This Mama’s Dharma

 
Now that spring is slowly, hesitatingly emerging here in Washington, DC, I have a new habit.  Each morning to and from work, I get off the bus and I walk.  All in all, I’m probably walking 25 minutes each way, but it is wonderful because I’ve been pretty sedentary all winter.
 
In general I am full [...]

March is already here, arriving with a fierce blanket of snow.  
Life is speeding by so, we did not yet get a chance to play in it.  If it had been up to me, I would have taken a snow day, but work called, so off we went, two hours late.
I looked out the window [...]

Reading Single Mom Seeking’s recent post about how confusing dating can be, all I can say is that I truly relate.  
I always feel like I am doing it wrong, like I scare guys away with my intensity, with some needy vibe that I don’t even realize that I am giving off.  I’ve concluded that [...]

Someone to tell me what to do.
There is not much narrative
Left in me right now. 
I’m tired.
This morning I get an email from the ex
Agreeing that we have gone nowhere with our nasty emails.
Our fights have always been legendary.
I really want to have Sami in my life
As much as I want to be in his,
He wrote.
I spoke [...]

Last night was filled with nightmares.  In one, I was out to dinner with my ex and his new wife.  Everything was going relatively well until I went to the bathroom and came back finding them in mid-PDA.  I flipped out, and this involved me cursing, shaking my fist at her, and giving them the finger [...]

My son and his father are quietly playing downstairs as I write this.  They are drawing pictures together at the dining room table and I am staying out of their way as they re-establish their bond.  Earlier in the morning, they were playing upstairs, loudly and boisterously, and H was throwing Sami around and doing [...]

This afternoon, on my way home early from work, throat burning, fever racking my body with chills, I listened to the most delightful dharma talk by Roshi Bernie Glassman, founder of the Zen Peacemaker Order.  I was struck so hard by something he said that my eyes welled up with appreciative tears:
“Take the ingredients you [...]

He doesn’t remember him.  
When he walked in the door, there was no “Daddy!”  No running to him.  No recognition.  Just a shyness.
“Who’s this, Sami?” I asked.  ”Who’s this man?”
No answer.
Periodically throughout the night, my ex tried to get Sami to call him by his name.
“You used to call me ‘Daddy,’” I heard him say [...]

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 [...]

I was going to title this post, “the snake crawls out of the slime pit.” 
But I decided that was just too mean-spirited.
On Sami’s birthday, I get a three line email out of the blue from my ex saying that he would like to start seeing Sami again and asking to go back to the regular Friday [...]