want to sleep.
The perfect body, what might this look like? Glowing face, dolled-up eyes, unlined neck, stick-thin arms, perfectly symmetrical breasts, tiny waist, wide-but-not-too-wide hips, muscular-but-not-too-muscular legs, pedicured feet? Maybe more? Who gets to decide the dimensions of this perfect body? Men? Women? Unconfirmed masochists?
Your expectations are just like your story. Pretty little lies, all of them.
So I have come here today to tell you this, societal expectations: Thank you for your standard, but no thanks.
I QUIT.
I don’t need your dazzling ideal of what a real woman should be, because I know that who I am is a real woman. I am a real woman with my imperfection and my imbalance and my body that doesn’t look like all the magazines say it should. My sisters, with all their different pasts and all their different realities and all their different sizes, are real women, too.
We are much more than false realities and easy achievements and bodies that fit into our jeans today but may not tomorrow.
So what if our story holds some pits along its path? So what if we’re falling into those pits right this minute, because danger and disappointment and mistakes are often hard to see until you’re right down in the hole of them? So what if our lives don’t look like all those fairy tales because we have to work really hard at choosing love every single day?
So what?
So what if our career isn’t quite where it would have been had we not gotten married when we did or had kids when we did or just chosen to quit when we did? So what if our home has dust on every surface and dishes piled in a dirty sink and enough lint on the floor to clog four vacuum cleaners? So what if we just yelled at our kids because they were being really annoying and we just couldn’t take it anymore and then we had to apologize and agree that, no, it wasn’t the proper way to talk to each other?
So what?
So what if we carry a little weight around the hips because we really like chocolate and it’s coming up on Halloween and the holidays, and there’s really no point in trying to lose it now because it’s just a losing try? So what if we don’t every day painstakingly apply that makeup because we don’t really care about standing out in a crowd or being seen for the beauty we can paint on our skin? So what if we didn’t get around to working out today because the baby was a little fussy or a friend called and wanted to talk or we just wanted to sit out in the cool air of fall and soak it up while we could?
So what?
We’re tired of living up to your standards, society. So we’ll make our own.
The real story of our lives is way better than the fake one.
Today’s work is enough for today, even if we did absolutely nothing.
Forget the beholder, beauty is in the eye of us.
We will bare our imperfections with fear that steps around fear and shares those scary pieces anyway. We will do what we can, right now, today, without agonizing about what someone else is doing and how they’re doing so much more than we are. We will wear our yoga pants and our unbrushed-hair ponytails and our naked faces with pride, because we believe we are beautiful, and that’s all that matters.
We are woman. Hear us roar.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
We “met” long before we met. We “met” in all those emails we exchanged, back when you worked in downtown Austin and I spent my summer interning for the Victoria Advocate so I could live at home and save a little money before I went back to my third year of college. I used to go out on assignments, interviewing my subjects as quickly as I could and then returning to the office just so I could read the email I knew you’d send in the time I was gone. We talked about songs we liked and why and which part of the day was our favorite and why we didn’t like the contemporary Christian world so much anymore.
I’d already sworn off dating because of a serious relationship in high school that didn’t end well, but that summer, you were slowly prying my hands from the key that could unlock my heart.
By the time we were supposed to officially meet on the campus of Texas State University, I thought I already knew you in the deepest ways a person can know another. I thought we’d surely hit it off, because you seemed to be everything I’d ever dreamed of in a man. I thought we’d start something that would race toward forever, because the only piece missing was looking in each other’s eyes, and I wasn’t a shallow person. I didn’t care about looks, much. I just wanted to find someone who understood me and loved me anyway.
Or so I thought.
And then there you were, standing in front of the Quad two hours after we’d planned to meet, and I looked at your curly black hair and those round Harry Potter glasses and the smile that could disarm me in half a second, but the thing that grabbed me and shook me by the shoulders and scared the hope right out of me were those eyes. They could see everything. They could look into a soul and know all the light and all the dark that lived there. They could find those places I didn’t want anyone to ever see.
And so I did the only thing I could. I ran.
