59,000 Miles, cont.

Well, long distance is turning into medium long distance; I took the job in Northern Virginia and will be moving in less than two weeks. I was going to spent some time this afternoon packing, but I'm instead sitting here writing this entry--my priorities are obvious. So that's good news, right? I'm taking a great job with an impressive sounding title, a much higher salary than I've ever before earned, 25 miles from where I grew up and, yes, 600 miles closer to my children. But my wife isn't coming right away, as she has to sell her house and anyhow she wants her daughter to finish the school year in Georgia and spend the next six months saying goodbye to everyone she knows (she's moved here to go to college 19 years ago and has never left). It's going to be a tiring and expensive few months as I live and work in one city and have to travel back and forth to Maine and Georgia. I'm not looking forward to that.

Even once my new family does join me in Virginia, then what? I'll still be 500 miles away from my kids and I'll have a full-time, high-pressure job with little ability to take random long weekends or week-long trips like I got to do. I'll have the money to see them now, but what about the time? It's got to be one or the other it seems. And my wife? She'll be in a new, strange place far from everything she knows, and is already feeling guilty about taking her daughter away from their extended family (mother, 3 sisters, 7 nieces/nephews, untold numbers of friends).

There's another issue: her ex-husband and his family (mother, stepfather, 2 sisters, son who's a half-brother to my stepdaughter, 4 cousins). I've found myself being so angry over the past two years about my ex-wife replacing me. Even ignoring the particulars of the new man in her house (see about 12 other of my entries for more on him), the fact is that, to my kids, Daddy doesn't live with us and we only see him every couple of months. Now I'm going to be responsible for making a six-year old girl move 600 miles away from her father.

Now I have every reason to be OK with this--her father is just this side of a deadbeat. Even though he has visitation rights every other weekend, he generally only sees her about once every six weeks, and even on the weekends when he does see her, he spends about 4 hours with her and then drops her off at his mother's or sister's house. He's perpetually two months behind on child support, and owes my ex $15,000 in marital debt. He doesn't come to his daughter's soccer games and has only ever set foot in her school one time. He is now married to the woman with whom he had an affair during his marriage to my wife, and she happens to be an illegal alien. He's also willingly cut ties with his 13 year-old daughter from his first marriage because he couldn't afford to pay child support for her. The guy's not exactly father of the year.

In spite of all of this, I can't help but feeling terrible. Yes, he's a poor excuse for a parent, but he's still her dad. How can I sit here and feel so terribly wronged about semi-voluntarily moving away from my kids and then have a clear conscience about taking another man's daughter away from him?

I'm trying very hard to focus on the facts at hand: 1) I need a good career so I can financially support my son, daughter, and stepdaughter. 2) I have failed to find this career path in Maine or Atlanta. 3) I have found a great job that could hold the key to my future in a third place, one that's halfway between the other two. 4) My wife's ex-husband doesn't even really try to be a parent, in spite of living 15 minutes away right now. 5) My wife has chosen to be with me, and understands facts 1-4 very clearly. I know that taking this job is the right thing to do. No matter how hard it will be over the next few months, I have to believe that the long-term benefits will be worthwhile. It certainly will make for some interesting blogging.

59,000 Miles

I don't know if I'll ever write a book based on all of these ramblings, but if I do, I have decided on one of two titles. Over the weekend the famed race car driver Dan Wheldon was tragically killed in a 15-car pileup during a race. At the news conference announcing his death, Mr. Wheldon was said to have perished from "unsurvivable injuries." If/when I do write my tome, I will either call it "Survivable Injuries" or "Unsurvivable Injuries". The exact title will, of course, depend on what happens between now and then.

To bring everything up to date, I voyaged to Maine for a long weekend with my kids over Columbus Day which was tough, as it was the first time since leaving town for good that it had been just me, just them, and a hotel room. Every visit since January had either involved me traveling to Maine with my wife and stepdaughter or me picking them up and taking them to another, better place.

