May 25, 2024 • 41 mins
In this episode, the hosts dive into the concept of "kin keeping" as defined by a New York Times article. Kin keeping involves creating and carrying on family traditions, buying gifts, coordinating care, and performing emotional caregiving, tasks predominantly done by women. The discussion centers around the invisible labor that women contribute to maintaining family bonds and traditions, even post-divorce.
The hosts share personal stories about their weekends, including wedding planning, adopting a new dog, and navigating family responsibilities. They explore how kin keeping continues to play a role in their lives, even after significant changes like divorce, and the challenges of setting boundaries while maintaining family connections.
They also touch on the importance of wills and planning for the future to ensure their children are cared for, and the emotional labor involved in managing these responsibilities. The episode concludes with reflections on favorite family traditions and the importance of creating magical moments for their children.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.
(00:31):
We decided we'd pop on air. We haven't done that in a while. Yay.
Hello, ladies. Hello. How are you guys tonight? Wonderful. Actually,
it's been a really busy but good weekend.
Yes, because you've got wedding stuff going on. Yes, it has been full of my
oldest who's getting married events for him. And it's just been, it's been fun.
(00:53):
Well, Beth, how's your weekend been? It's been busy. Yeah.
I feel like I've had, I don't know, I had a procedure and got a new dog and
like the same, an unexpected dog.
The dog found us. A dog found you. A dog adopted y'all.
No, I went, I walked into the event and he was like, what do we have here?
And I was like, this dog found my boyfriend, but she's darling and we couldn't,
(01:15):
she's, I mean, she's great.
So anyway, it's just been, there's been a lot going on too.
All right. But today, so at some point in the busy last week,
I did see this New York Times article and I didn't have a chance to read it
because I don't have a, I just need to like go ahead and get a subscription because I do have it.
That was our week or whatever. But I saw like a, I saw a post about an article
(01:36):
that I need to read in the New York Times and it was about something called
kin keeping. And this is how they define it.
Kin keeping. Creating or carrying on family traditions, buying gifts for birthdays and holidays,
coordinating medical care, performing all sorts of emotional caregiving,
a form of invisible labor predominantly done by women, dedicated to family bonding and magic making.
(01:59):
And I thought, wow, that's just so true.
And that's such a very specific job title, you know? Yes.
That seems to, yes, be done by women, even post-divorce. Like the family matriarch.
And it's kind of interrupted.
And divorce. And it leaves a strange disconnect in some ways.
(02:25):
Because you have to, where do you set boundaries? How much do you continue to
keep up with? Because it feels like you're doing it for your ex.
But really, is it for your child? And all of that. So how do y'all do kin keeping?
Like, what would you consider that?
Well, I don't really have a relationship with my ex's family.
And there wasn't, we really weren't like, we live so far apart.
(02:49):
And like, there really wasn't that much of a, he wasn't also very close to, not super close to them.
So there wasn't a lot of that to figure out. But I will say in my divorce I've
still done the sort of scheduling things The doctor's appointments And the,
you know I mean, I text my ex all the time To make sure that,
that our child gets to rehearsal or that he's or does or doesn't.
(03:14):
Sorry, I had to laugh. I had to laugh. All right. We sit the right place.
Or that, you know, or that my ex remembers that he's got X, Y, Z.
And because I know him and I know he doesn't know those things, remember those things.
So that's. Or look those things up. It frustrates me because I know that if
(03:37):
I don't, He will forget it because he has.
Like it's already been proven that that's something. So that's what I find in
my life that I specifically do.
I would say the other thing about like magic, like all of that,
I do a lot of that with just my son.
But I also see my mom doing that a lot in her role with not just our family,
(04:01):
but like her husband is my stepfather.
And she's really become that for his family too. So she does a lot of that, I would say.
Yeah, my mom has always been good about that. She's made sure that,
so when my kids, my boys were little before I had my daughter, and I'd want to do stuff.
I was a stay-at-home mom, and my husband didn't ever want to go anywhere.
(04:24):
So she'd be like, well, we'll go.
And she took us to go see the elves in Chattanooga at the train station.
And she took us to go see, you know, Thomas the Tank Engine.
And she would go, let's just go and go to the zoo here. Most of the reason that
I'm a traveler is because my mom took us everywhere.
And she lived in the North when I was little. That sounds like she's a Viking
(04:47):
or something, but she lived in the...
And you weren't really little. You were high school, right? Well,
I was middle school. I was like 12, 13. And...
But she lived in Delaware and when we would go up for the summer,
we went to New York or we went to Philly and we'd go to like science centers
and to, you know, the theater.
Like we did all these fun things with her.
(05:09):
Like, so the magic making was, was hardcore.
Okay. And so as moms in that sort of hard, are you, I think we're all kind of
like, are you arrange your kid's birthday party?
Oh yeah. Does, does your, so.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And see, my mom did all that for us growing up.
And then, you know, she died when I was 20.
(05:31):
So I never had, by that time, my grandparents were older. I didn't have that
connection, woman connection.
My dad's wife has never done that role.
So it was always up to me. So I have tried to keep it up. That's probably why
I'm exhausted all the time.
I've tried to keep it up. I've tried to make birthdays special and go to do
(05:53):
things and be very active and there for my kids and try to make things special
for them. You know, carry on some family traditions.
Even though we did talk about that when you get divorced, some of your family
traditions, you kind of have to tweak a little. Yeah.
But I mean, you know, that kind of thing, it would be really easy.
I could see it would be really easy getting divorce, especially if you get kind
(06:18):
of bogged down in that divorce not to be,
The magical, magical making. Or to continue to do it all for the ex.
Yeah. So where does the line between kin keeping and needing to set boundaries lie?
Well, I think we had a good example with a person that you knew,
Bonnie, that was still going and spending the night at his ex's for Christmas Eve.
(06:43):
I thought that was the craziest thing I have ever heard.
You're divorced, but you still got to spend time in the family home.
Or not the family home her home you
know yeah every moment that i think i'm not going
to remind you know him this time
i'm not going to remind him of of the appointment or the
(07:03):
whatever i mean we write a never mind
i'm not going to say it straight out detail but it's the it's the not
knowing it's the it's the he wouldn't know otherwise you
know and every time i think okay i won't do it
then i'm like but that's the expense of my kid
well that's the thing do you want your kid don't miss out
no I mean that's a point I would not know that no
(07:24):
never no well that so the I
have only had one real experience where I
and I don't know if it was kin keeping or drawing a boundary so one Christmas
I planned everything with my family for my kids and I well my ex didn't plan
anything with the kids he was expecting me to plan the things with the kids
(07:46):
for him and say say, okay, here's your time.
And I didn't do that because I was drawing a boundary saying,
okay, there's no longer my responsibility to manage your relationship with your
children. Now, granted, our children were older.
They were high school and above at this point in time.
And I remember one of my kids got very upset with me because he's like,
dad says you're trying to keep us from him. And I'm like.
(08:09):
When did he ask you to do anything? Yeah. You know, and so at one time,
you know, for my kids and knowing my ex was an alcoholic, I don't know if that
was something I should have continued and been like,
okay, I'm going to make sure that your dad has an opportunity.
He knows that because he probably wasn't thinking all that straight.
Or if it truly was me setting a boundary.
(08:30):
Because that's kind of a real gray area.
I don't, I mean, I guess everybody's, everybody's situation looks different.
Yeah. And you had a very unique one in that there was an illness, essentially.
And I was at a point. At what point? Yeah. It can't become your job.
Well, that's my job. Sometimes I'm like, why is this my job still?
(08:53):
And caring for him and trying to manage his relationship with the kids and hiding
all of his ugliness from them had become such a job.
At that point in time, we're divorced. We're living in different houses.
And I was trying to find a way to release my responsibility for him and his
decisions and the way he managed his relationship with his kids,
(09:16):
release that back to him.
And that's so hard to do because it did affect my kids, possibly negatively, my doing that.
And being on this side with hindsight being 20-20, he's not here.
That's one more experience I might have robbed them of because he's passed away.
But at the same time, in that moment, I had to do what I needed to do to move forward for myself.
