Every week my daughter empties her backpack onto the sofa and accumulates the drawings she brought home from school. She then she chooses which ones will bring her father to her and which ones will stay with me. It is my fault that she has two houses instead of one, and it is my fault that she has to make this choice.
She recently came back with a drawing of a fish divided into multiple boxes. In each there was 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 her calculations was a magnificent fish.
I wanted to have this fish. I wanted to post it on our fridge, send the photos 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 heap intended for her father.
I hate this weekly division of his assets. I try to hide from her how I feel, but I’m sure she knows.
“Do you agree ?” she asks me, showing me what she intends to give him.
I always answer yes. But I never agree. Whenever she chooses her father over me, it still hurts.
All the first few times
There are some things in a divorce that are impossible to predict, to anticipate. To know what it is, you must have experienced it. It’s like being a mother.
If I had known what awaited me, would I have done more to save my marriage? I had considered many things, such as the fact that it would be difficult for my daughter, and difficult for me to live alone after five years of marriage and ten years of living together. I also thought I’d never eat the delicious raisin filling my ex makes for Thanksgiving again.
What I hadn’t foreseen was the number of times I would have to write to her asking if I could call her because our daughter wanted to talk to her. I hadn’t measured the strength of their bonds (he had stayed at home in our daughter’s early years), nor the strength of the feeling of exclusion I was about to experience. I had no idea how badly missing my daughter’s first haircut would hurt me.
I had no way of imagining in advance all the first few times I would be lost, the pain I would 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 a hard time managing.
