Men and Separation

I don’t much like to fly, but I like to fly alone. I can read, think, space out through the window, watch the landscapes pass below. I experience the sensation of leaving my “real life” behind for a while, setting it to one side, letting everything get tossed up in the air to see where the pieces come down. And I get to pretend I am truly alone, on my own, with no one looking over my shoulder and no one to answer to.

Yet it seems I only fly alone when there’s a crisis. Over the last year it’s happened twice: Last spring my mother had a stroke and was partially paralyzed; I flew out to the West Coast to visit her in rehab. A few months before that, I flew west for the funeral of one of my brothers.

Each time I was conscious of being a Man Traveling Alone, a man with no apparent partner or children, no evident responsibilities, not dressed like a business traveler, too old to be a student. A man with no visible means of support, emotionally at least. (Who do I trust in the airport to watch my bag so I can go to the restroom unencumbered? Middle-aged ladies, especially those from the South.)

On the trip to see my mother, flights were delayed by thunderstorms up and down the East Coast. I missed my connection in Atlanta, the last flight out that night, so I made an unscheduled overnight stop. The hotel I stayed in was a nondescript building near the airport, along a strip of other hotels and chain restaurants. Alone in an unfamiliar city, I walked up and down the street, searching for someplace that might have decent food and be comfortable for a single person.

I decided on a Chinese restaurant, correctly figuring the food would be palatable and the waitstaff polite and efficient. In the restaurant were several other single men, travelers like me no doubt, who also sat quietly in their booths over kung pao chicken and cold Tsingtao. The food was just fair, Tsingtao fo fair ood but it was an easy place to eat alone and not feel the awkwardness of standing out, as one might in the dark, expensive steakhouse next door or the bright lights and loud colors of the Mexican place down the street, with its happy-hour crowds and pitchers of margaritas. Several places I’d think nothing of trying with even one other person seemed too daunting to enter as a solitary male, going it alone.

I’ve been getting lessons in flying solo of late, ever since separating from my wife a few months ago. In the end I was the one who chose to move out, going from the family house in a quiet neighborhood to a one-bedroom apartment downtown.

The decision wasn’t made lightly and was fraught with anxiety — we’d been together over 20 years and have two children still in school — but in the first few weeks I was out on my own I felt liberated, exhilarated, even euphoric. Suddenly lighter, relieved of the immediate tensions of the marriage, I moved through the world in a new way, and my relationships with those around me seemed to change. Now I could meet my friends for dinner or coffee, even go shoot pool at the local brewpub without feeling the pull of that invisible anchor that had often kept me close to home. I was still on a schedule — being with my kids at certain times, meeting work deadlines, and doing the usual round of child pickups and dropoffs — but otherwise I could get up when I wanted, go to bed when I chose, eat whatever I wanted at whatever time, with no one to oversee my choices or raise an objection or even an eyebrow. I was free.

The first time I went grocery shopping for myself, just after moving out, it took me more than an hour to get through the store, although I emerged with little to show for my slow progress up and down the aisles. From the parking lot afterward I called a male friend on my cell phone. “I just realized”, I told him, “I can buy anything I want!” He laughed; he knew. His wife had moved out just two months before. It hasn’t all been a magic carpet ride. Of course the decision to separate affected my kids and my wife. They’re still adjusting, as I am, and adjustments to great changes can be painful. My biggest concerns naturally center around my kids. For now I’m trying to keep listening and talking to them, hearing their questions and concerns and trying to reassure them that I’m still here for them. I’m trying to make the most of the time we have together without putting undue pressure on them, or myself, to reach a particular outcome. I may not be living with them full-time anymore, but I’m still their dad.

In the adult realm there have been changes too. Some good friends of “ours” now have no contact with me, while others remain friendly and keep their judgments to themselves. Some have inevitably taken sides — by far the easier course — while some have chosen the more difficult path of trying to stay amicable with both parties. I’ve gotten closer to some of my own friends since the separation, sharing what’s going on with me and profiting from their own life experiences, and it feels as though my relationships with them are more authentic now, like I’m able to be more of who I am, more confident and solid in myself, untethered to worries about how others think I “should” be.

Since the euphoria of those first weeks on my own, I’ve settled into a reality that is familiar, but always different. Each day I’m faced with choices I must make anew: when to get up, what to eat, how to apportion my time, what to buy or not buy and how to handle my money, which friends and activities to make time and space for and in what way. At each such juncture I ask myself: What is the right thing to do here? What is it that I want to t do here? It’s a new world, a terra incognita.

My last plane trip, I’m happy to report, was not a solo flight, nor made in response to a crisis. My son and I flew out to the West Coast for a few days to see my family, hit the beach, watch some baseball, eat Mexican food and have fun. It was great to have a traveling companion, and my son is an easy and congenial one. I loved talking baseball and movies and cars with him, laughing at the same stupid jokes, bodysurfing in the Pacific. Not yet 13, he’s already savvy about life in many ways. I love him, I’m really proud of him, and I hope I can help him to weather everything he’s facing in life, love, sports, and school from my new vantage point, living alone and not with him.

Now he’s in middle school — another milestone, a new phase. For me it’s a new phase too: this solo life filled with choices every day, with no one I have to consult — and no one else to blame if it doesn’t turn out well. It’s how I prefer it to be for now: a life I’m coming to know and embrace with all its fears and challenges and rewards, one journey at a time, one moment at a time, taking each step forward as it comes.

James S. is a writer who lives in western Massachusetts.