(09:41):
But, okay, my ex had some illness too.
But I also have to think he's a grown man. Yes.
He is very capable of making decisions. They might not be the decisions I would
make or that I think are good decisions.
But he is capable of making decisions.
He's capable of planning things for himself.
(10:01):
So why could not he plan something for my children?
That's true. You have to go back to that. He can get himself up. He gets himself to work.
He does all the things that are important to him. So why am I still feeling
like I have to be his secretary and keep a schedule for him?
And the other thing is, and I think that the definition that we read speaks
to this very specifically,
(10:22):
but have you ever in your whole life known a man who planned a family event
or a like a family gathering or a birthday party? Because I sure haven't ever.
I know a couple that would do it, but not consistently, but like for their lives.
Yeah. But here, but you said that would do it. Does that mean it was their idea
(10:44):
and they did it or they were told, please go do this?
No. My brother has done it before for his wife.
Okay. And done everything and come up with really good ideas. He's very creative.
I think they're. And I know that I have another friend, Rebecca,
who her husband does stuff like that all the time.
Lavish parties. Well, I have a friend whose husband is really good about planning
(11:05):
trips for them or doing like getaways. So I think for your significant other,
it's a little bit different than for the family.
Or for extended family, saying like, oh, I'm going to host Thanksgiving.
Why doesn't it do that? I think traditionally, well, especially in the South,
it's always been the matriarch of the family that does all that kind of stuff.
(11:30):
Like I remember going to my grandmother's for certain holidays and she did all
these things that we didn't necessarily do at home. And she had us.
At christmas de-strand all the tinsel to
one strand and put on her tree in a certain way and
now looking back it kept us busy and out of the way and
(11:52):
doing productive things in her house but it was a tradition that we did every
year finding the red bird on the tree the red bird ornament that of course nobody
wanted because it's flea-bitten and it's like from 1930s but it's on my tree
every year i mean just things like that but i think the mothers and the grandmothers
There's, I think, in the South.
(12:12):
Pass that down. Despite what you think about the good old boy system,
it is a matriarchal society down here.
The women keep the family recipes. The women cook the family recipes.
The women plan the parties and do all the get-togethers and get the perfect
shower gift and the perfect birthday gift.
Remember the birthday. Wake you up with a cake on your birthday and hang the
(12:36):
banner like I did for my children.
Hang the banner up. the special birthday banner when they went to bed the night
before i mean women do all that stuff all right so are y'all closer to your
mother's side of the family are you as close to your mother's side of the family
as you are your father's side.
Like everybody i'm i'm close to so basically both my parents only have their
(12:59):
siblings left there's no is that what you mean well i got growing up like i even knew my mother's,
extended family and cousins down in south alabama where
my grandmother was from and all that i never even traveled to
where my dad's family was from now we're still close to
his brothers and their families like we still get together with
them and we get together my mother but growing up
(13:22):
my from my mother my grandmother knowing their extended family was very important
to them yeah i know we did that every year i know both sides but you know both
sides but i'm like the historian and of the family too and so my mother was
very good at you know she's from milwaukee wisconsin,
every year a couple times a year we'd go up and see in the summer times we spent
(13:44):
months until we started sounding like a yankee and then we had to come home
my daddy would call us like sure we
didn't turn into yankees anyway we'd come home but also we i grew up going to
tuscaloosa all the time to my dad's sister.
And my dad on that side was in charge of the Halliburts family,
which was my great-grandfather's wife's family.
(14:08):
I mean, it was like, you know, I mean, we had family...
That's what we did back then. We went from family gathering to family gathering.
We didn't do a... They were in a supper club, but...
Did family stuff all the time. I was always with cousins, and I'm very close
to both sets of my cousins.
I didn't know a whole lot of extended family, except my grandmother and my grandfather
(14:31):
on my father's side always had family reunions.
And I knew one of my grandfather's brothers really, really well.
We went to his house a lot because they were pretty close.
My mom's side, there was a rift, a big rift. And so I don't know any of them.
I just know my cousins, really. so but we never see our extended family well
i look at it this way i never had sisters.
(14:53):
I have one brother and i have
cousins and that's who i'm you know i can call my cousins and say what do you
think about this and so i it was a big gift to me that we had that and that
my mother continued that both of my grandmothers were big into it it was good
for me because now i'm sitting
(15:13):
here kind of by myself so it's
nice to have that it's also nice to have those family traditions
well recipes there's also i
mean you can you can have as many friends as
you want and like you can have friends that feel like family i have lots of
friends that feel like family but nobody specifically knows your family lunch
and your specific brand of weird you know what i mean like and everybody is
(15:39):
weird everybody has their specific well it has their strange Yeah,
we have the red bird.
We have a green-haired angel from, I don't know, 30s, 40s. I mean,
it's old, and it's like her hair has turned green.
I have a weird angel that's from the 40s or 50s from my grandmother's tree that
(16:00):
has no arms. She's like a little ball.
She's like the Venus de Milo. Not the Venus de Milo, Winged Victory.
And then she just has these wonky little wings that are made out of wire.
It's so and i stick her right on
the edge of the elementary every year and i have
tried to keep alive some of the traditions that my
(16:21):
ex-husband had for our kids just because they were important to him they were
what he had and i want them to remember him you know because there were things
that when we were a young family before alcoholism took you know his hold that
made things fine that he participated in. That's really good.
(16:41):
But it's strange this kin keeping.
And setting boundaries at the same time. Yeah. Because, you know,
it's, you don't, especially as the kids get older,
if your ex can find the schedule online for the school, if your kid is in a
sport, they publish those.
(17:02):
You don't have to share it. That's what makes me do it.
You can share a schedule and say, how could you not know?
You have the calendar just like I have the calendar.
Why am I responsible for this? And Lauren, you're in that place where your kids
can't travel. I'm just going to share this recent story just because it reminded me.
So my son recently had a very important appointment that was for a diagnosis.
(17:25):
Nothing bad. It was just like an important diagnosis that I needed to hear.
Well, I made the appointment. I had been to that doctor already with him.
Like I was the one in charge of it.
But it fell on a day that my ex had custody.
So he said, I'll take it to the appointment. And I was like,
well, I'm going to the appointment also because I want to hear what this doctor says.
(17:45):
So we get there. We're in the waiting room. And I'm like, this is the strangest feeling.
Like, at one point, we might have
been doing this together. And then I was like, what am I talking about?
No, we didn't. We never did that. I was with him in the waiting room.
Yeah, he never went to. Right, yeah. And then.
That was your happy family syndrome. Yeah, I had this little moment that I was. It doesn't actually.
(18:07):
This is the strangest feeling. And I was like, oh, no, it wasn't. I'm mad at him again.
So then then we got back there and like, I'm asking all the questions.
I'm getting all the you know what I mean? Right. And then after it, because he had it.
My son had another appointment that day for his ophthalmology appointment.
And my ex wanted to take him to that as well.
(18:27):
So we're leaving. And my ex said, I said, don't forget the ophthalmologist appointment.
And he said, what's what's the ophthalmologist name? Right.
And I said, I'll text it to you.
I'll text it to you. But, like, he's seen this person since he was, since he wore glasses.
I mean, it's four years at least. So, it's just. He's just never.
(18:48):
I was like, okay, well, all of, all of what I already knew, you know.
I have to say, when you get divorced, I have, well, I don't know if everybody does.
What's hilarious is. But I had. My ex has spinal say over medical.
And he doesn't bring you the medical stuff. It's cracked me up, yes.
So funny. What was hard for me was, if y'all are like me, and I don't know if
(19:09):
the listeners are too, when you're the mother and the wife,
you tend to make all the appointments and the school things and you know the
school calendar and you know the after school activities because you're the
ones driving them and arranging the rides and arranging everything.
The weirdest thing for me was to just stop thinking that we were a family unit doing this.
(19:33):
Because when you're doing that and you're married, you think everybody.
I kept a calendar that was color coded so everybody could see it was a huge
craft calendar. Took up half my wall.
I do that. I still do that. At the same time, when we got separated and we were divorced.
Okay. Granted, he never made the calendar, but we discussed it.
