“mommy”

Last night, I had the wind knocked out of me with one little word.

“Mommy”.

Summer was missing her daddy as he is out of town this week so I set up facetime for them. And as soon as the call connected, Scott and his girlfriend’s faces appeared on the screen of my phone. All three of their faces lit up at the same time seeing each other and they asked all the usual “how was your day?” questions and the “are you having so much fun with mommy?” questions that usually start out a facetime talk. I walked away and started cleaning the kitchen, leaving them alone to chat because while I have no ill feelings towards his girlfriend, let’s be honest – I don’t need to see her face in my living room chatting away with my child. It was their conversation to have, not mine.

A few minutes later I walked back into the living room to see Summer twirling the phone in circles and being goofy, so I sat down with her and held the phone so they could actually see Summer and not the rotating ceiling.

And that’s when it happened.

Summer grabbed the phone, and yelled, “daddy!” and kissed him on the screen.

Then she yelled, “mommy!” and kissed the other face on the screen.

Heart.

Stabbed.

The two of them quickly responded with, “Summer, we talked about this…” And they changed the subject.

Cough, um, so it’s happened before. My child referred to this 27-year-old woman dating my 41-year-old ex-husband who Summer has known all of 6 months as “mommy”.

Tingly prickles washed up the front of my neck and into my cheeks. And they all carried on chatting away about nothing and everything while I sat frozen in my little “did that just really fucking happen?” bubble.

I didn’t say a word about it while they were on the phone.

I’m not mad at anyone for it – Summer is too little to understand the hurt that it caused, and the 2 faces on the screen didn’t encourage it, though I could have maybe, just maybe been given a heads up about it when it first started happening so I wouldn’t have been blindsided by the knife yesterday.

Obviously them just telling her not to call the girlfriend mommy wasn’t enough. That would never be enough. Not for Summer, not for me. So at bedtime we snuggled up close and had a little chat – I told her that it made momma sad to hear my baby call someone else mommy. I told her that I was the one who made her, who grew her, who had her in my tummy, whose heart is half hers, and who has taken care of her and loved her with my whole self since the very first day she was alive. And that is what makes me her mommy and no one else.

In her sweet little 4-year-old voice she said, “mommy, I’m sorry. I feel really bad and I promise I won’t ever call anyone else mommy again but you.” She got it. And my heart filled right back up as I listened to her breathing get heavy while she drifted off to dreamland.

Once I knew she was asleep, I went out to the living room and I cried. Oh, I cried good. A puffy-eyed in the morning type cry. Because, although I kept trying to remind myself that it actually tells me that this girl is doing something right with Summer if Summer equates her with things that “mommy” means to her – love, fun, safety, security – it still broke my heart for a moment.

A moment I never thought I would have to live.

the B variable

It’s the moments of quiet when my thoughts speak loudest – lying in bed next to Summer as she falls asleep for her nap – and the nights at home when she is with her daddy – and that first morning moment when I become aware that I am awake, eyes still closed with 10 minutes left before the alarm will start singing to me. Some days I find myself having a hard time remembering the bad stuff over the last 4 years. Other days the saddest times echo through my brain reminding me why I’m here.

When I’m alone in the quiet times, it’s good, it’s fuel, it’s not loneliness, it’s aloneness. And aloneness is healing time for me. Being here with my thoughts, working through everything, taking the time to be happy and the time to cry, to live, to do the things I enjoy, to be still with myself, it’s necessary. And it’s hard. But it’s good.

I think in the quiet. I analyze. I want to fix things. And because I think mathematically, to me there is one answer for everything. There is one solution to every math problem. I once had a 2 hour argument with someone over the fact that if A=B and B=C, then A must equal C. He tried and tried to disprove it. He came up with the most ridiculous “equations” pertaining to everyday life situations, and no matter what, A always equaled C. Plain and simple if a square is a rectangle, and a rectangle is a shape, then a square is a shape. If my car is in Chicago, and Chicago is a city, then my car is in a city. If black is white, and white is blue, then black is blue…in the logical sense as opposed to the description of what we were taught, if black TRULY equaled white, and white TRULY equaled blue, then yes, black would TRULY equal blue. It makes total sense to me.

And this is why situations like falling in love, getting married and making a promise of ’till death do us part, yet finding myself 4 years later living 8 miles away from my husband in an apartment down the street from the house we bought together, is hard to logically comprehend. I can’t fix this. I can’t explain this. There is no rational reason my brain can come up with as to why I was so 100% sure that when I said I do, I meant it forever, yet forever in reality only lasted 4 years.

I do= forever

forever=till the end of time

I do≠4 years

It’s like a crooked frame on a wall to a person with Organizational OCD. It’s not logical. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t get it. I don’t get the why or the how of that equation. If A=B, and B=C, then A=C. That. That I get. There is no why, and the how is a basic law of nature. There is no doubt, no uncertainty, no open-for-interpretation. It is what it says it is because it is. But when that logic fails you, when your marriage, your spouse, your happily ever after is no longer what you knew it to be with 100% conviction just 4 short years ago, it’s unnerving. It makes you distrustful of what you know to be true.

My dad is a wonderful man. He is a great father to me and my sisters and a good husband to my mom. This I know as fact. This is what I grew up knowing a man in a relationship to be. And this is what I have always applied to the men in my life because this was my math equation that was taught to me regarding men in relationships. What they present is what they are. And when that changes, when things show up that were not presented as part of the original equation, when an X, Y or Z is thrown in to the once perfect logical equation, I end up once again like the person with the crooked frame. I want to ignore the X, Y and Z with the little red nub of my pencil eraser. I want to fix it. I have to fix it. But when I can’t, I don’t know what to do.

