Boundary setting for people who hate boundaries

Z tells me the list of things I can never write about — just to be sure I don’t forget. I am surprised he’s doing it at our local coffee shop where anyone could hear. The last one is, “Don’t tell people Nino left us because he didn’t want to raise two autistic kids.”

“Wait. What? You’ve never said that to me before.”

“Forget it. Everyone already knows. I just thought the list needed more things or you wouldn’t remember.”

I look around to see if the people in the coffee shop are nodding. I think the real reason Z is concerned about what I write is that his friends read my blog — they never would have except that Duke has my first book in their library, and Z made the mistake of telling them, which only mattered because the cover is Six Sex Scenes.

When the kids were little the New York Times interviewed me about why I thought it was okay to write about my kids on my blog. The article turned out to be about how moms were ruining their kids’ lives by putting everything online. At the time I chalked the piece up to the NYT being too old to keep up with my amazing forward-thinkingness.

The article was on the front page. The picture of me was in our rented house in Madison where there was no furniture because I spent so much money landscaping the yard. We had all the birthdays in the yard that year in the small garden toward the back. When the kids asked where the old plants were going, I said they were dying. When I traveled on a kid’s birthday, I told the kid it was a different day.

The quotes from me are about how by the time kids grow up they won’t care about what’s online because everything will be online. I was so sure of myself when I had little kids. Now I see the reporter, Leslie Kaufman, is an obituary writer.

Z has to make sure I remember the list of forbidden topics because he thinks I forget about boundaries when I write. So I pay for our coffee even though he has way more money than I do after the Uber settlement. I need to function like a parent with boundaries, and money is my only way.

Z asks us to dress up for his birthday. I tell Nino he needs to show up for the kids or I’ll regret letting him back into our lives. He reminds me that I used to tell the kids their birthday was a different day when I had to travel.

Still, he shows up to the birthday decidedly dressy. Then I notice they’re clothes he took from his dead dad’s apartment. I tell him, “Thank you for trying.”

Our building is turning into short-term rentals, so I have to move, fast, before the kids think I got evicted. That’s the thing about a crisis — if you move on your own volition, you have something lined up with time to spare and it looks like it’s not a crisis.

I had a crisis trying to make all that look like it was happening. The place I got is a block from Nino’s apartment and there’s a garden in the back, so it looks very intentional.

Z told me he thinks I’m not making enough money to support myself.

I told him not to worry, I have a webinar tonight.

He said: “What is a webinar? Is that Zoom?”

He’s right that I need to focus on work. But the garden was just sitting there. So I moved all my plants from three other gardens I’d made around Boston and I got it looking really nice.

Z told me I have a problem with gardens and a problem with evictions, and this is going to be the fusion of those if I’m not careful. Also, he said, “It’s probably stealing when you take plants from a garden you already made. And you’ve been sneaking into the garden when you tell us you’re working.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I saw you going outside again. In the dark. Just like you used to. You have to cut yourself off.”

I say nothing.

I didn’t think it mattered what day their birthday was if they didn’t know the difference. I still don’t, really. I’m already keeping each kid’s list of things I can’t write. In exchange, I get to keep Nino — he’s not the best dad, but he’s the only person who will let me write anything. I need a way to keep bad boundaries and still build something that matters.