I
know Florida birds. After my divorce, I took the children bird-watching on the
golf course behind the house where we lived, a prime place for such a pastime. The
grounds were meticulous. Artificial turf blended seamlessly with the wild
lushness of bear grass, palms, live oak, and canals. In this landscape, the
modern and ancient Florida Everglades has compromised nicely with the championship
golf course and the palatial homes that surround it. We never saw the owners of
these estates; despite their wealth, they never seemed to be out enjoying their
pools, tennis, or basketball courts. Their houses stood at attention, as if
guarding their rich owners. Even when the security guard in his golf cart
stopped and ordered us to get off the course because people in the houses complained,
I voiced my right to be there. (Unlike the others in the gated community, I
refused to take part in their belief that nothing was good enough, not even the
beautiful golf course with its reminders of an ancient Everglades and exotic
birds.) I let him know my house was on Kingsmoor Way and that very high luxury
taxes were paid annually for my right to enjoy the golf course. Anyway, we were
not in anyone’s way. The golfers were Done for the day and only birds and my
kids and I remained.
During
that time, paradise was ours. The sun set like an orgasmic orange glaze in the
horizon and the birds emerged from their hiding places. With our binoculars,
reference books, and journals we proceeded to note what we saw. Birds were everywhere.
There were tiny terns; fishing cormorants; luxuriating anhingas, spreading
their iridescent wings to dry in the sun; red-love pouched Magnificent Frigate birds;
voracious turkey vultures waiting for death and stink to eat; tuxedo-clad
storks; aggressive boat-tail grackles, pouncing on females when mating; hoot
owls safely ensconced in the branches of live oaks; pure white ibises waiting
on the edge of the shore to stab fish with their sharp beaks; and the
erratic-flying fruit bats that wait all day to make an appearance in the early
evening.
My
children drew the birds in their journals. They read about them in the reference
manuals and learned of their mating rituals, eating habits, and migratory
patterns. I knew the birds were no replacement for their father, who had
recently moved out of the house, but they became a distraction that gave them a
sense of thriving life and stretched their imaginations beyond their consuming
sadness.
Regardless
of all our distracting afternoon activities, though, our sadness could not be
shaken, articulated, or even shared with each other. When we got back to the
house every evening we walked around solemnly, as if we were three separate
islands, existing solely off our own resources. I only wished I was the type of
parent who could sit the children down and, in a self-assured and confident
voice, promise them a better future and a plan for achieving it. But I was in
no condition to articulate anything. During the first months of the separation my
emotions bubbled inside me so vigorously that I kept the action focused on bird
walks and on the trivial activities of the day, like the brushing of teeth, the
eating of vegetables, and the completion of homework. I couldn’t delve into
anything further. One of my main preoccupations became the future of the red photo
albums my husband kept neatly arranged on shelves in the study. I stared at
them constantly in disbelief, stood at the threshold of the study mesmerized
and frozen by what they now meant. Really, I couldn’t figure out what relevance
happy memories had and whether their destruction would provide me consolation by
destroying evidence of a once familiar past now gone awry: Pictures of eloping
in a courthouse in Mississippi, adopting children in Russia. Celebrations of baptisms
and birthdays only elicited questions of how best the pictures should be
destroyed. Should I tear them apart one by one, burn the albums in a fiery pyre
by the pool, or just leave them alone? In the end, I decided to banish them to
the study where they had always been, close the door, and bar anyone’s entrance
to the room.
My
children’s reactions to the separation were more subtle: Clara, my
four-year-old, who might not have fully understood the situation in its
entirety, started leaving her classroom without permission, and Nicholas’s
grades started slipping. Subsequently, I signed them up for counseling with the
school psychologist who made them draw pictures of their feelings: empty
houses, unhappy faces, blank pages.
During
those months we were all about moving the action along, nipping it in the bud, not
falling prey to our debilitating sorrow, but instead standing alone, stoic and resolute.
That is, until the night I heard my seven-year-old son cry himself to sleep. His
father had always lain beside him in bed, answering all his questions: How high
is the moon? Are the stars really white?
Eventually, he would drift off to sleep and my husband would leave his
room. Really, Nicholas never slept through the night until he was eight years
old; he was always waking up and crying about fears of childhood monsters.
After
my husband left the house, I did the nighttime routine with the children as if nothing
had changed, reading their fairy tales with fervor, mimicking the voices of
wolves, bears, and pigs, and praying solemnly for their safety. I usually read
to my son last. Then I would scratch his back, place a kiss on his cheek and
tell him I was in the next room, when, in all actuality, I would be pacing the
halls, which I believed he heard me do. And I paced every night, until my pain
exhausted me, falling into maybe two hours of sleep in the early morning hours.
While
I was walking around the house one night, I heard my son’s whimpering from
somewhere deep in his pillow, muffled and almost indistinct, as if the sound had
gotten caught in the vents of the central air unit and were now traveling with
the cool air emitted from the ducts. Yet I heard it clearly, and it stopped me
in my tracks. For the time first in the whole ordeal, I realized that my
children’s pain was just as deep, silent, and cutting as mine. For a moment, I
stood at the entrance of my son’s door and looked at him, as if in a trance.
The boy who was always strong and resilient didn’t want me to know he suffered,
didn’t want me to suffer any more than I already did, so he made sure he held
the sides of his pillow around his small head. His gesture made me strong
enough to walk over to him, place a kiss on cheek, and a whisper in his ear
that everything would be okay. We huddled together side by side until he
drifted off to sleep, and for first time in those first brutal months of the
separation, it felt like a quiet, warm rain fell on both of our distant and isolated
islands of pain.
Memoir, " of ," available at: http://www.amazon.com
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