He tells me, “Well, you need a heart with three spaces, then: one for me, one for Daddy, and one for Elizabeth.”
It is summer, another Saturday, and I’m doing dishes. Michael comes into the kitchen and stands next to me, and I turn to look his way. He is wearing shorts but no shirt and has put a small, round sticker on each of his nipples to cover them up.
GOD
Today Michael asks me when he’s going to see Boomer again. Boomer was Jim’s dog who passed away last summer. I look around the room for help, but Jim is nowhere in sight. I’m on my own. I’ve come a long way since my Lutheran upbringing, and although I still don’t have it all figured out, I am certain I don’t believe in a singular Christian God or a literal heaven and hell. But Jim’s family is Catholic, and Michael sometimes attends services with his grandparents. I decide it is best to respond accordingly and save my own, more complicated theories for when he is older.
“Boomer is in heaven with God.”
“But I want to see Boomer now. How can I get to heaven?”
This is going to be a tough one. I think about the two baby ducks that died in our yard just weeks ago. A pair of adults landed in our backyard, hatched ten eggs, and swam around the pool with the babies for a week. By the end of the week most of the babies had disappeared, but we found two of them dead on the lawn. We were all in tears. I thought I recalled Jim telling the children that the babies had gone to heaven.
“We can’t go to heaven until … we … die. Boomer died, so she’s in heaven now, with the baby ducks.”
“But if I die, I’ll miss you!”
“You’re not going to die for a long time. Not until you’re old.”
“How will I get to heaven?”
Even as an ex-Lutheran, these questions are way out of my league. But Michael, at five, just needs simple explanations.
“Your spirit will go to heaven, not your body.”
“What’s my spirit?”
Michael patiently awaits my response as it takes me a while to formulate an answer. “Well, you know how you have toys that have to run on a battery, and if the battery is dead the toy won’t run?”
“Yes.”
“Well, our spirit is sort of like the energy in a battery, and our body is the battery. The energy is what helps us walk and talk and love and laugh and cry and get mad and be ourselves. When our body gets old and run-down and worn-out, like an old battery, our spirit has to live somewhere else. So it goes to heaven to live with God. Heaven is a wonderful place. And when we go to heaven someday, we’ll get to see Boomer again.”
Michael’s questions stop. He seems content with my answers, and I’m relieved. Then Jim appears, and I figure I’d better bring him up to speed. I have always done my best to respect his religious upbringing, but he knows I don’t share his traditional beliefs.
“Michael and I were talking about Boomer, our spirit, and how when we die we go to heaven to be with God.”
Jim begins to grin. “Oh, really? So you believe in God?”
Michael turns to me with his full attention. He is waiting.
“Well?” Jim asks.
I look down into the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. “Of course I believe in God!”
Michael walks away, content, all of his questions having been answered.
Jim is now laughing.
If there is a God, he must have a really good sense of humor.
THE CURE FOR A STOMACHACHE
We have just dropped off Michael’s sister, returning her to her mother after a long weekend. Michael tells us he has a stomachache. I know Michael is not really sick. He’s upset and probably doesn’t even realize it.
When I was his age my father had a job in which he had to travel from time to time. Whenever he left home, I would go to my mother with an upset stomach. Sometimes I would ask for medicine, but my mother seemed to know that my pain was psychosomatic. Instead she would come home from the store with a book of paper dolls, and they would always distract me from thinking about my father’s absence.
Now I look at Michael, and I’m certain his pain is emotional rather than physical. Perhaps he’s upset that Elizabeth is leaving again. Perhaps he’s upset because he senses that his father is upset.
Jim’s ex-wife is attempting to gain full custody of Elizabeth. As far as I can see, Jim has done nothing to warrant losing his position as father. He is present, he is attentive, he is playful, he teaches his children the difference between right and wrong, he tells them he loves them. Of course I only know Jim’s side of the story, but from what I can understand of the behavior I have witnessed, his ex-wife is not so much concerned about his parenting skills as just plain pissed off. The majority of her court filings reveal her belief that Jim is disrespecting her along with her concern that Jim will keep Elizabeth from her if he obtains custody—even though she’s the one interfering with access. She believes he should retain no parental rights and seems focused on achieving that goal at any cost.
Having enjoyed a lengthy career in law enforcement, she is just a few years away from retiring, and to get caught committing perjury could threaten her certification. Although I am not with Jim during every interaction, I have been present during the majority of their exchanges and am privy to most of their correspondence. Therefore, I have firsthand knowledge that she has filed court documents containing lies, made false statements in order to obtain a protective injunction, and perjured herself in the courtroom. She has also called Jim’s employer to file complaints against him and has reported to the city that our swimming pool has no fence.
Jim hires an attorney, and court documents are filed refuting her complaints. He fights the injunction in court, and it is overturned. His employer rejects her complaints as the unfounded attacks of a bitter ex-wife. The city inspector comes and sees that we have a motorized pool cover in compliance with city codes.
The injunction, although eventually dismissed, interferes with several weeks of Jim’s parenting time, but Elizabeth’s mother finds an abundance of other excuses to justify her failure to make the child available to her father. After moving forty miles away from Jim, she demands that he continue to pick up the child at day care in accordance with the court-ordered parenting plan—even though she has violated it herself by moving without prior notification and the required plan modification. Jim’s work schedule and the long drive now make it impossible to pick up Elizabeth before day care closes.
Jim files pleadings to modify the parenting plan, and by the time the court date arrives he has missed several more weeks of parenting time. Elizabeth’s mother suffers no consequences for violating the court orders, which is akin to dumping fuel on an open flame. Little do we know these are just the first in a long series of attacks.
These battles take their toll—on Jim, on me, on our relationship, and surely on the children. We don’t discuss the court case or demean his ex-wife in front of either child, but no matter how much we try to mask our stress, the children sense it.
On this night