It's Not In The Cards

A friend of mine gave my son this little refrigerator magnet that’s a little fortune teller booth. It has a little fortune teller inside sitting with a ball. And it says “Madame Fortune” on it. When you press a button, Madame Fortune says, in a generically continental accent, one of two things:

It’s in the cards…

It’s not in the cards…

It alternates between each answer. My son has figured this out and has tons of fun asking Madame Fortune shit like:

--will I get a tattoo when I am nine years old?

--will my father buy me a kid motorcycle next summer?

--when I win the lottery, will I buy myself my own ferris wheel?

Yesterday when I was cooking dinner and he was hanging out, he asked Madame Fortune:

Will my mom and dad ever be boyfriend and girlfriend again?
Madame Fortune happened to be right on and said “It’s not in the cards.”

Although my son knew it wasn’t real, he looked very upset and as if, finally, at that moment, we were going to have to talk about it. Deep breath. Ok, here we go. I tell him, I’m very sorry about that, I know it’s sad. Or something like that. He says to me:

Yes, it is. It’s very very tough all the time.

I wasn’t really ready to hear him say it that way, to use the word “tough” and not use baby talk or say anything immature or funny around it. Just say straight out his six year old life sucks—that was not something I was prepared for. Then he asks me, looking me straight in my face:

Is it sad for you?
Yes, it is. Of course, it is very sad for me.

Why?

Well because first of all, anything that makes you sad makes me sad too. But also because I also miss when we were a family all three of us and Papa lived here.

He listens and stops and says:

And he would sleep on the couch before but he would still sleep here in the house. Well not this house but the other apartment. But not even that anymore.

Yeah, not even that anymore. But we’ll be fine and things will get better and we’ll all get used to it and be a different kind of family.

Not me. I never get used to it.

I told him---I’m not sure what I told him. In fact, in this retelling of the conversation that happened last night, I’m approximating my lines. I just know his lines because they hit so hard.

I know that there was a lot of hugging and promises to do the best that I could to make it all be less sad everyday. And apologies for it being the way that it is. And assurances that we tried very much to stay together but sometimes grown-ups just don’t come through the way the kids would want them to and that is so not fair but so much a part of life. Or something.

Later on, as if by cruel coincidence, he saw an ad about spending time with a child on TV—maybe a mentor ad? To it he said, “Not my dad. He doesn’t even spend any time with me anymore.” So more assurances that we could try and sit down with the dad and I would help him speak to him about it; we would sit together and tell the dad what my son needs—surely Papa would get better at spending time again. I would help, I would be there when they talked. The whole time I am thinking, am I asking a six year old to speak to an adult about treating him right? What am I, a fucking sociopath? Then I realize, I simply don’t know what the fuck to do.

So wow, my plate is full, right? There is whole lot of shit starring me in the face right now and I don’t have an angle on any of it. This was a failure I did not want to have to correct. This was a story I didn’t want to have be part of my son’s life. The last two years he lived with us were mostly about allowing them to stay together if I am really honest with myself. I don't regret them because they gave my son and his father a shot at something that simply would not have happened if they didn't live together. Ironic, huh? I don’t blame myself for not sustaining that any further then the two years because I know better. I know that you can’t be some kind of architect building structures around some other person to keep them from messing up—they’ll just fuck up your structure and leave when shit’s coming down on your head. The asshole isn’t even in the room to hear what it sounds like for your six year old to tell you something you helped cause is “tough” and “sad” and he “never gets used to it.”

I did realize one thing, which is that I cannot be distracted from the fact that my son is going through his father’s disappearing act too, that he is being separated from as well, and that he has no resources for coping with that at all. And that insofar as I have great friends who will come and be there for me with wine and weed and just any and every attempt at making me feel a little less bad, I have to be that great friend for my son, bringing him the childhood equivalent of weed and wine—which is play--and you know, that takes a whole lot of energy I didn’t have at all but found immediately last night. Play and cuddles and laughter and the feeling of a full life to cover up certain absences.

My job is to put something into his life each day, something very distinctly good, though not necessarily big, whether a good story time or a good joke or a good playtime, that confirms to him beyond any doubt, that he has a good life; and by consequence, confirms that he is a good person who is loved, independent of a father who disappoints him and a family that breaks up around him. Because for kids, that's what is always at stake: everything, the entirety of who they are. It’s like you look away for a second and something fucks up your own kid. It’s brutal.