THE RACE
Chiang Mai, Thailand
June 13, 2022
Kez blew into Chiang Mai like the hurricane that he is, full of curiosity and confidence but without a place to land. His villa was unavailable for another day so I offered to sleep with Cecilia in her highly air-conditioned room and let him take my space for the night. I knew Ceci wouldn’t be happy about my invasion into her space, but she would survive. I was anxious for her to meet Kez, and not in a happy-anxious way, more like a I-hope-this-doesn’t-go-to-shit-because-I-really-love-both-these-people-way.
Kez is a presence.
Cecilia is a presence.
They do not tread lightly upon this earth.
I wasn’t sure how this was gonna go.
I found out real quick.
Kez settled in then we all walked over to a vegan spot near our villa. I hadn’t seen Kez in three months, since that blow-through layover in Texas after my emergency trip to West Virginia. We’d obviously spoken. A lot. Enough so that he was traveling with us for the rest o the summer but still I wanted to catch up, give him my full attention. Cecilia wasn’t having it. She kept interrupting our conversation and when that didn’t quite work, she decided to go after Kez directly.
It started with her toys, little rubbery figures with magnets on their feet, that function as both action figures and fidgets for Ceci. She clicks them together, pulls them apart, twists and bends them, whispers a running stream of dialogue between them but this time, she invites Kez to join the play. The little rubber men were competing with each other. Trying to win at something resembling paper-football. Ceci really wanted that win.
But here’s the thing. Kez played pro-ball for a decade overseas. There are pictures of him kissing trophies and dribbling past LeBron. Kez doesn’t give a shit who you are, he’s going for the win. Scratch that. He’s going for the kill. Basketball, paper football, whatever. Bring it on.
We somehow made it through dinner with me growing ever more uncomfortable. I’d never seen Cecilia be boastful and aggressive. She’d escalated their table play to a full-on challenge for a running race. I was literally sitting in my discomfort, watching Ceci and Kez, magnetized, clicking together, pulling apart, twisting and bending, a running stream of smack talk between them. They were really going to do this. They were really going to race. And I knew Kez would not let her win.
I had a choice to make: was I going to nip this in the bud or let it happen?
Allowing Cecilia to fail, to be defeated, when I could prevent it - that was the complete opposite of every parenting decision I’d made since Clayton’s death. I sought out compassionate doctors, accommodating teachers, cheerleaders for our healing. I did not require much from Cecilia at home. School and therapies were so taxing for her emotionally, that I declared our house a place of rest, a sanctuary from the world. I’d never had a safe home as a child. I wanted to provide that for Ceci. Solace. Despite my best efforts, Cecilia’s childhood was tumultuous. She’d suffered the greatest defeat a child can experience: losing her dad. I never wanted her to feel like that again.
That’s what I told myself.
In truth, I was the one who never wanted to feel that way again.
I was doing everything in my power to ward off another regression. To keep conflict and unhappiness at bay. Cecilia’s panic attacks, separation anxiety and negativity after Clayton’s death were exhausting. Walking her through meltdowns…we’d both be wrecked, bodies trembling, fatigued. It felt like surviving a car wreck. Over and over and over again.
It took almost two years before Cecilia could happily do a full-day at school, without me getting a phone call or a behavior update. Another year before we could finally focus on academics, not just our mental health, her social skills. And now, Thailand where Cecilia was choosing to walk a mile back and forth from the pottery studio, throwing pots for four hours a day, making friends with all the neighborhood kids and parading her good-morning hellos to the local vendors.
I’d stopped believing that I could trust my daughter to be okay without my constant supervision and management. But here she was, energized and activated by Kez’s competitive nature. A whole other side of her I’d never seen. I wondered if I had done her a disservice. Maybe I wasn’t protecting Cecilia. Maybe I was holding her back.
Kez came in and pushed harder than me. Immediately. That’s his style. He expects the best out of people, demands it simply by living from the truth of himself. He’s intense and charismatic. He doesn’t apologize for that. He’s used to leading teams to victory. He wants the best for everyone. He wants to see people thrive. He ain’t passive about helping them get there.
Cecilia felt his energy and his power. She wanted to match it. She bragged as if she could beat it. I knew she couldn’t. He was a grown man, a professional basketball player with legs as long as her entire body. I knew she was going to fail. I knew it was going to hurt. I knew I had to let it happen.
