Every week, my daughter empties her backpack on the sofa and piles up the drawings she brought home from school. Then she selects which ones she will take to her father and which ones will stay with me. It’s because of me that she has two houses instead of one, and it’s because of me that she has to make this choice.
Recently, she came back with the drawing of a fish divided into several boxes. There was in each a mathematical operation to solve, the solution of which corresponded to a color: green for the number 5, yellow for the 8, etc. The result of his calculations was a magnificent fish.
I wanted to have this fish. I wanted to post it on our fridge, send pictures of it to my parents, and one day put it in the box where I keep all the other treasures my daughter gave me. But she put the fish in the pile intended for her father.
I hate this weekly division of his possessions. I try to hide how I feel from her, but I’m sure she knows it.
“You agree ?” she asks me, showing me what she intends to give him.
I always answer yes. But I never agree. Every time she chooses her father over me, it still hurts.
All the first times
There are certain things in a divorce that are impossible to foresee, to anticipate. To know what it is, you have to have experienced it. It’s like being a mother.
If I had known what was in store for me, would I have tried harder to save my marriage? I had considered a lot of things, like the fact that it was going to be hard for my daughter, and hard for me to live alone after five years of marriage and ten of living together. I even thought I was never going to eat the delicious raisin stuffing my ex makes for Thanksgiving again.
What I hadn’t anticipated was the number of times I was going to have to text her asking if I could call her because our daughter wanted to talk to her. I hadn’t measured the strength of their ties (he had stayed at home during the first years of our daughter’s life), nor the power of the feeling of exclusion that I was going to experience. I had no idea how badly missing my daughter’s first haircut was going to hurt me.
I had no way of imagining in advance all the first times I was going to miss, the pain I was going to feel when she didn’t choose me, the thousand ways my life would be too empty without her. and too full when she was there. It’s an ebb and flow that I still have trouble managing.