The Other Shoe Falls

Ahh, Part 2. Whenever I have a fight with Hammerhead, there's a Part 2. I know it will happen, but I don't know exactly when. It's lurking up there, waiting until things are calm and we are all unawares, and then it swoops down and attacks, hoping for a quick, easy mouthful of my soft, bruised flesh. (Or, to be more precise, of Perfect Man's soft, bruised flesh, but that always hurts me more than it hurts him, I'm pretty sure.)
Part 2 stars Hammerhead's mother, Blood Runs Cold, a tall, beautiful, mean as hell 20 watt bulb. She rides her horse every day, owns a cute little house and a brand-new Audi, takes trips to Europe, Aspen, Florida, and California, courtesy of Perfect Man's generous settlement and our painful alimony payments, which THANK GOD finally stopped two years ago, hasn't held a job in 20 years, does not know how to have a conversation that involves an exchange of information, with both talking AND listening, and so has severed every friendship she has ever had, sometimes more than once. And yet Blood Runs Cold feels completely qualified to stand in judgment of everyone around her, up to, including, and especially me, poor old Aunt Pillowhead.
Of course it's easy to resent the ex-wife and mother of your husband's children, especially when she's tall, beautiful, mean, dumb, and doesn't have to work because you do. Some of this is automatically built into the deal, I acknowledge.
But what's really, really hard to live with is her enabling role in Hammerhead and his brother's struggles to adapt to and navigate the challenge of living in two households, each with different rules, expectations, and routines. During my battle with Hammerhead the other night, he locked himself in his room and called her, crying, saying he hated me and hated it here, which is awful enough to know in and of itself. What makes it more awful is the way she encourages and promotes it. I know it must be very, very hard to be the mother who gets the call from the child in tears who begs to be rescued from the house of hell. I really can't imagine how I might have responded to it if I'd had to deal with that dynamic when my own boys were young. BUT, I'm pretty sure I would not have responded with forty-minute phone calls to my ex-husband three days later (ie: today) outlining all of the ways we are mishandling Hammerhead, all of the things we are doing wrong, and all of the things we should do. Because I think that even in a worried, emotional, and angry state, I would know that that's not where you can make a positive, healthy difference for your kids. Even if Perfect Man and I esteemed Blood Runs Cold's opinion about what good communication and parenting involved, even if we thought that her perspective and opinion of what goes on in this house and how it could be improved had merit, and even if we took every action she recommended, we would probably not be able to affect the kind of change Hammerhead really wants and needs. Because what Hammerhead and his brother both really want and need is what we all want and need: to feel clear, powerful, independent, safe, in control, and capable, no matter where we are, no matter what situation we find ourselves in. Hammerhead's bravado is intensified by his feeling that unless he is in his mother's close proximity, he is undefined and unsafe, and his brother experiences this even more acutely--he is nearly seventeen and has profound separation anxiety when he is away from her, to the point of being unable to spend the night with friends and take trips with his elite soccer team when they play out of state. Her choice to create dependence and neediness in her teenage boys may make her feel important, validated, and superior, but it's having the opposite effect on them. And that's frustrating and sad to see.