It’s a scary thing to be known. We think we want it, but then we start going over and over and over all those mistakes we’ve tried to forget and the pain we carry from other people’s mistakes, and we think maybe it would be better to hide it, because we’d be too much work. No one would want our baggage. No one would care enough to stick around after all that.
We spent the next year as just friends, because just friends could know each other but never really “know” each other. I kept unscalable walls in place so none of my friends had to find out I wasn’t perfect like I tried so hard to be. So they didn’t have to feel how much work I would be. So I didn’t have to be “that friend” no one really likes and hates to be around. You see, I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone with my insecurities and my scars and the beliefs that would not let go of my heels and tripped me every which way I turned.
But the only thing all that work did for me was keep me alone.
I guess maybe I realized that the night we hung out with our mutual friends a year later. I’d just gotten back from singing the national anthem at the college girl’s basketball game, all dressed up because one of the junior coaches, a man six years older than me, had taken me out on a few dates and I was telling him this very night that I just wasn’t all that interested in him. He liked to talk about sports. I liked to talk about poetry.
And I came back to my apartment feeling light and free, and then you were there, standing with our friends when I got out of my car. I took one look, and I fell hard. Something had changed. You were no longer boy but man. A man I remembered falling in love with over thirty-six emails during a summer internship.
We spent the night talking about your band and music and what you wanted to do with your future, and I didn’t have to talk about myself, so it was safe and good and lovely. And then there was that planned double date to see Sweet Home Alabama at the local discount theater, and you set me up so I ended up being a third wheel all night with my best friend and her fiancé. I thought it was all over then, that maybe I’d slipped in some little secret that made you think what I imagined everyone else thought: Won’t be able to fix that one.
So I pretended I didn’t care. I pretended like there were others—and it’s true there were. A student government president who had a future in politics and probably only liked the idea of me because I was a reporter, and how powerful could a politician be with a reporter wife? There was the boy on the baseball team who used me for tutoring in algebra and chemistry so he could get the homework answers and scrape by with a passing grade even though his test scores were appalling. There were the boys at our campus ministry, who liked the idea of me but had no clue who I was inside. None of them were you.
And then, late one night, you showed up at my office door, where I was combing through the paper one final time before sending it to print. You had to wait to talk, because others were waiting on me and my editing, and then, finally, when the paper was free of every mistake I could possibly find, we left the office and you told me you didn’t just want to date me, but you wanted to marry me, because you’d seen my face on your walk home when you were thinking about your future, years down the line. That first weekend we made good on our date and spent the morning watching a sun that never rose but stayed behind clouds and then ambled along the Riverwalk hand-in-hand, and I drove home so you could fall asleep in the middle of one of my sentences. It didn’t matter, really. I would have a lifetime of talking.
Six weeks later there was The Majestic Theatre, where you took me to see The Nutcracker Ballet and I wore a red dress and you wore a tux, and you pulled me up on stage after all the dancing was over and popped the question and everyone in the audience shouted “What did she say?” because everyone loves a love story that begins like that one.
Ten months later was the wedding and the rain and all the crying I did before I could even put on my makeup, because this was the only chance I’d get to have that magical outdoor wedding by the lake, and we had to bring it back inside to that old historical church that held more history than we did. There was the honeymoon in the most magical place on earth—Disney World—and the way we walked all those beautiful streets with our hands held tight and how people beckoned us to the front of lines because they could just tell—they could just tell—that ours was going to be a good love story. There were those first nights in a hotel and the hands and the kisses and the love that spread its way to every inch of our skin.
Now there have been years, twelve of them, each taking a different turn in this love story. Maybe some of them haven’t turned out exactly the way we thought, like the third year where we spent time in a place that made us both miserable so we came running back home, and the seventh one that held a forever grief of losing a baby girl, and the eleventh one that carried such instability and security in terms of economics and provision and how much of us there is to go around.
But some of them have turned out so much better than we ever dreamed, because there was the first one, where we had steady jobs and young, hip friends and dates every Friday night. There was the tenth one, where we hardly had any money but we had enough to go back to that magical place where our marriage had first begun, even if it was only for a couple of days. There is this twelfth one, when we are living into a new definition of hope.
