12.10.08 - 11:44 pm

the first thing he said to me as he walked into my work was, "hey dad, do you mind if my mom takes me for like two hours tomorrow?"
"two hours? what for? when?"
"a movie. i dont know, like one."
"...but youll be in school, and why cant i take you to a movie?"

such a interesting thing for him to ask. why would sarah put an idea like this in his head? i dont see him barely 40 hours a week, and she wants to encroach on my time with him even more? its her again, driving a wedge between ashton and i, devaluing our time, because hes just going to do something more exciting with his mom anyway. or maybe she knew i was taking my class tonight, and wanted to take him while i was in it, and he just didnt understand the timing. it was peculiar regardless.

im not writing about this because its particularly interesting, but important enough to note. for future references.

i went to my first parenting class tonight. i brought ashton. i felt tears welling on two occasions: seeing him asked if he knew why he was there, and picking him up from his class.

surrounded by 20 people of varying ages, appearances and backgrounds. there were guys that looked like deadbeats. there were weathered and bearded men. there were stern faced body builders. there were fat women. young women. a german woman. a woman who looked just. like. sarah. striking similarities. if sarah had aged five years. and looked as she had three years ago.

ashton sat in a desk next to me, his head on his folded arms attentively paying attention to the woman standing with a clipboard at the center of the room. suddenly she started talking, and started with ashton.

"ashton, do you know why you are here tonight?" i looked at him, a wave of panic. should i have told him? should i have mentioned some sort of pillowy excuse so that all of this would make sense to him? i suddenly felt defective as a parent.

with his head still leaning on his arms, he shook his head and said, "i dont know." he looked so adorable.

she asked another child, to which the same answer was quietly muttered. when she asked the older kid in the back of the room he coldly stated, "because my parents are getting a divorce."

it was so cruelly honest. far more than i wanted ashton to hear. i didnt want to make this real for him. or any more apparent or confusing than it already had been on him.

these parents. during it all you could feel the strong desire to vent. a two hour stream of thought boiled behind each simplified statement they produced. they needed to share. to feel some sort of validation for all the anger and pain these parents were experiencing. the class was stressed as a noncounseling experience. it wasnt therapy. it was for the children. but all these parents, they all needed someone to listen. they all needed strangers to look at them and tell them they were right in how they felt. that the other parent was an asshole. and it was that pain that i knew was shared by the children of all these people. they were all here because they had children. and all of their children will have to share in the misery of their divorce. the same misery of divorce ive gone through. some will have to experience worse. and it breaks my heart to think of ashton experiencing the confusion, the sadness and disappointment in not sharing the childhood of his peers with happy, married parents.

this is going to be rewarding. im looking forward to what we share, not what we learn. the two girls moderating the class are well intentioned, but irritating. their instruction and dialogue is manufactured, read off a packet of paper copyrighted in 1984 and revised in 1996. its meant to illicit the impression of active listening and compassion. but it rings hollow and scripted. what they have to say is explicitly unmistakable and everything my step father has already told me.

obviously not everyone has a mike stradley as a mentor.

but the importance of class is not in what we are told, but what we will tell each other. and thats what im looking forward to.

they take the large group of people, all court mandated to attend, and split them up into two classes. they split up the parents, if they both attend. they split up the children into three age groups.

picking up ashton from his classroom next door, it was immediately obvious not only was he was excited to see me, but also enjoyed himself during his class. he cried twice.

once because he said "he kicked butt" and was told that was not appropriate. and once because he said he missed me.

his teachers said he was very good and were all smiles. he told them he was looking forward to coming back again. and insisted we come back "the fourth time". thats when there is a party with cupcakes.

and juice.

before we left, he approached another girl from his class and told her he hoped to see her next class if shes there. as we left he said, "she was a pretty girl, wasnt she?"

her parents live together, and just told their children last week they were divorcing. the mom wanted the father out of the house, and hes refusing. shes very frustrated by this. i wonder what he offered as his explanation in his class.

next week ill be put into a group of parents with similarly aged children. ill expand on my classmates then. and hopefully something novel the class will present.