Watershed Moments

Big changes are afoot.  Daughter Number 2 has passed her driving test.  First time.  This is a major cause for celebration on many levels.  For her it is much wanted and needed independence, and a chance to show she is more successful than those who have gone before her.  Poor DN2 has always rather suffered  being second, whatever she has achieved, it has always, however unintentionally, been in the shadow of DN1.  Now she can relish the success of being the only member of the family, including her Absent Father, who has passed the driving test first time.

We can celebrate with good hearts, which if I'm honest, would be lacking if AF were still on the scene.  His outlook would have been to somehow diminish her achievement, as if truly celebrating would be an indulgence to be paid for at a later date.  Also I am certain, unless AF has undergone a complete personality transplant, and the Jury is still out on that one, he would have made her uncomfortable by emphasising how much easier his life would be after all the extensive sacrifices he has made for her.  Which would in turn irritate me, because as it happens, I am the one who has made the sacrifices, although DN1 has been superb in the last few months, picking up the baton as I have been disheartened and guilty by the feelings of exhaustion.  DN1 has done the last bits of polishing that, in truth, have probably helped DN2 succeed first time.  But I have done the lion's share. 

DN2 has wanted the independence that a full driving licence offers for months now.  It was quite a time coming, she wasn't motivated at 17 to get going and get driving, it took her longer, partly because she had a boyfriend who drove her round.  But with the departure of the boyfriend, DN2 wanted freedom from her old ways, as many do.  It has taken the steady, excellent teaching and friendship of her instructor Tony to help her gain confidence and the skills necessary to succeed.  Not something I could do, I freely acknowledge that, but Tony gave me firm rules on how to be 'Mum' in the car of the Learner.  I tried hard not to shout, put my foot on the imaginary brake and squeal in quiet terror, but to remember to be positive, praise and not to jump in with my solutions and let DN2 practise what she had learnt.  It has been a stretch for both of us at times, and now this time is passed, we move to new waters.

DN2 is buzzing and excited, having driven herself to work yesterday and home again.  I am in something of a dream, and much as my children both now have the modern freedom of a full licence, I have a liberation of a more timeless quality: my children don't need me as their first defence.  Twenty three years and now I am not the one who should be there for them, putting their needs above my own.  It could be argued that this should have happened several years ago, and actually mostly it has.  I can leave my children alone, I can stay away for days at a time and I know they will be fine.  I don't have to watch them in a swimming pool, they can, and do, go to pubs by themselves and rarely even get id-ed these days.  Both have bank accounts,  both have cars they finance themselves.  But the guilt I felt last week, when DN2 and I had a stand up row, because I wouldn't drop what I was doing in Colchester to go and pick her up in Sudbury because the taxi rank had been moved without warning and she was stranded, coursed through me on wide and oh so familiar tracks.  Her frustration at the continuing dependence was understandable, but was my intransigence?  Actually I wanted to scream, and thankfully didn't, that I was exhausted by being a single parent when the responsilbilities roll on and on.  AF didn't know where DN2 was, and probably doesn't care.  No way could she have ever phoned him up and asked for help and expected him to give it because he wouldn't, putting his plans and desires above everyone else. In reality he probably wouldn't even answer the phone.

Through the years of our marriage I continued to pick up the pieces, knowing he was unreasonable, but in trying to compensate for his selfishness I became a doormat, validating myself in terms of what I could do for everyone else.  In the face of such solidly, reasonable narcissicism, after all he paid for the lifestyle we should have so enjoyed with him, I seemed awkward and demanding in not following such a path.  The doormat behaviours are hard to release, especially in the face of the suffering of our children, coping with such courage with the truth that their father has moved onto another life, one he has no place for them in.  Of course their pain reverberates within me, as I continue to hurt in abandonment, and really past battles I have fought for them have been fuelled by the rage for my rejection within.  As the years roll on I have tried to separate their needs for their father from my needs for a man I loved so much, who did little but feel a duty towards the role I occupied in his life, a role he has filled with another.  I have become more successful at marshalling the pain, but the residual is the responsibility I feel for our children.  There is only me now, and although this burden is a great deal lighter than others bear, it does frustrate me, almost beyond measure at times, that he can have the freedoms of a new life and, whilst I really don't know what he thinks, I can posit it that he enjoys his freedoms because he knows I will continue to be yoked to the responsiblities whilst simultaneously considering that behaviour foolish and unnecessary thus minimising any guilt that might furrow his brow once in a while.  There is nothing I can do to make him change his behaviour so I have to take a pragmatic view and just buckle down and get on with it.

Yet with this small piece of paper, everything changes. Twenty three years of making sure a child of mine is where they need to be is no longer my responsibility.  We can come and go as we please.  We can, as ever, chat over morning tea, laugh over supper together, muck out the horses almost wordlessly as a practised team on cold winter mornings, catch up about nights out, days at the chalkface or nappy bucket.  But I can commute to work as an independent soul, no more sitting waiting for school buses or shifts to finish.  No more working to another's timesheet, hers or mine.  We move to the next phase of our lives together.  I am trying the gym again, as I won't have to pick up, drop back, fit round and all the other juggling tricks I've had for years to balance our needs.  DN2 has her choices to make also.  My lovely daughter is thrilled for independence, and I am too.  It is richly deserved.