As post-divorce families go, my three older children have a relatively easy time of it. While their Dad and I do sometimes struggle with communicating with each other, we are both very involved, hands-on parents. We both live in the same town, and J. and E. split their time equally (changing houses on Sundays) between their two homes, which are only a few miles apart. Seventeen-year-old H. recently made the decision to live full-time with me, but that may change. He can still see his father anytime he likes. The kids have full access to both parents.
The kids' father and I have not lived together in six years, so my children have been living across two households for a good long time now. There was certainly an adjustment period, but in the past two years in particular, I feel like they have really settled in to the reality of their family life. There are difficulties with moving between two houses, certainly, but there are benefits, too. One of their houses is in a very urban, historic neighborhood, while the other is in a really lovely, wooded suburban setting. Each neighborhood has its own appeal. They get to do different activities with each half of their family, and they even get two Christmases. Bonus!
So they have adjusted pretty well. But I have to tell you that even though I have accepted the fact that my babies are away from me one-half the time, it doesn't mean it's ever gotten easy. I cannot begin to tell you how much I miss them when they are not there. The house seems so empty, even though we now have their baby sister toddling around. And when we do family activities on the weeks they are with their father, I literally feel an ache in my chest, wishing my other children were there to join us.
Before I met and married Jon, and gave birth to C., my time sans children was even harder. In the first year or two after their father and I broke up, I literally cried myself to sleep many nights, longing in a truly physical sense for my then quite-young children. The hard reality for me as a mother is that when I decided to end my marriage, I essentially gave up the chance to experience one-half of my children's childhoods. That's a loss so profound that I will grieve it 'til I die. And of course, the same is true for their father, who surely misses them just as much when they are with me.
This is not a new topic for me. I've written about it before. But I continue to revisit it because it's the most painful part of my life. I had to make the terrible, terrible choice whether to stay in a marriage that was slowly sucking my soul away versus giving up significant time with my children. There really is no perfect answer to that dilemma, is there? Now I am happily remarried, and so is their father. We are both happy, and we have each have moved on to the family lives we never were able to make happen as a couple, despite some monumental effort. I am blessed to be mother to my older children's little sister, whom we all adore. This is all good evidence that I made the right decision.
But I will tell you that last night - a night when the children were with their father - I went upstairs to my younger son's empty bedroom, and laid my head on his pillow for a few minutes, just so I could get a whiff of his sweet, fuzzy little head. And there are still times when I weep into my own pillow, missing my children, and wishing I could have been with them as they fell asleep on the other side of town that night.
I miss them. I keep on missing them. And honestly, I still can't say it's much easier.
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