Happy New Year

It's a new year, and, like every new year, I pulled down my old calendar and wrote on the new one. Birthdays, anniversaries, lest I forget some aunt or grandmother and inadvertently offend someone. It's not like I ever actually remember to send cards or gifts ahead of time. I just like to feel sufficiently guilty when I notice that I missed someone's birthday.

When I reached April, I saw that I had dutifully copied "Black Thursday" on April 25th for the past two years. I decided not to copy it over this year. That's one date I'm done remembering. It's close enough to say that it's been almost three years since Michael walked out. And it's been a year and a half since he saw any of his children. The last time Michael was here, Tony was a baby. Now he's a full-fledged toddler.
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So, time goes on. As time has a tendency to do. The kids are growing more and more. Tony is still working on the potty training, but I feel we're almost there. Last weekend I drove the normally four-hour trip to Sue's house. It took five and a half hours due to all the potty stops we had to make, but it was worth it, since Tony wore underwear the whole trip. I didn't even pack pull-ups. Then he got playing with his cousins and had an accident while we were there. Which is why I say "almost".

That's not the only "growing" he's done in the last three years, but that's the most recent. Jane has done so well in that time that it still amazes me to look back at my old diary. I've read, and then remembered, that she was once so stereotypically autistic that she didn't talk, play, make eye contact, and used to bite herself and hit her head off the wall until it bled. I was once told that she would likely never be able to function as an adult. Last spring, I was told that she was no longer eligible for the special needs preschool. No Longer Eligible. The three most beautiful words I'd heard in a while. She began attending the Lutheran preschool last fall, and has flourished there.

Jacob, of course, has undergone numerous changes, not the least of which was his diagnosis of neural epilepsy. He is currently taking two medications, and, although he is still different from the average first grader, I am no longer worried about autism with him. He's still got some mental health problems, but he's been through a lot for a seven year old, and I feel he's handled it splendidly.
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And what have I been doing in the last year? Not dating, that's for sure. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I dated a few different guys in the three years since my husband left. But none since last March.

I have been doing a lot of reading lately, and, in the last few months, have been devouring mystery stories. I found a paragraph in an Erle Stanley Gardner detective story some time ago (the author of the original Perry Mason mysteries, although he wrote of many other characters as well) that I am going paraphrase as best as I can recall. In the story, a young woman is talking about her divorce and she says something like, "When you're a girl, and you go out with a young man, he expects to buy you dinner and go out on the town. And a widow has a certain amount of respectibility. But a divorced woman can't just go out on a date, thinking that she's just going to have a nice time. And this is because she's not a girl, she's a woman, and a man taking a woman on a date has certain other expectations. Now, woman or girl, I am a lady, and I expect to be treated as one." The Perry Mason books were written in the 1940's, and I was not yet born when Mr. Gardner passed away. But I found myself mentally reciting this paragraph when going to meet someone new. Perhaps if I had recited it aloud those dates may have gone better. Nobody forced themselves on me or anything, but the topic of sex was simmering under the surface, even on a first date, making me feel unladylike. And not at all like the person that I want to be.

So right now I'm not seeing anyone. And when people ask, they usually apologise when I tell them so. But they don't need to apologise. It's my choice. I usually tell them I've got my hands full without adding dating into the mix. But the truth is, I've seen what this society has to offer a divorcee, and I am not impressed. I'm a lady, by God, and I don't need this crap.