There’s nothing more The National than being a middle-aged divorced dad at a Kindergarten graduation, which makes me think Matt Berninger should start straight-up writing lyrics about the lives of his fans. Let’s see…what rhymes with “Supervised Visitation”?
I’m not going to run with this as a bit, but I will admit that when The National’s “Hornets” came up on shuffle on the way to the elementary school, I cried. (“But I don’t want to leave and I don’t want to hide / I just don’t want to run into you tonight”) I arrived early enough to sit, but gave up my seat and stood not-too-near my ex-wife, her boyfriend and a longtime friend of hers.
To create seating, staff unfolded a cafeteria table that separated us further. We watched the Anglo kids sing a song in Spanish, the ESL kids sing a song in English, it was all very sweet. I joked with the teachers nearby about how you can really tell which kids go to church on Sundays because they were in suits, quiet for the hour+ of ceremony. I repeated that joke later to the boyfriend, who seemed to nod in mild amusement. He was the only one of that trio to say hi.
While I’ve gone to a mess of 6-year-old birthday parties, I don’t recognize many of the parents outside that context. I don’t live in the same neighborhood as my son’s school. But I recognized my enemy, a 6’4”, over-manicured dude I’d pegged as another divorced dad. He attended the last kid birthday with his new partner, a 6’0” woman in giant bug sunglasses, Millennial jeans and summer dress sandals who pet him nonstop. Like: hand in his hair, up and down his back, never not in contact. They were sitting together up front. They seem totally nice. If she’s attending a kindergarten event, they’re probably well-committed and what’s my deal anyway.
The kids came back out to pose for pictures in front of the streamer-and-balloon wall, and staff started to fold the metal folding chairs to clear space. They had folding chair dollies in the hallway, and I took over. I schlepped a few out and assertively took chairs from helpers four at a time and arranged them, facing the same direction, just superhuman efficiency. Because no one can clear folding chairs from a multi-use space like a man who’s worked the steps.
My truest pride, though? That this joke came to mind and I kept it to myself. After 4.5 years of sobriety, I didn’t overshare to some random parent who’d then look at me with concern for the next five years. Also it’s a very context-heavy joke that’s for me, people like me, and maybe you if we’re lucky.
I orbited my ex and her pod a while, before she went to talk with the corporate types that have taken over the neighborhood about their favorite MS Office app or whatever. Soon after that we congratulated J, took pictures, thanked his teacher. At no point did the ex make eye contact, and later that morning I complained to my therapist how I recognize that as a sober person, being myself is all I can do, but I’m exhausted by the sense that we can’t form a better co-parenting relationship by now. Sensing that I was not acknowledging the full context of the hell I put my family through, my therapist suggested that I go to Al-Anon.
Perhaps because my father worked 80-hour weeks, I am pretty obsessive about my time with J. In my first year of divorce, I signed off on supervised visitation I couldn’t afford, and had months where I’d only see him for four total hours. So now, when he talks nonstop for 16 hours per weekend day, I talk back. I refuse to adopt the beleaguered sarcasm of older parents, or roll my eyes at elemental pranks, which means sometimes you get this:
“Hey daddy, did you know that ‘ice cream’ sounds like ‘I scream’? Like someone screaming?”
“Yes. When I was little we’d sing, “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.”
[Pause] “What about ‘eye scream’? Like an eyeball in an ice cream cone, screaming? Did you have a song about that?”
“We…did not.”
I believe there’s a Dog Man reference here, but the cone and the screaming are new.
Up until I got all the pics I could with my son, I spent the assembly mostly alone, taking in the scene, unsure how to start a conversation with anyone. When it was time for the ex and I to head out the cafeteria to the hallway, I said “Hey, good to see ya” to my enemy.
Louis Simpson, from “There You Are”
Loved that. You have such an evocative way of painting these suburban scenes, I can picture every protagonist, every comment, every sideways glance. And can I just say... the folding chairs/multi-use space joke completely made me laugh out loud! (Oh and well done and thank you for saving it for us)
Improvised masturbation, optimized implication