Re-finding Old Love

An outstretched arm and a dream of safety nested in the broadest chest into which I’d ever collapsed: What more could I-- a single mother, child in tow, walking a high wire over New York--possibly want? Truth is, by the time I met him, I was exhausted from an adulthood I'd never have had the guts to scale had I known the slope in advance.

Starting with an aborted acting career, it moved through years of trying this and that with growing fear that the world had no place for me, or at least no place that I wanted. Later came a separation from my family lasting over a decade, a difficult marriage complicated by infertility, and, when I left, the loss of a step son I’d adored, followed by a journey half way round the world to adopt a baby I knew nothing about except that I would love her.

All the while, through luck and sheer will, I was able finally to craft a role into which to pour my abilities and ambitions, surpassing my own expectations and those of my agency and industry to create a thriving business that I suddenly realized was precarious. And had no net.

While my peers’ passages were no less difficult, I was far less prepared.

Reassurance at a Price

I found in Him a ballast, a brilliant thought partner and a grown up man to love. I was not alone in the world. But underlying the relief and early joy was a deep choreography that I had danced before.

After initial bliss, I found myself, like Ginger Rodgers, dancing backwards and in heels, realizing that to make him happy, I had to work much harder; and that sustaining connection meant forgoing a part of myself. This dance was in my repertoire; I had learned it with my mother.

This time, it went something like this: He was 8 years older, an empty nester; he had flexibility and naturally wished to enjoy his maturity with a stimulating, available woman.

I didn’t know how to be that woman without skimping on the motherhood I’d worked so hard to realize, the career I’d struggled so long to build, the self I’d sacrificed so much to free. Without these things, I couldn’t be the woman I wanted to be. The time and energy left for the relationship was a source of deep deprivation to him.

“Trying”

Years of trying followed: compromises, retreats for reflection, couples therapy. Each time we reached the edge of “over,” we reflexively pulled back, drawn by the mutual conviction that we were uniquely well matched: when we were good, we were great.

My mother’s impending death, among other things, began to force clarity. The shattering notion that this life really does end made me think about it anew. What is life, really?

The only answer I had was that it’s . . . well, living: being sufficiently present to taste the butter on my morning toast, hear the planes overhead in a suddenly clear sky, notice that my daughter’s eyebrows need threading and that she scowls with hilarious malice when I dare to mention it. It’s being sufficiently attuned in a casual conversation to detect a friend’s worry; it’s being able to access the best of my professional self-- experience and skill, questions and ideas-- to do great work with my colleagues and clients.

Despite my certainty that I loved him, I knew it was not good to spend so much time preoccupied by our distress that I was chronically un-present. I also knew it was not good for my daughter to live with a mother frequently distracted, sometimes distraught.

So with fierce reluctance I began to let myself know that this was a love that could not live in the world. At least not now. And when I became convinced of this, I knew it was over.

Was it Freud who said all new love is a re-finding of old? Much of what went right and wrong seems to converge in the shadow of my mother.