So even though we’ve seen ups and downs and pain and pleasure all in equal measure, there is not a moment I would have changed. Not one. Because all of them were spent with you, and even after all this time, I would still choose you.
It doesn’t matter that we are twelve years older than we were when we first stood in front of two hundred people and promised our love, you reading a poem from memory, me reading from six notecards. It doesn’t matter that we have become completely different people today. I loved who you were then, and I love who you have become.
Sometimes we love each other well, and sometimes we just don’t, but even that doesn’t change the force of our love. It’s a mysterious thing, this love. It means that in those moments when we think the other is quite possibly the most horrible person in the world, we stay. It means that when we can’t stand the sight of each other because we’ve never been so mad in our lives before, we stay. It means that when the other least deserves kindness and forgiveness and love, we give it and we stay.
Love doesn’t look like roses and fairy tales and stimulating conversation all the time (though there are pieces that do). Sometimes love looks like puke you have to clean up in the middle of the night, because one of you can’t really handle this side of parenting. Sometimes love looks like a dark comedy, because one of you is sick now and the other is one on six, and those six are cutting with scissors and scribbling on a library book and running out the door he’s not supposed to open and asking for more milk and sliding down the stairs in a box and trying to get your attention so he can whine about how he didn’t have his technology time today and just getting dinner on the table feels like winning the Trojan War. Sometimes love looks like planning the week’s meals in the car—the only time you can hold a decent conversation, as long as the kids are listening to Disney songs or anything Taylor Swift.
Love is made of every day, every minute, every second, and therein lies the secret for why I would still choose you: Because you have loved me well every moment you’ve had. Your love has knocked me to my knees sometimes, and they get all bruised and a little scarred, maybe, but your love also picks me back up again. It lifts me to a greater height. It lets me fly.
I would choose you again because of your love, because you love without condition, because you love me just for me. You have touched every corner of the dark with your love, and there is no greater gift than this.
There is no greater gift than you. Happy anniversary, my love.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Dear 21-year-old me,
I know where you are. It’s where you always are.
You are sitting inside your office at 200 Old Main, where you’re waiting for the designer to finish laying out the newspaper so you can edit it one final time before it goes to press. You’re tired and a little grumpy because it’s already 2 a.m., and you have class in 6 hours. You do this three nights a week, and it starts wearing on you after a while. I haven’t forgotten.
You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you that in 10 years, you’d be a managing editor once again, and not just for a college newspaper.
But I didn’t come here to talk about me. I came here to talk about you.
I have learned much in the years stretching between you and me and will learn still more as the years roll on, but I want to share my wisdom gained so far, so that maybe you can experience freedom earlier than I did.
You’re probably thinking, right this minute, about that B you got in your creative writing class last semester. It bothers you like almost nothing else ever has, and it will for a while. But it won’t bother you forever because you will learn this: One professor with an overly inflated ego saying you’ll never write well does not mean you’ll never write well.
You’ll come against all kinds of opposition in your life, so many people who doubt you and what you have to offer, and you will push through that opposition and surprise them all. Every time. Because you are strong and focused and pretty damn amazing, even if you cannot see that right now from where you sit, hands frozen by the winter sliding through cracks in those 100-year-old windows.
Waiting in that solitary room gives you plenty of time to think, doesn’t it? And you think of your father often, because you left that spring break visit a year ago on not-so-great terms.
That wound, it needs to be healed, so let me tell you something: Your father did not leave because of you, so stop trying to prove yourself exceptional. You are good enough just as you are. Good enough to write, good enough to dream big, good enough to make it all the way to the top, if that’s what you want.
You work hard for those grades, but they do not define you, so stop obsessing over that B in creative writing like it’s a great black spot on your perfect record. You comb this paper with editor-in-chief eyes, tired but efficient, but its perfection is not the perfection of you, so stop feeling like such a failure when a mistake becomes glaring in the light of the morning printing. You run six miles a day and eat salad and cans of green beans, but skinny does not equal beautiful, so stop killing yourself trying to look like you think you should look.
