May Day

Today is May 1st.  May Day.  It is also the date that I was engaged, married and served with divorce papers.  This used to be a date that I celebrated, and then a date that I avoided thinking about.  Now it is pretty much just another number in the calendar.  Back when things were still pretty good I thought it was ironic to get married on May Day, which in addition to being an ancient pagan holiday of fertility often manifesting in promiscuity, it is also a distress call for vessels in peril at sea.

When I was newly divorced it felt a bit like being stranded at sea on a raft with my sons, not sure what direction to paddle in, all the while yachts filled with "complete" families sailed by with a sense of purpose and belonging.  The worst was a day at Hershey Park, where it seemed like we were the only people there without both parents.  The only ones not experiencing the park the way that it was intended, as a family adventure.  I still felt like their mother but I didn't feel that we were "a family." As we've all grown in the past few years my sons and I have seemed to have filled that hole with new experiences, inside jokes and trust.  I think I could confidently take them to a theme park at this time and not feel like they've been cheated of a family experience.  However  I won't get on the Tower of Terror with them.

I've been thinking about relationships a lot lately; particularly what constitutes a family.  I think in reality the boundaries are a lot looser than the definition of family used to determine insurance benefits.  I've been in a relationship for 3 years and while I usually refer to Scott as "my boyfriend" it does not seem to fit.  Neither does "partner" or the "person I'm dating" because we are more than that.  We don't live together but it still feels like we are sharing our lives together.  So what is that called, and why do I care?

My grandfather died a few years ago within the same week of another woman that I had known only for a weekend.  I took the news of Granddad's death matter-a-factly,  whereas I weeped for Lois.  Not that I didn't care about my grandfather, he was a smily, gregarious man who loved to dance and drink Manhattans.  He dated a handful of women all with the same name, Gertrude I think, and repeated everything.  He'd say the same sentence over and over, only changing a word or two and switching which syllable he stressed.  He wore novelty ties and sock suspenders.  Quite a character that man was.  But he didn't touch my heart, and Lois in a few short days at a women's retreat did.  And many other people have touched it as well, making it feel like I have a very large family indeed. There is no need to call mayday.