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Jun. 29th, 2006 10:40 amI think it says much about my day yesterday that its high point was spent in Ikea looking at the modular furniture, perusing dummy Swedish books on the shelving units – umlauts! what America needs are more umlauts! – nibbling herring and meatballs on flatbread in the corporate cafeteria, a vast cool room that reminded me of a common dining area in some socialist utopian novel.
"Do you like your job?" I asked the cashier. (She should have been wearing a button: "Ask Me About Loganberries!")
"Oh, yes!" she gushed. And for a few brief seconds I entertained a fantasy in which I, too, was an employee of the perfect democratic socialist company with full access to health care, alternate energy sources and lute fish.
Buying everything I want to buy at Ikea will come to approximately two grand (gulp) so I guess I'll have to buy in stages. A really cool loft bed for Robin's room is $150 but that's without the mattress. There's a cool sofa bed, a butcher block island for the kitchen. I want to get rid of the hideous wooden entertainment center I inherited from my mother, I want to get area rugs to go over the hideous brown carpet.
The night before I'd had the most unpleasant conversation imaginable with Ben who finally allowed himself to be contacted by phone. So why hasn't he called in six weeks?
"Feels like I am always angry or very sad," he said.
The first time I saw those words – in an email a week ago – I was very moved and cried salt tears. But then they began appearing in text messages on Robin's phone ("I miss U terribly, I am always either angry or very sad") and I had to think to myself, what an inappropriate message for an 11 year old. And now that they'd finally surfaced as dialogue, all I could think was: this must be Ben's new French Foreign Legion meme; the great hurt behind the bravado of the manly man.
"Why are you angry?" I said.
"Because the deal was that I'd go out for five weeks – five weeks! – and then come home," he hissed.
"Oh, Ben," I said. "You know as well as I do that if you'd ended up loving C&B, I would have gotten a terse little phone call, 'Honey, I've got to follow my heart…'"
"I would not!" he snapped.
"No? See I think you wanted out but for whatever reason couldn't be upfront about it. So you set me up to do the heavy lifting."
"I never wanted out," he said.
"Okay, you never wanted out," I said. "Lemme ask you something. Do you think Brian Rapp" – the most boring, stable and good-natured of Ben's many cousins – "says to Julie, his wife, 'Honey, I'm running off the join the circus for five weeks. Hold down the fort.' 'Cause you know, I really don't think he does. I really don't think that's the way marriage works. Maybe you go off for a week to recharge, maybe you even go off for two weeks. But five weeks? Leaving me with a job, a business, a distraught eleven year old, a disaster of a house for five weeks of hell so you can – what was that phrase you used? Follow your heart?"
"I'd never say anything as corny as 'follow my heart'," he objected.
"A stylist to the last," I laughed. "Oh, Ben, I do miss you. But, no. I deserve better."
Oh, there was much, much more, of course. I heard the fear in his voice – what was he gonna do come November when the circus closed down for the winter? He hasn't held a job in six or seven years. He's over fifty. What can he do? For a moment I had this horrible vision of him homeless, pushing a shopping cart. I had loved him a lot once, really, really, really loved him, loved him enough so that his second chance was a hundred chances over fourteen years. He's still the other voice in my inner dialogue. I don't suppose I'll ever know anyone I get along with better on the day to day.
Not. My. Problem.
Oh, and Robin did his Linda Blair imitation at the San Francisco International airport last night. It was pretty awful. Proximate cause was that I had told him we could BART to Colma and see the Adam Sandler movie while we were waiting for his plane. But then we got to the BART station, the round BART trip to Colma was $20, which on top of the $20 to get into the movies was too much to spend. I told him this figuring he's eleven, he is reasonable, he understands money and budgets. BEEP! Wrong! He proceeded to lay down on one of the benches crying and screaming at the top of his lungs, "I hate you! I hate you!"
Great! All we needed was for a BART cop to come along. Robin could have had a wonderful story to tell his grandchildren: the Night I Ended Up In Child Protective Services Custody. You expect this behavior from a three year old but not from an almost-teenager, and I thought, I can't control him, I can't control him, I'm the worst mother in the world.
We talked it through and subsequently ended up dining on sushi and reading – A Tree Grows In Brooklyn for him, To Kill A Mockingbird for me.