You are beautiful. I know it’s hard to believe, but you are. In another four years, your body will stretch and grow and tear to deliver new life into the world, and you will see it then, the beauty you carried all along.
That boy you think you love, he is not The One. The One is coming, and it will be soon, but he, with his leading-on ways and his divided heart and his take-you-out-only-when-he-needs-some-tutoring-or-test-answers habit, is most definitely not The One. He will show you off to his friends at the games because you’re a pretty girl who sings the national anthem, and he wants to say he knows someone like you, but he does not care for your heart like The One who is coming will. So don’t waste one more second of your time or one more corner of your heart dreaming of that sounds-like-a-reporter last name. The One coming will make you feel like no one else has ever made you feel, because he looks you in the eye like you have something important to say, like you contribute more than just beauty to the world.
Enjoy these days. I know you’re carrying a full load, juggling those five writing-intensive courses while you wear the hats of editor-in-chief and substitute teacher, but soon you’ll be planning a wedding on the side, too. And this is all vital practice for when you become a full-time working mother. Appreciate your time alone; it’s a luxury. You will understand this in four years.
I know you see that man walking up the stairs to class, his stick clicking the way, and you have to look anywhere else but at those feet climbing stairs blind, because the sheer determination and will to achieve in the face of difficulty is just…
And I know you read Shakespeare aloud in class and your voice fractures for the emotion of it, and you pretend to cough so they won’t all notice…
And I know you watch that old teacher nearly bent double with age, who bikes all the way down the road from Austin, and I know you feel the emotion of that persistence because your fingers shake when you’re typing the story, and you close your office door so no one will be the wiser.
Stop trying to hide all these big emotions. This is who you are, an emotional wreck most of the time, and that’s OK. The world needs your big emotions because it needs someone to care. You care deeply, and sometimes that can change the world.
Don’t worry so much about what you’ll do after graduation. I know that’s easy for me to say because I know all the job offers that come, and I know how you’ll spend those months with the Houston Chronicle and then those years with the San Antonio Express-News, and I know all the fascinating people you’ll meet who will infuse your life with rich stories and deep wisdom. Your life will be a series of adventures, and you will learn that seasons are fluid and rhythmic, that nothing is ever written in stone, except what is written on your heart, that both the expected and unexpected changes hold the same beauty—those blissful months when you think you might be walking on clouds are just as beautiful as those jobless months that set you on the writing path and see you cut back creatively so you steward better.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. I know you love to learn and want to do the very best you can do, and I know you value trying hard for everything. But lighten up. It’s OK to miss one of those morning runs every once in a while. It’s OK to be late to work every now and then, those days when traffic bottles and parking places run low and your car won’t start so you have to walk instead of drive. It’s OK to take the tram and forget to get off because you’re so deep in Shakespeare’s As You Like It.
When you bake a cake for The One, and it falls apart, it’s OK. He’s not going to take back that engagement ring because he just discovered you don’t really like to cook. When you forget your key and your roommates forget about your call to request they don’t lock the front door and you’re stuck outside in the rain, it’s OK. The One will climb two stories and break into your patio door and open the front for you, and he likes showing you this hero side.
When you let that distasteful cartoon slide even though your gut says no but the editorial staff hails “free speech,” it’s OK to stand by your decision when the hate mail comes flying. Don’t take it personally. They don’t know you and what you stand for. And, anyway, it’s good practice for when you’re doing your own writing and the haters start hating. Your thin skin will never grow thick, but you will learn how to handle the criticism. Eventually.
Remember to laugh at yourself. When you trip on those stairs and don’t even try to catch yourself because you took some allergy medicine before going to class and your head is full of fog, laugh at yourself instead of hiding your face in burning shame. People fall on those steps all the time. You see them every day. You are not the first and most definitely will not be the last.
When you sing the wrong words during that song, be sure to laugh at yourself later. When you stumble over sentences during your Sylvia Plath speech, don’t forget to laugh. When you pronounce incorrectly that word you’ve only ever read silently to yourself while reading aloud in class, laugh.