(19:54):
It was there. It was visible.
Our life worked like clockwork. It was nothing ever, you know, it wasn't anything.
And then the hardest thing for me was thinking that we were separate and he
didn't know about it, or maybe he didn't look at it,
or maybe he didn't look up the school calendar, or
(20:14):
maybe he didn't know when one of my children was at dance
or when my child was supposed to go know softball practice then
the other thing was trying not to be
ugly about sharing it and then
also giving up that control over it
because it had just been such a part of me doing all
(20:34):
that and i was in control of that and i was the one
juggling all the balls but to be willing
to let a ball fall because he
didn't do the pull-through was really hard for
me not to snatch him sometimes and this is
going to sound a little bit but sometimes when
like he'll message me and he'll say you know
(20:58):
don't text me i'm busy and i want to say okay you have one job you have one
job that you drive to every day and you come home i am trying to do this stuff
like keep up with everything that he has to do make sure that everybody knows
what he has to do while i do my full-time job my part-time job and my other
part-time job that i just,
(21:18):
So it just, it goes all over me. But yours is. And try to be a happy person.
Defiantly non-communicative. Yeah. Like he is not willing to actually communicate
about your child in a productive manner.
Right. No matter what. But Lauren, he did text you that, you know,
mine would just say, I have reached my quota of texts for today.
(21:41):
Always so helpful. So such a team player. familiar.
All right. So, you know, you were talking about, so my experience is a little
bit different in that I got to the point, I guess my boys were, they were little.
I was out of town and I realized that my husband was drinking and had the boys
and he was only two blocks away from home, but I knew he was drinking and he
(22:05):
had the kids and he was going to have to drive home.
And I was so paranoid that from that moment on for the rest of our marriage, I arranged it.
So So he never drove the children at night.
He never drove them. I made sure he never had to take them to a dance,
had to take them to a practice, had to take them to anything that I was available
or I had somebody else picking them up or taking them there.
(22:27):
And that absolutely excluded him from so much of participating in their life.
But it was because at that point in time, I didn't recognize it as alcoholism.
I I ran my part of our relationship at my marriage in the he's a grown-ass man.
And he's making this decision to drink and he's doing it on purpose and he should
(22:50):
know the consequences And if he's going to make these decisions i'm going to
do what I need to do to parent our kids Instead of calling him on it and saying what are you doing?
I can't even trust you to drive our kids home Do you understand I think if I
had and probably nothing would have changed But I did not recognize it as alcoholism early on.
And instead, I enabled him further by making sure he had no more responsibility in our family.
(23:13):
But hindsight is 20-20. I had no idea that's what I was dealing with. I was so ignorant.
Of that. I just knew they weren't safe and my job was to keep them safe. Yeah.
So that was even harder. So. Even if that control was, you know,
be willing not to have all the balls in the air.
(23:34):
Well, I think at this moment, I have ultimately decided that I don't want my son to suffer.
Like to, to, for anything negative to happen because I was being prideful.
You know what I mean? or like, you know, so that, I mean, ultimately I'm like,
okay, he's probably gonna get mad at me if I text him about this right now, but I don't care.
(23:56):
I'm making sure that I'm covered with him.
All right. So let's take this a step further. How many of you have done a will?
No. Because having just had to go through with the ex-husband who did not have
a will when he passed means the state is then in control. We had to hire a lawyer.
The lawyer had to, Then we had to hire or get an advocate for my daughter,
(24:20):
even though she has me as a mother, to make sure she's represented with anything
that he might have had for her.
I mean, we had to spend so much money just to have things settled because he didn't have a will.
And I'm looking at, you know, I am now the only parent, so I've made sure that
I have that because I was then terrified.
I don't want my kids to have to go through all of that. I have one, but it's much older.
(24:43):
So I do need to revise and update.
But I think it's something that's very important because as especially as responsible parents,
it just having to watch my kids have to go to all of these meetings because
they we were divorced, even though I feel like I became the wife again and divorced in so many ways.
When he passed, I took care of all of the little bitty things.
(25:06):
And luckily my father stepped in and, and helped me take care of a lot of the
things, but really they were the ones.
And so they were the ones that had to make these decisions about things.
I don't want him to have to do that. I don't want him to have to do that.
No. No, I definitely have to get one. I don't have one.
Are there any other things like that that y'all have found that crop up that
(25:29):
you feel like you need to address?
Well, I struggle with this all the time. Because, well, Bonnie,
you have family that steps in all the time and you have a sister.
Lauren, you have sisters. Your mother lives next door. Yeah,
I have a... I don't really have... I have help when I need it.
That kind of thing. I'm just stubborn about it. Yeah. So, always worry.
That he you know i well we need
(25:52):
to do a whole special on bonnie's death box and my because
i like my death box hers is
humongous mine is a folder like a briefcase size bonnie's takes up her downward
turn but it does have it's like a file box like the big the big file anyway
i do have that because i struggle with like if something happened to me.
(26:17):
My kids would have to know passwords they'd have to know where all
the papers are they'd have to so what accounts do you have
what accounts do you know what what do you owe who do you owe so the keys to
this the keys to that everything is out and it's actually in my office if y'all
need it i'm just gonna tell you mine's right there but there's it hasn't made
it into the folder yet because i'm sorting to make sure it's all updated which oh my gosh it is like
(26:42):
overwhelming and my one thing is
if i'm overwhelmed putting it together how overwhelming
would that be if it's not put together my kids have to
like search yes would they even know where to search for it well that's i have
a friend whose father passed away ages ago and she just found out he had another
account she didn't know about you know it's not that there was anything hardly
(27:04):
anything in it but still she didn't know it was out there yeah so yeah these are crazy things Well,
and it's tough to have to think about, but I've kind of reached a,
like I said at the beginning of the episode, I had a procedure this week,
and it's something that I'm going to have to have done every year.
Like, it's just going to be a thing.
But afterward, I started thinking about the fact that I probably need to just
(27:26):
have some of that together.
I mean, I'm young, relatively young, but it's about time to just start making
sure that that stuff is in place just in case.
Well, for your son. You just don't know. I mean, yeah, yeah.
Well, and I'm paranoid now because I'm the only parent.
Yeah. You know, like I'm, I'm my kid's only parent. So anything happens.
(27:46):
I mean, this is it. I just feel like the only parent. Well, you are.
But he's still, he's still here. Yeah. Is he?
All right. So what is your favorite? Let's talk about, just really quick,
bring it back to the actual kin keeping. What is your favorite magic-making thing you do for,
(28:08):
For any season, for anything, or just one memory where you were like,
okay, that I love that we did that or do that or that's a tradition.
My son and I, we love Disney.
And I have been fortunate to get to go to Disney several times since he's in
his life because I teach and we take groups a lot.
And that's, I hadn't even really been to Disney. But the first time we traveled,
(28:31):
I was like, wait, this is really fun.
So I've only, I've only taken him, just me and him a couple of times.
But that was one of the big things I did like that first year after after the
divorce was was we had like a mommy mommy son trip to Disney.
That was great. So I want to try to do that every once in a while.
And then, you know, just like I can't think of like on the daily specific things.
(28:53):
But, you know, we we movie a lot together.
We love to go to the movies and like and basically just if he suggests a fun
thing, we're generally going to do it.
You know, the flow or if you get a movie today.
That way yeah yeah he we came over church he said of course
his little brain was like mommy this movie came out on may the
17th i'd like to go see it today and i said finish that book we'll go at 250
(29:16):
and that's what we did so but it you know we just kind of roll like that like
if he's like oh i want to build something we do that you know well that's you
know and you have to think when our kids look back at their childhood what are
they going to remember i don't want my kids to
remember necessarily the alcoholic part of their dad i
want to remember that he coached their baseball team
(29:38):
or he did other things but i want them to remember me that we
went and did stuff we try we try to have a lot of whimsy yeah
i want i don't want i want it to be fun things yeah
and like i always have like he he
and i we have like the advent calendar and instead of
at christmas which is my favorite holiday i
love christmas but during advent instead of
(30:00):
like stuff in there i'll put little things we're going to do oh
that's why so that's he's always so excited to work so they have a calendar
and then you know just i mean we have like christmas eve tradition and i mean
i have very specific holiday things that we do yeah but and then we make like
a summer to-do list of fun we've already started talking about because this
is the last week of school.