If these two people were going to be in my life, on a daily basis, even if it was just for these two months in Southeast Asia, they were going to have to create their own dynamic, their own relationship that had nothing to do with me. I had to get out of their way.
But it made me sick to my stomach.
There was more bravado before the race, stretching and talking smack. I did my best to keep the mood light and playful but inside, I braced for disaster. Ceci has always been a sore loser. When she was barely four, we attempted to enroll her in pee-wee soccer. At one point, she ended up face down on the field, weeping, because one of her teammates made a goal instead of her. Clayton had to pick her up and carry her to the car. She was inconsolable.
This was before we had her ADHD diagnosis, when we were utterly exhausted and neck deep in rigid food and sleep schedules, tap-dancing as fast as we could to ward off the next major meltdown. Would the restaurant be too loud? Too many people at the park? Would she get overheated? Had she had a snack? I was reading every book written about highly-sensitive kids but in my heart, I knew something else was going on.
The final straw was a birthday party for her new school friend. The mother had set up a crafting table for the kids to make jewelry boxes and while all the other kids sat quietly and decorated their boxes, Ceci grabbed the glue, dumped it all over her box, threw some decorations on it, jumped up, ran to go find their pets, chased their pets under the beds, came out, tried to eat the cake, opened the front door to go outside, came back inside, sat back at the table and threw more decorations then repeated the whole loop two more times before I finally grabbed her up and took her home. The look on the other parents faces was pure judgment. I was the bad parent with the spoiled kid. My kid was out of control. I heard the birthday girl call her crazy.
I remember walking into our apartment and announcing to Clayton, “Something is wrong,” but his brother had just died and there was a tumor in his left frontal lobe that we didn’t know existed so I was on my own with getting Cecilia diagnosed. Fortunately, I had my friend Allison, a Mama Bear Extraordinaire, who helped guide me to the right psychiatrist. It still took months of terrifying experimentations to find the right medication and dosage for Cecilia.
I’m wading into dangerous territory here because I assure you, every person on this planet, whether they are a parent or not, has a very strong opinion about whether or not kids should be on drugs for behavioral issues. The prevailing wisdom, still after all these years, is that ADHD is made -up and these kids are just spoiled, undisciplined, attention-seeking manipulative liars. The parents must be bad, neglectful, permissive, divorced and/or rich. Those kids need a good whack on the ass. They need tough love. A firm hand. Medication is a cop out.
Let me say this:
Of all the parents I’ve met with neurodivergent kids, not one of them allowed their kids to swallow pills before they’d exhausted every other possible solution to no avail. And I’m not just talking about the gluten-free hippies who throw out all their Teflon skillets and hand-make their own probiotics or source organic melatonin. I’m talking about the military families who eat structure and discipline for every meal. I’m talking about the parents who were themselves on medications for ADHD or OCD or whatever.
Choosing to put your five-year-old on medication is always a last resort.
I’d been raised to believe that people who took pills for emotional or mental issues were weak. Shit, if you weren’t coughing up a lung or your eyeball wasn’t hanging out of its socket, you shouldn’t even be “at the doctors.” You should just keep yer trap shut, stop yer bitchin’ and go about your business.
It took me ten years of talk therapy, EMDR for repressed memories, support groups, white-knuckling through postpartum blues, being overwhelmed by my mother’s dementia and my brother-in-law’s suicide, before I finally agreed to “just try” an anti-depressant, Wellbutrin. I told myself, “Well shit, Susan, when you have an asthma attack, you hit an inhaler. Sometimes, your body needs a little extra help. What’s the difference between helping your lungs or helping your brain?”
It was like I’d been living in a dark room and someone flipped a switch to turn on the lights. I was still the same person with all the same issues, but things just felt a little easier. I had more energy. I smiled more. For the first time in my life, I realized how much sadness I’d been carrying. My baseline was no longer despair. It had leveled up, been reset. My attitude went from “meh” to “yeah, okay, sure, why not?” And it stayed that way until, of course, everything went to total shit.
Still, it was my positive experience with Wellbutrin that gave me the courage to seek out medication options for Cecilia and to maintain that courage, in the midst of our experimentations, until we found the right combination for her. Intuniv and Amantadine helped Cecilia move through life with less friction but they sure as hell didn’t make her any faster.
Kez outran her with five long strides.
