His bloodshot eyes gazed into mine moments ago above the heads of my children. I know how much effort it is for him to come all the way here, every single Tuesday and Thursday at precisely four o’clock in the afternoon. The same routine every time – he doesn’t insist on entering the apartment past the living room, nor does he attempt small talk with me. He simply entertains his own kids.
And yet, I still can’t find it in myself to forgive him. Or I never could. Every time I look into his eyes, my mind jumps back to that cold and desolate North Side apartment where I stood in the darkness by myself and alone, pregnant with three babies at once and worrying whether the heat would even last until morning. All the fear of panic attacks and gum disease due to malnutrition and just that overwhelming fear of knowing that no help was on the way. While he feasted on steak in Lake Forest, I was counting pennies to purchase cheap diapers. There’s no amount of finger paints in the world that would erase those resentments.
But then Liam lets out this breathless, jagged little toddler laugh—the one where he snorts because he’s laughing too hard—because Ethan just did a terrible impression of a tyrannosaurus rex.
I see Ethan as he catches him falling backwards, his movements delicate, his expression tender with a sort of desperate love that is also protective in nature. He loves them. It’s an imperfect form of love, but love all the same.
And as I lean on the cool granite of my kitchen countertop, I know that I don’t have the right to feel this way. My resentment is something I can no longer afford to hold on to. If I insist on barricading that door and playing the part of the avenging mother, I will be the only person suffering, apart from perhaps the three boys currently grappling with their father over on the floor.
I get back into the kitchen where I open the refrigerator and plan dinner, just breathing. This is not an ideal ending. It’s not some kind of tidy resolution or completion for the horror of the last five years. This is simply the hard reality of giving an imperfect man the chance to be better and giving myself a break by putting away the knives.
It’s just Tuesday. And for now, that’s simply enough.
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Bored Daddy
Love and Peace
