My Ex’s Face

It’s amazing how quickly, when I see a picture of my ex, I just want to rip his face right off of the print. Right off of his head, actually. Recently my youngest son asked to see his baby book. Knowing full well that no book exists, I had to scramble to come up with an excuse…still scrambling… Anyway, I shortly thereafter decided to break out the scanner and start digitizing some prints. It has been a lot of fun. I’ve been all wistful about time passing and the meaning of life and all of these types of things. Of course, I decide that I must get out this boy’s baby pictures and scan them so I can at least make him a digital baby book. The other kids have scrapbooks with carefully trimmed pieces of coordinated paper and momentos carefully cemented in with the most delicate of adhesives. Screw that. This kid is getting a book that I very carefully auto-create from blurb.com.

It’s not that I don’t love him. Nobody can doubt this. But I am working full-time and raising four-slash-six kids to be wonderful human beings, all the while trying to be a worthy wife to my husband. All with NO help from my ex, which brings me back to my point: his face.

Rifling through these pictures was lovely. I realized that in my hugest belly pic, taken days before this child’s birth, I was wearing both horizontal and vertical stripes. I remembered his birth and the hours leading up to it as a time of great realization that natural birth may not be all that once believed it to be-even though I did not have the benefit of any drugs. I recalled the look on my oldest daughter’s face as I looked over and saw the tears that were streaming because she had just witnessed her brother’s birth. Then I SAW IT. The picture of my ex holding his newborn son. Of course, now, as I see it, I have the knowledge of what happens after this picture is taken. I know that he will choose to live a different life, away from his children. That he will choose an old, mean woman to share his life with instead of them. Ooops, I digress…

I made a conscious decision to include pictures of him in my digital files because he, quite simply, is their father. He was a part of those moments and he deserves space on our network drive and in their memories. When I look at his image with his children, though, there is so much there that I never allowed myself to really see until now. Maybe only I can recognize the apathy on his face, the utter distraction and laziness, because I was the only one that got to live with it day after day. When I look at these photos, it’s like I am allergic to bee stings and I just got swarmed with bees. I want to rip them off of me. I want them to never have existed. I want to rewind time and make better choices. None of us can do that, though, can we? As much as any of us want to rip our ex’s face off (and I know many do), we can’t. We can’t even toilet paper their house when we’ve had way too much tequila. Or tell our kids really what an ass they are. Well we can, but we really shouldn’t. And I won’t. I will continue to scan his icky face into my digital memory. I will make a blurb book for my boy that includes him and I will continue to say, “Yes, that’s your Daddy holding you.”

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