It’s OK to make mistakes. This is what humans do. You’ll go crazy trying to be so perfect all the time. Because you’ll roll down the hill instead of up when you’re driving that old 5-speed Civic, and you’ll completely miss that tennis ball in your PE class, and you’ll walk across campus for that awards ceremony in heels, and you’ll roll your ankle and almost fall (Don’t worry. Soon there will be such a thing as TOMs shoes, and you’ll only ever wear flats again), and some of your friends will see you do it. Laughing is all you can do.
You are an exceptional person just the way you are. Ignore the world and be yourself.
All the best,
Me.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
So it’s almost time to mark another birthday on your timeline. Another year that you’re here to walk me through this parenting game, this real world, this beautifully brutal life. I am so grateful I get to have a mother like you to shepherd me and guide me and listen to me when I just want to complain about how hard my days are, knowing that you had harder ones.
And for your birthday, I wanted to share my gratefulness by simply saying this: Now I understand.
Now I understand why you sat up those nights waiting for me to come home from dates. I understand the love that would make a mom watch the clock, wondering where her precious one was at that moment in time. I understand the love that puts a time limit on a night out, because a mom must know her little ones, no matter how big, are home safe and sound. I know because my oldest has just begun venturing out, to a secret hideout beyond the boundaries of our home, and I know what happens the moment before he leaves, the way a desperate hand can slip that walkie talkie into his backpack with a, “Use it. Let me know when you get there,” even though it’s just 200 feet from our house. I know what happens the moment he leaves, the way a mama heart can fret until he’s back in her presence. I understand the fear that coils up in a mama heart when a child is any amount of distance away.
Now I understand why you refused to let me go see that one serious high school boyfriend anytime I wanted, even though I thought I was in love and I was surely going to marry him and we were going to live happily ever after. You could see through every person who came and went in my life, and I know because I see it with my boys, how I always know which of their friends will break their hearts or help heal it, how there are always some I like more than others, how I feel the urge to protect them from the ones I know will hurt more than they’ll help. You were always looking to my future, and I know because I am always looking to my boys’ future—who these people will shape them to be and how they will change because of those friendships and where I can step in and guide and love in a way that still respects their free will.
Now I understand those long conversations you used to have with Memaw, when I was waiting on a phone call from my latest boyfriend and you were sitting there talking about your kids or your work or nothing at all. I understand that sometimes all it takes is a conversation with a mother to make you feel like you can do anything in the world. I understand that mothers give courage. That they hold a child steady. That they heal and believe and set the whole world on fire. I know, because I get to do it for my boys, every day before I drop them off at school, enfolding them in that embrace that speaks the words for me: I believe in you. I dream big dreams for you. I adore you.
Now I understand why you wanted to be in the seat of every performance, every track meet, every game, every ceremony, no matter how long or boring or ridiculously pointless. I understand that when you love a kid, you just want to be there. You just want to see. You just want to show them how proud you feel, even though they won’t even possibly know until they’re parents, if then. I understand, because I went to those silly school dance parties and the forever-long reading awards and the next-grade-promotion ceremonies, and I sat there fidgeting but beaming and waving and whooping when my boys came to the front of the stage. There’s just nothing like saying, “That’s my kid,” even if your introversion self would die before you say it out loud.
Now I understand those nights you sat reading while we sat watching the latest and greatest horror film so we could scare ourselves into not sleeping—because I can’t watch them anymore now like you couldn’t watch them anymore then. And when my boys sit to watch that weekly movie (not a horror film yet), I sit beside them to read, because it’s the only time a mom who loves to read books can actually read, uninterrupted, for any stretch of time, even if her attention is still divided by the dialogue and action on a screen and she could read more if she shut herself in a bedroom with a “do not disturb” sign. I understand that sitting with them, even when we’re not watching, is still being with them, and I understand that being with them is more important than anything else in the world.
