Girls' night out with the divorce coach
by Brynna Leslie


As my mom prepared for her semi-annual pilgrimage to Ottawa, I made a list
of things we could do together:

Museums? Check

Shopping? Check.

See the Divorce Coach? (This is where you hear the sound of brakes
screeching in your head).

But I went ahead and booked the appointment anyway.

My mom is one of my dearest friends, but every time she installs herself in
my house for a week, we have a huge blowup.

The last visit, my husband arrived home from work on mom's second evening to
find her upstairs in a bedroom sobbing, and me shaking angrily in a basement
corner. My mom had the telephone, which I had thrown at her in the midst of
anger-twinged-guilt, shouting "because I can't talk to you right now, but
maybe you need some support!"

"Go up there and apologize," my husband said to me. "Let it go."

In a lot of ways, his simple advice summed up the exact problem mom and I
have. But even when I vow NOT to act like a controlling wench, I flip out
anyway.

It starts before she even arrives, and I feel myself on the downward spiral,
progressively deteriorating into a time bomb as the week wears on.

So I booked an appointment with Diane Valiquette at the Separation/Divorce
Resource Centre in Blackburn Hamlet.

I had interviewed Diane in early September for a Weekly Journal article and
I knew she would be pragmatic.

Mom agreed to go to the one-off session because Ottawa's Divorce Coach
promised to give us tools to relate to each other more effectively, without
digging up too much dirt.

I figured if we never had the same fight again, it was worth it. Mom agreed.
So on went the lipstick and off we went for a "girls' night out" with the
Divorce Coach.

"What's the problem," Diane asked? (Okay, that sounds cliché and she
probably didn't really ask that question, but she had to start somewhere
that led to the following rant by me):

"I was working on my computer today and when I went to take a drink of my
coffee there were old clothing tags in it," I exclaimed.

"It was the only safe place I could find to put them out of reach of the
children," Mom responds. (Not the garbage, or in a drawer or on a high
shelf, but in my coffee cup)?!

Diane looked at me with eyebrows raised and said, "So?"

(Was she bullying me, I thought? Was she taking sides already)?

So I tried another one.

"The last time she was here, she was in the kitchen the whole time," I said.
"When she left, I was finding jars of jam inside pots and pans; cheese in
the meat drawer and the bottle of dish soap way, way up high with the wine
glasses."

"And that's why you're so angry?" Diane said.

"Yeah," I said.

"It's annoying, I admit, but if a friend of yours did it or your husband or
ANYONE else, would it bother you so much?" (This woman was good).

"No."

And that was the beginning.

It wasn't one of those drag-your-guts-out-on-the-table kind of sessions,
where you know they're trying to suck you in for 10 consecutive weeks of
follow-up therapy.

By the end of 90 minutes, we had a profound insight into
relationship-damaging behaviours (that are common in our associations with
other people, by the way); and most importantly we were left with ways to
deal with them that wouldn't allow us to slip into the no-zone like we
always do.

The rest of Mom's visit was smooth as glass, except.

On the last day, I watched her take a liquid-paper-stick out of a (multiple)
pen holder and try to write with it. "Bloody pen doesn't work," Mom mumbled.
And then she dropped it into MY CUP OF COFFEE!!

I really couldn't help myself: "Mom, why did you put that in my cup?"

"I needed somewhere to put it quickly and it doesn't work anyway," she said.


(Why? Why not in one of the 15 little holes drilled into my titanium pen
container that was sitting RIGHT NEXT TO THE CUP OF COFFEE)????

"Oh okay." I laughed and that was the end of it. Seriously.