“My Plate”
“Pain
shared, my brother, is pain not doubled but halved. No man is an island.” Neil Gaiman
Not
long ago I was driving Dermot home from a music lesson. It was just he and I alone in the car and I
can sometimes snatch some precious moments of straight connection with him when
it is just the two of us. We aren’t
being distracted by screens, or other people, or noise and he isn’t posturing
in front of his little sister.
Dermot
is a verbal kind of guy, but less and less does he open up about the things that
are bothering him. The older he gets and
the further into the murky, hormone-filled days of adolescence, Frank and I
have to work harder to tweeze from him what is going on behind his dimples and
shining eyes when the dimples disappear and the eyes go dark in anger or
introspection. He goes from happy and
carefree to stormy and mysterious in a matter of minutes.
There
are some things he will talk to his dad about and some things he will talk to
me about and he is starting to realize that Frank and I, though divorced, will
ALWAYS work to be on the same page about him and his sister. We check in with each other about the kids
just about every day so there is nothing that they have been able to get by us
yet, and rest assured, they have tried.
On
this particular car ride, I asked him about some incident of less-than-stellar
behavior he had displayed at his dad’s house and what might have been behind
it. He managed to express to me what had
been bothering him and I asked him why he maybe hadn’t said anything to anyone
about why he was upset before he exploded and got in trouble. He essentially said to me that he sometimes
doesn’t want to bother me or Frank because we have a lot on our plates.
Whoa
I
wanted to bring the car to a skidding stop and grab him by the shoulders to
both hug him and yell at him at the same time.
I refrained and instead took a deep breath and talked about how I know
that both his dad and I are busy people, but that we will always make time for
him and for Wren, especially if they have an issue or a problem. I know we have been consistent in our message
to both kids that this is the case and to some extent that this is teen angst coming
through, but clearly it needs to be said over and over and it needs to be said
louder and louder and in many different ways.
I
told him also that there are things I notice he is more comfortable talking to
his dad about and that was fine with me and that Frank was fine with the fact
that there are things he is more comfortable talking to me about. I wanted him to also know that there might
come a time when he might want to talk to someone other than us and if that
happened I just wanted to make sure that he talked to someone. I wanted him to know that he just can’t keep
things inside, because keeping things inside never helps, it only makes things
worse. I told him to make sure that no
matter what you have to a find a person, someone you can trust to talk to. It doesn’t always have to be the same person,
in fact it probably shouldn’t only be one person, but that you should always
have someone to confide in… but in a healthy way.
Then
I reiterated that I may have a lot of things on my plate at any given moment,
but that if he and Wren ever needed me to, I would gladly push something off
that plate. The only thing I would not
push off the plate I told him, was my recovery.
I said that would always have to come first, because my recovery is the
reason that I have a plate to begin with.
