It’s been a little while since I’ve commented on the Jon and Kate saga. It’s not because my interest has waned or because things haven’t continued to develop over the past few weeks. Kate calling the police and having a pseudo-confrontation with Jon about a babysitter during his visitation time was certainly newsworthy. Jon’s “setting the record straight” interview with In Touch magazine was surprisingly candid and detailed. Kate’s interview with Larry King, disappointingly, was much less so.
I thoroughly enjoyed a small headline about Jon Gosselin’s officially being branded as a douche-bag. Not the classiest title, but if the shoe fits….
I know a thing or two about being a douche-bag myself, which is why I’ve been so attached to the story. I understand that it is not news to everyone, but as their world turns, my breath is baited. Interestingly enough, when I write about this topic, my web traffic nearly triples . Every time. So, I’m not alone in wanting to know more about this evolving family crisis. Either that, or there are a decent amount of voyeurs out there that want to know what’s going on in my own personal soap opera and understand that I share a lot here. For everyone…. here we go:
If you missed the episode, you can watch a quick recap that is less than two minutes…here. Then the title of this article might make more sense.
I am really coming to love the new Kate. Now, I don’t know if this is a permanent change, or how a change can even be calibrated, but there is definitely something different about the formerly self described “indoor girl” Kate who (in Monday’s episode) rode horses and let her kids play with animal carcasses in a mountain lion’s cave. She talked a bit about the freedom from the paparazzi that she enjoyed, but it really felt like it was more than that. There seemed to be something profoundly new going on in her mind and soul.
Fans of the show and the recent saga may know that Jon likes fast things. Motorcycles, downhill skiing, and girlfriends (Did you see how fast he dated and broke up with Kate Major? Her interview in the New York Daily News doesn’t paint the best picture of him. At least he moved up to dirt-bag from from the other kind of bag.) Now that she is sans-Jon, Kate is riding around on quads and shooting guns? Whether she is trying to attract her former husband or trying to show him that she is capable of much more than she had previously shown him, it is fascinating to me. I wonder if she is consciously considering what his reaction might be. Perhaps she is just experiencing growth from all of the self-reflection that she has been doing lately.
During my separation from Kim, we would talk about our future lives apart from each other and how our new relationships would differ. She painted a vivid picture of a new and improved Kim that had grown immeasurably from the failures of our relationship. With no one to limit her potential but herself, she threw herself headlong into developing herself into the best version of Kim that she could be. Of course, this is always we want for our partners, and I was no exception. But we sometimes find ways to stifle that growth with our good intentions and arrogant claims of enlightenment on their behalf.
As Kim and I watched the episode together, I asked her if she would ever ride a horse. She also knows all of the lines to the musical: “Inside Girl”. Unflinchingly and lovingly, she said: ”I would for you.” Then she blushed and turned away before I could tease her about her answer, but her point was clear. And I believed her.
As Kate settled into her Wrangler jeans in Wyoming, Jon spent some time with his girls back in Pennsylvania, and ended up in a dress. It wasn’t the result of too much estrogen in his life, although that may come a decade from now when he has 5 teenage daughters. We finally got to see Jon back in the role that so many of us fell in love with him in. Normal dad. Helping his kids with crafts. Doing a scavenger hunt around the yard. Wearing a dress to help support a living room concert for his oldest daughters. In a way, he was back.
But in another way, it seemed totally different. Forced. Distracted. Divided. His heart was not all in one place. Perhaps it wasn’t even in one piece.
The first episode of the show that we ever saw was a few years back when the kids made their first trip to the dentist. With Kim’s desire to be a pediatric dental hygienist, and our own son about the same age as their sextuplets, we were quickly reeled in to their family. Within a few weeks, we had caught up on all of the re-runs and scheduled their show into the upper echelon of our DVR priority list. Only a new episode of LOST could bump them from being recorded, and fortunately it never happened. We were hooked.
We admired their strength and poise in going through the challenging experience of taking a child to the dentist for the first time. We wondered whether or not we could do it with SIX kids under 4 years old. We looked at each other knowingly when they would snap at each other in a moment of frustration and believed that we were watching real people in a real situation exacerbated by having sextuplets rather than one or two children. Last night, Jon took the girls back to the dentist, and a lot of great memories flooded back for me.
But the changes with Jon were still apparent. He used to provide some comic relief to frustrating situations. He would keep Kate balanced and mellow out some of her sharper edges. Now, his time spent with his kids feels like something that he HAS to do, and that he can’t wait to get back to his single life in New York and do what he really WANTS to do. Of course, I’m just speculating and I’m more than a little bit aware of my own perception’s influence on those speculations.
As for us, our family is nearly restored to the state where we were last summer. Not the state of Arizona, but the state of living together under the same roof. Our love and respect for each other has grown immensely, and we have seen how much our love can be stretched without breaking completely. Though some people won’t be happy with our decision to cohabitate without an official recognition of marriage by the state, we’ve spent too much of our lives trying to live up to other people’s standards, even when we don’t hold them ourselves.
Not having a clear understanding of our own beliefs and goals helped to break apart our union before. We are currently working on a written family statement like a “vision statement”, as corny as that sounds. Its something that we will always be able to refer to in times of distress or pain. We will always love each other, and we know that in our minds and hearts. We also know that we won’t always FEEL that love every minute of the day. For the times when our feelings fail us, we will still know what we believe to be true about each other.
Kate seems to be growing from the inside out. Jon seems to be reacting to whatever feels good at the moment, a more “outside-in” method of facing life. Time will tell who the wiser Gosselin might be.
Pingback: Tuesday Newsday – 2009: The Year of the Affair | Zac Parsons