Now I understand those glances I’d catch from you when I wasn’t really paying attention, until I was—those afternoons I was working on pre-Algebra homework or reading the latest Victoria Holt book I’d checked out from the library or writing a new story. I understand that sometimes love makes it difficult not to pay attention, because I sometimes can’t stop staring at my boys coloring a picture or tying a shoe or reading a book silently over in the corner. Sometimes I can’t help but marvel that they are mine for this moment.
Now I understand why you always tried to tell us we would be okay. That we were secure. That there was enough money, even when we were on the last dollar and wouldn’t have another until a week later and there was no food in the refrigerator, only canned food in the pantry. I know, because I’ve lived through a lean season for several months now, and I know that all I want for my boys is that they will not go to bed hungry, and I will do anything in the world to make sure they don’t. I understand why you wouldn’t eat those nights food was short, because a parent will make sure their kids’ bellies are full before they’ll ever take care of their own. I understand what it’s like to parent in that tension of not quite enough, and everyone’s asking for something you don’t have budget to give, and the way it can twist a heart all black and blue. I understand what it’s like to wonder what if—what if one of them needs counseling again? What if someone gets a growth spurt and never wants to stop eating? What if the air conditioner breaks in the middle of summer?
Now I understand why you never let us take the easy way out. I know what hard work does for kids, because I lived through it. I know how it builds resiliency, and I understand why you would want to shelter us from all that ugliness at first, and I understand the courage it took to let us see instead—because you knew who it would shape us to become. I’m not glad that you struggled. But I’m glad we got to see your struggle, because it showed us that you were a real person, that you weren’t perfect, that you didn’t have everything in the world figured out, not even close, and I understand, now, that this is important for kids to know. I understand, because my boys see their own ability to overcome in my mistakes and insecurities and shortcomings.
Now I understand that it wasn’t about being a perfect person so much as it was about being a good human being. Not that you ever made me feel like it was about perfection as a kid. I put that heavy expectation on myself, when all you really wanted was for me to be brave and kind and true to myself. I get it now, because I have boys I drop off at public school, where a world can tell them who they are faster than I can assess the damage. I understand what it’s like to fight for who they are in a place that values perfect behavior and perfect concentration and perfect execution of things like grades and sports and all the extras on the side. I understand that it’s not about behaving so much as it’s about becoming, because that’s all I want for my boys, too—to become strong, kind, true-to-themselves young men who see a world that needs changing and aren’t afraid to do the work.
Now I understand.
Thank you so much for the example you were. Thank you for the hero you still are. I could not have asked for a better mother.
Happy birthday. I’ll love you forever.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Here you are, locked in your room. Trying not to remember that he was supposed to share this room with you, that he promised to have and hold until death parted. Trying not to think about that one you loved, who never came home. Trying not to acknowledge that your kids are in the next room, that they will have to be told, that you will then have to carry on in the face of their anger and questions and silent blame.
Welcome to divorce.
You started your marriage all those years ago, just kids, both of you, dancing around the waxed floor to that song, that song, that song you’ll never, ever, ever be able to hear again.
The worst part is, you believed him. You, who didn’t believe any of the boys before him, because you knew what happens when a man finds another woman he likes better—you lived that life as a kid—and stays gone. You believed that he would love you forever. Humiliating.
What is forever to a man who doesn’t stay home? Nothing but words.
So much for happily ever after. So much for real-life fairy tales. It’s just real-life nightmares, that’s all. At least that’s how it looks from here.
Welcome to divorce.
So now you’re it. You’re the only one. You don’t know how you’ll possibly make it. All you really want to do, right now, is lay your head on your pillow and pretend the world is over, because it is for you. You have lost the man you loved. You have lost the father of your children. You have lost.
But the kids will be wanting dinner soon, and life goes on. You have to stay strong for them, because you know this is just the beginning. It’s not easy, the staying strong, but you are a survivor. You have endured all these years of working by yourself to put food on the table for those three. What are a few more?
So you keep on keeping on. Tonight it just looks like shaking out some fish sticks onto a cookie sheet and sticking it in the oven so they can help themselves. Tomorrow it will look like working your fingers to their very bones, sacrificing sleep to be both mom and dad to your kids, sitting in the audience of every performance, every volleyball game, every graduation because there’s a missing person haunting an empty seat that carves a hole of missing in their hearts.
