One way back to Stockholm

I'm livid. Nothing less. There is nowhere hiding it and I'm not going to keep quiet or be subtle anymore.

There are two things you have to know to understand this: Firstly, when sharing custody of a child, one parent can deny the other one taking the child outside the country of residency. Mostly this is due to fear of kidnapping but there doesn't need to be a stated reason, if one parent says no, you should not do this, it can lead to custody taken away. Secondly, when sharing custody and there is no written explicit visitation agreement, one parent can limit or deny the other parent visitation (i.e. being with) the child. Just by saying no. The other parent then has to go through the court to get a settled visitation schedule.
After Zoe's dad's and my negotiations about her future residence and schooling broke down (partly because it was all demands and threats from his side, nothing constructive, nothing that would give me an option for seeing her even close to 50%, him turning down any of my counter suggestions) he refused to let her leave Sweden. Let me repeat this: leave *Sweden*. Flybaby, who has spent countless hours flying from one country to another, who is an American and Danish citizen, who has the vast majority of extended family in Denmark and her mom in New York. Basically, he told me, unless I give in to her staying (forever) in Sweden, he would not let me take her outside Sweden from now on. About a week ago I then flew to Sweden to see her (I had been working towards deadlines 12 hours/day until then); last minute he hesitantly agreed that I could take her to Denmark if I bought a return ticket for her as evidence she was coming back. But even after this week, I am still due to see her for two and a half months this fall, as we are still sharing her time between us. But he is ignoring my requests to send her over to New York to spend time with me here (our face-to-face communication broke down long time ago and we are now emailing and talking through lawyers). Zoe keeps asking when she can come over and I keep saying, I don't know but if we both ask him, he might see the sensible in that a 5 YEAR OLD GIRL SPENDS EXTENDED TIME WITH HER MOM.

This morning, after a week in Copenhagen, I put Zoe on a plane as an unaccompanied minor back to Stockholm and got on a plane back to New York myself. A plane I have begged her dad to let me buy her a ticket for as well, for months so she could fly back with me. I was in the air when I discovered the entry in our still shared calendar. I gasped so loudly that two other passengers turned towards me: He had bought tickets for him, Zoe and the girlfriend to go on holiday to Greece in two weeks time. Without consulting me. On dates spilling into what we long time ago had talked about being my dates. So after refusing me to take her outside Sweden, he now makes his own plans to do this.

I'm so frustrated and angry, I can hardly think. Zoe and I cried our eyes out this morning when we said goodbye at the gate, me hugging her, she telling me that she would tell her dad right away that she wanted to go visit me in New York. Now all I can think about is staying on-board, taking the plane back to Copenhagen, going to Stockholm and just forget about New York. I mean, what does it mean anyway? A dream job, a boyfriend, the penthouse in a high-rise in Brooklyn, close local friends? It all means nothing compared to my little girl. Nothing.

I was going to give her the life I always wanted, living in New York and having all the opportunities of dance, acting classes that I never had the opportunity to take (and believe me, she is talented, her teachers are raving about her), good education, being in the middle of everything. Instead I'm going to give her (and me) the life I never ever wanted, living in a country I dislike and find utterly annoying, in a job I literally hate.

Parents

At the aquarium yesterday

Zoe fell asleep with her head on my stomach, so even though I was still fully dressed and had my contacts in, I stayed there in our bed for another 15 minutes, just enjoying her warmth and her breathing. She had been slightly restless after spending most of the day at my aunt's place (while I went to give a talk at my old university) and getting back just in time for a game, story time and bed. While we were lying in bed she started talking about family and I told her how I lived with my mom growing up and went to visit my father on the countryside during the weekends. We would take a walk each evening saying good night to the cows and look at the stars. "What did your father do?" she asked and I told her he was a school teacher but before that he was a television repair man. "He fixed your television if it was broken?", she asked and I explained that for most of my childhood we had at least four televisions, three tape recorders and two VCRs in the house at the same time, all in different working conditions. But he made sure there was always at least one working television where I could watch Muppet Show. Just two days before I had nostalgically introduced Zoe to the Muppet Show, which she had thoroughly enjoyed and watched with me. I also told her that my father taught me a lot of stuff about stars and planet. "Did your dad know a lot?", she responded and I said he did. "My mom knew a lot of things and my dad knew a lot of other things, that's the good thing about having two parents". Then she told me again what she has told me 100 times. "I wish I just lived with you, Mommy". I agreed but also said that she would always have both her parents and live some time with each of us.

Tomorrow is our last day together in a while. I'm planning to make pancakes for breakfast, take Zoe to the national museum and possibly the movies to see Inside Out (if she wants). We are going to have sushi for dinner with my mom and then pack up our suitcases. Wednesday, Zoe is going back to Stockholm and I'm going back to New York. My heart is going to break into two pieces, one for Zoe to keep and one for me to hold on to until I see her again.

Two parents

Most children have two parents, a mom and a dad or two of each. A lot of kids also have bonus parents who have parenting roles and parenting responsibilities but who are not the children's "real" parents, instead this is someone who has entered the child's life a little later as the one of the parent's new partner. I was a lucky winner in that department, growing up with not only two parents but also two bonus parents, except I had a hard time thinking of my "bonus mom" in any terms of mother figure; she was only 13 years older than me. My bonus dad on the other hand made my nuclear family complete with two parents and three kids, me and my two brothers, who I always laugh with when we have to talk about us being "half siblings", because we are as whole as whole brothers and sisters can be. In fact I think I have a better relationship with each of them than they have with one another. So despite me being from a so-called broken family since my parents divorced when I was one, I grew up in the most amazing, tight-knit family, as occasionally dysfunctional as any other. And as most children, from tight-knit to dysfunctional families wish, I always dreamt of a family of my own. I loved children and could not imagine a life without, preferably more than one. It took me all of my twenties to find a decent guy who didn't bail out on me and my demanding career goals (and, I sometimes thought, high intelligence; I scared a fair share of guys away just mentioning I wanted to be or was a PhD student. Ironically my girlfriend's husband got a first date with her telling her he was a meter maid instead of telling the truth, that he was a CEO of a large international company. Silly me never thought about dumbing down).

But as I approach the latter part of my 30s I find myself as one of those two parents Zoe has, not living as a nuclear family, but as two separate individuals. Zoe might tell people she lives with me in Stockholm but she also lives with her dad half the time. That leaves many days and especially evenings for me to just be by myself, a nice thing for most part since I get to work long hours and read books. Oh and I am crocheting again, trying to finally finish that throw I started five years ago. But as any parent, I miss her terribly when we are not together. The feeling is numbed by me listening to loud music, reading non-melancholic articles and take yoga classes. I think about how difficult it is not to have her around, hear her talking, asking, playing and hugging me, telling me I'm the "best mom" there is. I miss her temper tantrums and her drawing on my students' assignments.

My favorite movie of all times: My father had it on
video and I must have watched it over 50 times.

But I take a lot of comfort from my own childhood; after all I turned out a whole person, despite my parents (the 'real' ones) never speaking a word to one other, as far as I remember. And here is what I realize: parents are different. They give you different things. They each teach you different things, if they mean to or not. They talk to you differently and they give you different answers. And that's a good thing. They might give you different limits and they might provide you with different tools for handling life. I fondly remember my father telling me all about the sky, the stars, the moon and explaining planetary science, seeding my eternal interest for science fiction and anything space. My mom could probably not name more than two planets. My father listened when I asked math questions before I started school and explained the basics, recognizing my keen interest in numbers. My mom taught me to write letters neatly and I took on her very special cursive lowercase r, written in a way nobody else do; it is our bond, expressed each time I write an r. And my mom explained patiently the notion of "gay" when I was almost too young to understand, just in so much and so little detail that it made sense to a 7 year old. I'm still so impressed with this and now I know exactly how to talk to Zoe about this topic. They each gave me very different skills, knowledge and personality.

So this comforts me in my missing Zoe when we are not together. She will learn things from her dad that I could never give her and she will know diversity to an extent one parent can't provide. He is around people I would never be and Zoe has more play 'uncles' than any kid I know, each of them unique in their approach and play with her. So this is the approach I'm taking, because after all, the most important thing I got from my father was his undeniable optimism, and optimism so prevalent that my mom and I both started laughing loudly when a psychologist who were evaluating him during a particularly rough time of his illness asked if he had a tendency to be depressed. An optimism he had until his last days where he couldn't see anymore, couldn't walk but still listened to the radio and told funny stories about him and me. An optimism he still had when holding tiny three month old Zoe for the first and last time during what would turn out to be my last visit to his island.

But I also hope that I can be just a little bit better than my own parents and make sure that Zoe gets to do things with both of us together, even if that is just playground visits and occasional dinners. I'm that optimistic.