Full Circle

I still remember how happy they seemed together, how cohesive, sitting at that first soccer practice with their son and daughter nestled in between them. Together, they were a modern-day Norman Rockwell painting, fairly glowing with health and happiness– and when their little boy took a liking to my son Bruiser, I couldn’t help but be pleased at the prospect of the two becoming friends.

The soccer season progressed and like other families, the mom and dad took turns bringing their son to practices and games. Each time Owen showed up, he made a beeline for Bruiser. The two giggled together and pretended to be dinosaurs, or superheroes, or soldiers as they kicked the soccer ball back and forth.

“My daddy is a magician!” I overheard Owen tell Bruiser one afternoon.

“My daddy is a fighter!” Bruiser said, trying to sound tough. I laughed to myself and told Owen’s mom about the exchange the next time I saw her.

“I guess your husband knows a few magic tricks,” I said, grinning. “Owen told Bruiser his daddy is a magician.”

Her smile faded. “A magician?” she said sardonically. “No. Jim isn’t a magician. Unless you count the disappearing act he pulled on me last week.”

It was an awkward moment. I didn’t know her well enough to ask what she meant. I quickly changed the subject.

“You won’t believe this, but I think Jim and Amanda from soccer have split up,” I told my husband that night.

“Are you sure?” my husband asked. “They seemed pretty happy together.” I told him what Amanda had said at practice that day, and of the awkwardness that had followed.

“That is really weird,” he agreed. “You may be right.”

Over the next few weeks, it became painfully obvious that the split was real. Amanda’s easy smile was replaced by a tight, hard line, and when Jim was there, the two barely spoke. Amanda struggled to keep her feelings to herself, but they would often spill out in our limited conversations. Her whole world, it seemed, had turned upside down. In addition to her husband leaving, a move that clearly had taken her by surprise, she was also now searching for a full-time job, which meant that she had to put aside the home-based business she’d been working to launch over the last few years.

“I’m thinking of moving the kids to Maine at the end of the school year,” she told me abruptly one afternoon.

“Really?” I said, surprised. “Wow. That’s far away.”

“It’s where I’m from,” she explained. “I was sitting in my house over the weekend while the kids were with their dad and I just thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ It’s full of memories that really aren’t happy for me anymore. I think I need to start over somewhere else.”

“Then you should,” I said simply. “But we’ll miss you.”

Jim also seemed eager to open up on the days when Amanda wasn’t around. “I’ve moved into my own place,” he told me one day as we stood watching the kids play. “I’ve been really worried about how the kids would take it, but they seem okay with it.”

“Well, that’s good,” I said. It felt weird, being caught in the middle of what was obviously a painful separation. But, I reasoned, I might as well get used to it. As my kids got older, divorces among the parents of their friends and teammates were only going to increase. And so I tried that year to be friendly with both Amanda and Jim…

…at least until the soccer team’s end-of-the-year picnic came along. It was Jim’s weekend with the kids, but this time, he also brought along another woman. A girl, really. She looked like she was in her early twenties, and dressed in short shorts and a clingy off-the-shoulder top, she definitely stood out amid the more conservatively dressed moms and dads. Watching Jim and the girl canoodle and laugh together, I was dumbfounded. How could he bring her here? How could he force all of these families to watch this display, when only a few months earlier, he’d been on this same field with his arm around his wife? How was Amanda going to feel when she saw this girl, or when she heard about her from friends? She would be humiliated! My heart ached for her.

And then suddenly, it occurred to me that this, at last, was my full-circle moment.

Eleven years ago, I was that girl on the soccer field, hand-in-hand with a boyfriend who was 15 years older. Eleven years ago, I endured the malevolent gazes,  the coldness, and the barbs from other mothers. Back then, I thought the unkindness  was unfair– I hadn’t even met my boyfriend until after his divorce was finalized. There was nothing wrong or inappropriate about the two of us falling in love. But throughout our courtship, our engagement and eventual marriage, and occasionally even today, I’ve borne the brunt of hurtful comments from first wives– and because of that, I’ve always resolved that when I encountered another girlfriend or second wife at the soccer field or a child’s birthday party, I was going to go out of my way to be nice to her. Because I knew exactly how she felt.

And yet…

I struggled, watching Jim gaze adoringly at his giggling girlfriend. I couldn’t get the image out of my mind of that happy, golden family I’d seen on the soccer field at the beginning of the season, and how very wrong this all seemed, just a few months later. I thought of all the milestones that Jim and Amanda had experienced together, as a couple-  the pregnancies, births, first steps, first words, birthdays, vacations, date nights and family nights. I saw Amanda’s strained face in my mind, and thought of the pain she was fighting so hard to keep under wraps. I saw their children, struggling to make sense of this confusing new reality. And I saw Jim’s new girlfriend, not for who she was, but what she represented: a younger, newer version of what Jim had given up, free both of emotional baggage and stretch marks. Jim’s fresh start. Jim’s new beginning. Jim’s escape.

And honestly? I wanted nothing to do with her.

That sounds horrible, doesn’t it? But it’s the truth.

As I get older, I realize there are no easy solutions when marriages fail and husbands and wives find love and fulfillment elsewhere. No pat answers. No clear heroes or villains, much as we’d like to label them one way or another in our minds. No right or wrong way of feeling. It’s hard and it’s unfair and both sides are generally at fault and everyone, everyone gets hurt.

Eleven years ago, I pledged to reach out one day to the girlfriends and stepmothers that are now beginning to multiply along the soccer field sidelines. I will live up to that pledge. They really do mean well, and they have generally have no idea of what they’re getting themselves into.

But I’m no longer under the illusion that it’s going to be easy.

 

Image via CharlieTPhotographic/Flickr