Thursday, March 18, 2010

adventures in parenting

It's been an interesting week, with Matt home. He was great -- as up and cheerful as he gets, though there's a knot of anger inside him that doesn't seem to go away. We talked a lot about the similarity of our worldviews and coping mechanisms: the essentially malevolent universe, the need for escape clauses, safety nets and the importance of maintaining an outsider's status. He and Nick got along better than they have to date.

And it was a great week with Liv too. We celebrated her birthday at a great restaurant -- Del Posto -- with the three of us plus Liv's boyfriend and two close friends. Great meal and a great evening. She told me yesterday that it was the greatest meal of all of their lives. And Nick commented that he feels his relationship with Liv -- always good and strong -- has only gotten better.

But my two kids managed over the course of the week to never be in the same room at the same time: not once. That certainly eliminated the hostility and stress of recent visits, but left me with an odd feeling that I can only express in this way: I feel like I'm the mom of two only children. That's the best way I can describe the situation.

It could be worse, of course, if my relationship with either of the kids was shaky. With Liv and me there's never a problem. With Matt of course there have been issues and we had problems pretty much from the day we moved into this house (that he hated so much) until last year when it all finally broke open and we dealt with what had driven us apart.

So the good news is that both relationships are strong, but the peculiarity of the situation is always there and during this week it became clearer.

Never dull.

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