(30:22):
Wait what so we always have like a summer fun list that we make and we try to
check that you know, box off.
And so anyway, but, and like my, the nature of my life is to be in rehearsal.
I'm in rehearsal for something.
Five days out of the week, almost all the time, almost all the time,
if you include music rehearsals and theater rehearsals and whatever.
(30:44):
And he generally gets to go to those with me. So he has that sort of like imaginative
experience of being in a theater setting, which I think is really, I grew up like that too.
I grew up on gigs with my dad and in rehearsal with my mom.
So those are my childhood memories. That's what we did.
So anyway. Well, little things are like I hang a birthday banner on their birthday,
(31:10):
even if they're not at my house. I do that.
And we have special treats. And we do things at the holidays that are special.
But the latest thing, because I had my first child for almost nine years by
himself, and we'd have our own things that we did.
And then I have this child, the second child.
She gets the last nine years by herself.
(31:35):
So we do theater stuff all the time. We go and travel and do wherever,
whatever play is playing.
That's what we will go do. And it has been very good for us. And we enjoy that.
So I hope that's one thing. The funny thing is when you were saying my child,
I hope my children have memories.
The divorce was traumatic for them. The situation was traumatic for them.
(32:00):
You hope that it's not as traumatic as you think. But like when I'll ask my
older child, what do you remember about your child? He's blocked out a lot.
He doesn't remember Disney trips.
He doesn't remember beach trips. He doesn't remember half of his travel soccer.
Then I asked my daughter, and the early things that you would think that she
(32:26):
remembered, Disney, she don't remember any of that.
She has none. So it's really weird for me because I gave it 110% to make sure
my children had a really fun childhood despite what we were doing because that's
what my mother did for us. But they still felt all of that anxiety.
And they still have no memory of it.
I have one of my children is the same, doesn't remember a lot of the childhood
(32:52):
because it was walking on eggshells. And I thought I was protecting everybody,
thought I was hiding it all.
But no, I absolutely wasn't. They were absolutely in the thick of it.
And I think what I hate is looking back going, I could have saved them.
If I had known that they were feeling it all like that, then things might have
(33:12):
been different. Right. But I thought I was protecting them and doing what was best for them.
And instead, it was a little traumatic, I think. But so with my kids,
I have I've tried to do like I still
do, you know, adults do the Christmas things, the stockings and that.
And I've tried to make sure I've traveled with each one of my kids and make
(33:33):
their birthday special and all of that. But I just I don't know.
I don't know if I necessarily. I can't wait till my son's old enough to really be my travel buddy.
Yeah you know like really it does where we're gonna go yeah yeah yeah it is it is it is fun.
But yeah i would say and
i know we talked about this a few episodes ago
(33:55):
about positive consequences i think it
was yes the positive consequences but i really do feel like he gets the best
of me now and that my family they get the best of me now i mean i i really do
well you know it's it's just It's such a different environment to not be walking on eggshells,
(34:17):
to not have that anxiety of the friction between you and that person who's supposed to love you.
When you hit that point where all of a sudden you realize you're not a team
and you're pitted against each other with no fault of your own,
and even if that pits you, they feel that.
And you feel that. and being in my house and it's my space and y'all,
(34:38):
my house is a disaster. There's a kayak in my front hall.
My dining room is completely unput together with crap everywhere getting ready
for wedding stuff and all of that. But it's living life.
Like, look at all the, look at all the living that's happening.
But it's also not creating the.
We all just walked through it. Like all three of my kids were here this weekend.
We all just walked through it. Like, I mean, they all know mom is messy anyway,
(35:01):
but they're just whatever.
And, you know, live with it and go roll with it. But there wasn't tension like
that. No, there was no tension.
That has been, I think, the biggest gift after divorce is just that.
Yeah. And I wish I could come up with a whole lot more things that I do for my kids.
I think I did a lot of different things with my daughter than
I did with my boys because I had
(35:24):
more time with her on her up because those last year's middle
school forward it was just me and her really one of her her brothers was here
but it just you know trying to make sure that I that I feel confident that she
can be an independent person and we did home maintenance together and we painted
this the walls together and we will go you know all of these little side missions and do
(35:47):
whatever and that's but it's different and it's not necessarily it wasn't necessarily fun,
but it was it was it spun memories for me i felt like that i i lived with my mom.
She lived in delaware for a while when i was in middle school and high school
but then she moved back down my senior year in high school and my freshman year
in college and i lived with her and we kind of had that like yeah just like
(36:11):
full-time like okay it was just the two of us Yeah,
I've told you all about COVID. Just like surviving.
You know what I mean? Just figuring it out.
We just became, we were a great little symbiotic unit that worked and did whatever.
But then I know that when COVID happened and both of the boys moved into this
house, and this was all of a sudden. You guys were like, boys, ew.
(36:35):
My daughter was like, hey, mom, you remember that time when it was just you
and me? Don't you miss that?
I really missed that time when it was just we're having good we're having a
good time we have our own little routine we do our own little dance you know and it's,
(36:58):
And I hope that she will have that as her move forward with her daughter and her children.
So, yeah, hopefully so.
I know I've had a weekend full of, I just try and be available for my kids.
I don't know if that'll end up being a fabulous kin keeping tradition or whatever.
(37:19):
But if one of them says, hey, will you be my designated driver tonight?
I'm like, yes, I will stay up till three o'clock in the morning to come get
you. You just let me know.
Like, I will always volunteer. Can I just say sometimes when it comes to family,
too, just like talking about family, that it's really important to know when
you've reached a limit, like when you need to say no to something,
even if it's a family thing.
(37:40):
Like, my mother, we had done a lot.
We had been, she was home. They're not always home, but they were home for a
stay, and they had hosted a lot. and it was coming up on Mother's Day and I
looked at her and I said, do you want to do something for Mother's Day?
She said, no, not really.
(38:02):
I just, we've just done so much lately. I said, okay.
Well, then my sister texts me. We need to do something for Mother's Day.
I said, I really don't think that she wants to.
And my sister's like, yes, she does. I said, no, I'm telling you.
She told me to my face that she doesn't really want to. But I found myself like
really trying to fight for my mother's solace. Like my mother's trying to like
(38:25):
have that space for herself too.
Because when you are that role, and she's definitely that role in our family.
Yeah. You have to have, you have to have that a long time, like that downtime,
or you can't do it all, you know? So anyway.
My mother was out of the country for Mother's Day. So I guess she had the great time.
(38:46):
So. All right. All right. Well, what are y'all doing this week to live the life you love?
It's my boyfriend's birthday. Nice. And so we're celebrating his birthday this week. Yeah.
We're we're dressing up as different versions of him for his birthday party.
Well my daughter is home i just had
(39:08):
both of the kids home this past weekend it's the last week of school
so i do for the for graduation
for the for the high school i used to teach at
i go and put all of the diploma covers on the table that
is my job and i kept it even after i left the
school so i'll go do that so that's kind of neat
to see i think it'll be the last group where i actually know
(39:29):
kids until your daughter graduates so that'll be
that'll be interesting so well we are running into summer because it's my daughter's
last week of school and i've already put the foot down saying we're not laying
around here better go get back on the schedule at work and so we'll We'll see how that goes.
(39:50):
And summer is short, though, and I still want, we have two trips.
It's just right at two months.
Yeah, but we have two trips. We have a trip each month.
Yeah. And so then I feel like, I mean, we're already planning the class of 2025.
It's already planning stuff for next year. All the moms are already texting
me. To go to Senior Supper Pub and do it. Oh, yeah.
(40:11):
So, I mean, it's already, like, it's already started.
Like, I don't even get the two months to take it off. And then for my daughter,
she was home early May. So she'll be on May and June, and then she'll be gone
to Spain for July before she goes out of school.
And so I've told her she doesn't have to work because she worked at school during
her internship all that last semester, which was so over. I mean, that was a lot.
