They say everything you really need to learn in life you learn while in kindergarten. Play nice with others. Wait your turn. Listen to your elders. Share.

The first few I think I’ve nailed down. However I’m finding, being a parent who ”˜shares’ custody with someone, I’m no good at sharing. Apparently I missed that day of kindergarten because there’s certain things in this world that I want to pitch a temper-tantrum about and screech, “Mine!”

My age and my sprouting gray hairs prevent me from acting on it, but the impulse is there.

For the past four years, I’ve been allotted the days of Monday through Friday with my daughter. We spend our days shuffling from school, work, dance classes and childcare usually to run home, throw together dinner then say goodnight.

Her weekends are spent away from me in what may as well be another world. During the time that I’m away from work the days don’t fall into the definition of “my time” with her and the silence that echoes from her room is somehow deafening. Most weekends, I just close her door, avert my eyes from it, close my mind off from her absence and count the hours until she’s back around.

I’m starting to think I grasped the short straw in the fun-filled world of custody. Though I would never second-guess ever having her in my life, the good, memory-inducing, bonding experiences with her are rare at best. There simply isn’t enough time during the work week to squeeze in even the most simple pleasures most families take in stride.

In other words, I miss my kid. Like all the time.

Regardless of the reasons, she’s made to live a double life. Each week my 7-year-old swaps houses, rules and lifestyles. Her ability to adapt has amazed me for years now. She simply lives each moment the best she can in the environment she’s in. Honestly, I wish I could be more like her.

But as the years fly by, saying good-bye to her week after week just doesn’t get any easier. Instead the silence grows stronger.

There’s just something unnatural about spending large blocks of time without your little one. I’m aware the grass is always greener and many mothers would give an eye-tooth for a break, but when a stranger in a judge’s robe says I can’t spend more time with the one and only child I have it doesn’t seem all that fair. Unlike other parents out there who see child-rearing as a chore, I treasure every spare minute I have with her because I always want more

There are times I wish there was some other way to work things out so we didn’t have this way. Although she has adapted to life as she knows it, divorce, even in the best of circumstances is downright brutal on kids. Broken families are more the norm these days than the ones who stay together, but that doesn’t make the situation any easier on any of the family members involved.

I grew up in a family who were the cookie-cutter image of the American dream. All the roles were filled; Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, Dog. They bought the house I grew up in when my mother was pregnant with me, and it’s the same house they still live in to this day. If nothing else, I always knew I had my family that I could always come home to.

Which makes raising a child only part-time seem that much more alien to me.

But, each Friday morning, I drop her off because that’s what I’m told to do (listening to my elders), I try my best to ”˜co-parent’ with her father (playing nice with others) and wait until her return on Sunday evenings (waiting my turn).

I hope I pull off my acting job with her that it doesn’t feel the way it does when she leaves so she doesn’t have to carry guilt with her. The kid’s been through enough without having to feel responsible about me feeling her loss.

That being said, sharing has never been my strong suit and I highly doubt, even in my on-going quest to be a grown-up, that I’ll ever ace the lesson that’s routinely taught to children younger than my own.

— Elizabeth Reilly can be reached at elizabethreilly1@yahoo.com.