So I find myself sitting and thinking a lot in the silence…trying to take all of the extra variables that were scribbled all messy on the board right in the middle of my logical little equation, others that were there all along that I didn’t see at first, and plug them into my equation to figure out how the answer ended up being L instead of C when I was so freaking sure it was C.

I’ll get it eventually. I will realize why this equation all makes sense once I can look back and see that this moment in my life (A) led me to wherever I end up (C). That without all this, I wouldn’t be where I am in 5 years. That in the ABC equation always, always A=C, the key is figuring out what B is.

mysterious ways

I’ve always believed that everything happens for a reason. I think that while you may not necessarily know what that reason is when something happens, down the road if you look back at the journey that brought you to where you are, it always makes sense, and I believe if it doesn’t make sense, then the journey isn’t over yet. One of my favorite quotes, and I think I saw this on a friend’s Facebook page (so if it was you, then thank you 🙂 ) is:

“Everything will be ok in the end. If it’s not ok, it’s not the end.”

I love that. I believe that. I think it’s why I’ve been described as calm. It’s why I don’t mind being spontaneous. It’s why taking risks isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s why unsolicited advice irks me because I believe no matter what, my journey is going to happen the way it’s supposed to. Even if you get hit by a bus or swallow a bug or light your hair on fire, it was meant to happen, even if you don’t know the reason right now. That’s not to say that you’re not allowed to get mad or be hurt or upset or have to walk around with a smile on your face at all times, but to know that there’s a purpose for everything that happens can be a calming thought. It’s why I believe when you like the cashier’s hair or think the mail lady has pretty eyes or the old man behind the counter at the gas station has a sweet smile that reminds you of your grandpa… you should tell him/her because doing so becomes a part of their journey. Maybe you made them smile which made them want to do the same for someone else that in turn changed that person’s mood or maybe it made them hesitate for 30 seconds which stopped them from running into someone they could have run into but weren’t meant to at that moment for whatever reason and thus you were a part of their journey that was meant to happen that way to begin with. It’s why I love the movie Serendipity (on top of the fact that John Cusack stars in it, of course….mmmmmm).

Part of my journey that took a while to understand happened when I got married when I was 24 and divorced by 25. And while the day I got divorced will go down in my life’s journey as one of the most emotionally challenging days I’ve ever been through, it all happened for a reason. Though I didn’t know it when I was sitting at the Borders cafe with my sister sobbing into a cup of hot chocolate hours after I left the courthouse, I now know that that day is part of the reason I’m here right now. Had I not gotten married the first time in a church to the wrong guy, I wouldn’t have had my dream wedding on the beach with the right guy. Had I not gotten divorced, I would have never lived in the city, lived by myself for 3 years, learned how to struggle and pull myself out of debt and grow to be completely self-sufficient and strongly independent. I would have never had the opportunity to be single and picky and date and have fun and be responsible at the same time. I wouldn’t have been confident and proud of myself for my accomplishments and in the perfect place in my life to reconnect with Scott, marry him, and make the perfect little human being with him. I would have never smiled in the car on the way to work this morning thinking about Summer’s big gummy grin because she actually wouldn’t exist had I never gotten divorced. Who knows, I may have never had a baby ever. I may have never seen the proud smile on my mom’s face when she looks at her granddaughter. I could go on and on and on, but my point is that this all happened because it was meant to be… maybe my divorce happened in my journey so that all the rest could happen. And none of what might have been matters because it if it didn’t happen, it wasn’t meant to happen, otherwise it would have happened. Make sense?

Although I am still waiting to find out the purpose behind why I had to bathe myself with baby wipes last night after the shower backed up the plumbing to the point that the toilet started gurgling. I smell like a powder fresh baby butt. 🙂

Anywho, a few weeks back when I was nearing the end of my maternity leave, Scott called me at 10:30am. “Now don’t freak out, ok?” he started. Well crap, that’s never a good way to start a conversation, is it? At that very moment I was frantically searching for my Summer necklace that he gave me as a push present.  Last time I remembered seeing it, it was sitting there on the bathroom sink so I was busy shoving a coat hanger down the drain when he told me he was on his way home. He had just been laid off. And I now know that the reason I couldn’t see my necklace sitting a foot in front of me behind a hair rubber band at that very moment probably happened so that I wouldn’t freak out, I just didn’t know it at the time.

Talk about timing.

We had a new baby, no income on my end for another month at least, a mortgage, bills, ugh. But I didn’t freak out. Everything was going to be ok in the end…and it wasn’t ok, so I knew it wasn’t the end. And in the weeks that followed, Scott made phone calls, sent emails and met with people, all the while being exactly where he was meant to be but never quite knowing where it would all lead him and soon enough, his journey became crystal clear. Scott found a new job with an old friend, someone who he worked with years ago, someone my husband has always spoken so highly of, always with a nostalgic smile on his face thinking about how much fun they used to have together. This friend hadn’t been on the radio for years, not since they worked together over a decade ago, and wouldn’t you know it, here he was starting fresh on a new radio station while Scott was leaving one and looking for a fresh start at another at the same time. What a purposeful journey it was! And during the few weeks that Scott was home looking for a job, he and the baby had the opportunity to create an amazing bond that wouldn’t have grown as strong as it is now had they not been on their own together, day after day. Had he not been let go, he wouldn’t have been available to start this new job when the opportunity presented itself. So as of yesterday, Scott is the new morning show producer for Murphy in the Morning on Rewind 100.3, and it’s exactly where he’s meant to be because it’s where his journey has led him.

Pshhh, I wasn’t scured.

And I want to say to anyone struggling with unemployment, health issues, family struggles, relationship issues, money problems, anything, just know that everything you do has a purpose and it will make sense in the end, it always does. So if your journey doesn’t make sense, just wait, because that just means it’s not over yet…