This is not to say I didn't have a great time. The weather was an Inconvenient Truth-ly 80+ degrees (October! Maine! 80 degrees! Call Al Gore!) and we had many memorable moments. Maybe someday I will pen the whole narrative of this weekend, but, in journaling about the trip during the plane ride back "home," it seemed like a more cathartic exercise to spill out random thoughts from the weekend gone by:

The last day of Indian Summer
Where I come from and how that place is gone
Feeling rootless, like I'm living in quicksand
Watching my children struggle and being unable to help them
My daughter's scary fascination with TV commercials
Playing superheroes at the school playground
Watching my son go up (and down) the Hi-Jacker ride at the Fryeburg Fair
Seeing my daughter get on the swing and go by herself
The street sign on the way to the fair that read "Pig Street"
Playing "bedbugs" in the hotel room
Swimming at the YMCA
Sitting on a bench at Deering Oaks Park watching the squirrels together
Riding the Tornado ride at the fair all together
Room 112 at the Extended Stay America
Can being 500 miles away be better than 1,100 miles away?
Who would talk to me for an hour anymore?
Teaching my son about football
My daughter blowing raspberries at me then singing "I'm a Little Scarecrow"
My son leaping from one bed to the other in the hotel room
My kids talking about their "step-family" as if were their own
Needing to feel useful and pining for a better job

Reading this list a week later I feel it does a better job of summing up my feelings than would any contrived narrative. My feelings were (and are) scattered, and the time I spend with my kids is best summarized in this manner. There is no arc to the story. There is no recurring theme. There is just a series of highs and lows. Elation in one moment melts into fear and despair. My fragile heart soars 80 feet up to the top of the Hi-Jacker, then shatters upon impact.

I'll see my kids again in a month or so, again alone in a hotel somewhere near Portland, although I can almost guarantee that it won't be 80 degrees any sunny this time (and if it is, I'm really going to give Mr. Gore a call!) Until then I'm left to stew in my own juices about the life I'm living. I'm sitting here at work, having all the time in the world to write this entry as, after more than three months, I still have virtually nothing to do all day long. Meanwhile, I've been offered a job in the Washington DC area, and have only a few days to decide about it. The job could be great, but I've been keeping myself up nights worrying about whether or not that's really close enough to my kids and being if neither here (Maine) or there (Atlanta) is going to allow my marriage to work. But I don't feel like I have any other options, as there are no better opportunities on the horizon anywhere else.

By the time I write my next post I will have decided whether or not to take the job, in the process probably causing more stress than I can handle. My body has, technically, survived the injuries suffered due to my first marriage and its disastrous end, but I'm having a hard time seeing how my spirit will carry on. No matter where I live (Atlanta, DC, Boston, Maine), I will feel like I'm giving up too much and that my life will always fall short of what I wanted it to be. In that regard I suppose I haven't survived my injuries at all. I'm not living the same life that I was living before the crash, but instead feel like a ghost who is inhabiting the same body but somehow unable to feel the same way. But that's the definitation of survival, isn't it? I've been bloodied and battered, but my body still lives and breathes. I guess I've got my title.

56,800 Miles

What was it I was saying last time about sound and fury, signifying nothing? Well take that, put it in a six-page court order, and make it a double.

Well, the judge agrees with me...my ex-wife is guilty of (and I quote), "naivete, at best, and self-decption at worst," and "there is no doubt that [she] has not complied with the terms of the Judgment and, without tighter strictures, will continue to do so." Sounds good for me, right? Well, let's keep reading to see how the court intends to put "tighter strictures" on my ex:
"[The mother] shall allow no unsupervised contact between the children and [the boyfriend]...[The boyfriend] shall not consume alcohol, or be under the influence of alcohol, in the residence or in the presence of either or both of the children." Throw in a small victory of me now getting the kids for six consecutive, uninterrupted weeks in the summer, and that's the ballgame.

