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| On one of many road trips back to see my mother. Photo copyright, Teece Aronin |
I post pictures of my kids baking cookies as the dog watches with flour on her face. I make sure you wake to photos of my cat, stretched in feline repose across my bed. I choose pictures that show most cheerfully or poignantly or humorously how well my kids and I get along.
What you don't see is everything that came before, like a tsunami crushing our lives. Life fell apart, and what you see on Facebook is the repair work, the reassembly, the cleanup - with me, the mother, who never knew a damned thing about how to do any of this - as team captain by default.
There was the end of a marriage to the man who fathered these children, who helped build a home only the most tangled of crossed stars could destroy and did. There was me scrambling to find a better job before our house sold out from under us. There was me networking in two different states, first the kids' home state and next mine, to find that job.
There was the kids having to leave their father. There was the kids having to leave their grandmother. There was me having to leave my mother when I'd always planned to be there as she aged. There was the night before we left when she broke the "no open flame" rule at her assisted living facility, lit a votive, and joined hands with us around the flame. Then she spoke with a smile of how grateful she was that we had been near her all those years and how she would pray for our trip to be safe.
Then there was the 500-mile move away from every warm thing my kids had ever known.
There were the months on end where I swore I was piloting the kids through hell only to learn that they were guiding me. There were the endless kindnesses of family and friends who took us in, shored us up, and gave us hope.
There was Facebook, which became a way to document the restoration. The place I laid our trips to cider mills and pickle festivals and county fairs as though they were flowers and Facebook was an altar.
It was a place where the Facebook friends who truly knew me tracked our progress and supported the effort, and where those whose newsfeed I clogged, viewed the work, neither knowing nor caring that there was any work in it.
It was the place I showed off my new sofa with framed Rothko prints hung perfectly level right above - and where at least five nail holes hid behind each print even though I measured. It was a place where few knew it took five years to save the money for that sofa because I was terrified of credit card debt. It was somewhere just a handful of people were aware that the sofa's predecessor had belonged to my aunt, was chewed up by our dog, and that the prints came from a thrift shop and cost $12 each.
I, who loved to write and aspired to be a blogger, developed my "voice" on Facebook, found rhythms for my words, and learned how good it felt when my posts made people laugh. It was a place where my friends nurtured the writer sapling until it was strong enough to launch that blog.
Anyone who didn't know me well might have thought: 'What a great little family; I wonder what happened to the marriage.'
For the record, the marriage was lost in the tsunami.
But I had Facebook where I documented our trips to see my mother and my ex-husband, where friends could see how well he and I worked together for the sake of our children, and everyone could wonder just how much was exactly as it seemed.
What you don't see is everything that came before, like a tsunami crushing our lives. Life fell apart, and what you see on Facebook is the repair work, the reassembly, the cleanup - with me, the mother, who never knew a damned thing about how to do any of this - as team captain by default.
There was the end of a marriage to the man who fathered these children, who helped build a home only the most tangled of crossed stars could destroy and did. There was me scrambling to find a better job before our house sold out from under us. There was me networking in two different states, first the kids' home state and next mine, to find that job.
There was the kids having to leave their father. There was the kids having to leave their grandmother. There was me having to leave my mother when I'd always planned to be there as she aged. There was the night before we left when she broke the "no open flame" rule at her assisted living facility, lit a votive, and joined hands with us around the flame. Then she spoke with a smile of how grateful she was that we had been near her all those years and how she would pray for our trip to be safe.
Then there was the 500-mile move away from every warm thing my kids had ever known.
There were the months on end where I swore I was piloting the kids through hell only to learn that they were guiding me. There were the endless kindnesses of family and friends who took us in, shored us up, and gave us hope.
There was Facebook, which became a way to document the restoration. The place I laid our trips to cider mills and pickle festivals and county fairs as though they were flowers and Facebook was an altar.
It was a place where the Facebook friends who truly knew me tracked our progress and supported the effort, and where those whose newsfeed I clogged, viewed the work, neither knowing nor caring that there was any work in it.
It was the place I showed off my new sofa with framed Rothko prints hung perfectly level right above - and where at least five nail holes hid behind each print even though I measured. It was a place where few knew it took five years to save the money for that sofa because I was terrified of credit card debt. It was somewhere just a handful of people were aware that the sofa's predecessor had belonged to my aunt, was chewed up by our dog, and that the prints came from a thrift shop and cost $12 each.
I, who loved to write and aspired to be a blogger, developed my "voice" on Facebook, found rhythms for my words, and learned how good it felt when my posts made people laugh. It was a place where my friends nurtured the writer sapling until it was strong enough to launch that blog.
Anyone who didn't know me well might have thought: 'What a great little family; I wonder what happened to the marriage.'
For the record, the marriage was lost in the tsunami.
But I had Facebook where I documented our trips to see my mother and my ex-husband, where friends could see how well he and I worked together for the sake of our children, and everyone could wonder just how much was exactly as it seemed.
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