I found Cecilia standing by the side of the empty road, crying. As I approached I heard the words no mother ever wants to hear, “Just leave me alone,” so I backed off but I couldn’t leave. I wouldn’t leave. It pissed Cecilia off. “Mama, leave me alone. Go home. Please. GO!”
Stepping away from Cecilia and allowing her to walk home, crying, by herself, uncomforted, may have been one of my hardest moments in parenting. And I’ve had some doozies. I tried leaving very slowly at first but realized she was not going to budge until I was out of sight. I eventually made it to our villa gate.
Kez was sitting in our shared kitchen, drinking a glass of water. I glared at him, pissed, my whole body vibrating with suppressed anger. He made eye contact, “She okay?” I could only manage to say:
“Fix this.”
From the kitchen windows, I saw Cecilia slink into her bedroom villa and pointedly shot Kez a withering stare. He shook his head, sat right where he was. “Let her chill. Don’t get all up in it. You’re the one making this a thing.”
Which was absolutely infuriating.
Who the freaking fuck was this man to come into our little safe world and tell me how to handle my daughter?
I completely ignored his advice and marched my way over to her bedroom door. It was locked. I tried cajoling my way inside. It didn’t work. Cecilia wanted to be left alone.
Now, my stomach was on fire.
I spun on my bare feet and headed back across the little patio and into the kitchen villa. “You need to make this better. Right now.”
Kez wasn’t feeling it. “You’re rushing this because of your own discomfort. Give her space.”
Ahem.
If you want a sure-fire way to send me into the stratosphere, there are two things you can say: “Relax” or “I Need Space.”
I fucking hate SPACE.
I hate it.
It is the complete antithesis of how I navigate conflict. Being a writer, I like words. I like talking. I like speaking lots and lots and lots of words until the words run out of me and I am empty inside and clean and clear and I can take a big old breath and feel like something has been accomplished, figured out, resolved. I need to word vomit. I’ve got conflict bulimia. I binge on the emotions. I purge with words.
I just want it to feel DONE. Even if ‘done” isn’t a real solution. Even if complicated and uncomfortable is actually the whole point. I want the misery of the mess to be over.
Kez, on the other hand, was lounging in the muck like a pig in shit. “This is good for you. Good for both of you. Let it be.”
While in my head a mantra was looping, “I know my daughter better than you; I know my daughter better than you; I know my daughter better than you,” which came out of my mouth, tightly, as, “I said, go fix this.”
Kez paused for a moment, then acquiesced. Loping over to her door, I watched as he knuckle-tapped, stood for a moment mouthing words I could not hear then retreated back to the kitchen. “She ain’t having it.”
I sighed heavily. One of those sighs that sounds like the frantic last exhale of a wild but dying balloon. This was a disaster. Kez had been in Chiang Mai for less than two hours and already, Cecilia wasn’t speaking to him. Or to me. We had another seven weeks of traveling together in front of us not to mention I was supposed to be sleeping in Ceci’s bed that night.
Kez and I may have shared the oddball friendship of a Snoop & Martha and the emotional intimacy/physical affection of a Kurt & Goldie but we were as confusing to other people as Oprah & Stedman.
In other words, we would not share a bed.
I sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep on the rock hard kitchen floor, even with the support of a traditional three-fold tatami mat. The Thai beds were already hard enough as is. I gave it one more shot at Cecilia’s door and she let me in. The lights were already off, her AC blowing full blast and she said nothing as she crawled back under the comforter. I didn’t even press for her to brush her teeth, I just slid in beside her and began rubbing her back.
“If you wanna talk about it, I’m here.” I whispered.
She just shook her head and rather quickly, fell asleep.
I…did not sleep at all.
I gave up pretending to sleep and snuck back into the kitchen villa, journal and pen in hand. I needed to vent on the page, the kind of writing where your pen rips the paper and your words rip your heart.
I rehashed the events. Ceci was upset. I wanted to fix it. Kez said “stay out of it.” I got super pissed. Those were the “FACTS” - as Kez would announce when in agreement with anything - but I needed to dig diaper.
Why did I even allow it to happen? Why didn’t I stop it when I could see it coming? I knew it was going to end badly. I was the one who LET it end badly! It was horrible to see Ceci struggle, try, risk, and then lose. I was her protector. She’d been through so much. What had I done?