Welcome to divorce.
You worry that your kids will be damaged irreparably by the way things ended, because now there’s a dad who didn’t look back. And it’s true that they’ll walk with scars. That’s not your fault. And they will make it through, because of the example you live every single day. They will remember the nights you got home late, and you were so tired, and yet still you listened to that song they wanted to share on the clarinet, because they thought it was just beautiful (and you do, too). They’ll remember the days when you took off work, even though it meant lost wages, so you could watch them scratch on purpose in the 300-meter hurdles their coach made them run, purposely jumping the gun because they didn’t want to jump the hurdles. They’ll remember the nights you sat up stroking hair because a friend had been mean or a boyfriend broke up or a grade wasn’t what was expected.
It may not be today, but one day your kids will look back at what you’ve done and call you a hero. They will know the truth of your struggle, not because they live it, thank God, but because our eyes open wider to reality as we live our years. They will remember. They will be glad for your surviving. They will be glad for what it taught them about their own survival.
You will make it, single mom. It doesn’t feel like you will in this place of betrayal and heartbreak and despair, but you will. You have what’s needed deep inside. It’s in the hardest times that we most see what we’re made of. So show yourself what’s inside. Surprise yourself. Carry on.
Love those children. Be their cheerleaders, work your job, be the best mom you know how to be, but remember you won’t be able to do it all. Remember you’ll need help. Put that community in place so that you’ll have the help for the days you just can’t go on a single minute more, and they’ll help you carry on. This is the purpose of community. You’ll never make it if you go it alone.
Keep dreaming with that broken heart. Let it heal, and then learn to love again. Because maybe there’s another one coming, or maybe not, but you are strong enough either way. You are strong enough to love, and you are strong enough to stand with no one else by your side but kids who are shorter than you now but will soon tower over you.
Be careful how you talk about your ex. Your children are always listening. Make it honoring and forgiving, not bitter and ugly. He’s still their dad, as much as you hate it. They still love him, as much as you hate that. They still wait on his calls and long to tell them their exciting news and want to see him, so do everything you can to make that relationship civil at least. They’ll remember who talked bad about whom.
And when they threaten, after you’ve laid down the law and set out the boundaries, that they’ll just go live with their dad, sure, it will claw at your heart, but you should know down in your deepest places that they’re just saying words. Because you’re the one who’s always been there, for everything. You were the one sitting in the audience for the seventh grade National Honor’s Society induction, when she shook through lighting a candle. You were there to snap pictures of him the night of his first prom. You were there to hear her sixth grade band concert, when someone tripped over the time signature in “Silent Night.”
They’ll know who deserves their hearts and their presence. They’ll come around.
Thank you for your sacrifice. Thank you for nurturing your children and rocking them to sleep on your own and putting that food on the table, every single day, no exceptions.
Thank you for being a hero.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
So the letter came.
You put it on the bureau for your mom, but you just had a feeling it was something bad. Something tragic. Something you might never survive. Hands know when they hold a thing like that.
So it was not entirely surprise that met you when your mom knocked on your bedroom door and beckoned you and your sister out into the kitchen, where your brother was already waiting, lured from the walls of his room still shaking with the angry chant-singing of Korn’s Jonathan Davis. It was not entirely unexpected when she looked at the three of you, swallowed hard and announced that your dad wouldn’t be coming back. It was not entirely new news that he had a new family now.
There was, after all, that year in a place where he promised to live with you all, when he only came home enough nights to count on one hand.
And yet is something like this ever entirely expected?
You try to stay strong and brave and hopeful, but if one were to look deep down inside, they would see how everything is breaking all apart, smashing against the mountains of divorce and betrayal and abandonment that would take a miracle to move. You take it calmly, of course, but you are anything but calm inside. You try to let it roll right off, but it’s really rolling you flat.
There are no words for pain like this.