Wait, she's in Spain for July? Okay.
(40:34):
So it's after the wedding, the Thursday after the wedding, she leaves.
Oh, girls. All right. Well, y'all have the best week.
Cheers. And y'all, good luck with all the kin keeping this week.
Oh, yes. The kin keeping.
Thank y'all for joining us for champagne sunday see you next week.
(40:59):
Music.
Music.
(00:31):
We decided we'd pop on air. We haven't done that in a while. Yay.
Hello, ladies. Hello. How are you guys tonight? Wonderful. Actually,
it's been a really busy but good weekend.
Yes, because you've got wedding stuff going on. Yes, it has been full of my
oldest who's getting married events for him. And it's just been, it's been fun.
(00:53):
Well, Beth, how's your weekend been? It's been busy. Yeah.
I feel like I've had, I don't know, I had a procedure and got a new dog and
like the same, an unexpected dog.
The dog found us. A dog found you. A dog adopted y'all.
No, I went, I walked into the event and he was like, what do we have here?
And I was like, this dog found my boyfriend, but she's darling and we couldn't,
(01:15):
she's, I mean, she's great.
So anyway, it's just been, there's been a lot going on too.
All right. But today, so at some point in the busy last week,
I did see this New York Times article and I didn't have a chance to read it
because I don't have a, I just need to like go ahead and get a subscription because I do have it.
That was our week or whatever. But I saw like a, I saw a post about an article
(01:36):
that I need to read in the New York Times and it was about something called
kin keeping. And this is how they define it.
Kin keeping. Creating or carrying on family traditions, buying gifts for birthdays and holidays,
coordinating medical care, performing all sorts of emotional caregiving,
a form of invisible labor predominantly done by women, dedicated to family bonding and magic making.
(01:59):
And I thought, wow, that's just so true.
And that's such a very specific job title, you know? Yes.
That seems to, yes, be done by women, even post-divorce. Like the family matriarch.
And it's kind of interrupted.
And divorce. And it leaves a strange disconnect in some ways.
(02:25):
Because you have to, where do you set boundaries? How much do you continue to
keep up with? Because it feels like you're doing it for your ex.
But really, is it for your child? And all of that. So how do y'all do kin keeping?
Like, what would you consider that?
Well, I don't really have a relationship with my ex's family.
And there wasn't, we really weren't like, we live so far apart.
(02:49):
And like, there really wasn't that much of a, he wasn't also very close to, not super close to them.
So there wasn't a lot of that to figure out. But I will say in my divorce I've
still done the sort of scheduling things The doctor's appointments And the,
you know I mean, I text my ex all the time To make sure that,
that our child gets to rehearsal or that he's or does or doesn't.
(03:14):
Sorry, I had to laugh. I had to laugh. All right. We sit the right place.
Or that, you know, or that my ex remembers that he's got X, Y, Z.
And because I know him and I know he doesn't know those things, remember those things.
So that's. Or look those things up. It frustrates me because I know that if
(03:37):
I don't, He will forget it because he has.
Like it's already been proven that that's something. So that's what I find in
my life that I specifically do.
I would say the other thing about like magic, like all of that,
I do a lot of that with just my son.
But I also see my mom doing that a lot in her role with not just our family,
(04:01):
but like her husband is my stepfather.
And she's really become that for his family too. So she does a lot of that, I would say.
Yeah, my mom has always been good about that. She's made sure that,
so when my kids, my boys were little before I had my daughter, and I'd want to do stuff.
I was a stay-at-home mom, and my husband didn't ever want to go anywhere.
(04:24):
So she'd be like, well, we'll go.
And she took us to go see the elves in Chattanooga at the train station.
And she took us to go see, you know, Thomas the Tank Engine.
And she would go, let's just go and go to the zoo here. Most of the reason that
I'm a traveler is because my mom took us everywhere.
And she lived in the North when I was little. That sounds like she's a Viking
(04:47):
or something, but she lived in the...
And you weren't really little. You were high school, right? Well,
I was middle school. I was like 12, 13. And...
But she lived in Delaware and when we would go up for the summer,
we went to New York or we went to Philly and we'd go to like science centers
and to, you know, the theater.
Like we did all these fun things with her.
(05:09):
Like, so the magic making was, was hardcore.
Okay. And so as moms in that sort of hard, are you, I think we're all kind of
like, are you arrange your kid's birthday party?
Oh yeah. Does, does your, so.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And see, my mom did all that for us growing up.
And then, you know, she died when I was 20.
(05:31):
So I never had, by that time, my grandparents were older. I didn't have that
connection, woman connection.
My dad's wife has never done that role.
So it was always up to me. So I have tried to keep it up. That's probably why
I'm exhausted all the time.
I've tried to keep it up. I've tried to make birthdays special and go to do
(05:53):
things and be very active and there for my kids and try to make things special
for them. You know, carry on some family traditions.
Even though we did talk about that when you get divorced, some of your family
traditions, you kind of have to tweak a little. Yeah.
But I mean, you know, that kind of thing, it would be really easy.
I could see it would be really easy getting divorce, especially if you get kind
(06:18):
of bogged down in that divorce not to be,
The magical, magical making. Or to continue to do it all for the ex.
Yeah. So where does the line between kin keeping and needing to set boundaries lie?
Well, I think we had a good example with a person that you knew,
Bonnie, that was still going and spending the night at his ex's for Christmas Eve.
(06:43):
I thought that was the craziest thing I have ever heard.
You're divorced, but you still got to spend time in the family home.
Or not the family home her home you
know yeah every moment that i think i'm not going
to remind you know him this time
i'm not going to remind him of of the appointment or the
(07:03):
whatever i mean we write a never mind
i'm not going to say it straight out detail but it's the it's the not
knowing it's the it's the he wouldn't know otherwise you
know and every time i think okay i won't do it
then i'm like but that's the expense of my kid
well that's the thing do you want your kid don't miss out
no I mean that's a point I would not know that no
(07:24):
never no well that so the I
have only had one real experience where I
and I don't know if it was kin keeping or drawing a boundary so one Christmas
I planned everything with my family for my kids and I well my ex didn't plan
anything with the kids he was expecting me to plan the things with the kids
(07:46):
for him and say say, okay, here's your time.
And I didn't do that because I was drawing a boundary saying,
okay, there's no longer my responsibility to manage your relationship with your
children. Now, granted, our children were older.
They were high school and above at this point in time.
And I remember one of my kids got very upset with me because he's like,
dad says you're trying to keep us from him. And I'm like.
(08:09):
When did he ask you to do anything? Yeah. You know, and so at one time,
you know, for my kids and knowing my ex was an alcoholic, I don't know if that
was something I should have continued and been like,
okay, I'm going to make sure that your dad has an opportunity.
He knows that because he probably wasn't thinking all that straight.
Or if it truly was me setting a boundary.
(08:30):
Because that's kind of a real gray area.
I don't, I mean, I guess everybody's, everybody's situation looks different.
Yeah. And you had a very unique one in that there was an illness, essentially.
And I was at a point. At what point? Yeah. It can't become your job.
Well, that's my job. Sometimes I'm like, why is this my job still?
(08:53):
And caring for him and trying to manage his relationship with the kids and hiding
all of his ugliness from them had become such a job.
At that point in time, we're divorced. We're living in different houses.
And I was trying to find a way to release my responsibility for him and his
decisions and the way he managed his relationship with his kids,
(09:16):
release that back to him.
And that's so hard to do because it did affect my kids, possibly negatively, my doing that.
And being on this side with hindsight being 20-20, he's not here.
That's one more experience I might have robbed them of because he's passed away.
But at the same time, in that moment, I had to do what I needed to do to move forward for myself.
(09:41):
But, okay, my ex had some illness too.
But I also have to think he's a grown man. Yes.
He is very capable of making decisions. They might not be the decisions I would
make or that I think are good decisions.
But he is capable of making decisions.
He's capable of planning things for himself.
(10:01):
So why could not he plan something for my children?
That's true. You have to go back to that. He can get himself up. He gets himself to work.
