Patterns

A couple years ago, I did a little photography project. Walking around my neighborhood, the Mission, I shot whatever caught my eye on the sidewalks and walls, mainly just trash or graffiti. I didn't shoot buildings, cars, trees, or people. Just urban detritis.

I showed the photos to my kids, and they had a funny response: "I know where that is!" They didn't necessarily view any of these images as pretty or ugly, appropriate or inappropriate. They just recognized them as parts of our neighborhood that they, too, had noticed on our frequent walks around the area.

As a single Dad, 50% of the time, I often see life through my kids' eyes. I also rely on them about people. When friends drop by, or new people enter my life, I always ask them later what they think about them. As with my images of the streets, the kids rarely make judgements. Instead, they make observations.

My kids like all of my friends. And they are inclined to like anyone new I introduce to them. Over the past three years that I have lived here, one person above all others captured their hearts, as she did mine.

She was the most unlikely of all our visitors in that she has always claimed she doesn't like kids, particularly, and certainly never wanted to have any, or be responsible for them. Oddly, however, with my three little ones, she revealed a side of herself that perhaps never before had been seen.

I won't go into detail now, but her sweetness toward them changed our entire family dynamic. Today, after she is long gone from our lives, her influence lingers throughout our flat. The kids often mention her, when we play certain games or do things she introduced into our family life.

When people ask me why this loss has been so difficult, I always try to explain that it isn't only me who has lost his lover, best friend, and confidant, but my kids who have lost a good friend, an adult they came to trust and love very deeply.

It's hard, in a single parent household, to make things work. There is a ton of work, never enough time, constant pressures of various kinds, conflicts, worries, difficulties, noise, chaos. There also is music, art, beauty and love of a rich kind.

My kids and I were alone before she came and we have been since she left. They are fine with it; partly because there may be some backsliding going on around here about some standards that she introduced. And though the kids never considered her a parent, only a friend, she was our most special one, the only one we all embraced as part of our family.

A problem for me, the sentimentalist, is that her traces are everywhere here, so the kids innocently mention her all the time. This is fine in one sense, because I remain in love with her myself. Yet she is totally and irrevocably gone from me. She broke up with me, partly because I am a parent.

Our lives go on. Today I played vigorous games of basketball and soccer with my kids; we hung out with friends; ate lunch on Valencia Street; ordered Chinese food at night (Indian from Spicy Bite next time); and rented movies tonight. In the video store, an attractive woman with dark hair and dark eyes complimented me on how sweet and cute they all are.

I'm not sure whether it takes a village to raise kids, but I do know it is very hard to be a parent, whether alone or in a couple. Every now and again, however, if we are lucky, an Angel shows up, and that can make all the difference...I am grateful to mine, even as I mourn her loss. Maybe some day another will show up to take her place. Or maybe not. Either way, her time enriched us, changed us, left us all wanting more.

The heart may indeed be a lonely hunter. But I don't think any of us should turn away from love, in its many forms, unless we are willing to pay the price, many times over. Breaking any heart, but especially a child's, will reverberate far into our collective future.

All any child of divorce has to do is to look in the mirror.