While my mom and my ex’s mom have kept in regular contact, I have taken a backseat when it comes to communicating with my ex-MIL, so I was surprised when the text from her came in on a random Thursday.
“You are on my mind a lot. ,” it said. I took a deep breath and responded, “My mom says you’re redoing your kitchen at long last! Hooray! You must be so excited.”
This kicked off a flurry of messages back and forth between us. It was the first time we had chatted in the 2+ years since her son and I divorced, though she and I have traded rather generic “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Birthday” texts. I always liked her: She’s a petite blond German lady with a huge heart, charming accent, and a contagious giggle that sounds like a cross between a polite guffaw and a fairy’s bell.
We used to spread out almonds to grind into almond flour along with eggs, butter, vanilla sugar (which her friend would send her from Germany), and her homemade raspberry jam and bake five or six kinds of German Christmas cookies each year, listening to holiday music while the lights on the tree twinkled in the background.
When friends and family would visit from Germany, we’d drive around showing them Cannon Beach at the coast, Mt. Hood, our favorite restaurants downtown. We’d drive and wander and get lost and then find ourselves again, and laugh about the experience.
She called her son and me “my kids,” and my heart would warm each time. She’d endlessly tease me about the time I sassily responded “I pay attention,” when someone asked me how I knew the answer to a question I no longer remember.
She kept the best dark chocolates in a glass jar on her coffee table, the only spot of color in a muted white-and-gray living room. I was obsessed with her simple salads; it was just romaine, dill, red peppers, avocado, scallions, red onions, and tomatoes (which I avoided), but she made a salad dressing from scratch that I always requested by the jarful for my birthday present.
I’ve been reluctant to interact with her in any meaningful way because her son — my ex—moved in with her after our divorce two years ago, and as far as I know, is still living there. And though he is the one who filed for divorce and initiated our split, it still feels…awkward and icky to me to try and crowd his space.
She told me she thinks of me daily and misses me. And while I also think often of her — and yes, miss her — I wasn’t sure what to do with that information.
She shared that she is remodeling her house slowly (having my ex do much of the labor since he isn’t working), and sent photos of the kitchen that was finally updated for the first time since the house was built in the early 90s. It’s still all-white, but she changed the drawer pulls from shiny silver to oiled bronze in order to modernize it, and she replaced the cracked white shower tile counters with quartz slabs that look like marble. It’s beautiful, airy, full of light, and way more contemporary.
She sent me a photo and said, “The best part is that I finally got all new stainless steel appliances!”
I laughed, and replied, “You must love your new fridge; you’d complained for years about the old one not holding cold temperatures, and not having much storage capacity.”
She told me what she was planning to do to the guest bathroom, as well as her bathroom in the primary suite (it is covered in shell-pink tiles, and has a giant shell-pink tub and very light powder blue carpet. She wants to change and update all that). We avoided discussing anything of substance. We didn’t talk about her son, or how she was feeling about him living at home with her; We didn’t talk about what I was doing now, or where I was. We kept it surface level, and perhaps that’s some of the sadness that lingers: Like in my marriage, the heart of the matter is skirted around and glossed over, never delved into.
I continued to think about her and our conversation for several days afterward. How is she, really? How is she handling having her son living at home? Am I doing my ex a disservice in communicating with his mom? Is this the sum of 13 years of being a huge part of each other’s lives? Is this all our lives will ever connect?
They say healing is messy and not linear. I guess this just goes to show that I still have a lot more work to do.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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