Crying Has Never Brought Me Relief

The story of MY Husband

It was July.

I was sitting on a beach chair in my parents driveway chain smoking menthols and swiping. There he was. Very tall in a suit. Slick. “Want to get ice cream?” I asked. He did.

I hopped in my mother’s SUV and parked on the street. We got two cones. Mine was strawberry, but I didn’t eat it. I don’t usually eat ice cream. I was a crazy young thing in my twenties. He had a red T-shirt on.

He talked a lot. I was into it. It was 2011. I was 24. We spent the next two weeks together. Then the 4th of July. Then the rest of my life. There was a double rainbow at our rustic barn wedding (an interesting choice for two city slickers.) I called him Peach. He called me Anna.

On my 30th birthday I got the gender reveal results in an email. We held hands. I clicked to reveal the sex. I was getting a baby girl for my birthday. The biggest dream of my life!

He moved into my apartment in the Back Bay, in Boston. We went to parties. I sold vintage, he made documentary films. We honeymooned in Rome, then took a car to Positano, Italy. We swam in the blue lagoon in Capri. We had a honeymoon suite. We over flooded the bathtub. I learned I liked Prosecco. We bought his and hers perfumes I later found in his bedside dresser and had to make a choice what to do with.

Our divorce was hard. Not in the way that things are usually hard when they are hard. It got realllllly bad. I thought I had actually died and been replaced in a new life. A quantum crackdown. Who was this baby girl living with me and where was my husband? I told everyone my husband was coming back for me. I raised my baby alone in Covid lockdown.

I wrote sad poetry. But I didn’t cry.

I was saving my tears for later.

I knew if I started I would not be able to stop.

Anyway, crying has never brought me relief.

…..

It is July.

Yesterday we went on a boat ride for his forty second birthday.

Sometimes when I date new single dads (divorced or otherwise previously partnered) it makes me sad to not have been their one main love affair. The girl they fell head over heals for. The mother of their babies. Then I remember. He was there was there for my twenty two hour natural birth and held my vomit bag. He was there for surgeries, graduations, milestones, birtdays, deaths in the family. He is my family. Sure we have also wronged each other but also he was there. What if this was the main love affair I got?

At lunch, on his birthday, the three of us sat around bowls of fancy north end pasta and cups of still water. He and I took turns wiping red sauce off our five year olds little moving dancing hands, wiping her mouth. I chugged water. It was a hot day and we had gone on a boat.

“I’m sorry.” I said. It fell about as flat as words can fall flat.

I said more. He said some. We tabled it and got gelato.

There’s no two ways about it we cooked our goose.

We are “family passing.” People tell us when we are out that we are a beautiful family.

They have no idea the divorce we had!

They have no idea what I endured in family court!

Say more?

No.

Not this time.

This time I will say less.

Are you two getting back together the nanny asks.

No. I say.

In my heart I know it is an impossible task. Too clunky.

I guess I am an adult now because I know when something is impossible.

Another question. Do you know what it is like to have “a child’s father”? A child’s father with whom you are not together and yet, there he is familiar as toast.

Trust is another story. I mean, forget it!!! It’s like how do you trust say, a teddy bear…that say, bites. You don’t.

But, what other nuclear family do I have?

It’s taken me years to realize the double rainbow at our wedding had zero significance.

I wish I could place value on signs to deliver hidden meaning.

We fell apart.

And our daughter is crazy wild beautiful.