Sacrifice
A few weeks ago Nathaniel and I were talking on Skype, and I asked him a question. It wasn’t a fair question, I know, but I couldn’t help myself:
“Are you happier now? Or were you happier a couple of years ago?”
The implication was a comparison–NOW, when we live mainly apart, versus THEN, when we did the shared-custody dance. Underneath the question I asked were all the ones I didn’t: is this okay? Am I okay? This decision to be apart–is it hurting you? Do you still love me? Do you still feel my love?
Nathaniel was silent for a while and then he spoke. “Now, I think.”
“Now?” Even though it was the answer I had hoped for–I wanted to know this was the right choice and I want my children to be happy–my heart seized. They’re happier without me. How do I bear this?
“Yeah. I didn’t have any friends then. It was hard going back and forth all the time from your house to Daddy’s. His house was so messy. . . ”
“And now?”
“Now it’s good,” he said finally.
Good. I wasn’t prepared for my tears then, and I wasn’t sure whether the tears were from relief or sadness. Shouldn’t he be pining for me now? Has my sacrifice–giving up being with my children so their life could be better–gone unnoticed?
My expression of motherhood has been one long chain of sacrifice. I didn’t plan it that way, but I can look back now and see what I created: quitting jobs to raise babies; sleeping sitting up while holding nursing infants in my arms; commuting three hours a day so my children could go to the schools that best supported their needs; dishing out the best bits for the kids and taking what was left for myself at every meal. Growing up, my brother and I teased our mom when she claimed to prefer her toast burned. Now I know why she did that. It’s a mother thing. Sacrifice.
Earlier this month I flew to Pennsylvania to spend a week with my children. It took two airplanes to get to there. On the first I saw the movie Her Sister’s Keeper, about a family with three children. The youngest child was bio-engineered so she would possess the proper genetic combination to donate parts of her body to her older sister who is dying of leukemia. The film was all about sacrifice–the younger daughter giving of her body, the mother giving up a normal life and a normal relationship with the younger daughter so as to save the older one. I watched it uneasily while seeing myself in the mother’s desperation and understanding her helplessness.
On the second airplane I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and learned that in advance of the German occupation of the English Channel islands during World War II, thousands of children from the island were sent to England to live with who-knows-who for who-knows-how-long. The parents had to make a snap decision–keep their children with them and face together the horrors or challenges from the occupation, or send them away to an uncertain but safer future, one that could last years. It was a cruel choice, and either way a sacrifice. My first inclination was to cry, “How could those mothers send their children away?” Then I realized that this might be the same response people have when they hear my situation.
The mother-bear instinct is strong in me, and it took every ounce of resolution I had to execute the decision that being apart from my children was going to be the best thing for them. The reasons were complex and numerous, but among them was that my stepping back was to be a gift to their father. Now would be his time, I thought, to step up and to deepen his connection with his children, the connection he thought I usurped simply by being their mother. He could be the dad he wanted to be. I would sacrifice the thing that, like my mother’s burned toast, was part of a long chain of sacrifice. I would give up the close, everyday connection I had with my kids, the connection that was at the heart of nearly everything I had done for twelve years.
I found out earlier this fall that my ex-husband is now going to law school in addition to working with an airline. His older brother moved in with all of them shortly after I left over a year ago, and now this 60-something man who never had children of his own spends more time with my kids than their father does. The kids see their dad in the mornings before school and then late in the evenings after he returns home, and not at all on the weekends because that’s when he also works. I feel now that I should have known that this–or something like it–would happen, but I feel angry and cheated. I am angry that my supreme sacrifice appears to have been in vain, and angry that my ex-husband is the father that he is and not the one I thought he should be. I feel cheated out of feeling good about my sacrifice, and angry that just as when we were married, my children’s father seems to be doing exactly what he wants without regard for anyone else. I know my anger is misplaced in all this, and that letting go is, ultimately, best for everyone, but it’s still there. The aching place in my heart is still too raw.
