Scrambling

So, my girls have exactly 7 days of school left this year. That means 7 days of writing left for me. Not that  I won't write at all this summer, but it won't be the same daily affair that it's been lately. I've been on a mission to get my latest novel done and revised so that I can send my second (or third, or fourth) draft out to my trusted beta readers for feedback. While they have the novel, I'll be hitting up local parks with my kids and trying to read a few of the dozen books sitting on my nightstand waiting for me. I might also try writing a few new short stories. And a screenplay or two.

The truth is, I'm terrified of losing the momentum that I've built up this school year. I'm ready for summer: for play dates and homemade snow cones and sleeping in and no more late-night lunch prep when I just want to go to bed, and no more standing over my kids forcing them to do tedious homework assignments. But I'm also sad to give up my daily block of a few hours to myself, and my guaranteed daily writing time.

My dad and step-mom have graciously offered to watch my girls a couple times a week, for a few hours each time, so that I can have some dedicated writing time. I intend to use that time well. Discipline hasn't really been an issue for me. I work well under pressure. Often, the less time I have, the more effectively I use that time. That's been one of my most important lessons to learn as a writer: carve out the time, and guard it. No phone calls, no internet, no email, no texts. Just write, for however long I can. I'm frequently at the tail-end of my three-hour writing block, watching the clock, counting how many minutes it'll take me to get home to relieve my babysitters, typing those last few words as fast as I can. And that's my happy place, racing the clock with my words.

Two writing breaks a week is a lot less than I've had this school year, but that's exactly what I started with when I got back to writing a few years ago. And at that pace I wrote a novel in four months. Two and a half years later I have five novels plus twenty-something short stories done. They aren't all good, and they won't all make the cut of revision rounds and beta-readers and agent/literary journal submissions. But they all mattered. Every single word, every second of time I gave to myself. I've had nine stories published or accepted for publication, and nine agents are currently looking at one of my novels. It isn't just a dream anymore, this writer thing. It's actually happening. And I don't want to let it go.

I'm almost ready for summer. But first I have 7 more days of writing. And I'm going to make the most of each of them, watching the clock as it gets closer to pick-up time at school, scrambling to get those last few words down before I have to go.

Vacation

One of the hardest things for me to master as a single mom has been vacationing. Not just the epic packing battles with two little girls who only want to bring 3 swim suits and 5 sundresses even when it's a snow trip, but the logistics of traveling alone with two small kids, and frequently a dog as well: all of those contingency plans and nerve-wracking crowded airports or hopes that the car doesn't break down en route to some hours-away destination.

Last summer was my first time driving to our family's cabin, 4.5 hours away, through hot valley towns and up into the Sierras, finishing with a 45 minute trek along a rutted dirt logging road, with two girls and a dog. There were bathroom breaks, dog water breaks, snack breaks, general runaround breaks for two girls who could only be happily confined to their hot pink car seats for so long. I stressed about the the possibility of having car issues, about the dog overheating in the car as I ran the girls into the next rest stop, about getting too tired and fed up with the back seat fighting and having no one to help me out.

I caravanned with some family friends that first time up, just in case anything went awry, and during the long drive I realized something invaluable: I had it down. This single-motherhood thing had already become second-nature to me. The girls had a bin of books and games wedged between their car seats that kept them busy for much of the time. We blasted music and sang together when we needed to perk up. I had a mini-cooler of food and drinks on the passenger seat, full of pre-cut, single-serve portions I'd readied the night before. I had a clear view of the dog sleeping on top of our pile of suitcases in the back, and could see when he was getting restless. When we had to stop in hot towns I blasted the A/C to cool off the car, then found a shady parking spot and made a game out of rushing the girls off to the bathroom and back to the car as quickly as possible. I lounged on random lawns outside fast food restaurants while the dog trotted around and the girls picked dandelions. I let go of my usual travel timetable, any expectations, and relaxed. And it was fine.

That's not to say I haven't had any travel or vacation hiccups in my year of doing it solo. We've been stranded with a dead car battery. We've had throwing up children traveling with borrowed bowls on their laps in the car. We've had the dog get into some sort of insect nest and end up with a face swollen with three baseball-size lumps and had to rush him to the nearest emergency vet. We've had a cross-country flight just days after Peanut fell and knocked out her front tooth and loosened up a handful of others, juggling her all-liquid diet on an airline in this no-liquids-through-security era. And we've made it through it all. And got some good stories to boot.

So today I'm packing up for our first big trip of the season. I have lists of all of the clothes, food, meds, toys, and dog supplies I will need. And I have the confidence, that even if some disaster befalls us mid-route, we'll get through it, we'll make the best of it, and we'll still have a good time.

