My therapist once pointed out to me that I love two men, but I love them differently. This is not wrong. It isn’t bad. It just is. It took an outsider to swoop in and tell me loving two men was okay after I spent weeks beating myself up over it–believing it was wrong. I carry love for my ex-husband, I still care about his well-being, and I am remarried to someone who adores me. Years after my divorce, I have learned that my relationship with my ex is abnormal—there aren’t many who maintain a real friendship with their ex. He is my oldest friend and the father of my daughter. He is also dying of terminal cancer. This is why I make him a zucchini muffin.
When we were married and I had a garden full of zucchini I ended each weekend by making two fresh loaves of zucchini bread. The first loaf would be the “day loaf,” and the second loaf would be the “week loaf.” The three of us–my ex, my daughter, and I–would consume the day loaf while it was still hot from the oven, steam escaping the small golden rectangles. Comforting and sweet, cinnamon spices bombard our senses. It was the day loaf because we consumed it all, in one day. The week loaf was savored one slice at a time each morning with coffee. Each Sunday more zucchini would turn to bread and more bread would be consumed. Once zucchini season ended, I transitioned to pumpkin bread, and then to banana bread. Always baking. Always consuming.
Divorce aside, our lives are now radically different. Nowadays my ex acquires the vast majority of his calories through a feeding tube. On Sundays, we no longer eat fresh baked goods together; instead, our daughter exchanges homes. Nora packs up a few of her favorite things–her hamster, Hammy, in a small carrier to be transported to her second cage at my house, her laptop, her bike, and her favorite pillow in the shape of a chair. Recently on Sunday because I know her dad nibbles on things throughout the day when he can, I planned to bring him a petite zucchini muffin, not an entire loaf–built-in self-control–as if he needs that.
At home, I leave the remaining eleven muffins for my daughter and my husband to consume. At home, I will tend to normal things: laundry, cooking, work, graduate school, and my relationships–which can often feel like juggling eggs, hoping one doesn’t drop. I send messages to check on my ex-husband while I nurture my new marriage. Balancing the two relationships the best that I can. Pretending I know how. Through it all, I look at Nora and think about how she knows her father. She was 8 when her dad was diagnosed with gastric cancer. She was 9 when he had his stomach removed, 10 when he had a feeding tube placed and could no longer eat, and 11 when he got a colostomy bag. I often wonder, what memories will she have of her dad before cancer?
Will she remember the hours they spent at the park when she was little? When it was too cold to be at the park at all–snow falling from the sky, ice coating the pavement leading to the play structure, the bars shimmering with frost–both of them insisted on going. When the two of them returned home, Nora’s nose bright red like a maraschino cherry, her fingers frigid like ice cubes, but her smile as wide as ever. Will she remember the time we took her to the beach and she whined and complained all the way back to our hotel in Portland because her feet still had sand on them? She worked hard to remove every granule of sand onto the floor of the car, an exhaustive effort that left her boiling over with frustration all while ignoring my suggestion to wait until we got to the shower. What about the hours her dad spent in her bedroom each night reading her piles of books–my favorite There’s a Woket in My Pocket by Dr. Suess? His narration so animated that giggles poured from her small purple bedroom as he read. These memories, so precious, all before he was inflicted with the disease that will end his life. This reality, so unfair.
As I bake, mixing in the flour, I wish there was a recipe or instruction manual out there to tell me how to get through this. The same one I wanted when my daughter was born, How to Make Her Stop Crying. Only this one, How to Carry This, would explain to me how to take care of my daughter after a divorce while her father is dying.
Chapter One: How to Help Your Friend Find Joy While Battling Cancer
Chapter Two: Establishing Relationship Boundaries
Chapter Three: Consoling Loved Ones After Death
While I shred the zucchini, chopping it into rectangles small enough to fit into my food processor, Nora walks into the kitchen, she has just come back to my house for the week. I can smell the flora scent diffusing from her skin and her damp hair. She lets out a deep satisfied sigh and says, “I took a long shower today since I can’t at Dad’s house.” Nora eyes the contents of my purple Kitchen Aid Mixer.
“You can’t?” I ask her.
“I can’t spend much time in the bathroom just in case Dad needs to throw up.” She says this without leaving any hint of emotion in her voice. It just falls out. We often comment about Nora’s matter-of-fact nature. But when I hear it this time, it stuns me–knocks the wind out of me. I don’t react, I just reply with a simple, “Oh yeah?” and so she continues, “Yeah, one time I was in the shower and he needed the bathroom because something was wrong. I had to stop the shower and get out quickly. I'm not sure what happened, he was in there awhile.”
I take a deep breath and Nora says, “Are you making zucchini bread?”
Often people compliment my ability to carry the weight of ‘this’ as if I had any other choice.
You’re handling all of this really well.
You’re so strong.
There is no other option. I carry fear. I carry anger. I carry guilt. I hold onto it for my daughter. My husband. My friend. Sometimes I drop it and I fall apart, but it’s as if nobody really notices, or at least I hope. For some reason I can’t explain, I have to appear strong.
Once I fell apart and sobbed in my bed. The tears stained my pillow with salt and black mascara. My body trembled, keeping my husband from falling asleep. Leaving him with an empty feeling of helplessness unsure of what to say. I know that feeling. I’ve been carrying it myself for almost five years. It pains me to carry this grief into my new marriage, my happy marriage.
I pretend to be strong. I work to make words without tears while updating my family on my ex’s condition. The same questions, day after day–how’s he doing? How’s Nora doing? The same reality–any day now, my daughter will lose her father. I will no longer lose my husband, but I will lose my friend. In those moments I pretend to feel strong. I bake muffins. I go to the gym. I train for an ultramarathon. I pretend because what else does one do? How do you carry around the stopwatch that counts the hours your daughter has left with her father? The minutes you have left with your longest friend? The seconds you have left to say your final words?
I want to take away Nora’s fear: the death of her dad. I consider while standing in the kitchen, Nora’s deep brown hair dripping on the floor that it is my job to tell her that everything will be okay, but I can’t.
Everything will be okay. She will survive like the many other children who have lost a parent, including my ex-husband whose mom died when he was eight. My husband and I will love her. We will get her through–whatever that means. And together, she and I will grieve the loss of her father. But what she wants, what I want, what everyone wants, is for the cancer raging through his body from his esophagus all the way to his colon to go away. For the chemo to kill the cancer, not him. For some sort of unrealistic miracle to happen to us.
But I can’t promise her that, and so I don’t.
I pour the muffin mixture into twelve tiny muffin cups. “Do you think your dad will enjoy tasting one?” I ask her. We both know that taste is all he can really do. Not eat. Not consume–the mixture of sweet, buttery, cinnamon mixing in his mouth.
*
What do you pretend? a colleague asked me once at a conference. I thought it was an odd question and I took a long time to consider an answer. Her presence in general made me uncomfortable. She was mystic and wise. She carried a kind of confidence I didn’t know how to carry myself. Her posture said I belong here. She probably wouldn’t have questioned why she loved two men, differently, only embraced it. She was what I define as a free spirit. The other women around me answered I pretend I love what I do or I pretend I am self-confident. But I couldn’t come up with anything. I wish I could go back to that conference, in that sea of people all holding their drinks and chatting about simple topics–not cancer or death or grief–I would say to her: I pretend I know how to carry this.
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