I suppose there is some lemonade to be made here. I do now have an official opinion from the State of Maine stating that my ex-wife is somewhere between naive and delusional and that her boyfriend is quite obviously not cured of his drinking problem. I do get the kids for six weeks straight starting next summer. I do, on the surface, have some restrictions on the lowlife who kidnapped my daughter and drove her home drunk. But what I don't have is any way to enforce those restrictions.

So the bum can't be alone with them, drink in the house, or be under the influence in their presence. That's good and well if I'm the guy from Rear Window sitting in a wheelchair all summer long and staring at him through my binoculars. But I live 1,100 miles away. Even if I lived 10 miles away, as I did a year ago, I still don't see how I would be able to indisputably prove that he had done any of these things. In fact, I already know that these things have happened in the week since the decision was rendered. My son told me on the phone that he and the bum went for a bike ride around the neighborhood, including down a busy, hilly street with mangled sidewalks. But I can't use the word of a 7 year old in a court of law, so it never "officially" happened.

Furthermore, let's say that I do miraculously obtain hard proof of the order being violated--the order contains no "then what." I was hoping that it would at least tell my ex that one screw up would result in the bum going or even her losing the kids. It seems that my only remedy would be to take her back to court again, and replay the whole tragi-comic-farce once more (and at great expense, of course). I am filing a motion to appeal the decision, but I'm not holding my breath.

So, in the end, I feel like she was convicted of her crimes, but given a very light sentence. Meanwhile the person at the heart of the matter, the drunk boyfriend, gets to stay put, living in the house that I bought with my money and pay for with my child support checks. He is allegedly going to school to become a medical assistant, but I can't possibly imagine any responsible medical office wanting to hire this clown, who looks like death, walks with an alcoholic's shuffle, chain smokes, and generally always seems to be drunk. And the person ultimately responsible--my ex-wife--gets to go on with her life as if she did nothing wrong, but she still is raging with anger at me for, as she put it, "ripping the kids away from me for the summer." Never mind that she gets them all year long, and I'm in the midst of going six weeks without seeing them right now (I'm going up over Columbus Day weekend).

Meanwhile, I'm sitting at my desk 1,100 miles away typing this. I'm at work, but my job is such that I basically get paid to do absolutely nothing. I'll save the details for a future post (or not), but the gist of it is that I was hired by a public agency to help get an ineffective lifer of a bureaucrat off the dime, but she is refusing to share any work with me and our mutual boss is too much of a wuss to do anything about it. Thus, I have been sitting here for three months now with literally nothing to do but surf the internet and feel like a complete ass for being so far from my kids for no other reason than to collect a paycheck.

If I were at least doing something good for the world, or at least something that occupied my mind all day, I'd feel a lot better. As it is, all this job is giving me is money and a serious case of depression. I've again begun to seek out something better closer to where my kids live, and this time my wife swears that she's coming along no matter what. The adventure continues...

55,700 Miles

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing."

--Shakespeare, Macbeth

I'm not often one to quote The Bard, but my day in court yesterday reminded me of nothing but Macbeth's conclusions about life upon his hearing of the queen's death. My central conclusion from yesterday is that courtroom is nothing more than two theatrical performances going on simultaneously (all the world's a stage?) To the judge and the attorneys, the proceedings are mostly scripted comedy-drama, with elements of farce. They recite their well rehearsed legalese and misleading questions, and trade occasional in-jokes with one another. Meanwhile, the Plaintiff and Defendant get to muddle their way through improvised tragedy, with their fates at the mercy of the well dressed and highly paid jesters acting beside them. And to top it off, yesterday's performance certainly had the most anticlimactic ending I've ever seen.

For three hours, the motion that I made to protect my children from the ravages of the dangerous drunk that their mother permits to live with them devolved into a series of truths that could not be told, lies that were left uncontested, and, at the end, an announcement that the decision would be sent by mail at a later date, followed by a bang of the judge's gavel.