But it's too much for him, and it's too much for me. I'm so happy he has this break with happy, horse-obsessed, dog-obsessed Grandma. But what do I do when he comes back?
"Do you like your job?" I asked the cashier. (She should have been wearing a button: "Ask Me About Loganberries!")
"Oh, yes!" she gushed. And for a few brief seconds I entertained a fantasy in which I, too, was an employee of the perfect democratic socialist company with full access to health care, alternate energy sources and lute fish.
Buying everything I want to buy at Ikea will come to approximately two grand (gulp) so I guess I'll have to buy in stages. A really cool loft bed for Robin's room is $150 but that's without the mattress. There's a cool sofa bed, a butcher block island for the kitchen. I want to get rid of the hideous wooden entertainment center I inherited from my mother, I want to get area rugs to go over the hideous brown carpet.
The night before I'd had the most unpleasant conversation imaginable with Ben who finally allowed himself to be contacted by phone. So why hasn't he called in six weeks?
"Feels like I am always angry or very sad," he said.
The first time I saw those words – in an email a week ago – I was very moved and cried salt tears. But then they began appearing in text messages on Robin's phone ("I miss U terribly, I am always either angry or very sad") and I had to think to myself, what an inappropriate message for an 11 year old. And now that they'd finally surfaced as dialogue, all I could think was: this must be Ben's new French Foreign Legion meme; the great hurt behind the bravado of the manly man.
"Why are you angry?" I said.
"Because the deal was that I'd go out for five weeks – five weeks! – and then come home," he hissed.
"Oh, Ben," I said. "You know as well as I do that if you'd ended up loving C&B, I would have gotten a terse little phone call, 'Honey, I've got to follow my heart…'"
"I would not!" he snapped.
"No? See I think you wanted out but for whatever reason couldn't be upfront about it. So you set me up to do the heavy lifting."
"I never wanted out," he said.
"Okay, you never wanted out," I said. "Lemme ask you something. Do you think Brian Rapp" – the most boring, stable and good-natured of Ben's many cousins – "says to Julie, his wife, 'Honey, I'm running off the join the circus for five weeks. Hold down the fort.' 'Cause you know, I really don't think he does. I really don't think that's the way marriage works. Maybe you go off for a week to recharge, maybe you even go off for two weeks. But five weeks? Leaving me with a job, a business, a distraught eleven year old, a disaster of a house for five weeks of hell so you can – what was that phrase you used? Follow your heart?"
"I'd never say anything as corny as 'follow my heart'," he objected.
"A stylist to the last," I laughed. "Oh, Ben, I do miss you. But, no. I deserve better."
Oh, there was much, much more, of course. I heard the fear in his voice – what was he gonna do come November when the circus closed down for the winter? He hasn't held a job in six or seven years. He's over fifty. What can he do? For a moment I had this horrible vision of him homeless, pushing a shopping cart. I had loved him a lot once, really, really, really loved him, loved him enough so that his second chance was a hundred chances over fourteen years. He's still the other voice in my inner dialogue. I don't suppose I'll ever know anyone I get along with better on the day to day.
Not. My. Problem.
Oh, and Robin did his Linda Blair imitation at the San Francisco International airport last night. It was pretty awful. Proximate cause was that I had told him we could BART to Colma and see the Adam Sandler movie while we were waiting for his plane. But then we got to the BART station, the round BART trip to Colma was $20, which on top of the $20 to get into the movies was too much to spend. I told him this figuring he's eleven, he is reasonable, he understands money and budgets. BEEP! Wrong! He proceeded to lay down on one of the benches crying and screaming at the top of his lungs, "I hate you! I hate you!"
Great! All we needed was for a BART cop to come along. Robin could have had a wonderful story to tell his grandchildren: the Night I Ended Up In Child Protective Services Custody. You expect this behavior from a three year old but not from an almost-teenager, and I thought, I can't control him, I can't control him, I'm the worst mother in the world.
We talked it through and subsequently ended up dining on sushi and reading – A Tree Grows In Brooklyn for him, To Kill A Mockingbird for me.
But it's too much for him, and it's too much for me. I'm so happy he has this break with happy, horse-obsessed, dog-obsessed Grandma. But what do I do when he comes back?
