betrayal

Probably the single most significant thing to happen to me since coming to China was the realization that my eldest son didn't understand what I was doing.

Obviously, he couldn't have understood. But somehow, because he is so much like me, because we have been so close, I just figured he got it by osmosis. As my mom told me once, assume makes an ass out of u and me. Of course, as we talked, his own dots got connected. He couldn't have understood because what I was doing was incomprehensible to him. His life revolved around me. He could only go as far as his dad was just going for 10 months and then coming back for good - just a long visit. That is all. That is all he could allow himself to imagine.

While I was looking far down the road and couldn't see what was in front of us, he was looking just looking in front of us, daring not to look far down the road.

Thus I left him vulnerable to his mom.

His mom, my ex, is a lemon tree. Ironically, that was one of her favorite songs. She is beautiful on the outside but utterly bitter on the inside. Her currency is misery. When my eldest didn't understand what I was doing, I left him open in a trap. And, indeed, March 1, she sprung the trap that I had stupidly left for her.

She is not concerned with how the boys feel. Her only concern is their alignment to her. My eldest didn't fall easily into alignment. My error allowed her to show him how foolish, how stupid, how wrong he was to love me. When I realized what I had done, my heart sank. I know what she is like, which makes my choice to come to China, even at the most optimistic, tainted with something reprehensible, that is, betrayal. My only private consolation I had when I left Canada was that he understood. That understanding would have protected him from her.