I don't have the strength to go into bloody detail, but here are the main points of the trial:
- I testified, mostly on the strength of my own knowledge and of several self-incriminating emails sent to me by my ex-wife, about the long and perilous pattern of alcohol abuse, drunk driving, and cover-ups in her home.
- I was barred from discussing hard evidence of her in the form of police reports, because police reports are considered hearsay unless the officer who wrote the report appears in court to testify.
- Her attorney repeatedly objected to most things that I said and tried to get me off on irrelevant tangents such as whether or not the drunken boyfriend's license was officially suspended on October 9 or October 19 (as if it matters--she still let him drive the kids after his second drunk driving arrest in six months). This was all done to waste time and run out the clock, as he knew that only three hours were alloted for the trial.
- My ex got on the stand and skated on the edge of crying for the better part of an hour as she painted herself as an ideal mother, her boyfriend as a wonderful human being who is trying to conquer his tragic disease of alcoholism, and me as one part sterotypical bumbling father who is overwhelmed at the thought of spending time with his children and one part jealous, jilted ex-lover who is trying to get back at her.
- She spun one tall tale after another: saying with a straight face that she never dreamed that their "maintenance plan" of giving him 64-80 ounces of beer a day could ever be considered alcohol abuse; insisting that last week's domestic dispute, which was described in the police report as her boyfriend yelling and throwing things at her, was really her yelling and screaming to him about how mad she was at ME; and, especially, that her boyfriend had not imbibed a drop of alcohol since going to jail last October, in spite of common sense and ample evidence.
- She refused to accept a condition that another incident of her boyfriend drinking or even getting nabbed for drunk driving would automatically result in him being tossed out of her house, arguing that alcoholics never truly beat their disease, and he could be forgiven for an isolated slip-up.

And then the lawyers chewed up the last 10 minutes of our time discussing who would be paying the other lawyer in the room, the Guardian Ad Litem, and then we were dismissed. The case is now left twisting in the wind for at least several more weeks while the judge takes her sweet time writing up a decision. So all the sound and fury signifies nothing, at least not yet.

Meanwhile, things are in typical SNAFU mode. I am hanging around Maine for two more days (possibly longer if I get held up by Hurricane Irene), and was hoping to spend most of it with my kids. I had previously arranged to get them during the day on Saturday, and then emailed my ex four days ago to see about having them Friday night as well. When she didn't respond, I had no choice but to call her at home two hours after the trial ended. She of course barked at me that I can't just drop a last-minute request on her. I told her that I had informed her days earlier, but she snarled that I know she doesn't check her email much, so, no, I couldn't have the kids Friday night. It's just one more example of how she has no concern at all about what's good for the kids, as they haven't seen me in three weeks.

So that's the way it is. More to come.

54,600 Miles, ready for takeoff

It had to happen sooner or later...a blog entry from the airport. I thus haven't accrued any additional miles, and won't until my plane departs in 90 minutes. Tomorrow is the big day--the court hearing. Nearly nine months after filing my "expedited" motion to modify our divorce judgment, D-Day is finally here. As expected (see previous entry) the Guardian Ad Litem (GAL, for short) concluded that my ex is wacky and delusional, but shouldn't lose the kids because: 1) they are extremely attached to her, and 2) I don't live in the same community where they allegedly have a support network.

Now I will admit that my kids are attached to their mother, but they are also attached to me. She did manage to bamboozle the GAL by convincing him that, because she's still nursing our 4-year old daughter, that our little girl simply can't be away from mommy. Of course she just got done spending 15 full days away from mommy and only cried for her one time after hearing her voice on the phone. I am fully convinced that, at this point, the nursing is 110% about the mother, not the child.

As for the second issue, I don't see why my residence matters. Their mother puts the kids in harm's way every day of their lives by letting an unreformed drunk live with them while their other parent (me) has a safe, secure home. The GAL asserted that the kids have a strong support network in their hometown, specifially citing their grandmother. Never mind, of course, that their grandmother was barred from their lives for more than 6 months last year for suggesting that the drunk should go, and that they see her at most once a month, though she lives two miles away. To me, the point is this: one parent puts them in danger and the other does not. Shouldn't they live with the one who keeps them safe?

