I have an ex-husband who is Canadian.  He and I were married for 3 years and are now quite good friends.  After our divorce, I fell in love with and had twins with a man I did not ultimately marry.  He’s still a very involved father in the twins’ lives and he and I are also, in our way, friends. 

I have not typically trumpeted the details of my personal history at the various social gatherings I have attended these past years.   I usually let people assume, as they do, that my current husband is the father of all of my children.  Most of the time, this lack of information sharing is natural reticence.  Reticence and cool remove are rare jewels in a culture where gloppy personal stories are shared like fudge at every gathering.  Besides, I like my peeps a little shy so that when they do reveal their secrets, it’s like winning a lovely prize.

On the other hand, I like the sassy fun hip people with a past.  I love the courage and folly of bad life choices and stories of fun drunken debauchery and bad boyfriends and torrid travel romances.  I can view a divorce (or 2) or a kid out of wedlock as a colorful part of someone’s past, but I’ve never wanted to be someone with a past.  I want to be the funny  wacky, but still pure & innocent sidekick.

The truth is, I’m a little embarrassed when I do get close enough to someone to tell them my story.  I’m always afraid that they’ll see me as this single mom, smoking cigarettes, while her bastard children run around the yard in dirty diapers.  Or as a bitter cynical divorcee who got married in the nick of time. 

Even with this, I’m still often chosen to be the funny & wacky sidekick to smartass babes with dark pasts and I love that role because we’ve all got our secrets.  And in the end, everyone needs a good belly laugh from someone who *knows* them in that "I’ve been there too, sis" kind of way.

Hi. My name is Rachael and I have a dark and sordid past. 

You?

Bookmark to:

My twin daughters attend preschool for 2.5 hours 3 days each week.  As a newly unemployed stay-at-home-against-her-will mom (SAHAHWM), these brief hours of solitude are treasured, but they tend to fly by in a wink.  As a result, I don’t want to waste them on anything productive like showering, cleaning, answering the phone, picking up toys, or exercising.  I do want to spend them writing, reading, or swearing loudly to myself just because I can. 

Earlier,  I came up with the brilliant idea to tell the twins that while they were at preschool a magical fairy person made them a special lunch.  They got so excited that they bounced up and down in their booster seats.  When they got home and saw the table laid out with food, they gobbled everything up including the carrots without one complaint. 

Unfortunately, when I pick them up from preschool these days, if I ever have the nerve to say  "no the fairy person didn’t come today because she had some important reading to catch up on" a huge double preschooler car breakdown ensues.  So now, I have to make a big deal of the goddamn fairy person making the lunch.  Worse still, I have to get the lunch made before I even leave to pick them up which takes more coins from my sad little alone time jar.

I know I’m living in Crazy Mommy World and I shouldn’t let them push me around.  I know that as a formerly single mama I sometimes give in to their bullying more than I should.

But the truth is, I’d rather submit to the tyranny of the fairy person than have to sit through another car tantrum in stereo.

##

Bookmark to: