May 15, 2019: Victims and Villains: A Fairytale

Headline banner to the paper in the fall of 2013 before Ben's shenanigans (and for our use in life lesson training for him)

It's been over ten years since my divorce. When I recently thought of this milestone, I was doubting my mental math. Has it really been that long? Then I remembered the faces of our three young sons at that critical point in time. Comparatively to their 19, 23, 26 year-old selves today, I know this timeline to be true.

I vividly remember picking up our youngest two from grade school on the day I filed. I was pretty sure they hadn't a clue on the news I was going to deliver. My intuition was correct. I painfully watched as they both broke into sobs following my disclosure. Grant simply cried, while twelve-year-old Ben pleaded with me.

"Will Dad still be your best friend??"

It seemed like such an odd thing for my young son to say at the time. And it has probably taken these past ten years for me to fully appreciate what he saw in his child eyes. His parents had been friends since pre-adulthood and I am sure we acted in a way that felt this way to him. The nature of a relationship that begins at age 19 is completely different than one that begins at 40. It's just a fact of life. There is a lot of growing up that happens in your 20's and 30's.

Scott, my ex-husband, and I grew up together through our young adult years. During this time he was my first call for all the laughs and the cries. We had the same friends and the same sense of humor. Through our college years and with all the new friendships we gained through our boys, there was no Sandy without Scott or Scott without Sandy. We were a team. And other than one year of bad, we really did have a lot of fun over the other twenty.

But as in life, whatever is top of mind unfortunately becomes our new truth. That one year of bad soon became the replacement story of our life together. At least that was the case while we fought through possessions, time with kids, friendships, attorneys, and all the resulting anger that goes along with this territory.

And although we have all long since moved on, the uglies that go hand-in-hand with divorce still pop up on occasion. An occurrence that happens less frequently with the passage of time, but still comes up, is when I run into an old acquaintance who I haven't seen from the divorce days. Their question is about the same, with variations in directness.

"How is Scott doing?"
"Do you two get along?"
"Have you ever forgiven him?"

What goes through my head (in tandem with a mental 'ugh') is that this conversation is likely flipped  and also being asked of Scott as well. A divorce of any sorts (marriage, business, relationship) almost always falls into the victim vs. villain philosophy.

When a human breaks close ties to another human, their natural path of comfort (either self-imposed or from well-intentioned or less-well-intentioned others) is to become the victim. The next rule of life is that there can be no victim without a villain. One role does not exist without the other.

Even with the best of intentions in the beginning, both Scott and I quickly fell comfortably into the victim roles. Which, as you can surmise, made the other the villain in our marital dilemma. It was amazing how quickly we forgot about the twenty+ years of togetherness that produced wonderful memories and three boys we loved dearly.

We created stories that we truly believed and as sympathy was poured on to each of us, the more we allowed ourselves to become the victim as the other became more vilified; a crazy but frequent human trait.

For us it took years to get over. Ultimately two things happened that pushed us away from our victim/villain status:

1) People moved on to the next life drama that wasn't ours. They simply didn't care anymore.
2) Those closest to us refused to feed into the drama. A gift that I didn't fully realize at the time.

So we moved on. Every day things got better for our family. I slowly realized that I wasn't right in all my thought process during the high-drama divorce time. I also believed Scott felt the same way about his own actions. But no words were ever exchanged. Things just got better and tension started melting away, which seemed satisfactory enough.

As with any relationship that goes through ups and downs, even those with the extremes, there was a turning point post-divorce with us that will be forever ingrained in my brain. To others, it may sound insignificant, but it was the point in time that the old 'Scott and Sandy' were back and the drama became a seemingly distant memory.

The event of note was several years after our divorce with our middle son, Ben, seventeen years old. As senior in high school, he had the daily duty of picking up his younger brother and friend from grade school. On this particular day, I had received a disturbing phone call from the mom of the other boy in the car pool.

The issue that finally brought Scott and I back on the same page revolved around teenage boys being stupid. The stupid boys story revolves around Ben and a friend. They thought it would be funny to convince the two grade school boys, whom they had just picked up from school, that the Starbucks drinks the teenager drivers were enjoying contained alcohol. They thought this was funny (huh?) and added narrative to their comedy act.

The other boy in the carpool, Brendon, was worried and did the right thing. He told his mom when he got home. And then she did the right thing and told me.

I went from anger to worry, overthinking every possible scenario on whether my teenage son was just foolish or really did have a problem. I decided to call Scott who was immensely more talented in assessing situations like these given his 25 years in law enforcement.

It is amazing when dealing with kid issues how quickly a previously tormented couple, who are also parents of said child, can get back on the same page.

As my mind floated from 'I'm going to kill him!' to 'what if he does have a problem?' I blubbered to Scott my every fear, worry, and random thought around the boys. Scott carefully listened as I rambled. And then he took over the situation in the professional cop-like-way that he always had.

Calm. Cool. Collect.

I just kept blubbering.

Knowing Ben was at high school with his buddy, Scott coached me not to text or call Ben with screams of motherly anguish. Instead, Scott would come to the house and I would then simply text Ben to come home. No more additional words were to be communicated. I followed these instructions to the tee, even though my knee-jerk reaction was a desire to either go ballistic or to track Ben down like a ravenous vulture in the school parking lot.

Scott's cool demeanor prevailed.

The first weirdness of the situation was when Scott arrived and just he and I stood in the front entryway. This was same entryway that we spent thousands of happy encounters over the many years when we all lived there as a family. But it was also the location of later threats of not allowing one another in each other's homes and arguments over parenting time. I hadn't forgotten either and was pretty sure he felt the uncomfortableness in the air as we struggled for conversation awaiting Ben's arrival.

As anticipated, Ben was shocked to see not only his dad at his mom's house, but both us together in the entryway. This was a distant memory for him. Now he knew something was up.

Then the magic happened. Scott immediately took charge of the situation and I followed his lead. The best way I can describe what happened next is that he lit into Ben. And he did it brilliantly. Ben didn't know what hit him.

As a background for Scott's interrogation technique, Ben and his accomplice were not only friends, but football teammates too. They had just won the state championship, capping their senior year. It was a huge achievement and they were still flying high on the win. Scott used this to skillfully force Ben to reconcile the nature of his wrongs with the resulting consequences.

Initially Ben smirked as he sat on the steps. He was ready for his comeback on the insignificance of the spiked coffee debacle.

"Is it my fault they're so dumb?" Ben boldly pleaded with his fully-uniformed cop dad.

Not missing a beat, Scott kept drilling. He refocused the conversation to Ben's action and away from the grade-schoolers' level of aptitude. I played my role of the silent, but disappointed mom. My glare of sadness kept a steady aim on Ben while I reaffirmed to Scott our being on the same page with my frequent head shaking. There was no doubt Scott and I were in sync as Ben fell silent.

With the silence, Scott pounced.

"Ben, do you know how much Brendon looks up to you? Do you understand that? He idolizes you! On the day of your state championship game, his dad took time off of work to take Brendon out of school to watch you play. Did you know that? YOU are setting the example for him and this is what you do???"

Jackpot. Scott struck a nerve. Ben's eyes teared up and as any good parents would do, we turned up the heat. Scott took the 'Brendon looks up to you' strand and ran with it. It was nothing short of brilliant as I followed his every lead with body language and single word affirmations.

Scott and I were in perfect parenting unison.

Ben was in tears.

Completely broken down by his dad, Ben moved on to the next stage of interrogation. He wanted to rectify the situation and we gave him a life lesson in owning his shit. He was instructed to go to the house of Brendon, knock on the door ,and ask to meet with him and his parents. Ben was to do this by himself and explain what he did and how he was going to correct the situation. Words and actions can't be taken back, but life is also full of second chances to rectify past misdeeds.

As Ben wrestled aloud on gaining the courage of apologize to the parents and taking this on alone, something unexpected happened.

"Ben, you can just take me home and then you walk in the door with me."

It was Brendon.

In our house.

Unbeknownst to us, while we handed Ben his ass using Brendon as our primary material to get our point across, little Brendon was sitting in the adjoining room. Apparently Ben's actions did not preclude Brendon from having a playdate at our house after the incident.

The pawn in our parenting game had heard every word of our embellished characterizations.

Scott and I immediately shifted into recovery mode as we looked at Brendon's reaction to see if he felt like the third wheel in a really weird conversation. But amazingly he seemed fine, just wanting a ride home as he indicated. Ben took his marching orders without hesitation. He and Brendon headed out together for the family apology.

As they walked out the door, it took everything for Scott and me to hold back our laughter until we heard the garage door close. With tears streaming down our cheeks, we laughed and laughed and laughed some more. We laughed so hard, we couldn't speak. But speaking wasn't necessary. Scott and Sandy were back with the best joint parenting we had to offer.

When we finally did take a breath, we thanked each other for the support and rehashed the highlights of the interrogation. Laughing over the silliness of the Brendon situation, a text came through to both of us from Ben. He was humbled by the experience of meeting with Brendon's family and the forgiveness they gave him. And although it was really hard for him to do, he was soooo glad he did it.

Parenting success.

Scott and I stood in the entryway no longer as adversaries, but as a team. The nature of our relationship had changed, but not as it related to our kids. Jointly finding humor in situations hadn't changed a bit. There was no villain. There was no victim.

As for those old casual acquaintances we run into on occasion who want to know if I have forgiven Scott or Scott has forgiven me....

We are just fine.

5/15/19 (no caption necessary)