He does all the things that are important to him. So why am I still feeling
like I have to be his secretary and keep a schedule for him?
And the other thing is, and I think that the definition that we read speaks
to this very specifically,
(10:22):
but have you ever in your whole life known a man who planned a family event
or a like a family gathering or a birthday party? Because I sure haven't ever.
I know a couple that would do it, but not consistently, but like for their lives.
Yeah. But here, but you said that would do it. Does that mean it was their idea
(10:44):
and they did it or they were told, please go do this?
No. My brother has done it before for his wife.
Okay. And done everything and come up with really good ideas. He's very creative.
I think they're. And I know that I have another friend, Rebecca,
who her husband does stuff like that all the time.
Lavish parties. Well, I have a friend whose husband is really good about planning
(11:05):
trips for them or doing like getaways. So I think for your significant other,
it's a little bit different than for the family.
Or for extended family, saying like, oh, I'm going to host Thanksgiving.
Why doesn't it do that? I think traditionally, well, especially in the South,
it's always been the matriarch of the family that does all that kind of stuff.
(11:30):
Like I remember going to my grandmother's for certain holidays and she did all
these things that we didn't necessarily do at home. And she had us.
At christmas de-strand all the tinsel to
one strand and put on her tree in a certain way and
now looking back it kept us busy and out of the way and
(11:52):
doing productive things in her house but it was a tradition that we did every
year finding the red bird on the tree the red bird ornament that of course nobody
wanted because it's flea-bitten and it's like from 1930s but it's on my tree
every year i mean just things like that but i think the mothers and the grandmothers
There's, I think, in the South.
(12:12):
Pass that down. Despite what you think about the good old boy system,
it is a matriarchal society down here.
The women keep the family recipes. The women cook the family recipes.
The women plan the parties and do all the get-togethers and get the perfect
shower gift and the perfect birthday gift.
Remember the birthday. Wake you up with a cake on your birthday and hang the
(12:36):
banner like I did for my children.
Hang the banner up. the special birthday banner when they went to bed the night
before i mean women do all that stuff all right so are y'all closer to your
mother's side of the family are you as close to your mother's side of the family
as you are your father's side.
Like everybody i'm i'm close to so basically both my parents only have their
(12:59):
siblings left there's no is that what you mean well i got growing up like i even knew my mother's,
extended family and cousins down in south alabama where
my grandmother was from and all that i never even traveled to
where my dad's family was from now we're still close to
his brothers and their families like we still get together with
them and we get together my mother but growing up
(13:22):
my from my mother my grandmother knowing their extended family was very important
to them yeah i know we did that every year i know both sides but you know both
sides but i'm like the historian and of the family too and so my mother was
very good at you know she's from milwaukee wisconsin,
every year a couple times a year we'd go up and see in the summer times we spent
(13:44):
months until we started sounding like a yankee and then we had to come home
my daddy would call us like sure we
didn't turn into yankees anyway we'd come home but also we i grew up going to
tuscaloosa all the time to my dad's sister.
And my dad on that side was in charge of the Halliburts family,
which was my great-grandfather's wife's family.
(14:08):
I mean, it was like, you know, I mean, we had family...
That's what we did back then. We went from family gathering to family gathering.
We didn't do a... They were in a supper club, but...
Did family stuff all the time. I was always with cousins, and I'm very close
to both sets of my cousins.
I didn't know a whole lot of extended family, except my grandmother and my grandfather
(14:31):
on my father's side always had family reunions.
And I knew one of my grandfather's brothers really, really well.
We went to his house a lot because they were pretty close.
My mom's side, there was a rift, a big rift. And so I don't know any of them.
I just know my cousins, really. so but we never see our extended family well
i look at it this way i never had sisters.
(14:53):
I have one brother and i have
cousins and that's who i'm you know i can call my cousins and say what do you
think about this and so i it was a big gift to me that we had that and that
my mother continued that both of my grandmothers were big into it it was good
for me because now i'm sitting
(15:13):
here kind of by myself so it's
nice to have that it's also nice to have those family traditions
well recipes there's also i
mean you can you can have as many friends as
you want and like you can have friends that feel like family i have lots of
friends that feel like family but nobody specifically knows your family lunch
and your specific brand of weird you know what i mean like and everybody is
(15:39):
weird everybody has their specific well it has their strange Yeah,
we have the red bird.
We have a green-haired angel from, I don't know, 30s, 40s. I mean,
it's old, and it's like her hair has turned green.
I have a weird angel that's from the 40s or 50s from my grandmother's tree that
(16:00):
has no arms. She's like a little ball.
She's like the Venus de Milo. Not the Venus de Milo, Winged Victory.
And then she just has these wonky little wings that are made out of wire.
It's so and i stick her right on
the edge of the elementary every year and i have
tried to keep alive some of the traditions that my
(16:21):
ex-husband had for our kids just because they were important to him they were
what he had and i want them to remember him you know because there were things
that when we were a young family before alcoholism took you know his hold that
made things fine that he participated in. That's really good.
(16:41):
But it's strange this kin keeping.
And setting boundaries at the same time. Yeah. Because, you know,
it's, you don't, especially as the kids get older,
if your ex can find the schedule online for the school, if your kid is in a
sport, they publish those.
(17:02):
You don't have to share it. That's what makes me do it.
You can share a schedule and say, how could you not know?
You have the calendar just like I have the calendar.
Why am I responsible for this? And Lauren, you're in that place where your kids
can't travel. I'm just going to share this recent story just because it reminded me.
So my son recently had a very important appointment that was for a diagnosis.
(17:25):
Nothing bad. It was just like an important diagnosis that I needed to hear.
Well, I made the appointment. I had been to that doctor already with him.
Like I was the one in charge of it.
But it fell on a day that my ex had custody.
So he said, I'll take it to the appointment. And I was like,
well, I'm going to the appointment also because I want to hear what this doctor says.
(17:45):
So we get there. We're in the waiting room. And I'm like, this is the strangest feeling.
Like, at one point, we might have
been doing this together. And then I was like, what am I talking about?
No, we didn't. We never did that. I was with him in the waiting room.
Yeah, he never went to. Right, yeah. And then.
That was your happy family syndrome. Yeah, I had this little moment that I was. It doesn't actually.
(18:07):
This is the strangest feeling. And I was like, oh, no, it wasn't. I'm mad at him again.
So then then we got back there and like, I'm asking all the questions.
I'm getting all the you know what I mean? Right. And then after it, because he had it.
My son had another appointment that day for his ophthalmology appointment.
And my ex wanted to take him to that as well.
(18:27):
So we're leaving. And my ex said, I said, don't forget the ophthalmologist appointment.
And he said, what's what's the ophthalmologist name? Right.
And I said, I'll text it to you.
I'll text it to you. But, like, he's seen this person since he was, since he wore glasses.
I mean, it's four years at least. So, it's just. He's just never.
(18:48):
I was like, okay, well, all of, all of what I already knew, you know.
I have to say, when you get divorced, I have, well, I don't know if everybody does.
What's hilarious is. But I had. My ex has spinal say over medical.
And he doesn't bring you the medical stuff. It's cracked me up, yes.
So funny. What was hard for me was, if y'all are like me, and I don't know if
(19:09):
the listeners are too, when you're the mother and the wife,
you tend to make all the appointments and the school things and you know the
school calendar and you know the after school activities because you're the
ones driving them and arranging the rides and arranging everything.
The weirdest thing for me was to just stop thinking that we were a family unit doing this.
(19:33):
Because when you're doing that and you're married, you think everybody.
I kept a calendar that was color coded so everybody could see it was a huge
craft calendar. Took up half my wall.
I do that. I still do that. At the same time, when we got separated and we were divorced.
Okay. Granted, he never made the calendar, but we discussed it.
(19:54):
It was there. It was visible.
Our life worked like clockwork. It was nothing ever, you know, it wasn't anything.
