Sympathy Pain

I’ve written about my realtionship with my ex- before. It may not be the stereotypical divorced with child relationship, and I think we are lucky that way. However, this sometimes leads to strangeness, especially where her family is involved.

Little expositional info. Her family is large and extremely close. It took me about 2 years to get down how belonged to whom and where the family tree forked and such. I come from a small to medium sized family, and we are just close enough. Nobody in our back yard to check out our dirty laundry. We see each other on major holidays and send cards. The ex family mostly live in the same zip code and their are easily 25 family members in a 20 mile radius. I never have more than 4 in a 100 mile radius. And they like each other an are extremely loyal.
Sounds great, right. Well it is…if your apart of it. So, one of few things I hated about the divorce was loosing her family. Lawyer, Dentist, Chiropractor, pediatric nurse, construction contractor…all in my cell phone.
So now, years after the divorce, our story begins.

Saturday, during a peaceful walk with my family, after working on Jack’s “Valentine Box”, the phone rings. It’s Jack’s bio-mom’s mom…Nanny. I think some thing’s wrong. Maybe the bio-mom has been attacked by a Hydra…or something. No, she just wanted to check on Tony and Sarah and, after prompting, said hey to Jack. felt strange, but Nanny is an extremely nice person, so I shrugged it off. She has even offered to watch Tony…again, nice but kinda odd.

Then, last night we took jack home. Bio-mom was at a relative’s house. The patriarchal head of the clan. So we stop to drop him off, and Nanny descends on the car, insisting we bring Tony in for the family to see. We are way off in the docks…I had a feeling we were about to become some domestic violence statistic. However, the ex- family was extremely sweet and loved that Tony bot. They also wanted to take photos of the binja…again, the baby not related to them. He is Jack’s brother, but there is no blood relationship back to this family tree, so it was just odd.

Well, we made it out…but the pucker factor was high. I admit I am blessed to have the kind of relationship I do with my ex-, but it really was odd to stand on the orange shag carpet I had grown accustom to over the 9 years of marriage, and hear my ex- say, “this is Sarah, Bryan’s wife and their baby, Tony.” Very twilight zone.