Well, anyhow, there may be some hope. Call me obsessive, but for the past 1.5 years I have checked up on the drunk boyfriend by scanning the local police log that gets posted online every two weeks. Time after time there was nothing, and I began to think that maybe he actually is serious about staying out of trouble. And then yesterday I took one last-ditch peek at the current report and, Eureka, there it was--a domestic disturbance last Thursday night, the very day that the GAL report arrives. I still don't know all of the details but it seems that my ex and her boyfriend got in a violent screaming match at 6:30 pm (while the kids were home) and a neighbor called the cops. Though they were dismissed with warnings, there is now hard proof of very current bad things going on in her home. I've gotten my hopes up 100 times before, but doesn't this event at this late date portend something positive for me? Shouldn't it?

So will truth and justice prevail? One can only hope so. There will certainly be no shortage of material for the next entry!

Tune in next time for the conclusion to this cliffhanger.

54,600 Miles

The summer has gone by and The Frequent Father was on the move. 1,100 miles to Maine to get my son, 500 miles to Maryland for two weeks with him, 500 miles back to Maine, 1,100 more back to Georgia. Later, 1,100 miles to Maine to corral both kids, 1,100 miles to Georgia for two weeks with them, and one more 2,200 mile round trip to return them and return myself...so that's 7,600 miles in all. Fortunately, there were plenty of good times to go around. Unfortunately, the drama continues to unfold.

Let's start with the fortunate.

For two whole weeks in late June and early July I had my beloved boy with me every day, with nothing to do except hang out with him and enjoy summer. I picked him up from school on his last day of first grade and took him to my parents' house so we could all spend some time together. I took him swimming every day but two, and by the end of the trip he had transformed from being afraid of the water to being able to swim a whole 25 meter lap by himself. We went running at the high school track each day. I had shown him a video of Usain Bolt running the 100 meter dash in 9.58 seconds, so now my boy wants to train to be the world's fastest man. He is very fast for a 7-year old, and can actually run 100 meters in less than 18 seconds, so he's halfway to his goal!

We also did lots of DC tourist stuff--I took him to the Smithsonian, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and even Mount Vernon. He loves presidential trivia, so Mount Vernon was a great experience for him. The only bad part about the trip is that I had to return him on July 3, so I didn't get to spend Independence Day with him. I spent that day traveling back to Atlanta and preparing to start my new job on July 5. The job has been underwhelming so far, but the paycheck is a wonderful elixir, as is not having to stress out about my work situation for a while. The job is only a contract position, though, so I am still seeking a better opportunity.

The real fun came in Round 2, when I went to work on Friday, flew up to Maine after work, arrived at midnight, hit my favorite late night restaurant in Portland, slept in the rental car, picked up both kids at 5am, and caught the 7am flight to Atlanta. The next two weeks were jam packed. On weekdays when I was at work, my son went to "superhero camp" at the YMCA, and my daughter and stepdaughter stayed home and had "princess camp" while my wife worked in the next room. On weekend days we went swimming, had playdates with their many step-relatives, threw a birthday party for my daughter (she's 4 now) and even took a trip to Six Flags. The three kids (my 2 + stepdaughter) all did mostly well--we stayed 11 hours! It was an exhausting but phenomenal experience to operate like a family for an extended period of time.

But all was not perfect. My son continues to have a number of behavioral issues that I simply can't figure out how to overcome. I feel helpless, as his mother has refused to do anything to correct these problems, suggested that he only has them when he's with me, and concluded that I must not be a good parent if I can't manage my own child. After much wrangling she finally did agree to take him to a counselor, so he hopefully will get some direction. I hate to be cynical but I suspect that she only agreed to this because of the threat of the court case.

Ah, yes, the court case. In nine days I finally get my day in court. The guardian is set to deliver his long delayed report tomorrow, and I'm on pins and needles. On the one hand I am dying to see what he actually says about my ex's inexplicable behavior, to see just how outlandish it seems to an independent expert. On the other hand I fear the report, as I'm 98% certain that he will ultimately conclude that she's wacky and delusional, but that she hasn't done enough to merit losing custody.