And then the hardest thing for me was thinking that we were separate and he
didn't know about it, or maybe he didn't look at it,
or maybe he didn't look up the school calendar, or
(20:14):
maybe he didn't know when one of my children was at dance
or when my child was supposed to go know softball practice then
the other thing was trying not to be
ugly about sharing it and then
also giving up that control over it
because it had just been such a part of me doing all
(20:34):
that and i was in control of that and i was the one
juggling all the balls but to be willing
to let a ball fall because he
didn't do the pull-through was really hard for
me not to snatch him sometimes and this is
going to sound a little bit but sometimes when
like he'll message me and he'll say you know
(20:58):
don't text me i'm busy and i want to say okay you have one job you have one
job that you drive to every day and you come home i am trying to do this stuff
like keep up with everything that he has to do make sure that everybody knows
what he has to do while i do my full-time job my part-time job and my other
part-time job that i just,
(21:18):
So it just, it goes all over me. But yours is. And try to be a happy person.
Defiantly non-communicative. Yeah. Like he is not willing to actually communicate
about your child in a productive manner.
Right. No matter what. But Lauren, he did text you that, you know,
mine would just say, I have reached my quota of texts for today.
(21:41):
Always so helpful. So such a team player. familiar.
All right. So, you know, you were talking about, so my experience is a little
bit different in that I got to the point, I guess my boys were, they were little.
I was out of town and I realized that my husband was drinking and had the boys
and he was only two blocks away from home, but I knew he was drinking and he
(22:05):
had the kids and he was going to have to drive home.
And I was so paranoid that from that moment on for the rest of our marriage, I arranged it.
So So he never drove the children at night.
He never drove them. I made sure he never had to take them to a dance,
had to take them to a practice, had to take them to anything that I was available
or I had somebody else picking them up or taking them there.
(22:27):
And that absolutely excluded him from so much of participating in their life.
But it was because at that point in time, I didn't recognize it as alcoholism.
I I ran my part of our relationship at my marriage in the he's a grown-ass man.
And he's making this decision to drink and he's doing it on purpose and he should
(22:50):
know the consequences And if he's going to make these decisions i'm going to
do what I need to do to parent our kids Instead of calling him on it and saying what are you doing?
I can't even trust you to drive our kids home Do you understand I think if I
had and probably nothing would have changed But I did not recognize it as alcoholism early on.
And instead, I enabled him further by making sure he had no more responsibility in our family.
(23:13):
But hindsight is 20-20. I had no idea that's what I was dealing with. I was so ignorant.
Of that. I just knew they weren't safe and my job was to keep them safe. Yeah.
So that was even harder. So. Even if that control was, you know,
be willing not to have all the balls in the air.
(23:34):
Well, I think at this moment, I have ultimately decided that I don't want my son to suffer.
Like to, to, for anything negative to happen because I was being prideful.
You know what I mean? or like, you know, so that, I mean, ultimately I'm like,
okay, he's probably gonna get mad at me if I text him about this right now, but I don't care.
(23:56):
I'm making sure that I'm covered with him.
All right. So let's take this a step further. How many of you have done a will?
No. Because having just had to go through with the ex-husband who did not have
a will when he passed means the state is then in control. We had to hire a lawyer.
The lawyer had to, Then we had to hire or get an advocate for my daughter,
(24:20):
even though she has me as a mother, to make sure she's represented with anything
that he might have had for her.
I mean, we had to spend so much money just to have things settled because he didn't have a will.
And I'm looking at, you know, I am now the only parent, so I've made sure that
I have that because I was then terrified.
I don't want my kids to have to go through all of that. I have one, but it's much older.
(24:43):
So I do need to revise and update.
But I think it's something that's very important because as especially as responsible parents,
it just having to watch my kids have to go to all of these meetings because
they we were divorced, even though I feel like I became the wife again and divorced in so many ways.
When he passed, I took care of all of the little bitty things.
(25:06):
And luckily my father stepped in and, and helped me take care of a lot of the
things, but really they were the ones.
And so they were the ones that had to make these decisions about things.
I don't want him to have to do that. I don't want him to have to do that.
No. No, I definitely have to get one. I don't have one.
Are there any other things like that that y'all have found that crop up that
(25:29):
you feel like you need to address?
Well, I struggle with this all the time. Because, well, Bonnie,
you have family that steps in all the time and you have a sister.
Lauren, you have sisters. Your mother lives next door. Yeah,
I have a... I don't really have... I have help when I need it.
That kind of thing. I'm just stubborn about it. Yeah. So, always worry.
That he you know i well we need
(25:52):
to do a whole special on bonnie's death box and my because
i like my death box hers is
humongous mine is a folder like a briefcase size bonnie's takes up her downward
turn but it does have it's like a file box like the big the big file anyway
i do have that because i struggle with like if something happened to me.
(26:17):
My kids would have to know passwords they'd have to know where all
the papers are they'd have to so what accounts do you have
what accounts do you know what what do you owe who do you owe so the keys to
this the keys to that everything is out and it's actually in my office if y'all
need it i'm just gonna tell you mine's right there but there's it hasn't made
it into the folder yet because i'm sorting to make sure it's all updated which oh my gosh it is like
(26:42):
overwhelming and my one thing is
if i'm overwhelmed putting it together how overwhelming
would that be if it's not put together my kids have to
like search yes would they even know where to search for it well that's i have
a friend whose father passed away ages ago and she just found out he had another
account she didn't know about you know it's not that there was anything hardly
(27:04):
anything in it but still she didn't know it was out there yeah so yeah these are crazy things Well,
and it's tough to have to think about, but I've kind of reached a,
like I said at the beginning of the episode, I had a procedure this week,
and it's something that I'm going to have to have done every year.
Like, it's just going to be a thing.
But afterward, I started thinking about the fact that I probably need to just
(27:26):
have some of that together.
I mean, I'm young, relatively young, but it's about time to just start making
sure that that stuff is in place just in case.
Well, for your son. You just don't know. I mean, yeah, yeah.
Well, and I'm paranoid now because I'm the only parent.
Yeah. You know, like I'm, I'm my kid's only parent. So anything happens.
(27:46):
I mean, this is it. I just feel like the only parent. Well, you are.
But he's still, he's still here. Yeah. Is he?
All right. So what is your favorite? Let's talk about, just really quick,
bring it back to the actual kin keeping. What is your favorite magic-making thing you do for,
(28:08):
For any season, for anything, or just one memory where you were like,
okay, that I love that we did that or do that or that's a tradition.
My son and I, we love Disney.
And I have been fortunate to get to go to Disney several times since he's in
his life because I teach and we take groups a lot.
And that's, I hadn't even really been to Disney. But the first time we traveled,
(28:31):
I was like, wait, this is really fun.
So I've only, I've only taken him, just me and him a couple of times.
But that was one of the big things I did like that first year after after the
divorce was was we had like a mommy mommy son trip to Disney.
That was great. So I want to try to do that every once in a while.
And then, you know, just like I can't think of like on the daily specific things.
(28:53):
But, you know, we we movie a lot together.
We love to go to the movies and like and basically just if he suggests a fun
thing, we're generally going to do it.
You know, the flow or if you get a movie today.
That way yeah yeah he we came over church he said of course
his little brain was like mommy this movie came out on may the
17th i'd like to go see it today and i said finish that book we'll go at 250
(29:16):
and that's what we did so but it you know we just kind of roll like that like
if he's like oh i want to build something we do that you know well that's you
know and you have to think when our kids look back at their childhood what are
they going to remember i don't want my kids to
remember necessarily the alcoholic part of their dad i
want to remember that he coached their baseball team
(29:38):
or he did other things but i want them to remember me that we
went and did stuff we try we try to have a lot of whimsy yeah
i want i don't want i want it to be fun things yeah
and like i always have like he he
and i we have like the advent calendar and instead of
at christmas which is my favorite holiday i
love christmas but during advent instead of
(30:00):
like stuff in there i'll put little things we're going to do oh
that's why so that's he's always so excited to work so they have a calendar
and then you know just i mean we have like christmas eve tradition and i mean
i have very specific holiday things that we do yeah but and then we make like
a summer to-do list of fun we've already started talking about because this
is the last week of school.
(30:22):
Wait what so we always have like a summer fun list that we make and we try to
check that you know, box off.
And so anyway, but, and like my, the nature of my life is to be in rehearsal.
