me. This is who I am. And I hope for someone I will love thoroughly and authentically who will believe that is enough. And he will love me for who I am in all my flawed imperfection.
It takes a long time to shape a human. It takes a very long time to shape three good men. And it takes more energy, focus, and commitment than I ever could explain to someone who does not want to hear, that this is the most important thing I will ever do. And it must be done. This is not elective. This is not a choice. And it can be done.
It takes help from family and friends and coaches who arrive in a high school wrestling room out of nowhere to be someone your sons will respect, love, and listen to. But you can’t be drinking wine on somebody’s porch when a son is in crisis. And you can’t be whispering sweet nothings when a son is stranded and needs a ride home. Children can forgive many things—the hurts, the failures, the mistakes. But they cannot forgive you forgetting that they come first.
Buttons. That’s what came to mind when I thought of having a partner, of being in love. In my mind’s eye, I could see a huge drawer of spare buttons, some in the small plastic envelopes you get pinned to the sleeve of the slightly more expensive clothes, others just tossed in with excruciating randomness. I have a box of them at home in my sewing kit, hundreds of mismatched buttons: the gold military buttons and the flat pearlized ones in shell or tawny colors for blazers and jackets, the ones made of braided fabric, the small printed ones belonging to blouses or dresses I no longer own. All you want is two buttons that can hold together a piece of fabric for a good long time. You can spend a lifetime looking for another button similar to yours, simply trying to make somewhat of a match, just two together that appear to make a pair. You can expect symmetry—you can hope for it, pray for it, try to make two buttons work together—but no two ever match exactly, now do they?
7
Gone
----
2006
T he screen message on my cell phone read U NKNOWN . I always answered anyway, no matter who it was, what time of day, or whether it was convenient: it could be an emergency for the boys. I once got a call when Colin suffered a concussion in seventh-grade gym class. Another time, I got a call when Brendan, in fourth grade at the time, landed on his knee on the playground and a wood chip daggered in so deeply it had to be removed in the emergency room. Weldon had the stomach flu one morning in middle school and needed to come home immediately. I answered that call too. I have turned around forty-five minutes into the hour-plus drive to work to retrieve a son, fix something, start over.
So I answered.
“Hello, Michele.”
I had not heard my former husband’s voice in about a year. His voice sounded as methodical and rehearsed as if it was delivered in a slow, intravenous drip. He said he was in town and wanted to talk to the boys and set up a time to see them. It was 2006, more than ayear since he had seen them, more than two years since he moved to the Netherlands. I couldn’t remember the last time he spoke to any of them.
“Call them yourself. They can arrange this for themselves,” I told him. “They have the same e-mail they had before, the same cell phone numbers. We have the same home number.”
We had a cordial conversation—brief and nonconfrontational. There was no point in confronting him. Attempting to redirect any of his behavior was like trying to sort through a tangle of live wires with wet hands. I hung up, slowed down the car, turned right off of Dempster Street at the next side street, pulled over to the curb, got out, and threw up. I stood in the street near a pile of leaves and breathed deeply until the nausea passed and I could get back in the car.
Later that night I told the boys at dinner. “Your dad called today to see when he could see you.” I skipped the throwing up near the curb part.
Each son responded with a
It takes a long time to shape a human. It takes a very long time to shape three good men. And it takes more energy, focus, and commitment than I ever could explain to someone who does not want to hear, that this is the most important thing I will ever do. And it must be done. This is not elective. This is not a choice. And it can be done.
It takes help from family and friends and coaches who arrive in a high school wrestling room out of nowhere to be someone your sons will respect, love, and listen to. But you can’t be drinking wine on somebody’s porch when a son is in crisis. And you can’t be whispering sweet nothings when a son is stranded and needs a ride home. Children can forgive many things—the hurts, the failures, the mistakes. But they cannot forgive you forgetting that they come first.
Buttons. That’s what came to mind when I thought of having a partner, of being in love. In my mind’s eye, I could see a huge drawer of spare buttons, some in the small plastic envelopes you get pinned to the sleeve of the slightly more expensive clothes, others just tossed in with excruciating randomness. I have a box of them at home in my sewing kit, hundreds of mismatched buttons: the gold military buttons and the flat pearlized ones in shell or tawny colors for blazers and jackets, the ones made of braided fabric, the small printed ones belonging to blouses or dresses I no longer own. All you want is two buttons that can hold together a piece of fabric for a good long time. You can spend a lifetime looking for another button similar to yours, simply trying to make somewhat of a match, just two together that appear to make a pair. You can expect symmetry—you can hope for it, pray for it, try to make two buttons work together—but no two ever match exactly, now do they?
7
Gone
----
2006
T he screen message on my cell phone read U NKNOWN . I always answered anyway, no matter who it was, what time of day, or whether it was convenient: it could be an emergency for the boys. I once got a call when Colin suffered a concussion in seventh-grade gym class. Another time, I got a call when Brendan, in fourth grade at the time, landed on his knee on the playground and a wood chip daggered in so deeply it had to be removed in the emergency room. Weldon had the stomach flu one morning in middle school and needed to come home immediately. I answered that call too. I have turned around forty-five minutes into the hour-plus drive to work to retrieve a son, fix something, start over.
So I answered.
“Hello, Michele.”
I had not heard my former husband’s voice in about a year. His voice sounded as methodical and rehearsed as if it was delivered in a slow, intravenous drip. He said he was in town and wanted to talk to the boys and set up a time to see them. It was 2006, more than ayear since he had seen them, more than two years since he moved to the Netherlands. I couldn’t remember the last time he spoke to any of them.
“Call them yourself. They can arrange this for themselves,” I told him. “They have the same e-mail they had before, the same cell phone numbers. We have the same home number.”
We had a cordial conversation—brief and nonconfrontational. There was no point in confronting him. Attempting to redirect any of his behavior was like trying to sort through a tangle of live wires with wet hands. I hung up, slowed down the car, turned right off of Dempster Street at the next side street, pulled over to the curb, got out, and threw up. I stood in the street near a pile of leaves and breathed deeply until the nausea passed and I could get back in the car.
Later that night I told the boys at dinner. “Your dad called today to see when he could see you.” I skipped the throwing up near the curb part.
Each son responded with a
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