Either way, the whole nasty business will be done soon, and I'll figure out how to proceed. In the meantime I have been a ball of stress and uncertainty. One day I swear I'll never set foot in Maine again (I told my wife that I'd rather have my manhood hacked off with a meat cleaver than move back there), and the next I'll seriously ponder applying for a job there. One hour I am frolicking in the swimming pool with my stepdaughter, and the next I am sitting on the couch with my heart aching after my son tells me that he's sad that I couldn't come to his karate belt test. I know that the hearing next week won't put the situation 100% right, but at least it will be done, the new rules will be written, and I can make the necessary decisions about my life and career based on them. I am not holding out hope that my days as the Frequent Father are coming to an end, but I'm not giving up either.

47,000 Miles

Summer vacation is upon us, and I, The Frequent Father, am preparing for what will hopefully be the last summer spent under the dreadful divorce agreement that I signed two years ago. As of now, I get two 14-day blocks with my son (age 7) and one 14-day block with my daughter (age 3.75). I don't get two blocks with her until she's five.

Believe it or not, this was the best compromise I could get out of my ex when we divorced, and I signed it so our marriage could be over and we could avoid a long, messy trial. Her opening offer was that I couldn't even have my daughter with me overnight AT ALL until she turned five, as she was still nursing (and still is at nearly four) and there would be "significant emotional damage" to her if she were away from her mommy for even one night. Don't get me wrong--I am an advocate for the health benefits from nursing beyond infancy, but past a certain point (three years?) it becomes more about the mother than the child.

Anyhow, I'll be spending the next two weeks with my son at my parents' house in Maryland, as it turns out that I have exactly two weeks between the end of his school year and the starting date of my job. Yes, that's right, I have at long last secured a good paying full-time job with a great company in Atlanta, which should be a good thing. Unfortunately, the more I have consiered the implications of having this job, the more uneasy I get.

One the one hand, I will be finally making a good salary for the first time in years, will be able to pay off my credit card debt, and will be able to save money to provide for my kids' futures. On the other hand, I need to be in an office in Atlanta five days a week and can't easily get away to see my kids, and that has made me feel rather depressed. But I've already tried the alternative, taking a crappy job in Maine just to live near them, and that didn't work for me. Even though I was there, I still only saw them 4-5 days each month, and felt like I was trapped in someone else's life for the balance of my days.

So, to sum up, I was miserable living near my kids because my job sucked and I had no life, and I'm miserable where I am with a good job and good life because I'm far from them. My wife, sage that she is, has correctly concluded that the only thing that will truly make me happy is to get my kids full-time. Failing that, I'm going to have to learn to live with the situation, whatever it may be.

And so here's what it is: my wife and stepdaughter came up to Maine for a long (four day) weekend in early June. We rented a two-bedroom unit in a dumpy old motel on the beach and had a fabulous time, but it sort of drove home the fact that, once my job starts, I won't be able to randomly do things like that any longer. The guardian ad litem continues his work, and he actually met up with the whole gang and got to see my kids interact with Daddy's new family, which was undoubtedly positive. I'm leaving for Maine in two days to see both kids, then bring my son to Maryland for the last two weeks I'll have before I start my job. It will be fun, but likely bittersweet, as I won't have my daughter (or my wife or stepdaughter), and it will probably be the last time I ever get to spend two uninterrupted weeks with my beloved child.

Last but not least, is the whole legal morass. The trial has been pushed back until late August so the guardian can finish his work. While I'm glad that he's doing thorough job, the "expedited hearing" I requested last December is going to take nearly nine months to occur. During that time my children have been living in the presence of an unreformed drunk and a delusional mother who, at least publicly, doesn't seem to grasp the danger. I called last night to talk to the kids, and I heard the bum in the background yelling at someone at the top of his voice. I have no ideas what the circumstances were, but I know that my heart sank. I'm still not sure what's going to come of this legal action, but I can't let it ruin my summer. I need to just try to enjoy my time with my kids as much as possible and have faith that everything else will fall into place somehow.

