When half is as good at it gets (2)

The first weekend without Zoe is always the hardest one. It didn't help that I hadn't planned much in terms of being social, only an adhoc drink with a visiting friend on Friday. After managing to buy a birthday present to Zoe and work out Saturday, by Sunday I was going into such mental disarray that I felt out of control. A final spur of energy made me turn on Eurythmics' "Sisters are doing it for themselves" and get out the door, walking to the Lower East Side in the pouring rain. And there I was, in my Tory Burch ballerina flats, having a double latte at El Rey (where they also happen to sit in Master of None, but by then I already had three stamps on my coffee card) feeling really stupid that I felt so sorry for myself. Yes, I didn't get all the things I wanted but I still got a lot. In fact, it was as if I have gotten exactly half of what I wanted in life.

I wanted a family but I have half, two of us to be exact, and that exactly half the time. I wanted to live in New York forever, but I got to live here for a year and a half. Not that that is half of forever, but perhaps if you round it down a bit? I wanted that nice professor job and I got a professor job in a country I hate. I got to kiss the guy on the top of the subway stairs. Okay, on some counts I definitely got less than half, but I got something. I put on a smile and thought about all the things I got instead of all the things I didn't get or will lose. Because that's what it looks like, I'll lose New York and get something entirely different. And sometimes, half is just fine.

Midsummer rain

Zoe and me on the beach in
Denmark 3 years ago

I might not live in Stockholm any longer but my Facebook feed and friends are all cheering and being family like for the world-known Swedish Midsummer Celebration. Zoe is somewhere undisclosed on the countryside celebrating with her dad and the new girlfriend. What worse is, people think this is a Scandinavian tradition and greet me happy midsummer, when it is really only Swedish (okay, full disclosure, I have absolutely no idea how they celebrate it in Norway). In Denmark, on the other hand, we celebrate the actual longest day of the year (which is next Tuesday and is called "Sankt Hans Evening", not midsummer) by burning a witch, usually made of sticks and cloth, and sing a couple of old herritage songs around the bonfire on the beach. Because in Denmark there is always a beach nearby. I actually hate midsummer and try to avoid it. From my first summer in Sweden where, to foreigners, everything (and I mean e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g) is just closed for two days and then we go back to work, to my more settled times where I was simply just home alone because it is a family holiday and Swedes don't include anybody else but their family. Add to that a divorce and a fragmented family and this holiday is just one of those ugly portraits of what I don't have anymore. And even in New York, I'm reminded of it's existence.

Several studies have looked at how friends' and connections' positive social media posts will make people post positive posts as well, and potentially make them happy too. Fewer studies mention how positive social media makes people grumpy and jealous because they don't have what others seem to have in those posts. My feed was full of romantic couples and happy families the past few days and it finally got the better of me. I miss my family, I miss my extended family in Denmark. I just want to sit on that beach and watch that witch burn and look over the blue water and hug Zoe. Five more days. And no more Facebook for me.

Memories

One of the horrible things about divorce and splitting up is that suddenly, eight years of your life become very difficult to think of. Zoe's dad and I had a wonderful relationship, and did amazing and fun things together; we traveled a lot, we laughed a lot and we did all the mundane things such as watching television at night while drinking tea and him rubbing my arm. I loved the vast majority of the time and we have lots of pictures from our journeys around Europe that I fondly used to look at and I would go through all the good moments in my head. I remember the posh hotel in Malaga that had a slide from one floor to the next, which he took, I remember the overnight train from Berlin to Krakow where we had dinner in the dining car before trying to cuddle up in one of the bunk-beds, and I remember the way he laughed so hard at my miserable parking skills when I drove the rental van we had for the day to pick up furniture for our new home in Southern California (not that he could park better, in fact I became the master of parallel parking, so much that if he was driving and we needed to parallel park, he would drive up, without a word walk around the car and let me get in the drivers seat just to do the parking). I also remember all the flights where we got champagne because there was always something to celebrate, the first time I got upgraded because of his gold card (I since got my own), calling my mom from London Heathrow: "I got upgraded! We are going to the US on business class!", I yelled into the phone, embarrassing him because it was not a big deal to him.

