Tonight I had a fairly awful talk with my ex.  I started out simply by asking for some explanation of what has been up for the last 10 months, as well as some kind of reassurance that he was going to stick around this time and that he was really ready to come back into Sami’s life.  

I explained to him that Sami was older and more aware now and that I wanted to try to protect him from being hurt again, if possible. 

He then went into a tirade, a familiar pattern that I am quite used to with the man, saying that he would not “be manipulated by me” and that he refused to “deal with my drama.”  Then he rattled off some old stuff I did right after we broke up.  He then said that he had a moment of weakness had made a mistake - that he was never going to contact us again.  

Yet he did not hang up, so I sensed that maybe he was digging a hole for himself with his words and might need some help extricating himself.

After a long pause, I said that it would be nice for Sami to have a relationship with his father, and that I would be willing to let go of the past and to support things moving forward if he was committed to some kind of consistency.

He countered with something like, “I grew up without a father and I’m just fine!”

Um, yeah.  OK.  Sure you are, buddy.

My enraged heart wanted to take his bait and run with it and say what was on my mind: “OK you fucker, fine, just leave us alone then!  He’s better off without you. We’re moving to California!  No, make that China!”  

But somehow I managed to de-escalate the situation.  Clearly he was not going to be able to offer any rational explanation for abandoning his child for the last 10 months other than that he was upset with me for some things I did and said after we were first separated.  I know I did some shitty things when we were breaking up and I fully admit that.  But he takes no responsibility for any of his actions, and everything comes down to me manipulating him and “making him feel guilty” and “taking him for a ride.” Then he started going off about his other son from his first marriage and his ex-wife #1 (he’s on his third marriage right now) and things I didn’t even understand.  It was scary.

Why did I try to salvage the phone call?  I would have had the perfect out through his complete a$$hole behavior.  Yet I did work to de-escalate it.  I am truly amazed.  I stayed about as calm as I could under the circumstances, shockingly calm considering how triggered I was. Somehow I kept Sami in mind, even if he couldn’t see past his anger at me and was ready to bail, again.

So we are going ahead with trying to make a reunion happen on Monday.  I tried to brief him on where Sami was at with sleep, toileting, discipline, etc. and his pat response to it all was, “nothing’s really changed.”

I hung up the phone feeling so disgusted with him.  So much has changed.  I was there for every new little stage of development.  Maybe in the big picture, major things have not changed (Sami’s still a “selective eater” for example) but he is a whole different person than he was 10 months ago.  

I hung up the phone burning with rage, sick with it, wanting to call back and spew all kinds of venom his way.  I was so entrenched in the story of what an asshole he is and how wrong he is and how right I am, all caught up in a ball of righteous anger and wanting to relieve it.  I found myself wanting to smoke a cigarette or engage in something addictive and destructive so I would not have to feel that pain.

Somehow I had the presence of mind to get out my new puzzle, which is an image of Kwan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.  I spread the pieces out and visited Dharmaseed.org searching the talks under the keyword “anger.”  

I listened to the most amazing talk about working with anger by one of my favorite American Buddhist teachers, James Baraz.  The talk is based on the book No Time to Lose by Pema Chodron, which is her interpretation of The Way of the Bodhisattva by the 8th century sage Shantideva.  I was struck by the opening verse of the chapter.  

Good works gathered in a thousand ages,
Such as deeds of generosity,
Or offerings to the blissful ones–
A single flash of anger shatters them.  

Anger is like that: a momentary flash that destroys.  We get taken over.  I have never not regretted the words I’ve said or the deeds I’ve committed out of that terrible flash. Shantideva tells us that the antidote to anger is patience.  

I don’t know what grace saved me tonight from just letting my ex off the hook when he tried to back off again.  I don’t know how I was able to access patience in that moment. It was grace.  

How much better would it be if, instead of relying on random grace, that I could actually cultivate patience with my ex, with Sami, with all people and circumstances, or as Shantideva says, “steep yourself…in patience — in all ways, urgently, with zeal.”  

Zealous patience.  This is going to be my mantra in dealing with my ex from here on in.  Shantideva sees three kinds of patience: the patience that comes from “reframing our attitude towards discomfort;” the patience that comes from understanding that things are complicated, and that we don’t have all the information; and the patience that comes from “developing tolerance.”

The snake’s emergence from the slime pit is stirring up these flames within me, but now I see he is going to be a great teacher for me.  Perhaps almost as much of a teacher as my son is.  My son teaches me about love, my ex teaches me about hate. Both are teaching me patience.  Humility. Acceptance.  Tolerance. This is not particularly sexy stuff.  But here is where evolution lies, rather than just crystallizing habits and being a mindless slave to old patterns.  

I cannot change my ex.  He will change in his own way, as do we all, without me doing anything.  How he was on the phone tonight is clearly the best he can do right now.  I can hate him for being who he is, I can judge him harshly, or I can learn to accept that this is simply the way he is.  As much as he blames me for his actions, it is so not about me or about Sami.  It’s all him and his stuff.  

Pema puts it beautifully in this chapter: “In any encounter, we have a choice: we can strengthen our resentment or our understanding and empathy.  We can widen the gap between ourselves and others or lessen it.”

I am having a hard time feeling empathy right now, but I am at the point where I can muster up some tolerance for what has felt like the most intolerable behavior.  Who knows what is to come?  I don’t think it will be tremendously easy, but it could all be very valuable if I choose to reframe what is happening here, to continually reframe the story that I am telling myself about it.  

I’ll close with a part of this chapter that stands out for me tonight.  Shantideva says, “without pain, we’d never long for freedom.”  Oh, that is so true to me.  I came to the spiritual life out of enormous physical and emotional pain.  And I would never take it back.  My suffering brings me closer to home, to the awakened heart-mind that is always and already here.