I mean, what even WAS this competitive aspect of my daughter? How could this man create a whole different energy just by showing up? I did not care for this. At all. The world around me was shifting yet again. I felt out of control, powerless.
These were old feelings. The same feelings I’d had at Clayton’s memorial when the ceremony closed with a film about his life - a beautiful remembrance of his short time on this planet - from his happy childhood to his final good days on the “Guidance” set. Cecilia had sat beside me, quietly, the whole memorial but when that movie ended, she screamed out in a pain no parent ever wants to hear.
I will never forget that scream.
I had no stomach for her pain then and I still had no stomach for her pain in Thailand. My stomach actually felt hot and empty and heavy. My body was tense and the tears started flowing. Tailspin. I was in a tailspin. Whirling down, down, down.
It sounded something like this:
“I do not want to bring another man into our lives. I like running things the way I run them. I’ve worked too hard to reach this place of smooth sailing to allow some dude to come in here and rock our damn boat. If a man can’t come in here and start rowing, I don’t need him. I appreciate my peace and quiet. I appreciate my solitude. I appreciate our freedom and my independence. Our serenity has been hard won. It’s not something I’m giving away easily. It’s just stupid to even think a man could join us and it would be okay. It will not be okay. We are fine the way we are and we don’t need anyone else. Ever. The end. Period. Good night.”
But is that really what I wanted? To be alone until Cecilia was in college? To possibly deprive her of an amazing father figure because I felt out of control, uncomfortable? To keep us sheltered from upheaval but also from love? To stay small just because it was easier than the risk of allowing someone else in our orbit?
I did miss being in partnership.
I do miss being in partnership
The problem is…to let people in, you have to actually let people in.
FACTS.
At just that moment, from thousands of miles across the globe, I got a text from My Ex. When I say “My Ex”, I only mean one man. I mean my high-school sweetheart, a blonde-headed, green-eyed bull of a man with a back made of marble and fists as big as my head.
For twenty-three years, since we were ninth-graders at competing junior highs, My Ex had been in and out of my life, acting as my quiz-bowl nemesis, my best friend and protector, my first real love and heartbreak, my summer vacation fling, my first betrayal and second heartbreak, and then finally, years later, the man who followed me to New York, who packed our U-Haul and drove me to Los Angeles, the man I lived “in sin” with for eight years, the man everyone assumed I would marry.
Obviously, we did not marry.
(This would be a very different memoir if we had.)
Instead, our “divorce” was abrupt. Well, sort of. It took two years of me sleeping on the couch, pretending things would improve before I dramatically burst into our bedroom, turned on all the lights, hands on my hips, not one tear in my eye to announce, “I can't live like this, it’s not fair and I don't want us to live together anymore.”
My Ex said nothing. He only stared at me, blinking against the glaring light, his broad, naked chest exposed to my venomous attack. I wasn't even sure he was awake. I went back to my sofa and somehow fell asleep.
He left for work the next morning, without waking me, and when he returned that night, he said only two things. “I’ll be out as soon as I can” and “Maybe someday, you'll call me and ask me to come back home.” Then he cried and I cried and we couldn't comfort each other because we were the cause of each other's pain. It flattened me, to see him in tears. It absolutely broke me in half.
He was not an emotional man. Deeply sensitive yes, but never demonstrative. Stoic and Southern Gothic in his principles of right and wrong, honor and dishonor, My Ex made Dirty Harry look charmingly chatty. Most of my friends were scared of him. We were complete opposites. A people-pleasing extrovert and a misanthropic introvert trying to convert one another into someone more compatible. We failed and in our failure, we hurt each other. We parted ways without processing.
A year after the fact, I wrote him a letter to apologize for the way I’d tried to change him into someone he wasn’t, for the ways I’d withheld my love because I was unhappy and wanted a different life, how I’d punished him for being himself.
He’d never acknowledged that letter.
Until…that night in Chiang Mai, fourteen years later, where I sat on a rock-hard couch, weeping and convincing myself I was better off alone, that I was not strong enough or brave enough or capable of starting over.
Ting.
Text from My Ex: “Doing ok, kid?”
I had to smile. It was like having my own personal Batman. I’d send out the psychic distress signal and My Ex would swoop in, with his omnipotent intellect, photographic memory and the burning rage he used to defend me against life's cruelties.
“Still tapped into the Susan freak outs huh?”