And if it's really bad, I'll end up with a great story out of it.

The Post-Divorce Phone Tree

It’s a familiar sight at the elementary school: a mom saying goodbye to her kid in line before the bell rings, reminding him that his father, or his father’s girlfriend, or his father’s girlfriend’s mother, will be picking that kid up after school, saying farewell for the next few days. The look of anxiety in the mother’s eyes as the child heads into class, her hope that it all works out. It’s hard to share your child with someone you rarely see, even harder to trust that the fringe family members of that person, often people you’ve never met, will remember to show up, on time and in the right spot, to get your young child after school. And so began the post-divorce phone tree.

I’m one of the moms that lives at school. I didn’t intend for it to be that way, but between volunteering in Peanut’s class twice a week, String Bean’s class twice a week, chaperoning field trips, helping out with in-class projects and parties, having two separate drop-off and pick-up times each day for my two kids, and lingering around campus for after-school play, the parents, step-parents, even teachers have come to know me as one of the moms who can be counted on to be standing there when the bell rings.

As a result, I now have several phone numbers of moms/dads/grandmas who sometimes have to rely on virtual strangers to pick up their beloved children from school. That way, whether or not the ex-husband’s new girlfriend’s younger sister, or whomever, shows up on time and in the right place, the child is covered. My job, when it’s one of those days, is to hang around the kid until they are safely picked up, then discreetly text the mom/dad/grandma to let them know the child is safe, and who the child is with. It’s a whole new game, this modern, fractured family, but I’m learning fast. And I’m happy to do it.

I had a week where my mother and mother-in-law took turns picking up my children from school, and I had a back-up list of about five contacts just in case anything went wrong. That was easy, because I have a good relationship with them and they weren’t annoyed when I texted them every day to make sure all had gone well. But when it’s the new love of an estranged ex, or some even more distant relative from the new family tree, someone you do not have an amicable relationship with, it’s nice to have a little reassurance that your child is covered.

My closest group of mom-friends at school are all similar phone tree monitors, with their own lists of kids they keep track of for the peace of mind of divorced moms and dads, and the safety of children who sometimes fall through the cracks of divorced parents who no longer communicate well. Like minds have drawn us together. We’re easy to spot. We’re the ones on the playground after school, cell phones in hand, obliviously happy kids gathered around us, watching the gate for your arrival.

The Non-Mommy Parts of Me

Here’s the thing: I hate dating. I’m not a dating kind of person. All of that posturing and fake smiling and hair-tossing. It just isn’t me. I’m a jeans and t-shirt mom with princess band-aids, hair ties, and hand sanitizer at the ready at all times. Need a tissue? I’ve got a whole pack for you right here. Splinter? I can fix that. Monkey-bar blister? No problem. But get dressed up and head out to sit across from some guy and impress him? Not my strong suit. That, and I haven’t been on a date in over a decade. So you might say I’m rusty. Except even back then I wasn’t a good dater. So can you really be rusty at something you never learned to do in the first place? Probably not.

Anyway, all of these things led me to one conclusion in my year of being single: I probably had another few years of being single to come. I mean, when would I even meet someone? I have my kids most of the time. And I’ve noticed that nothing spooks a handsome young guy who has just smiled at you like the two little girls traipsing along behind you calling you “mommy.”

My girls’ dad keeps them for a couple hours on days he can knock off work early, and he has them overnight on Fridays when he’s in town, but he does travel a lot for work, and that means I’m a three-bodied, six-armed, six-legged person most of the time. Which is fine. I adore my kids--probably to a borderline-unhealthy degree. I fully accept and am honored to hold the role of being their mother, solo or not. And honestly, I think I’m pretty good at it, this single motherhood gig.

I didn’t mind being single. I needed that year of solitude. My year alone gave me time to grieve the end of my marriage, to let all the negative stuff go, to get back on my own feet, to push myself harder than I ever have as a writer, and to find a balance that doesn’t just feel like surviving, but like thriving, like moving in the direction I was always meant to go, like pure, unrestrained joy with two adorable little sidekicks cheering me on in the sidelines. But, still, there was a part of me that wondered: is this going to be it, forever?

It’s not that I need a man around to fix stuff. I can fix stuff. I work out. I can lift my own heavy things. I don’t miss cooking for someone else (I don’t even like cooking) or doing someone else’s laundry or tripping over big man shoes in the hallway. But sitting on the couch at night, girls tucked into beds they refused to stay in, watching TV before prepping school lunches, checking homework, folding the endless laundry of two girls who love outfit changes the way I love sleep, I found myself thinking: meeting someone would be nice, right? Someone who saw me as more than just a mom? It seemed unlikely, though. I travel between my house, the kids’ school, and my favorite table at Starbucks where I write and ignore all of the other patrons. My quiet cocoon of an existence doesn’t really invite others in. Especially not single men.

