Weekend visit

Finally for today, an earlier musing on something I get to do very frequently:

            I’m driving down to get my daughter for a visit earlier this Friday evening and I’m struck by what the world must look like through her eyes.  A child of divorce, which is something I never was, it seems like everything for her is split in half.  Brain exhausted from my work week, I watch her go through her usual routine, feeling a little sad for her.  I wonder if she really feels like she belongs anywhere.  She carefully takes the time to say goodbye to my ex’s dog, telling him to be good and listen to Daddy while she is gone.  And he watches her with an earnest face, as though wondering when she will return.  She insists on carrying her own little suitcase, which proves a fool’s errand once she gets out into the snow, but she stubbornly tries until her father helps her on the second face-plant in the yard.  Once we’re in the car, she tells me she told the dog it was okay to sleep on her bed while she was gone.  I begin directing the car through the snow onto the highway, turning on the CD I keep for long trips like this one which has a selection of her favorite songs on it and she comments that she can’t wait to get home. 

            Already?  A bit perturbed, I ask why.  She comments wistfully that Bandit is waiting and he must miss her. 

Now, Bandit is my cat, not the dog she just left behind.  As she smiles out the window at the snow, I see that my perception of her world is actually backwards.  It must’ve been hard for her to move away from the only home in her conscious memory and only see me now and then.  But when her mind finally settled with the changes, her new version of normal wasn’t what you’d expect. 

            To her, the world didn’t split in half when she and her father moved eighty miles away.  It grew twice as large, but stayed in one piece.  She sees both apartments as her home.  As I sing aimlessly with her to the tune playing through the speakers, this begins to make sense.  The dog and the cat are both her pets, so why wouldn’t the room with the Pocahontas sheets AND the room with the Tinkerbell wall both be her room?  My place was always home, now Daddy’s is, too… not “instead”.  She has two toothbrushes, two favorite cereal bowls, two little folding tables which she sits at to color; why would she think of things any other way?

            She falls asleep, as she always does on the long drive, and doesn’t wake up until I am carrying her through the dark into the building.  I’m already on the phone with her father, telling him we made it okay through the snow, and she mumbles that she wants to talk to him.  I set her down just inside the door and she yells at Bandit for tripping me.  As I unload her suitcase, she begins a ritual started when she was very small.  After either of us says goodnight, we say “I love you”.  She in turn says “I love you, too.”  The correct response to this is “I love you three!” generally in a rather high pitched voice, followed by “I love you forever!”  It occurs to me that this is precious for the continuity it provides.  This is why her world stretched instead of splitting.  Because the only thing we still agree about on a consistent basis is her.  She comes first.  So we continue the traditions and keep telling her that no matter where she is, it’s her home, that she will always have a home wherever we are. 

            Some people feel sorry for kids with divorced parents.  Personally, though, I think the best thing we could have done for her was to keep our problems out of her way by giving her two happy homes instead of one angry one.  She is twice blessed, though once she’s a teenager and we are agreeing on her punishments, she might feel otherwise.  But I no longer feel sad for her at all.  I wish it were so for all children whose parents loved them more than they loved each other.  Let the child come first, and second.  And third.  Forever.