44,800 Miles

I just finished the Boston Marathon during the Patriot's Day holiday, but didn't even wear running shoes. No, my version involved flying from Atlanta to Boston, renting a car, driving to Maine, meeting with the court appointed guardian ad litem, picking up my kids, driving back to Boston, flying back to Atlanta for the week, flying them back to Boston, renting another car, driving them back to Maine, dropping them at their ungrateful mother's house, driving back to Boston, and flying back to Atlanta. I'm not sure what the world record is for frequent fathering, but I've got to at least be sneaking up on it.

The good news? The week in Atlanta with both of my kids made all of the rigamarole worth it. It was the first time that my daughter had come down here, and I finally, at long last, had everyone I love in the same place at the same time. My kids got to feel like they were part of my family and my life, and not just hear about it. Every day was an adventure, full of playdates, sleepovers, family celebrations, fun outings, and all around good times. My son played superheroes with his stepcousin, and my daughter played dress up with her new sister (they don't even say stepsister!) and several girl cousins. We all went to a Braves game together, and when I say all, I mean all--our group was 14 people, of which 8 were kids! It was a beautiful experience that I hope will alter their lives forever.

You see, at home, they don't get any of that. Their mother has essentially no friends, and she's content like that. Other than school and daycare, they never get together with other children or other families. They never go to baseball games or movies or even dinner. Their mother is a hermit and she wants to raise them to be hermits too, but they obviously crave what I offered them last week, as they both were smiling from morning to bedtime every day. I am hopeful that, now that they've seen the life they could have if they were with me, someday they will ask to be part of it.

I realize that courts don't let kids choose where to live, parent-wise, until they are much older than my kids are, but I have to believe that their excitement at being in Atlanta will shine through when they speak with the guardian. Oh yes, he will be meeting with them one on one, and he's been doing this a long time, so he'll know how to get them to talk about things. I don't know if he'll get them to describe the drinking habits of their supposed stepfather, but my daughter has said more than once that he drinks beer, so one never knows.

In the bigger picture, we are now definitely on course for a trial. The guardian has already met with me alone, and with the kids and me (at McDonald's, right before leaving for Boston). He's going to meet with my ex, with her and the kids together, with each kid separately, with my son's teacher and the daycare director, and, most of all, the bum himself. I have to imagine that a seasoned family attorney with more than 10 years' experience as a guardian ad litem will be able to peg the guy on sight. We'll see. Once the guardian renders his report in a next few weeks, his findings will set the stage for a trial--then the real fireworks begin.

In the meantime, my life is as scrambled as ever. I have been out of work for three months, but have four job interviews in the next 10 days. I'm trying to be positive about it, but it's getting harder. I don't know how much time I'll get with my kids this summer, as the divorce agreement is likely to change after the trial...but I don't even know if the trial will happen before the summer. Even if I do get more time granted with them, I don't even know if I can use it, since I'll (hopefully) be working full-time. And then there's the trial itself. Dare I even dream about this whole mess ending in me getting custody of the kids and being able to whisk them away from Maine forever? Do I even really want that for them?

The amazing thing is that, in spite of all of these crushing concerns, I am actually beginning to overcome my depression and feel like I am returning to living a full and meaningful life. I left Maine for good three months ago, but have still gotten to spend substantial quality time with my children in places where I can be myself and they can have access to everything I want to give them. I know that I won't be able to do this forever--I'll either get a job or burn through my savings account--but it's certainly put me in a far better place. In a couple of years, even if they are still living far from me, they'll be able to travel by themselves to where I am. Who knows, maybe when they're grown up they'll pay the ultimate compliment by choosing to live with their father. I can dream...

40,400 Miles

Three more months and nearly 12,000 miles later, I am sitting here in Georgia, preparing myself to not see my son on his seventh birthday. Yes, he turns 7 today, and this is the first time that I won't get to see either of my kids on their birthdays. I didn't send anything in the mail because I fear that his mother would throw it in the trash, and I have no expectation that she will answer the phone when I call tonight to wish him happy birthday. And so, life as the Frequent Father has resumed.

