73,000 Miles*

*This post's title comes with a disclaimer: I've actually traveled a whole lot more than 1,000 miles since my last  post, but I made the executive decision to only count the miles traveled for the express purpose of seeing/retreiving my children from their permanent home in Maine.  I ventured north to pick them up in late June and have had them in my possession for the past four weeks.

Foremost among the many realizations I have had over the past month is that, at long last, I have finally embraced the idea that my children would be every bit as content living with me as I would be having them.  They have been staying in my new home in Northern Virginia for the past months and they have given absolutely no indication that they are unhappy, miserable, or otherwise homesick for the pathetic excuse of a life that their mother has crafted for them back in Maine.

I'm not going to lie and claim that everything has been easy or free of stress--instead of just one relatively normal six year old, we've instead got three rambunctious kids, including one with Asperger's Disorder.  However, what started out as a frightening proposition has, after a month, turned into a semblance of normalcy.  During the week the kids to go day camp and my wife and I each do our jobs.  At night we find enough time to play board games, have picnics, or watch movies in the basement, and weekends have been filled with fun times.  This weekend alone we had a sleepover with my mom, went to a Washington Nationals game, had a movie night, invited over another family for a playdate, went to the American Indian Museum, and had dinner at a great Cuban restaurant.

In brief, our makeshift Brady Bunch has become a family, and a small part of me couldn't be happier.  I have finally managed to turn the dead-end existence that I had in Maine into a rewarding life in a great city, with a decent job, good friends, a loving wife, and hope for a future.  When I still lived with my first wife I had given up on having much of a life for myself, as we were staying in Maine no matter what, and there were few joys in my world apart from time spent with my children.  I have come to realize that, no matter how a great a parent a person is, fulfillment from one's children is not, and indeed should never be, enough.

For the first several years of my kids' lives, I was little more than Daddy to them.  There was so little to my life that I wasn't able to show them any more than the part of me that fed them, changed their diapers, drove them places, and cuddled with them.  By contrast they saw all there was to see of their mother, who is and always has been a homebody, and so they grew close to her, they pined for her, they sent the message that they could never be away from their beloved Mommy. 

Last year when they spent two weeks with me in my then-home in Atlanta, I never got the feeling that they felt at home, and my daughter in particular frequently whined for Mommy.  But not this time.  This time, they are seeing more and more of the person that I was before I met their mother, and I feel them growing nearer to me and I to them with each day they spend in my care.  I see that they are having a fun and fulfilling experience being here, knowing that each day will bring another exciting adventure.  I hear their laughter and feel their hugs and, most importantly, never have to endure them whining for their mother.

And then, 13 days from now, it will all suddenly come crashing down, and they will go back to the life that they don't even seem to miss.

I know it's not so simple for them.  I have heard both of my kids express in their divergent ways that they wish I could come back and live with Mommy and we could be a family again.  Since I didn't live through a divorce as a child I can't possibly understand this, but they apparently can say this without thought of the fact that both of their parents have remarried.  They don't take the next leap of logic to see that they would have to say goodbye to their new stepfamilies. In my case, my daughter would have to part ways with her stepsister, with whom she has grown inseparable.  But to a small child who has had to endure the unspeakable tragedy of having his or her parents split up, the collateral damage of splitting up two other families to put theirs back together is of no consequence.

I don't have it in me to tell them that their dream of having me come back to Maine and move back in with Mommy isn't going to happen.  I have moved on and, seemingly, moved up.  My thoughts of dropping everythng and going back to at least live near them have dissipated; now it's my wife who talks of doing this, as she worries (with good reason) about the effects on her daughter of not living near her beloved stepsister.  She talks of us moving there, making a simple court filing, and Presto...I would have joint custody of my kids, and they'd live with us 50% of the time.  I tell her that it's not so simple, that doing so would involve a nasty, expensive, and possibly even unsuccessful court battle, a battle that I am in no way capable of fighting right now.

So the clock ticks on, and in two weeks I will be sitting here on my computer on another Sunday night, pounding out my despair and emptiness into my next entry, pondering the good times that I had with my kids over the preceding six weeks, but lamenting the emptiness of the 46 weeks that follow.  I know it's coming, and I'm steeling myself for it by staying up late writing this entry while drinking wine and blasting a long-lost favorite record ("Gish" by the Smashing Pumpkins).

I'm preparing to have many more nights like this over the next 12 years, if not longer.  But I am no longer afraid to let myself daydream about the possibility of my kids living under my roof, whether due to their mother's poor judgment, a future tragedy, or even their own choice at an older age.  I love them.  They love me.  They don't need their mother any more than they need me, and now they know it.  If I have to suffer through the rest of their childhoods as the Frequent Father, then I will, but I'm finally ready to embrace the idea of being their primary parent.