So we all get it. The boys are mostly fine after a couple days but for Tom and me it's longer. We fight through the whole thing, each of us half dead still mad at the other for not helping enough.
We get better. The morning we know for sure it’s a Wednesday, I think. I know something's different because he's looking me and the boys in the eye and smiling, showing up like he's glad to be alive. Like when we first met, like when Luke and Jason were first born.
Old Tom was basically a ghost, a divorce in the making. If old Tom showed up at meals and muttered something akin to hello as we passed in a room or when he wanted to fuck, you took it, like, Tom being Tom. New Tom pays attention.
Old Tom had a temper around the edges; the new version of my husband stays unflappably well adjusted. Old Tom lived and died by Philadelphia sports, listened to inane quantities of sports radio, became dumber day by day. The new one does yoga in the den, reads whole books to our growing kids, listens to classical dawn to dusk, calling out key changes and speculating on the raw glory of hearing intelligence from more than 100 years ago played out in a beautiful orchestral cavern, the sort of joy you hope is coursing through your addled mind all hopped up and dying at a ripe old age with a couple generations gathered to tell you: "Continuity, friend. It wasn't all for nought."
My old husband let the house decay around us. New Tom proactively mows the lawn and spares the stray dandelions for a bouquet. Makes us breakfast above and beyond toaster waffles. So above, so beyond.
Being around the new Tom kind of rubs off. Before, the boys would've been at each others throats too about everything, two years apart but perpetually fighting for the same patch of ground. Now they share chores, find new efficiencies, plot together. Before I was a bad conversation from trying to figure out leaving, a meet cute away from a move as far as a credit card's worth of gas and passionate introductory conversations could drive my second husband and me to a new free life. Now I find myself wanting things to last. Now the daydream now bridges back to things we both wanted, when we first fell in with each other over dumb movies and too much weed.
Old Tom had a temper around the edges; the new version of my husband stays unflappably well adjusted. Old Tom lived and died by Philadelphia sports, listened to inane quantities of sports radio, became dumber day by day. The new one does yoga in the den, reads whole books to our growing kids, listens to classical dawn to dusk, calling out key changes and speculating on the raw glory of hearing intelligence from more than 100 years ago played out in a beautiful orchestral cavern, the sort of joy you hope is coursing through your addled mind all hopped up and dying at a ripe old age with a couple generations gathered to tell you: "Continuity, friend. It wasn't all for nought."
My old husband let the house decay around us. New Tom proactively mows the lawn and spares the stray dandelions for a bouquet. Makes us breakfast above and beyond toaster waffles. So above, so beyond.
Being around the new Tom kind of rubs off. Before, the boys would've been at each others throats too about everything, two years apart but perpetually fighting for the same patch of ground. Now they share chores, find new efficiencies, plot together. Before I was a bad conversation from trying to figure out leaving, a meet cute away from a move as far as a credit card's worth of gas and passionate introductory conversations could drive my second husband and me to a new free life. Now I find myself wanting things to last. Now the daydream now bridges back to things we both wanted, when we first fell in with each other over dumb movies and too much weed.
Tom's parents have always been such dicks. "Jamie," they never said, "we love you like our own."Now there's something more polite and peaceful to our Zoom calls. Something akin to the fear of God in them, like ownership of the fact that the world they've left us doesn't have enough gas left in the tank to get where we want to go, like they're realizing that they want to live, to love if they can figure out how, to laugh besides their evil quiet laugh when no one's listening. Like they want to maybe not die alone.
Tom starts watching the President on TV on purpose. He stays calm the whole time. "He's just a guy," my new husband says. "He's scared like any of us would be in his situation. He's having trouble facing the horror of this moment. He wants us to win, but can't figure out the playbook. He needs us to know it's going to be okay. He's trying." The new Tom writes Trump a reassuring letter and stares for too long, too thoughtful a time at his Democratic primary mail-in ballot. After he's finished choosing he won't let me see his choice as he seals the envelope -- but I can see a lot of writing on the form, more than you’d expect.
"Miracles are in each of us, hon" he says, thoughtfully weeding the sidewalk in front of our neighbor's yard.
"Miracles are in each of us, hon" he says, thoughtfully weeding the sidewalk in front of our neighbor's yard.
I'm not nervous when Tom starts reading our small town's Facebook forum for parents, or even when he starts actively posting thoughtful bridging political commentary to try to find common cause between BLM people and people still squeamish about 2008's results. "Dialog's important," I tell myself. And true to form, whenever anyone gets out of hand in a thread, he acknowledges their humanity. In his presence, people get nicer. A few even seem to change their minds.
I'm not nervous when Tom's engagement grows. He starts reading other town forums, state and national ones. The kindness catches on. Tom can end the fiercest and vilest debates. He has closet white supremacists wrestling with their own sense of justice, has socialists interviewing police with a kind understanding of how there's racism buried in each of us, how the adrenaline of first responding can fuck with executive function, especially in a pandemic time when no one's got reserves, they just need structure, a narrower job description, and maybe, you know, an allowed default effective nonfatal option.
Tom stops sleeping and starts logging long shifts on Facebook. One morning I notice that he has 115,000 friends to my 300. Weeks pass; 250,000 friends. A near constant stream of judicious, kind posts from Tom, a succession of miracles in the making.
There's just one problem. Tom's so kind that people get tired of it and stop believing it. Suddenly the one thing Biden and Trump supporters and people who were never going to be happy with either can agree on is that Tom's useless. Maybe he's a sophisticated bot or at best a troll.
Tom swears he'll fight on. But today I get back from a drive to clear my head and I find him crying, his monitor smashed in with something. His account deleted. "It's all bullshit, hon," he says. He looks up. His eyes are a child's, scared and lost, in need of certainty that I'm sure I can muster from somewhere.
There's just one problem. Tom's so kind that people get tired of it and stop believing it. Suddenly the one thing Biden and Trump supporters and people who were never going to be happy with either can agree on is that Tom's useless. Maybe he's a sophisticated bot or at best a troll.
Tom swears he'll fight on. But today I get back from a drive to clear my head and I find him crying, his monitor smashed in with something. His account deleted. "It's all bullshit, hon," he says. He looks up. His eyes are a child's, scared and lost, in need of certainty that I'm sure I can muster from somewhere.
