Summer's lease

Divorce sucks. But I'm realizing it's the moments that matter.

For those not paying attention, it’s been quite a year. But amid this beautiful pain—beautiful in the form of where my life is heading; painful in terms of where it is—I had a moment of zen a few days before my birthday in April, when the first song landed from the latest Crowded House album.

I immediately declared “Teenage Summer” the song of my season. It’s infectious and upbeat, with the usual deep undercurrent of any Neil Finn song.¹ But I couldn’t exactly put my finger on why it so resonated with me until I this week caught an interview between Finn and fellow New Zealander Zane Lowe, who has lived overseas for the better part of 30 years.

“It’s hard to explain what this songs means to me but you will get it,” Lowe told Finn. “Someone said to me yesterday in an interview what do you miss about New Zealand? And I said I miss New Zealanders’ ability to be able to somehow take the entire summer off. Or, at least, the feeling that you can take two months off in the middle of the summer and not really do the job that you do normally to the same degree.”

Bingo.

I’ve now lived in the United States for 23 years. In my experience, this isn’t a country that embraces summer for the three-month professional slow-walk it should be. I mean, people take vacations, of course—while often glued to their phones and replying to emails because everyone is, you know, indispensible. Kids have every week structured, shuttling from one camp to another or whatever activities will keep them out of the hair of their parents who are, of course, working.

It’s distinctly different from summers I remember back home, which were exactly as Lowe describes. First, summer falls over the holiday season, kids don’t go to camps, and it’s a cavalcade of cricket, beaches, and hanging out with nothing but long days and warm nights. Second, there is an uncanny and slightly mysterious ability for people to work while not really working. The days pass and stuff kinda sorta gets done, but everyone’s kinda sorta working and no one bats an eyelid.

I haven’t had a summer like that for two decades, and I most definitely didn’t have one this year as summer disappeared amid having to move, divorce ridiculousness, and a ton of work. The loss also felt more acute because, just as Chicago tries to cram a year’s worth of outdoor activities into four months, I’ve spent the past 10 months trying to cram a week’s worth of parenting into a couple of days.

Divorce is hard on multiple dimensions. For me, by far the hardest thing has been the jarring loss of being with my kids all the time. Here’s what my life used to be: up early with my boys, getting them breakfast, hanging out, making their lunches, driving them to school, picking them up, making them dinner, hanging out, putting my youngest to bed. Rinse, repeat. There were good parenting days and bad, naturally. But the law of averages works in your favor when you get to kiss your kids’ foreheads every night and tell them how much you love them.

Now? I’ve gone from being the parent who spent the most time with my kids to the one spending the least. It’s awful. I have my boys for just two days each week—I am supposed to move to three, but the struggle to make that happen falls squarely in the “divorce ridiculousness” category. Losing 70% of parenting time overnight is tough enough, but it’s compounded by the pressure it places on the balance: you want every minute of every day to be perfect, and a bad day eats at me for the long gap until my boys are with me again.

I know the new reality is the new reality. But it’s also reminded me life is, ultimately, the sum total of a series of moments. I used to feel almost overwhelmed by my inability to inhale life in full; to grasp and feel deeply connected to the beauty that surrounds all of us. I’d hold my boys in my arms and try to stretch that feeling across everything leading to that moment; swaddling my past with my present in an effort to make it something more than ephemeral.

These days, any time with my boys is quality time.² I have to believe it will all add up, minute by minute, to forge their understanding of who I am and reassure them of my unconditional love. I’m accepting my job isn’t to be perfect all the time, but to be truly present and provide an environment that lets them be kids and allows them to develop at their own pace in their own ways so they can ultimately make their way in this world with kindness, humility, and confidence.

So, the moments that matter will keep accumulating. For the past two days, it was making five trips to the pool in my apartment complex, celebrating my eldest’s increasingly strong swimming and smiling at my youngest’s obsession with cannonballs and his habit of conflating that with “cowabunga” to shout “cannonbunga!” as he jumps into the water.³ In the weeks ahead, it will be helping them navigate this new area and new schools, providing a haven of stability and fun. And in the months and years ahead, it’s taking them to Australia to understand more about their heritage and to Asia, Europe, across the US and to all corners of the world.

I also have a sneaky feeling we’ll be able to stake a small claim to an American version of an Aussie summer. Just cross fingers this year’s tsunami of stupidity will have passed. Please.

1. In the context of the album, called Gravity Stairs, Finn says it’s “a metaphor for getting a little older and becoming aware of your own mortality, your own physicality. Things are getting a little harder, and there’s more determination needed to get to the top, but there’s still the same compulsion to climb them.” That absolutely checks out.

2. In one conversation questioning why the boys couldn’t just stay with me overnight on the one day each week that I already take them out to dinner, my ex said, “All that is is getting them ready for bed and waking up to take them to school. It’s not quality time.” If that’s not quality time, what is?

3. The fact all this activity also left them exhausted and falling asleep next to me as we lay in bed watching “Phineas & Ferb” was just a bonus. Is there anything better than a child using you as a pillow and contentedly falling asleep?