My Horse and my Ex-husband

Last week I took my ex-husband to the ranch to feed my horse carrots and walk around a bit. He's been living back in town for a couple of years, I think, but it's only been recently that I've decided we can be friendly, if not friends. We divorced in 1966 when we lived at Lake Tahoe and he decided he liked the night life more than family life. While I was cleaning house, starching curtains, baking pies, raising two small boys and teaching Sunday School, he was drinking, gambling, and getting to know at least one other woman in the Biblical sense.

I had a rough row to hoe as a single mom with an ex-husband who couldn't afford to pay child support because partying is costly in a casino setting. The idea of forgiving him for abandoning us didn't even occur to me until many, many years later, when I realized his leaving us was actually our good fortune.

Through thick and thin, the boys and I have maintained our bond, and of course without what Tommy now calls "the biggest mistake of his life" there would be no husband Frank, no daughter Jennifer, and no granddaughters Annabella, Evelyn, or Olivia due in September. So when I think back to the day he walked out, I thank my lucky stars. Obviously it wasn't a great marriage but I would have stuck it out only because back then I actually bought into that "for better or worse" nonsense.

Frank likes it when I spend a little time with Tommy every now and then. Mainly because it reminds me of how my life might have been, and makes me appreciate the life I have now even more. But it was a passage from my favorite book, Women Who Run With the Wolves (Claire Pinkola Estes) that caused me to rethink my ice berg attitude toward Tommy through all these years. She wrote: "Forgiveness is not surrender. You're the one who decides... when the debt is paid, when enough is enough. You can forgive with no more chances."

Tommy will never hurt, scare or even disappoint me again. I am in no way emotionally invested in our new relationship. What I see is a lonely old man who has no friends, nothing to do with his time except tinker with cars and drink, and who sports a sorrow etched deeply in his face. For his 70th birthday I gave him the words I had never before been able to utter. "I forgive you," adding, "Now you need to forgive yourself."

No more chances... for him to breathe life back into what was stagnant years back, even before we let it die. He wouldn't try to even if he thought he could. He always told me I was too good for him, that he didn't deserve me. He was right.

That having been said, if a couple of hours over lunch mixed with half hearted laughter playing "Remember the time..." , or a birthday dinner at my house with my family (his first), or an afternoon feeding carrots to my horse (a photo op to help fill pages in his album) helps brighten his days, well and good. I like being nice to him. It lightens my own burden. I didn't have to marry him at the ripe old age of 18, after all, I chose to. So I've had some self-forgiveness work to do too. We were both young and, let's face it, stupid. But we did make a couple of wonderful sons. In fairness to Tommy, he always gives me full credit for the job I did raising them without him.

The difference between Tommy and me is he fell off the mountain way back when. I kept climbing... and life is good at the top. I can afford to be gracious, therefore I am. Why? Well, why not? The debt has been paid. Enough is enough, and as Dr. Laura would say, it's just the right thing to do.