Sunday, June 26, 2005Is it live or is it Memorex?Spencer provided me with a huge insight today. He had his first babysitting gig - watching over five (5) two-year-olds while a party was underway. His job was to keep things sane enough for the grownups to enjoy themselves.Five two-year olds. Oh yeah, and two other kids... aged five and nine, I think. Can you imagine? I can't. I barely survived my own children's two's, and I love them immensely. And the two's happened serially, so I only really ever had to deal with one two year old, ever, at a time. Spencer was STOKED. Not only because of the money (he didn't really want to charge more than $5/hour, which I considered the deal of the century for his clients), but because he genuinely likes their son. "Owen ROCKS," he's said, more than once. "Owen is OBSESSED with basketball." Apparently Spencer had met this little kid down at the park near our house and they had really hit it off. Obsessed? Hit it off? In my mind I'm thinking, how can you know ANYTHING about a two-year-old? A two-year-old is an aggregation of hostility, neediness, random excretions and howling rage. A two-year-old is kinetic physics in action. A two-year-old is charming and sweet precisely as much as is necessary to keep surviving, and not a bit more. But Spencer was seeing this kid as a PERSON. I was struck by that. Spencer had this ability to see past the stereotypes that are formed around two-year-olds. Spencer saw the person and not the list of generic attributes. Spencer, maybe because of a lack of direct experience, or maybe because he's simply way more evolved than I am, was seeing the situation in exactly the right way. He wasn't going to baby-sit five two-year-olds and a couple of other kids. He was going to go hang out with Owen and Mackie and Casey and some other kids he had yet to meet. It was going to be fun. They were just people who happened to be younger than he was. After he went off to his babysitting gig, I stopped by the local coffee place to get a bite before my yoga class (noting with satisfaction the sweet turnabout of going to a playdate while my son trudges off to earn a few bucks). I paused to say hi to Jill, my ex-husband's girlfriend, who is working there parttime (which seems to me to be the coolest gig ever). And I realized as I left that Jill and Gavin and I, to varying degrees, had also mastered this ability to see past the archetypes and directly to the people involved. Over the past six and a half years, Gavin and I have had the best results at being divorced when we talk to each other as friends, and people, and co-partners, rather than thinking of each other as the "ex." Early on I begged him to not introduce me as his "ex-wife," but to consider just saying my name or, if further definition were necessary, to call me the mother of his kids. In conversation, I never refer to him as the ex, but just call him by name. I've tried to take the "ex" out of expletive. It works pretty well. Our worst times are when we're all caught in situations where archetypes are prevailing over real relationships. When his parents are caught between being "in-laws" to their son's ex-wife. When there are conflicting loyalties between the Girlfriend and the Ex. Jill and I have talked about this and I am so appreciative of her ability to "get" it. I'm pretty sure she sees me, most of the time, as this other person in her partner's life who happens to have had children with him. I see her as the other woman in my children's lives; a woman whom I am deeply grateful to for her sense of humor, her whimsy, her fundamental goodness and her sweet temper. Yes, I could revel in bitter rivalry, but that would only be workable if I kept on the level of thinking of her as the Girlfriend, and not simply Jill. My thought as we go through life is that we work a lot better with each other when we stay live to the moment and don't go all Memorex on each other. This is an exortation to myself most of all. I need to better give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and not assume that past experience - either on a personal or archtypical level - will inform future action. So thank you to Spencer - for teaching me to look at things differently. And thank you to Gavin and Jill - for continuing to work out of our pre-conceived notions of how we should act towards one another and trying, as much as possible, to deal with each other as fellow travelers on intersecting journeys. I still draw the line at the two-year-olds, though. Maybe the next incarnation. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 7:39 PM  
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