Grace, Grit & Sarcasm

My children’s father and I have been divorced for 25 years.

And we’re friends.

Yes. Friends.

I’m also friends with his wife. We’ve gone to get piercings together, raised children together, celebrated weddings and grandchildren together, and over the years we’ve helped each other through more things than I could probably fit into one blog post.

If you had told me 25 years ago that this was where we would end up, I probably would have laughed at you. Or thrown something. Depending on exactly which point in the divorce you caught me.

Tonight, my ex-husband and his foster son, J, brought over materials to fix my fence. My fence, by the way, is another casualty of Mother Nature’s personal vendetta against me this summer. Straight-line winds came through and flattened part of my back fence like it was a blade of grass.

Apparently, owning a home in your 50s means periodically walking outside, staring at something that has broken, fallen over, flooded, blown away, or started making an expensive noise and saying, “Well, what the hell is it now?”

I’m paying J for the materials and the work, of course. But the fact that they are willing to come over and help me is something I don’t take for granted.

Because relationships like ours don’t happen accidentally.

And they certainly didn’t happen because the divorce was easy.

It wasn’t.

There were years when my ex and I were angry with each other. We fought over what we thought was best for the kids. We disagreed. We said things we probably shouldn’t have said. There were moments when I’m fairly certain neither of us would have put the other on a list of our favorite human beings.

But underneath all of that was one thing we never disagreed about:

We loved our children.

And eventually, we figured out that we could either spend the rest of our lives proving who was right, or we could figure out how to raise four kids who knew they were loved.

We chose the kids.

That didn’t mean everything suddenly became sunshine, rainbows, and beautifully coordinated co-parenting calendars.

Our kids occasionally tried the time-honored childhood tradition of playing one parent against the other.

“Dad said…”

“Mom lets me…”

“Stepmom said…”

Nice try, kid.

We communicated.

Sometimes they were angry with their dad. Sometimes they were angry with me. Sometimes they didn’t like their stepmom very much. Sometimes they probably didn’t like any of us.

Frankly, there were days when I didn’t particularly like them either. I loved them fiercely, but motherhood does not require pretending every moment is magical.

What mattered was that we didn’t let temporary feelings turn the adults against each other. We talked. We compared stories. We backed each other up when it mattered, and we tried very hard not to let the kids discover a crack they could squeeze through and turn into the Grand Canyon.

Their stepmom wasn’t my competition.

She was another person who loved my children.

That took some maturity to understand, and I won’t pretend I possessed all of that maturity immediately. Growth is lovely, but unfortunately it usually happens after we’ve already made complete asses of ourselves a few times.

Over the years, something changed.

We stopped being “the exes” and became a very unconventional family.

When our second-oldest daughter got married, her stepmom was part of the family picture. There was never a question in my mind that she belonged there.

Our grandchildren call her Grandma. I’m Ema, which conveniently differentiates us and saves the grandchildren from having to point and say, “No, the other Grandma.”

And one of the things I treasure most is that my ex-husband and his wife have never treated my youngest daughter differently because she isn’t biologically his. She is part of the family because she is part of our family.

Twenty-five years ago, I couldn’t have imagined any of this.

Back then, I could see the anger and the hurt. I couldn’t see the wedding pictures, grandchildren, piercings, holidays, favors, laughter, fence repairs, and all the ordinary little moments that would eventually replace it.

I think sometimes we are too quick to decide what a relationship has to look like after it changes.

An ex has to be an enemy.

A stepmother has to be competition.

There have to be “sides.”

Except there don’t.

Sometimes the relationship you think you don’t want becomes one of the relationships you’re most grateful you kept.

That doesn’t mean every former couple can—or should—be friends. Some relationships need distance, boundaries, or a completely closed door. But when friendship is possible, especially when children are involved, there is something pretty incredible about choosing grace over resentment.

Our children didn’t need us to pretend the divorce never happened. They needed to know that the divorce didn’t mean their family had to spend the rest of their lives at war.

We didn’t always get it right.

We still don’t.

We’re human.

But somewhere along the way, we stopped keeping score.

We recognized that we were both good parents who loved the same kids. Our differences became less important than the people we had created together.

And 25 years later, my ex-husband can pull into my driveway with fence materials, his wife can be Grandma to my grandchildren, and all of us can sit together at the important moments in our children’s lives without anyone needing assigned corners of the room.

That’s not the family I pictured all those years ago.

It’s definitely not the relationship I thought I wanted.

But life after 50 has taught me that some of the best things in my life don’t look anything like I originally thought they would.

Apparently that includes my family.

And, for the moment anyway, a fence that will hopefully stand upright again.

Mother Nature, if you’re reading this, please find another hobby.