“I’m here, you know.”
“I’m in Thailand.”
“Do some food stuff. We miss Bourdain.”
To which I texted photos of food and elephants.
He texted back: “Did you ever know that you’re my hero?”
“I don’t feel like one today.”
His next text hit me like a ton of bricks: “Do you know the good work you did with me? Do you know where I’d be without you?”
I knew what he meant.
That loving me had forced him to change the entire trajectory of his life.
Our love had literally uprooted him.
“Yes. I’m sorry I couldn’t stay. I wanted a family.”
He replied: “I remember the moment I really understood how things had to proceed. For all the good and ill of it.”
The pain of all those years came rushing back as I typed: “No matter where we are in our lives, we are soulmates, just walking different paths.”
“I’ve never questioned it,” was his final text.
That painful night in Chiang Mai, the first man I ever loved, reached out and finally forgave me, released me from the guilt I’d carried for fifteen years, of choosing to leave him. Of choosing to pursue happiness. Of choosing to start over and build a life with someone new.
I knew it wasn’t a coincidence.
By morning, I’d calmed down…slightly. Enough that I could greet Kez in the kitchen without killing him. I scooped yogurt into a bowl as I heard him on the phone. The villa he rented was being cleaned. Mister A was scheduled to drive him over. It was a relief to know things were returning to my idea of normal. Maybe we even could make it through the morning without another stressful confrontation.
Or maybe not.
I saw Cecilia’s door open and my stomach immediately tightened. Kez sensed my discomfort and motioned for me to settle. “Let’s see what she does.” Kez went about his business, pecking at his phone but I positioned myself to watch through the kitchen windows.
Ceci caught sight of Kez at the kitchen table and it stopped her in her tracks. I watched as she paused, made the decision to come in and sit down at the table beside him. I kept my mouth shut, which took every ounce of willpower I’ve ever amassed in my entire life.
Kez never missed a beat. “We good?” He offered her his fist and Ceci looked at him, thoughtfully. She gave him a quick pound and instantly, they were buddies having breakfast. Cecilia even asked Kez if he was gonna stay for a swim.
I stood, silenced by amazement. That was it? It was done? All that weeping and gnashing of teeth I’d done all night, was for nothing? A fist bump and it was all good? Everything’s forgiven?
For them. That seemed to be the case.
As for me? I was still a mess.
I felt the looming presence of an unpredictable future. A future where Ceci wasn’t only MY child, where it wasn’t just the two of us anymore. A wave of grief swept through my heart. This special time together could end…would end. That was certain. No matter my resistance, change was already here. Cecilia was now a tween, not the kindergartner she’d been when her dad was dying. I had to see the capable, competitive daughter sitting in front of me now, not the grieving, wounded little girl that needed my hovering care. My vision of Ceci had to change. Kez’s dynamic with Cecilia was like taking an open-handed smack to the face. Wake Up! But I didn’t want to wake up.
I wanted to be really, really, really mad at Kez.
I wanted to sssssttttteeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
There’s that parable about the two monks. They’re traveling together when they come to a river crossing with a strong current. On the banks of the river, a beautiful, young woman is standing. She asks for their help but the monks have taken vows never to touch a woman.
Without a word, the older monk picks the woman up and carries her across the river, places her gently down. After she thanks him, they resume their journey in silence. A very loaded silence.
The younger monk is astounded. He can’t believe the older monk betrayed his vows. For over an hour, he’s speechless until he can stand it no more. He blurts out, “We are monks! How could you carry that woman on your shoulders?” The older monk looks at him and says, “Brother, I set her down an hour ago, why are you still carrying her?”
Kez came in and saw my daughter standing by the river, needing to navigate a strong current through which I could not take her. He picked her up on his back and carried her across, kicking and screaming and crying, but when he placed her down on the other side, she realized she was safe, everything was all good. She was standing on solid ground.
It was only me still wading in those swirling waters, by myself. Distraught that someday soon (or maybe it was already happening) Cecilia would need something from me I wouldn’t know how to give, that she’d become someone I wouldn’t understand.
Or worse, that she might love someone else more than me.
It was a cold and miserable current that had me in its grip, spinning me in circles, sucking for air. It was all I could do to keep my head up, not drown.
As for those two?
They were already headed to the pool.
Go To Chapter 6 Bonus Materials