But lo and behold, the universe has a way of listening, even when you aren’t sure you’re really asking. A year after my husband and I set up separate residences, an old acquaintance from high school, a film producer looking for new material, asked to see some of my writing, and a conversation started. After a couple months of exchanging short stories and comments on them, we met for dinner—not a date, so I didn’t dress up or get nervous—to talk shop. And sometime between dinner, the bookstore we visited, the cafe we ended up in, the business meeting started to feel like a date. I didn’t have my kids for the night, and he didn’t have his, which meant hours of uninterrupted conversation about utterly grown-up topics. I had my princess band-aids and pink hair ties and hand sanitizer right there in my purse, but I didn’t feel like a mom for a few precious hours. We didn’t know much about each other, except that we’d passed one another in school hallways twenty years earlier, but he’d read a lot of my writing, so in a way he knew more about me than most people do. The inside of me, the vulnerable parts and sharp edges and restrained anger and hard truth-seeking part that doesn’t posture or hair-flip or tolerate any fakeness whatsoever. And even with all that, he liked me.

I guess you could say we’ve been dating for two months now, except that I hate dating, so I wish I could think of a better name for it. We’re taking it slow, getting to know each other and trying to maintain the balances of our own careers, our own relationships with our kids, our own fears of getting hurt. To call this new territory minimalizes the wonderful oddness of the whole thing. It’s new territory the way an entirely new solar system would be, when someone you barely knew in your past can come back around and help the present you feel, well, more like you. The non-mom part of me is now a bigger part of me, which is strange and scary and, ultimately, good. It makes the mommy moments more special, when they aren’t the only moments I’m having all day. So maybe dating isn’t so bad.

Aloha

We're back in Hawaii: me, my girls, and my sister-in-law Jessica for a week in one of my favorite places in the world. I've got sun and the sound of ocean waves, myna birds and palm trees, mongooses (the girls prefer "mongeese"), plumeria trees, fresh-cut pineapple and papaya, a fridge full of Pog, and a much-needed week with no plans whatsoever. No school lunches to prep, no gymnastics to rush off to, no homework to check, no dog to clean up after, and no nagging household chores to do.

The girls, still on California time, have been the first up each day. They wake Jessica and me up with music blaring from their iPod, the little thumps of dancing legs just outside our bedroom door, their high girlish voices singing along to Adele.

We sip Kona coffee on the lanai and wait for the day to start. The first few days we were up before sunrise, but today the sun beat us. We've visited a variety of beaches, had pool time each day, have watched a hula show, gone to the beautiful and calming Place of Refuge, and done some shopping. The days have a timeless feel and pass both quickly and slowly. Yesterday we decided to spend an hour at the beach. With twenty minutes left we took to the waves. The girls bodysurfed while the grown-ups scanned the horizon for the last of the migrating humpback whales, the mamas with their new calves. When we checked the time three hours had passed.

String bean, out of the water since last summer, has gotten reacquainted with her swimming skills. She's built like a swimmer, long and lean with a wide wingspan, and she can cover the length of the pool in a single breath. At seven years old, she's probably a better swimmer than I'll ever be. Peanut, five now and determined to do everything her own way, huffs along in her spastic doggie paddle style, still stubbornly refusing to try any real strokes. Luckily we have water wings, so she can alternate between floating along and thrashing around and I know she'll stay safely afloat. The girls exhaust themselves with jumping waves, making sandcastles, running free in their hot pink flip flops, swimming in the pool for hours, and each night as I cuddle with them for our daily list of three good things, they've fallen asleep on me before finishing.

Jessica has been an enormous help on this trip. After a year of single-motherhood I'd forgotten what it's like to have an extra set of hands for dinner prep, kid-bathing, dishes, laundry, general clean-up, and driving around. I was prepared for a kid-centered vacation, but I've gotten more relaxing in than expected thanks to Jessica's presence. We're a lot alike, quiet readers who prefer the sound of the ocean to the bustle of a crowed street, drama-free types who like to get the work out of the way so we can sit and chat and relax. The girls adore their aunt, and I'm enjoying watching them vie for her attention, off the hook for many mommy duties that they'd rather have her do. It's also been a great week to keep our friendship going, which has always been a separate thing from my marriage to her brother. The separation from my husband has done nothing to diminish my bond with Jessica, and this week has been a great reminder of that.

