I have a very good friend and we have done everything at exactly the same time. Three kids. Divorce. New Marriage. Always within a year of each other and always there for each other. When we were in our single lives, raising kids alone, we would often have family meals at one of our homes with all the kids. We had each other’s back.
Our first-born sons were the best of friends. They were artists and did not necessarily fit in with the other sporty boys. My husband once said about them, “Are you sure they didn’t once walk through a toxic fog together?” We still laugh about that. Sometimes we would think it was a brilliant idea to “mainstream” the boys by sending them on YMCA camping trips to the mountains. They would come back coated black from dirt, stunned, as if we had sent them off to an inmate labor program. Unlike all of our other kids who would return from these excursions so happy, laughing with a pack of new friends they’d made, these two were miserable. (more…)