The week with my kids was wonderful. None of them seemed starved for a connection, and I reveled in being truly present with the new dynamic I’m creating with each of them individually. This was most apparent with Nathaniel. One afternoon he ate an apple while sitting on the edge of his hotel bed. The way he held his body, hunched over the dripping apple that was still wet from being freshly washed, reminded me of his father. For a moment I was taken aback–my little boy was no longer mine, no longer as like me as he once was–but then I realized the perfection in his changes. His voice is deep now and his tall body dwarfs mine. His demeanor is capable and knowing. He’s no longer a little boy in any respect, and of course he carries pieces of his father’s spirit along with mine. I see them more clearly now after he has spent a year redefining himself with his father’s energy. And, like he said to me that day on Skype, it’s good. My sacrifice didn’t create emptiness for him, it created space–the space he needed to become the man that is inside of him.
7 replies on “Sacrifice”
You are delusional if you think your absence has not left a hole in those children. Keep telling yourself that. You’ll need it when they are in their 30s and ask you ‘Why?”
Thank you for sharing your stories. It sounds to me like you are very present in your children’s lives, then and now. Please continue to write about this topic. Have your children ever expressed an interest in writing their stories? It would be interesting to read a story from their perspective. Be well.
It seems to me that you are available for your children, both before you moved and now. I like following your story and “hearing” how you and your family are adapting to the changes you made. Be well.
When I first read your column, I was instantly angry and I couldn’t figure out why. After several days, I think I know. You have written about leaving your abusive marriage, yet you left your kids there with that same man because you need to do what’s best for you. That is not being a mother.
A mother would fiercely protect her children at all costs. She would not leave them with an individual that she considered a danger to herself. Your kids did not ask to be here. You brought them here. You have an obligation to them first, you second. You can ‘find yourself’ when they have grown. Abandoning them at this stage in their lives is doing permanent damage to them.
Every night since I first read your column I have prayed for the safety of your children. Maybe the truth is that your marriage was not abusive – you just wanted out. That’s fine but hiding behind a claim of an ‘abusive marriage’, and ‘doing what is best for your kids’ is an insult to mothers everywhere.
MOF, all the high horse dramatics doesn’t change one thing: the legal system sucks. It actually protects smart abusers a lot more than it protects their partners. And when you get beaten – even if it’s ‘only’ by words, by intimidation, etc – you can’t help but pass it on to your kids. You either beat them in your own way or teach them to be victims. Or leave.
The legal system isn’t about what’s right. It’s not about helping. It’s not about protecting. It most definitely isn’t about the kids. It’s just about following some rule made by someone who was very disconnected from what goes on in real families.
How tragic that the author does not get to enjoy her sacrifice.
The nerve of her ex-husband being exactly who he has always been. Doesn’t he know that the authors wishful thinking should be the blueprint for his life? If he doesn’t change, then she, let’s not forget, does not to enjoy her sacrifice.
Luckily for the author her children are there to pin the justification for her leaving on. See, she did it for them. Of course. No doubt.
Karen, I feel and live your pain every day. My marriage was emotionally abusive for 18 years. The divorce and subsequent custody battle has seen that abuse carried to a whole new level as he manipulates the kids’ minds to hate their mother by telling them lies. I thought giving him custody would stop his mental abuse of our children, but no. As long as I remain in their lives (hanging by my fingernails most days) he continues to torment them until they now too spew his poison from their lips and minds against me. The sad thing is, that’s exactly what his mom did to him and his siblings.
Mom of 4 has no idea, no concept, that such an evil can even exist in these “modern” times. I am here as living proof that it exists and the court system is their playground. I am now contemplating moving away which would be heartbreaking for me, but if it would help lessen the torment of my children, it is a path I may soon take. Thanks to Karen being so honest and having the courage to express herself it is a sacrifice that good mothers, mothers who love their children with all their being, must sometimes choose to do. She sacrificed herself so her children could be “free” or at the least, less tormented by their father.
Thank you for sharing your heart, Karen!