I'm in rehearsal for something.
Five days out of the week, almost all the time, almost all the time,
if you include music rehearsals and theater rehearsals and whatever.
(30:44):
And he generally gets to go to those with me. So he has that sort of like imaginative
experience of being in a theater setting, which I think is really, I grew up like that too.
I grew up on gigs with my dad and in rehearsal with my mom.
So those are my childhood memories. That's what we did.
So anyway. Well, little things are like I hang a birthday banner on their birthday,
(31:10):
even if they're not at my house. I do that.
And we have special treats. And we do things at the holidays that are special.
But the latest thing, because I had my first child for almost nine years by
himself, and we'd have our own things that we did.
And then I have this child, the second child.
She gets the last nine years by herself.
(31:35):
So we do theater stuff all the time. We go and travel and do wherever,
whatever play is playing.
That's what we will go do. And it has been very good for us. And we enjoy that.
So I hope that's one thing. The funny thing is when you were saying my child,
I hope my children have memories.
The divorce was traumatic for them. The situation was traumatic for them.
(32:00):
You hope that it's not as traumatic as you think. But like when I'll ask my
older child, what do you remember about your child? He's blocked out a lot.
He doesn't remember Disney trips.
He doesn't remember beach trips. He doesn't remember half of his travel soccer.
Then I asked my daughter, and the early things that you would think that she
(32:26):
remembered, Disney, she don't remember any of that.
She has none. So it's really weird for me because I gave it 110% to make sure
my children had a really fun childhood despite what we were doing because that's
what my mother did for us. But they still felt all of that anxiety.
And they still have no memory of it.
I have one of my children is the same, doesn't remember a lot of the childhood
(32:52):
because it was walking on eggshells. And I thought I was protecting everybody,
thought I was hiding it all.
But no, I absolutely wasn't. They were absolutely in the thick of it.
And I think what I hate is looking back going, I could have saved them.
If I had known that they were feeling it all like that, then things might have
(33:12):
been different. Right. But I thought I was protecting them and doing what was best for them.
And instead, it was a little traumatic, I think. But so with my kids,
I have I've tried to do like I still
do, you know, adults do the Christmas things, the stockings and that.
And I've tried to make sure I've traveled with each one of my kids and make
(33:33):
their birthday special and all of that. But I just I don't know.
I don't know if I necessarily. I can't wait till my son's old enough to really be my travel buddy.
Yeah you know like really it does where we're gonna go yeah yeah yeah it is it is it is fun.
But yeah i would say and
i know we talked about this a few episodes ago
(33:55):
about positive consequences i think it
was yes the positive consequences but i really do feel like he gets the best
of me now and that my family they get the best of me now i mean i i really do
well you know it's it's just It's such a different environment to not be walking on eggshells,
(34:17):
to not have that anxiety of the friction between you and that person who's supposed to love you.
When you hit that point where all of a sudden you realize you're not a team
and you're pitted against each other with no fault of your own,
and even if that pits you, they feel that.
And you feel that. and being in my house and it's my space and y'all,
(34:38):
my house is a disaster. There's a kayak in my front hall.
My dining room is completely unput together with crap everywhere getting ready
for wedding stuff and all of that. But it's living life.
Like, look at all the, look at all the living that's happening.
But it's also not creating the.
We all just walked through it. Like all three of my kids were here this weekend.
We all just walked through it. Like, I mean, they all know mom is messy anyway,
(35:01):
but they're just whatever.
And, you know, live with it and go roll with it. But there wasn't tension like
that. No, there was no tension.
That has been, I think, the biggest gift after divorce is just that.
Yeah. And I wish I could come up with a whole lot more things that I do for my kids.
I think I did a lot of different things with my daughter than
I did with my boys because I had
(35:24):
more time with her on her up because those last year's middle
school forward it was just me and her really one of her her brothers was here
but it just you know trying to make sure that I that I feel confident that she
can be an independent person and we did home maintenance together and we painted
this the walls together and we will go you know all of these little side missions and do
(35:47):
whatever and that's but it's different and it's not necessarily it wasn't necessarily fun,
but it was it was it spun memories for me i felt like that i i lived with my mom.
She lived in delaware for a while when i was in middle school and high school
but then she moved back down my senior year in high school and my freshman year
in college and i lived with her and we kind of had that like yeah just like
(36:11):
full-time like okay it was just the two of us Yeah,
I've told you all about COVID. Just like surviving.
You know what I mean? Just figuring it out.
We just became, we were a great little symbiotic unit that worked and did whatever.
But then I know that when COVID happened and both of the boys moved into this
house, and this was all of a sudden. You guys were like, boys, ew.
(36:35):
My daughter was like, hey, mom, you remember that time when it was just you
and me? Don't you miss that?
I really missed that time when it was just we're having good we're having a
good time we have our own little routine we do our own little dance you know and it's,
(36:58):
And I hope that she will have that as her move forward with her daughter and her children.
So, yeah, hopefully so.
I know I've had a weekend full of, I just try and be available for my kids.
I don't know if that'll end up being a fabulous kin keeping tradition or whatever.
(37:19):
But if one of them says, hey, will you be my designated driver tonight?
I'm like, yes, I will stay up till three o'clock in the morning to come get
you. You just let me know.
Like, I will always volunteer. Can I just say sometimes when it comes to family,
too, just like talking about family, that it's really important to know when
you've reached a limit, like when you need to say no to something,
even if it's a family thing.
(37:40):
Like, my mother, we had done a lot.
We had been, she was home. They're not always home, but they were home for a
stay, and they had hosted a lot. and it was coming up on Mother's Day and I
looked at her and I said, do you want to do something for Mother's Day?
She said, no, not really.
(38:02):
I just, we've just done so much lately. I said, okay.
Well, then my sister texts me. We need to do something for Mother's Day.
I said, I really don't think that she wants to.
And my sister's like, yes, she does. I said, no, I'm telling you.
She told me to my face that she doesn't really want to. But I found myself like
really trying to fight for my mother's solace. Like my mother's trying to like
(38:25):
have that space for herself too.
Because when you are that role, and she's definitely that role in our family.
Yeah. You have to have, you have to have that a long time, like that downtime,
or you can't do it all, you know? So anyway.
My mother was out of the country for Mother's Day. So I guess she had the great time.
(38:46):
So. All right. All right. Well, what are y'all doing this week to live the life you love?
It's my boyfriend's birthday. Nice. And so we're celebrating his birthday this week. Yeah.
We're we're dressing up as different versions of him for his birthday party.
Well my daughter is home i just had
(39:08):
both of the kids home this past weekend it's the last week of school
so i do for the for graduation
for the for the high school i used to teach at
i go and put all of the diploma covers on the table that
is my job and i kept it even after i left the
school so i'll go do that so that's kind of neat
to see i think it'll be the last group where i actually know
(39:29):
kids until your daughter graduates so that'll be
that'll be interesting so well we are running into summer because it's my daughter's
last week of school and i've already put the foot down saying we're not laying
around here better go get back on the schedule at work and so we'll We'll see how that goes.
(39:50):
And summer is short, though, and I still want, we have two trips.
It's just right at two months.
Yeah, but we have two trips. We have a trip each month.
Yeah. And so then I feel like, I mean, we're already planning the class of 2025.
It's already planning stuff for next year. All the moms are already texting
me. To go to Senior Supper Pub and do it. Oh, yeah.
(40:11):
So, I mean, it's already, like, it's already started.
Like, I don't even get the two months to take it off. And then for my daughter,
she was home early May. So she'll be on May and June, and then she'll be gone
to Spain for July before she goes out of school.
And so I've told her she doesn't have to work because she worked at school during
her internship all that last semester, which was so over. I mean, that was a lot.
Wait, she's in Spain for July? Okay.
(40:34):
So it's after the wedding, the Thursday after the wedding, she leaves.
Oh, girls. All right. Well, y'all have the best week.
Cheers. And y'all, good luck with all the kin keeping this week.
Oh, yes. The kin keeping.
Thank y'all for joining us for champagne sunday see you next week.
(40:59):
Music.
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