In the end, for the cost of about $800 (including airfare, hotel, rental car, all meals and activities), I got to spend three full days of quality time with my kids. I have had people tell me that I probably spend more quality time with them during my visits to Maine then many parents spend with their kids who live in the same house.
So what did we all get out of this? I got three days with my kids with no interruptions. We got to do fun things together, I got to tell them my version of how life, the universe, and everything works. I had to discipline them a handful of times for being somewhere between annoying and disrespectful. As for my kids...I'm not sure. I know they love me, enjoy seeing me, and have fun with me, but I know they'd rather be in their own home, with their toys, books, and games around, and a driveway and backyard to play in, instead of being cooped up in a crappy motel. Even after more than three years, they still haven't fully come to understand why Mommy and Daddy got divorced. My son, who is almost nine now, came right out and said, "I wish you could come back and live with me so I could see you and Mommy all the time."
I wonder what goes through the mind of a kid who says something like that. I understand the eternal wish that Mommy and Daddy would get back together and that all would be as it was before. I always think of the song "Wonderful" by Everclear, which captures life for a boy with divorced parents so painfully well. The most wrenching part is this:
"I don't wanna meet your friend
And I don't wanna start over again
I just want my life to be the same
Just like it used to be"
I imagine that my kids have some version of those words in their heads all the time. "Yes, Mommy and Daddy married other people. Yes they both seem happier than when they were together. Yes, I've gotten used to living this way. But I don't like the way things are and just want them to be back together." And I can't blame them for feeling that way--it is only natural.
I know this because I had the opposite sort of feelings in my childhood. My parents were miserable and fought all the time, both with each other and with my older brother. I frequently found myself wishing that they would get divorced so they would stop fighting. As I grew towards adulthood I found myself hating any time that I had to spend with both of them, as they brought out the worst in each other, but I actually sort of enjoyed getting to spend time with each of them individually.
These feelings grew once I went to college, 1,000 miles away from home. My dad was on a business trip not far from where I was in school and he came to town one weekend to hang out with me. He was a different person than usual--happier, more relaxed, and much more fun to be around. We went out to a jazz club one night and had a tremendous time. I couldn't picture him having that sort of enjoyment in my mom's presence. When I moved back to Washington after finishing my education I got a partial season ticket plan for the Capitals and went to a bunch of hockey games with my dad, all of which were fun. And then in the last year of my dad's life, I spent a lot of time alone with him, as I was the only person who could be around to help him so my mom could go out of the house for more than an hour. We had a many chances to hang out and just talk to each other without interference.
Looking back on those times now, I have come to realize that the only times I actually liked being around my dad were when my mom wasn't there. Much the same way, my relationship with my mother has improved greatly in the nine months since my dad's death, as she is no longer preoccupied with taking care of/henpecking him. I now believe that I would have turned out to be a much happier person and had far better relationships with my parents if they had gotten divorced when I was little. I am certain that the fiasco with my first wedding would never have happened, as they would not have put up such a unified front against me.
So what does all of this mean for me as a father? And what does it mean for my kids? They won't know what it would have been like had I stayed, so they will spend the rest of their childhoods pining for an alternate reality in which Mommy and Daddy never got divorced and everything was "wonderful." This is no different from how I spent my childhood (and my adulthood as well) wishing that my parents had gotten divorced, so everything would have been wonderful. Such is human nature: when you don't like what you've got, you yearn for the opposite.
I will never be able to go back in time and to remove the ugly stain of divorce from my childrens' childhoods. By the same token, I cannot cleanse my own childhood of the stench of a bad marriage that should have ended. All I can do is to pass on what I've learned from my own experience and hope that my children benefit from my hard-earned knowledge. If nothing else, I hope they come to realize that they are getting to see a much better version of Daddy than they would have gotten had I stayed with their mother.
I only got to see a small piece of my own father independent of his unhappy marriage. Now that he is gone, I am certain that our relationship would have been far better if he and my mom had split up. I will never know what it would have been like to go over to his apartment for the weekend and have nothing but good times without fighting or tension in the air. I guess I should be happy that my kids do know what that's like, and that they will have few--if any--memories of their parents fighting with each other.