So you go back to the room you share with your little sister, the room with dirt that won’t come off the windows no matter how hard you scrub because they’re a thousand years old, the room with rust-colored carpet that smells like ancient days, the room with walls so thin you can hear your mom crying in the next room when everyone else is asleep.
You lie there, listening, thinking, trying to figure out how to breathe in a black tunnel like this one. You think about the three moves in three years, making new friends in places you never wanted to be, and at least you’re done with that. You think about the year you spent up north, in your dad’s home place, where promises came and went like they were nothing more than flakes of snow falling from a southern sky in summer.
You think about that new family.
What do they have that you don’t? Why do they get to keep him? What about you, specifically, made him leave?
This is the way your 11-year-old mind works out all the knots. It twists more intricate knots. But this is the truth for you, that your presence has been replaced by those whose presence is better.
One day you will know that there are many factors that go into a complicated divorce like this one, but all you know right now, lying in a daybed beside the trundle your sister never pushes in when she’s finished sleeping, is your own truth: You were not good enough to make him stay.
You will let that sink all the way down deep. You will let it burn your joy to ashes. You will cry and rage and wonder. And then?
You will carry on, because this is who you are.
But you will carry on with a bleeding wound that will crust and dry and weep at the most inconvenient of times. Like the first time you meet your dad’s new family. Like when the girl from school says you have a pointy nose. Like when that boyfriend who is not The One comes calling in another five years.
A heart that feels unwanted is a heart that turns hard. Yours was not meant to turn hard, but here it is bending. Breaking. Freezing solid.
So lean in close, and let me whisper your freedom: He did not leave because of you.
He did not leave because of you, sweet child. He didn’t. HE DID NOT LEAVE BECAUSE OF YOU.
(He did not leave because of you.)
It wasn’t your fault, child. You did nothing to make a marriage end like this. You did nothing to make him stay away. You did nothing to make him leave.
You are a good enough daughter.
You will spend too many years trying to prove this to every significant and insignificant person who comes sweeping into your life, and you will never really believe it yourself. I know how the wondering can worm its way inside, and I know how you can spend decades of your life trying to fight your way into something that looks like letting go. Something that looks like forgiveness. Something that looks like joy.
Tomorrow, when you return to school, you will see all those friends with their seemingly perfect lives, and you will wonder why some get to have parents who love each other forever and others, like you, live their lives with missing dads. You will be tempted to wish you could be them, wish you could be better, wish none of this had ever happened in the first place. This wishing will launch you into a black hole, and it will take strength you don’t think you have to climb back out.
That black hole will hold things like worry that your mom won’t make it as a single mom, even though she’s done fine the last few years with everything but the papers sealing divorce. It will hold things like a twister of self-hate every time he doesn’t call on your birthday (and he won’t). It will hold things like a day when you will have to choose who walks you down the aisle—the man who gave you your eyelashes or the man who raised you.
There is something else I know, now that I stand on the other side of it. It’s not easy to see from your vantage point, but one day far removed from this one, you will be glad for what this experience has taught you—things like resilience and love and forgiveness and mercy and hope. Mostly you will be glad for the person it shaped you to become.
You see, even in the black hole that is divorce, there is still light. There is still hope. Hold on to the light, and hold on to the hope. Keep it ever before you, as you walk through your hallways with peers who seem to have their perfect lives (but probably don’t) while yours is falling clean apart. Hold its warmth in the dead of night, when you wake up wondering what he’s doing right now, whether he loves his new daughter more, how you might possibly prove he made a mistake in his choosing.
Forget proving yourself altogether. You are already worthy of a father’s love, and you don’t have to do anything in the world to prove it. And there is a new dad coming, one who will love you just to love you, not because he gave you the color of your hair and the length of your legs. Let him love you. This is healing, too.
Sometimes we don’t recognize the light until we’re walking in the dark. And one day, when the dark comes to meet you again, when you’ve lost a beloved grandmother or your baby girl dies or you just wonder how you can possibly keep on keeping on, you will remember this first time the lights went out. How it made you stronger. How you changed. How you walked yourself out.
So hold on, child. Remember to breathe. Beat those voices back into gone, and cling to the truth:
You are a survivor.
