It Can Be Complicated

We went to see It's Complicated last night, muttering beforehand that it would be (sigh) an obvious Hollywood movie, another romantic comedy for old folks. We are movie snobs who prefer Indies and foreign films, but on a drear Sunday night in St. Johnsbury Vermont, after a spate of recent bone numbing temperature plunges had triggered mid-winter blues and strange eating neuroses, it was an alternative to couch sprawling and really bad tv.

The plot, however, is disturbingly familiar: After many years of divorce, and even though one of the couple has since re-married, lechery is sparked and an intense comic affair ensues.

During a trial separation from ex#2, I wondered if I had made a mistake in divorcing #1, the father of my children. I had been so busy hating him - plotting tire-slashing and house demolishing revenge - perhaps, I mused, the flip side of all that murderous passion was love. Within seconds of my having phoned him, we were cavorting on my dining room table. For days fountainous bouquets of flowers fell on my doorstep. We plotted a weekend rendezvous in the Adirondacks with the brilliant idea of carting our then 7 year-old son along.

"You're w-what?" my highschool age daughter Katherine stammered.

"We're seeing each other," I said meekly.

"Oh, boy."

During the drive from southern Vermont to the rustic romantic cabin owned by my uncle in the heart of the North Woods - a place where in years past our family had fed deer by hand, hiked among towering ancient conifers, and fished for trout - our son remained mostly silent. He had been 2 when we divorced and his memories of us together were dim.

"Did I lie on my stomach on the kitchen counter with my face in a tomato once?" he asked finally.

"Yes," we said.

"Did I stomp blueberries into the floor and then sit in them?"

"You did."

"I remember lying on a giant yellow sponge in the bath tub," he added thoughtfully.

"You had chicken pox."

"And taking the hinges off the closet door."

"Yes! Yes!" we chorused.

Grappling on the dining room table or living room rug is one thing, but sharing a room with the ex in front of the family - some of whom, nostalgic for inebriate poker games and vacations to Culebra, wanted us back together - was awkward.

When we took Will for a hike, he stode ahead of us dragging a stick. When we suggested fishing, he put on his own orange life preserver and went solo in a canoe as we trailed behind in a row boat. While we offered paddling direction, he glowered. While we struggled to make sense of us, he caught a shimmering rainbow trout with his cousin. He fed corn to deer as his sisters had, pre-divorce.

I wanted to give him his family, untarnished. I wanted him to know his parents without eye rolling, without hurling, "You know how crazy your mother/father is!" at him, without shouting and slammed doors and tears. I wanted us whole. Intact.

The experiment failed. The we I sought was truly gone, and I went back to my husband. For a little while, anyway.

Last summer, our daughter was married. Following the ceremony, her proud papa and I led the guests down a garden path into the Japanese lantern festooned tent arm in arm. We boogied with the wedding party and he escorted me gracefully back to my seat. We gave toasts. Mine was better. At Christmas time, there was some confusion about trees. I had just taken Buddhist refuge vows, so a Christmas tree felt wrong somehow. When I went into his florist shop looking for poinsettias, he came out from behind the counter with a tiny table top boxwood tree in both hands.

"Will tells me you're not doing a tree this year," he said gruffly.

I didn't tell him I had bought 2 Norfolk Pines.

As I opened my mouth to say thank-you, he interrupted.

"Now you've got one," he said.

Today I asked my 22 year-old son if he remembered the North Woods weekend, so I could steal his emotions for my blog.

"I don't remember feeling anything," he said. "But that rainbow trout stayed in Dad's freezer for 5 years."