marriage.
With a weekend trip to Napa and a two-hundred-dollar ring from Kmart, we sealed the deal in a small ceremony. I sent pictures to my parents. They said they were happy for me, but why couldn’t I have gotten married in a church? Jared wasn’t religious, and despite my parents’ refusal to acknowledge it, neither was I. The Christian ideals I’d been taught all my life had soured when those same believers had condemned me at the age of seventeen to a life of poverty and delinquency because I wouldn’t part with my own flesh and blood.
Jared wanted to be an actor, which meant he waited tables and provided security at events while waiting for his big break. I continued with my career, making sure we had a reliable income, and did the best I could to juggle everything—new husband, demanding job, new baby, and a ten-year-old girl. Despite all my good intentions, however, we never quite found our groove, Jared and I, before he decided that a groove with me wasn’t what he really wanted anyway.
The miscarriage right before our official separation hadn’t helped my view of myself in a maternal role. Ever since, I’d harbored a secret fear that God had taken that child away from me because He knew I couldn’t take care of it. I didn’t necessarily disagree with Him, but it was one more reason to regard God with suspicion.
After we officially split, Jared took a job as a salesman for a computer software company in Tustin, while I stayed in our overpriced apartment in Chino before transferring to the Irvine office and tried, again, to keep up with a life I hadn’t really wanted and didn’t feel cut out for.
I wasn’t a bad mother all those years, but I had a lot going on, and I couldn’t honestly say that I felt like I’d ever been a good mother to my girls.
I considered saying this out loud to Paul, but it was one of those questions that came with the obligation of a specific answer. Kind of like “Do I look fat in this?” If I told Paul what I really thought about the kind of mother I’d been, he’d try to convince me I was wrong. How could he do otherwise? I was very self-aware, so manipulating people into offering empty reassurances wouldn’t do me any good in the long run. I just wished I could see the job I’d done as a mom as good enough. Tonight of all nights, however, was not helping.
“Do you think she’ll forgive me?” I asked once the lump in my throat had gone away and I’d reminded myself all over again of who I really was. Not Super Mom—just Daisy, who was trying to keep up for eight more months until she could check “Raise second daughter to adulthood” off her to-do list.
I reflected on my relationship with December. We’d had our moments when she was the teenager making me crazy, though she was never as stormy as Stormy was, but once she left home, we’d become pretty good friends. We talked on the phone a few times a week, and I felt like I was a part of her life in such a way that she didn’t ask more than I could give, which meant I couldn’t fail her. I loved that feeling.
December had her degree in secondary education and had taught junior high English in Ohio for the last three years. She hadn’t renewed her teaching contract this fall, though, because she and her husband, Lance, were expecting their own child in just a few months. December was going to stay home and be a full-time mom. She was excited about becoming a mom. I’d never had that. Having my children had been seasons of anxiety in my life, despite the thrill it was to hold them and realize they were a part of me. I was so glad December was going to have what I didn’t: a solid marriage and the ability to choose the kind of mother she would be instead of being forced into it.
“She’ll forgive you,” Paul said, and for a brief moment I thought he was talking about December. Then I realized he meant Stormy. “And while perhaps saying it the way it came out wasn’t the most politically
With a weekend trip to Napa and a two-hundred-dollar ring from Kmart, we sealed the deal in a small ceremony. I sent pictures to my parents. They said they were happy for me, but why couldn’t I have gotten married in a church? Jared wasn’t religious, and despite my parents’ refusal to acknowledge it, neither was I. The Christian ideals I’d been taught all my life had soured when those same believers had condemned me at the age of seventeen to a life of poverty and delinquency because I wouldn’t part with my own flesh and blood.
Jared wanted to be an actor, which meant he waited tables and provided security at events while waiting for his big break. I continued with my career, making sure we had a reliable income, and did the best I could to juggle everything—new husband, demanding job, new baby, and a ten-year-old girl. Despite all my good intentions, however, we never quite found our groove, Jared and I, before he decided that a groove with me wasn’t what he really wanted anyway.
The miscarriage right before our official separation hadn’t helped my view of myself in a maternal role. Ever since, I’d harbored a secret fear that God had taken that child away from me because He knew I couldn’t take care of it. I didn’t necessarily disagree with Him, but it was one more reason to regard God with suspicion.
After we officially split, Jared took a job as a salesman for a computer software company in Tustin, while I stayed in our overpriced apartment in Chino before transferring to the Irvine office and tried, again, to keep up with a life I hadn’t really wanted and didn’t feel cut out for.
I wasn’t a bad mother all those years, but I had a lot going on, and I couldn’t honestly say that I felt like I’d ever been a good mother to my girls.
I considered saying this out loud to Paul, but it was one of those questions that came with the obligation of a specific answer. Kind of like “Do I look fat in this?” If I told Paul what I really thought about the kind of mother I’d been, he’d try to convince me I was wrong. How could he do otherwise? I was very self-aware, so manipulating people into offering empty reassurances wouldn’t do me any good in the long run. I just wished I could see the job I’d done as a mom as good enough. Tonight of all nights, however, was not helping.
“Do you think she’ll forgive me?” I asked once the lump in my throat had gone away and I’d reminded myself all over again of who I really was. Not Super Mom—just Daisy, who was trying to keep up for eight more months until she could check “Raise second daughter to adulthood” off her to-do list.
I reflected on my relationship with December. We’d had our moments when she was the teenager making me crazy, though she was never as stormy as Stormy was, but once she left home, we’d become pretty good friends. We talked on the phone a few times a week, and I felt like I was a part of her life in such a way that she didn’t ask more than I could give, which meant I couldn’t fail her. I loved that feeling.
December had her degree in secondary education and had taught junior high English in Ohio for the last three years. She hadn’t renewed her teaching contract this fall, though, because she and her husband, Lance, were expecting their own child in just a few months. December was going to stay home and be a full-time mom. She was excited about becoming a mom. I’d never had that. Having my children had been seasons of anxiety in my life, despite the thrill it was to hold them and realize they were a part of me. I was so glad December was going to have what I didn’t: a solid marriage and the ability to choose the kind of mother she would be instead of being forced into it.
“She’ll forgive you,” Paul said, and for a brief moment I thought he was talking about December. Then I realized he meant Stormy. “And while perhaps saying it the way it came out wasn’t the most politically
Similar Books
