My kids were strangers to me every second Sunday night, especially in the summer. When they came home from a weekend at their dad’s house and they were just other people I didn’t recognize. Hopped up on too many Sour Patch Kids and not enough water. A jutted chin from the oldest, ready to do battle. Ready to see me as someone different too. My youngest suddenly became a hitter, a biter, hitting notes with his screams I didn’t know he had in him. A little Mariah Carey in training.
It was tough during the school year. It was unbearable in the summer, for several reasons. First off, I generally had Sundays to myself to decompress, to get the house sort of clean. To go to the beach, read a book, catch a matinee with a big box of my own popcorn. Relax and feel like myself again for a minute. In retrospect, this was not a good idea. I let my guard down during my down time. Forgot that, while I was getting my brain back to factory setting, my kids were getting reprogrammed.
From the time they left me on a Friday to the time they were returned on Sunday, they lived a whole life as other people. With other people. They became a bit feral, lightly buzzed on a steady stream of sugar and hot dogs and screens all hours of the day. Or, as I would later learn, sent outside to play with the front door locked, no access to indoor plumbing or food or hydration for hours at a time. Their dad told them it was good for them, that this was the way he grew up, that they were turning into, I kid you not, “sissies,” a word I thought only bullies in after school specials from 1985 ever used.
They didn’t want to be sissies, especially in the summer when they had less access to their friends at school and thus no barometer for coolness. They didn’t know how to be angry at their father, so tenuous and arbitrary was his affection for them.
And so, without fail, they came home on Sunday night, guns ablazing for me. They were tetchy, edgy, dirty, tired, and often sunburned. Their dad didn’t believe in sunscreen or hats. They bugged me for dinner, stomped around the house complaining about our furniture, our street, our stupid small town that they suddenly hated with a vengeance.
They snapped at me, but worse than that, I snapped right back.
I got too complacent on summer weekends filled up with sleep and friends and a life of my own. I lost my sense of proportion and let myself get a bit resentful of my kids. Less patient with the changes in them than I normally would have been, more irritable. I was resentful of my ex-husband, that was the real problem. I resented his lackluster parenting, his refusal to co-parent or even parent on his own in a way that made his kids feel loved or seen or enriched.
It was probably okay that I resented my ex. It might have even been okay to say something to him about it. It was less okay that I took it out on my kids. Every second Sunday of the summer, when they stomped and pouted and nagged, I did the same. I was more apt to lose my temper, to forget that I was, in fact, the adult in the house and these were, in fact, children who were being shuttled between two houses where their parents could barely speak to each other.
Because this was the one true thing I forgot in all of my irritation and resentment. That these boys of mine were suffering. That they were expected to be two different people for two different parents and they were too little to understand how to do that. That they should never have been expected to do that in the first place.
Every once in a while, I did remember that they were not the problem. Every once in a while, I remembered it was a sunny summer Sunday night. Every once in a while, I was ready for them. I took them to the beach to watch the sunset. I made their favorite sticky chicken drumsticks and mashed potatoes and corn. I sat on the sofa and just let them gripe, get it all out. I held onto their frustration and pain and didn’t try to head it off at the pass.
Every once in a while, I was just their mom. Not an ex-wife, not a single mom. And I’m glad for it.
Jen McGuire lives in Canada and teaches life writing workshops where someone cries in every class. When she is not traveling as often as possible she’s trying to organize pie parties and outdoor karaoke with her neighbors. She will sing Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” at least once but she’s open to requests. You can find Jen on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter (sorry, X).
source https://www.scarymommy.com/parenting/co-parenting-with-a-useless-ex-is-even-harder-in-the-summer
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