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Another weekend, another fight at the Please Touch Museum. I swear, every fight happens there. My marriage will end, the divorce papers served, in the germ-infested halls of that place.
Ellie was having a meltdown. Her usual new tantrum thing. Jay was doing his usual thing – “I got her.” ‘I’ll hold her.” He always does this. I tell her to just put her down, let her cry. Let her climb up the slide and fall the six inches. Maybe I’m just checked out. Or maybe, I’ve learned the art of preservation. Let your kids lick and run and fall and cry and drink your coffee and look at the architecture. Oh that’s a nice tree. The carousel is beautiful.
I know about ego depletion. I wrote a book on it. I know that I have to pick and choose my battles. That my tank is depleting and if I’m gonna last the day, I need to let some things go. Thus, I choose to let her cry on the floor. He chooses to try and contain her.
Fine, I think, do what you want to do. So we split up, like we always do. I was busy with Emmy, teaching her, and myself, patience when an older boy wouldn’t get off the toy rocket. His mom was aware, as all moms are, trying to manage the social pressure and her own child’s tantrum.
The classic tango:
“Tommy, this little girl has been waiting.
*“Emmy, we have to be patient.” *
“Tommy, I’m setting a timer.”
“She’s setting a timer,”
“Two minutes,” she says, displaying the timer on her phone so we all can see it. I’m thinking two minutes is a long time. This is a thirty-second kind of deal. The timer is counting down. I don’t realize, until I meet Jay in the cafeteria, another timer is going off.
I see it in his eyes when I meet him in the cafeteria. The crash is coming. I know it the way he thinks he knows when my period is coming. Please. That charged energy before a storm. His eyes are empty and dark, and if you look at him the wrong way, if Elizabeth screams one more time, he might just explode.
He’s checked out. It’s only 9 am, but he’s gone and I know he’s not coming back. The only words that come out of his mouth the rest of the day are mumbles about how miserable this is. How terrible everything is.
The worst part is, he’s trying to be good. He’s doing everything a great dad should be doing and I keep saying: Why don’t you take a break. What I mean is: Go away, refill the well, and come back, whether it be two minutes or two hours or two days later, but go and fix yourself. Because there’s nothing worse than doing something with someone who clearly doens’t want to be doing it. There’s nothing worse than watching you try and do everything and leaving me with nothing.
The whole thing reminds me of this experience my friend is going through. She’s building a house. The idea is always great. It’s not until you’re in it – halfway through, covered in mud and marble countertops, do you understand what people meant. What they were trying to warn you when they said ‘it’s hard.”
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