My miserable parking skills, 2007

But when you split up, all these memories become painful. Every single one of them and I often try not to think to much of the positive parts of our relationship because it reminds me of how so many good things can be gone in an instant. The memories cannot be shared with the other anymore and they remind me instead of how we failed to maintain our family. I still think people get divorced or split up way too easily today without trying much at all, because relationships are tough. Nobody ever said it was easy and yet, people expect it to be easy. When things got tough for us, we tried for three months before he said he didn't want to try anymore. Three months. When I said I wasn't able to move back in right now he said that then it was over. Eight years relationship gets a three month trial. At the time I really couldn't move back in because I was emotionally messed up and very sad about my situation. So I turned to someone who were able to give me attention and who was there for me. For a short time. Six month later I was ready to, if not move back in, at least try again with Zoe's dad because he was after all the love of my life and we had a wonderful daughter who deserved a whole family, not to mention eight years of wonderful memories, but he was gone. He declined my suggestion without much thought. This was not even a year after our initial split.

Our first trip to the desert, 2007

Time flies when you are having fun. Time also flies when you are having a miserable time, it just flies differently. I try to cut out the eight years in my memory because it is so painful to think of. Last time I was in the basement of our old apartment to pick up some of my 100 books that still reside there, I saw that he had put all our old picture books down there. We used to get a picture book made for each of our holidays or events (our wedding, Zoe's first year) but apparently it was too painful for him to look at them too (I still don't understand how he can live in our old apartment with our old furniture because that would make me sad every day to think that we got all this together, created this home together). But despite me cutting out at least a big part of the last eight years in my mind (I did have an independent life with friends and work that is joyful to think of) it pops up again and again. Zoe's questions prompt a lot since she is at a stage where she is just beginning to understand that I know her dad very well and that we had a life together before here. She remembers nothing of her life before the split, she was only 2 and could hardly talk. We used to have a book that went with her, where we wrote down things she had done, said, what we had observed. Now two years later she tells me all kinds of things about what they do and how things look and it is nice to recognize his habits. Zoe gets rice with fish for dinner and he tells her the same jokes he always told me, just the kids version. She explains how she has a table with colors and paper in the corner of the living room and how her changing table is now only for storing clothes. And I have to tell her that I know, because I set up all those things. I retrofitted a coffee table and put it in the corner and bought the chair for her. And her dad and I bought the baskets for her clothes in her changing table before she was born. So I'll cherish the memories that I can at least share with her. And when she gets older I can't wait to tell her all about her parents' travels to Japan, our life in California, and all the funny and nice things her dad used to say to me. Because in fact, the only thing that really makes memories into memories is the sharing of them.

Midsummer tears

Today it is midsummer, one of the most celebrated days in Sweden. The general gist is that people go with their family to the countryside, eat and drink all day and dance around a May pole. Apart from the drinking (or maybe in spite of) it is a very kids-friendly holiday. I got to think of Thanksgiving, an equally family oriented holiday in the US where families also gather (in the home) and eat and drink all day. Most of my American friends claim this to be their favorite holiday because it is family oriented and non-religious. It is just about being together. Just like Midsummer in Sweden.

I have spent 10+ thanksgivings in the US and because I have been in Sweden numerous times during the summer (while living in the US), I have also been here during midsummer 4 or 5 times. But it wasn't until today that one contrast struck me: of all the Thanksgivings I spent in the US without my family, I was always invited to join friends or acquaintances in their celebration. Sometimes I went, sometimes I declined (like the time my personal trainer in California invited me over to a pot-luck friends' thanksgiving), but I was never alone or if I was, it was a choice of my own. I went to a friends' sisters' thanksgiving celebration 45 minutes drive away and I went to a Thanksgiving in New York where the only American was the newborn baby (we laughed a lot about that). And I was always welcomed as the most natural 'addition' to the family. Families in  Sweden are not like that. Here, family is much closer knit and not something to bring strangers into. I have in fact never been invited to a midsummers celebration in Sweden. Not that I haven't had nice midsummer experiences like the time Zoe's dad and I, with a tiny newborn Zoe went to the local park for a picnic or the time my brother and I went drinking in Gamla Stan.

It is of course particularly painful for me this year because I don't have my own family to spend it with. For practical reasons Zoe ended up with her daddy this weekend (I'm leaving for Italy early tomorrow morning) and we (read: he) have yet to find a decent way of being together the three of us. I really hope that one day we can do things together all three, if not as a family, then at least as Zoe's mom, Zoe's dad and Zoe.

Luckily for me I have a lot of work to do and the sun is shining on my balcony. I laugh at the drunk youngsters across my street on the opposite balcony and enjoy reminiscing of my own youth where it would have been me drinking, celebrating and having fun. But I'm not the one with a hangover tomorrow.