Whenever we come here, I remind the girls that they have Hawaiian blood, are tied to these islands beyond loving vacations here. The concept of ancestors seems hard for them to grasp, but they like to hear the stories, of their Chinese great-great-great grandfather Chun Afong marrying a Hawaiian Chief's granddaughter. They never met their Hawaiian-born grandmother, and while String Bean has my same almond-shaped eyes and olive-toned skin, fair-skinned and blue-eyed Peanut doesn't look like she could possibly have Hawaiian blood in her anywhere. But from the stories they have decided that they are Hawaiian princesses, and this fills them with a ridiculous amount of joy. Almost as much joy as I get out of being here with them.

Family is Forever

Yesterday I hosted a birthday party for three of my favorite people: my 3-year-old niece, my dad, and my dad's sister. The Aries have the rest of us outnumbered in my family. It started as an idea for a small get-together to acknowledge my dad and niece's back-to-back birthdays, and grew into a big family and friends-who-feel-like-family gathering. There were family friends that I hadn't seen in years who came, and my amazing, artistic aunt, who I hadn't seen in over five years, who is celebrating her birthday today (Happy birthday, Aunt Nancy!).

There's been plenty of family drama and the usual life trials in my family over the years, and many of us have drifted apart, but yesterday none of that showed. Hatchets were buried, bonds were renewed, and best of all, my girls got to be there to see it all. It's an amazing thing, to fill your house up with everyone you love and just bask in it for a whole day. We ate, we talked, the kids played, the musicians jammed, the kids danced, and the party lasted all day long. We're all talking about doing it again, soon.

Probably the only thing I still struggle with about separating from my husband is the guilt over not being able to keep my daughters' family intact. I know what it's like to have divorced parents, the schlepping back and forth with suitcases in hand and wanting desperately to wear the shirt you left at your dad's house and won't see again for at least a week. But watching my girls run circles around their extended family yesterday, giggling and twirling in their princess dresses, and having them ask over and over if we can do it all again next weekend, I'm letting some of the guilt go. They are loved, and they have an intact family, just as I do. My parents divorced over 30 years ago, and had plenty of years of not speaking kindly of one another, but yesterday I got to sit between them and listen as my father played his banjo and my mother sang along. That's the thing about family. They're forever, if you let them be.

Flying Solo, Together

The past year has been a steady string of firsts, none of them easy. Twelve months ago, this very week, my husband and I broached the idea of separating. It was the first time we'd discussed the idea in a calm, non-threatening way, not as hurtful words hurled to inflict pain during a fight, but as a means to end the hurting that had become a solid part of our relationship. It wasn't what I wanted, giving up on our marriage, pulling our childrens' lives in half like the clean snap of a wishbone. But it was the right thing to do. We had long talks about how to part as friends, how to set aside our anger and sadness, and focus fully on making the transition as easy as possible for our girls. We looked together for a place for my husband to move into, went to Ikea as a family to pick out furniture for his new apartment. For the first few months we called it "our house" and "our apartment" when talking to the kids, so they wouldn't hear the division, the finality, of mommy and daddy having different homes.

The kids adjusted surprisingly well. Their dad and I had been leading fairly separate lives for a while, between him traveling regularly for work, and me ducking out to a hotel for a night of recovery and writing time when he came back into town. While they were with me they continued to have the same home routine, school routine, and play dates as always. We took our time getting them used to the apartment, to sharing a room for the first time, to being without me in a new place. The apartment came with new bunk beds and a pool, two things the girls were very excited about. As soon as the warmer weather hit, they started heading over there regularly to swim with their dad, and we worked up to them spending the night there on Fridays.

It was a big change for me, being home without them, but after the initial shock of quiet, I learned to appreciate the down time. I had precious pockets of alone time to simply sit and breathe, something I hadn't had much of in years. I started going out with friends, especially other single moms, to unwind during my Friday nights off. Our new version of family fell into a rhythm that lasted through summer and into this school year.

The girls are both thriving this year, blowing me away with their reading and math skills, blossoming into confident little chatterboxes with a constant bubble of friends around them at all times. And a surprising number of their friends also have parents who are no longer together, which has helped this all feel less drastic for them. They compare notes with their friends on which toys they keep at mom's and dad's places, who takes them out to eat the most, which ones have pools to offer summer fun.

A year into it, we're still figuring out certain details. When dealing with small kids, flexibility is key. But one thing I'm most proud of is that our kids' family has not been shattered. They have a lot of love around them, on all sides. And their dad and I have kept our promise to stay friends, to stay kind, and to not put the kids in the middle of our issues. When we have family gatherings at my house, he's invited. Last Christmas we all headed back east to visit his family together. Next month his sister is accompanying the girls and me on a Hawaii trip. I feel very strongly that the girls must not lose any of their family connections as a result of the failings of their parents' marriage. It's a strange new world, this single motherhood gig balanced with a determination to keep the whole extended family in the picture. But I think we're pulling it off.