My separation from my son’s Father was far from amicable: there were mediators, lawyers, harsh words and tears. Finally, there was silence and quiet despair, the tangible leftovers of wreckage: dry mouth, a diminished appetite for anything but bed. There was a period of time that spanned over a year where the two of us exchanged almost no words. Monthly visitation was a horror: cockles were raised, hands clenched, each of us teetering on the verge of curse words, imaginary jabs, tears.

Two years into the split, and things are markedly better. There is still tension, of course, but there is also occasional affability: sometimes there’s even a shared chuckle. On Wednesday mornings, I arrive at his home to snooze on the couch until our son wakes up, so my ex can get to an early start at work. He lets me take his dog for runs with me — my ex-dog, actually, the canine we both love.

There aren’t many things the two of us have done that well together (besides help create our astonishingly cool little boy) - but one area we’ve excelled at is respect, when it comes to one another’s love lives. I know my ex has had girlfriends since our split. We have mutual friends and I’ve reluctantly listened to breathless recounts of his conquests. And, he would likely know that I’ve also dipped my toe in the dating scene - all he would have to do is google my name and this column would come up. But he doesn’t care to know, and neither do I. If he is visiting a girlfriend, he says he’s with a “friend.” If I’m on a date, I say I’m going grocery shopping. We don’t care to pour salt into each other’s wounds by flaunting our sex lives in each other’s faces, and for that, really, I’m proud of us.

We are moving upward, onward: it’s true that the opposite of hate is apathy. I actually kind of hope for love for him again, I think it softens people. In any case, falling in love is never a horrible thing. We’re not exactly comrades, but we’re tentatively polite and that’s a great start. Enough of a start, I wonder, to be his Facebook friend?

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Foreclosures everywhere. Global markets in crisis. Record numbers of people losing their jobs, being evicted on to the streets. Doom, gloom, on the headline of every paper that’s still gasping with the last gulps of circulation survival.

I’ve been trying to avoid the headlines, because I know my own predisposition for parallelization in the face of panic, and there’s no time for that right now. I need to have my head to the grindstone, my tacks sharp, I must put in extra hours and struggle fiercely for revenue in a market that doesn’t want to part with its precious dollars.

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I’m stuck in bumper-to-bumper bridge traffic late on Sunday afternoon, my windshield wipers feebly half-parting the sluicing waves of rain over my Jeep when my Blackberry vibrates.

“I know!” I answer immediately, seeing his number on the call display “I’m late, we’re headed over there now.  I got lost trying to find your rugby game today and Nolan’s cranky…”

“I’m not cranky!” bellowed an indignant, trembly voice from the backseat. He had blueberry yogurt dribbled on his chin and clutched a crusty Spiderman action figure.

“He’s not cranky,”I sighed,”We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“OK, “said my ex,”Tell him I rented him the new Batman movie.”

“The new Batman movie?” I blinked, glanced at our son in the rearview mirror,”Not the Dark Knight?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“He can’t watch that movie!” I hate that my voice just moved up four octaves, and I take a deep breath,”Man, wait.  Have you seen that movie?  It’s rated R and I had nightmares about blue-mouthed evil clowns for weeks after watching that and he’s 3.”

“He’s gotta grow up sometime.”

I have the feeling he’s pressing my buttons and I fight the urge to press them right back.

“He’ll have nightmares, R, please.”

“I’m not going out again.  If you want him to watch a different movie, stop and get one yourself.”

I hang up the phone, glance in the mirror and my son is looking intently at the back of my head. We go to the video store and pick up a copy of Finding Nemo.

***

I don’t think any parents of a child make the decision to split up with lightness.  For my ex and I, there were a multitude of reasons.  There were the “standard” things: money, unresolvable fighting, a diminishing lack of respect for the views of one another.  One of the things that came up time and again was guns: I am staunchly anti-violence and anti-gun and my ex is very much at the opposite end of the spectrum.  If I had my way, our son would never play with toy guns, would never watch a violent movie - would not be exposed to the reality that human beings kill each other, fairly regularly - until much, much later in life.

If my son’s Father and I still lived in the same household, this would be easier to assure but as it is, of course, we’re leading completely separate lives.  Our one shared life thread is our son, but we have heavily differing views on what is right and appropriate for a 3 year old.  So - right now, there’s an uneasy balance: I guide Nolan according to my principles at my house, and his Father does the same thing at his house.

It’s far from ideal.  I wonder about the future implications of the mixed message for our son, and wonder what I can do to help come to some kind of happy medium.

Among the things I’ve pondered:

• Writing a list, asking my ex to abide to the top 5 things that are very important to me (no violent movies, teeth brushing every night, no sugary food right before bed, etc.)  I would then encourage him to write a list too, and promise to abide by what he considers important (assuming they are not in direct disagreement with my list.)
• Asking him to attend a co-parenting class.  We’ve done this before, as a mandatory part of our Separation Agreement process, but it might make sense to do it together.  I’m not sure he’d be interested, though.
• Giving up any illusions of control whatsoever and realizing: he’ll do what he does, I’ll do what I do, and hopefully our son will turn out OK despite of us.

I plunked down in the snow at the top of the lift, ratcheting my heavy black boot into the binding of my snowboard. It was a breathtaking blue night, orange sun streaks stretching through dotted puff-gray clouds, and I was taking advantage of a kid-free night with my friend Brenda, snowboarding high above the city at a local mountain.

Brenda is a few years older than me, a very cool single Mom with two gregarious teenage daughters. Brenda snowboards, works hard, inhales life and enjoys the rewards of closeness with her girls, after what must have been a very difficult nearly two decades raising them herself.

I raised myself up to standing position with one mittened hand; Brenda was talking about snowboarding with her daughters.

How cool would that be? I thought, to rocket down the mountain, doing what she loves, side by side with those young women, those living pieces of her soul.

“I was up with my older daughter and some of her friends the other week,”Brenda explained,”And they stopped in the trees for a toke and I was all: I’m still a Mom, you know?”

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Things are so much easier than they were two years ago, when my son was still a baby and I was still a wide eyed single Mom, not quite believing I’d landed in a one of life’s inadvertent destinations: the all-inclusive vacation equivalent of Siberia.

My son is now 3, nearly 4 really - a functioning, self-bum wiping little human full of ideals and chatter and nearly maniac energy. He doesn’t sob wretchedly when I leave him at daycare every morning and he almost always sleeps through the night. I’ve achieved a precarious balance between work, housework, a social life. Sometimes I falter miserably: I noticed while stacking magazines on the toilet the other day that there were cobwebs on the ceiling. And sometimes while Nolan tugs my hand in the forest to show me the banana slug he’s inadvertently crushed disturbingly with his shoe, I am too busy too notice: absorbed in my buzzing Blackberry and a compulsion to answer my work emails tout de suite because, omg, don’t want to drop the ball in this economy, as the sole supporter of my son. On odd occasions, late at night, I lower my head down on my desk and dream of running up the mountain until I can’t feel my legs, far away from that omniscient heavy knowledge that I am perpetually, inexorably responsible for the well being and care of a defenseless little human.

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