CuppaGemma

“Either is fine, which day do you prefer?”

My ex-husband and I shared a laugh. We’re both trying to be considerate of one another for Christmas. We both want the holidays to be happy and memorable for the boys. We’d talked about gifts too as trying to ascertain the key desires of adolescents is not easy.

I am grateful that we can have conversations.

The ability to talk and negotiate is part of how we raise our children. Mom and dad are divorced and both remarried, these are facts the boys long since take for given. They can go back and forth between homes parents and stepparents and it’s okay.

It is not always perfect, as we have had several- heated discussions over time. But we’ve always managed to get past emotional nonsense and posturing in order to work through the question at hand with the kids.

This is not easy for divorced parents. The thought crosses your mind when discussions mire or have raised voices, “There is a reason we got divorced you know…” or ” “Oy vey, will you never, ever change?” But that’s the crux really- can you put yourself and or your past aside and just think about the kids? Are you able to say- “Not solving this actually doesn’t help anyone in the long run, so let’s solve and move on?”

Kids remember, kids notice.

What do we want them to learn?

Watching your parents divorce is a lesson itself. How your parents treat each other before, during and after the divorce stays with them. It’s an example of how you choose to treat people, of how you choose to be accepting and how much of your present and future is fueled or defined by the past.

My ex-husband and I want the same things for our children. We want them to be compassionate and empathetic. We want them to treat everyone with kindness and respect. But really we want that openness to be a given, not a grandstand issue or scripted moments to prove a point.

It’s the mundane of meeting by happenstance in the bagel store on Christmas eve morn. A bubbly little boy dashing back and forth between mom and Chris and Chuck while we all wait in line. It’s Chuck coming by to let us know what’s happened with Thomas’s friend. It’s going to things together (but separate) so the kids see the gang’s all here.

There are no sides, just family. Period.

We can look at things with much laughter because time and life have passed, so we could swap Tokyo stories together. We had good times, we had bad times. We are glad we made the choices we did to take our lives on separate courses, but the boys are a common bond between us. We don’t keep annotated ticklists to evaluate one another over time. Parents and children give and receive love. It is not contingent on meeting baseline criteria.

This was not always easy, but we have both tried to be fair to each other. Four and half years ago Chuck and I agreed that the boys and me would return to the states. His life and work would remain in Tokyo. I felt there was both privilege and obligation in that decision.

Privilege that on the deepest level he trusted me with the boys to raise them well. Obligation that he, as their father had right to be in their lives and it was part of my responsibility as their mother to ensure they would both know and respect their dad. Reality was there were and remain unknowns in navigating those decisions. Reality is that variables change, so you have to keep reevaluating what makes sense and what is needed.

There is a humanness in it all. Those actions are the ones I hope resonate most deeply with the boys.

Mom and dad were always decent to each other. They are both good people.