My decision to leave Maine came over winter break, when I spent a week at the beach in Florida with my wife, stepdaughter, and their extended family. Yes, I missed my kids, but I was too busy enjoying life again to dwell on that fact. I reminded myself that, even if I were back in Maine, I still wouldn't be with them, and I would probably be all alone. For the first time I felt like I had a new family and that there could be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Our original plan was to come back to Atlanta from Florida, pack up, and move everyone to Maine for good. I had already quashed that plan, as I told my wife that I hated my job so much that I needed to find something else if I was going to stay up there. Not surprisingly, nothing came of my desperate attempts to find anything better, and I got nothing but pessimism from people. By late January I had had enough. I quit my job, broke my lease (in spite of an empty threat of a lawsuit and pathetic attempts to hang criminal charges on me from my landlord), packed my belongings into my ex-wife's 1996 Corolla (she got the good car in the divorce), and hit the road.

I was sad to be leaving again, this time for good, but it felt different this time. I felt like I had built up a stronger bond with my kids through one more year of being near them. I felt like I truly had given it my all in Maine, and that it simply wasn't possible for me to have a good life there. Most of all, I felt like I could finally live with myself if I didn't see my children for more than a month. We'd figure out ways to love and stay attached to each other.

One thing missing this time is Skype. My ex broke the computer that I gave to her last year and claims that she hasn't got the money to replace it, which is funny, because she has enough money to hire a lawyer to fight me over her boyfriend's presence, not to mention that she can afford to buy him cigarettes and alcohol. Yes, I said alcohol--he is quite obviously still drinking. her own brother called me a couple of weeks ago to report that he actually witnessed the guy in the most stereotypical lush pose ever--guzzling wine from a 1.5 liter bottle then whipping it behind his back when he saw that he was being watched and pretending that nothing was amiss.

There have been some additional minor bumps:
- I sent my kids handmade Valentines last month but they told me they never came (nor did those from my parents or grandmother). My ex insists that they did come and that the kids must be lying.
- My ex "forgot" to tell me that my son was supposed to be in a play at Sunday School last weekend.
- A beer commercial came on the TV and my 3.5 year old daughter exclaimed, "That's beer!" I asked her how she knew that and she said that her alleged stepfather drinks it. Swell.

Anyhow, back to Skype, it is hard to not get to see their faces, and the phone can be a challenge at this age, especially for my daughter. Sometimes she won't talk at all. Other times she'll talk for five seconds and run off, or sing me a song and say "bye, Daddy." In spite of this, I still hear the love in their voices, and know that our bond is cemented, no matter what.

Another big change is that I no longer have any qualms about the potential of having to fight for custody. This conclusion came a bit from my ex's continued lying and enabling of her boyfriend, but more from the fact that my daughter has broken out of her iron-clad attachment to Mommy. I took the kids for 9 days during their February vacation--flying up to Maine to get them, spending a week in Maryland with my family, then returning them to Maine and flying back to Georgia (the miles are certainly piling up). During this time, my daughter was perfectly happy and fine, never asked for her mommy, refused to even talk to her on the phone, and even told me that she wanted to stay at Grandma's house when I told her it was time to go. My parents and I went up to Maine again last weekend to celebrate my son's birthday, and the kids didn't want us to leave. My son even told me that he wants to live in Georgia someday (hmm....)

Which brings me back to the legal proceedings. My trip to Maine in February included a mediation session with my ex and our lawyers. During this grueling and expensive session, I got her to agree to a bunch of constraints on her boyfriend's access to the kids, and squeezed more summer vacation time out of her as well. I wasn't exactly happy to be allowing him to stay, but at least I put some clamps on him, so I was satisfied. Well, my satisfaction lasted all of two days, when the aforementioned incident with my ex's brother came to my attention. She was in mediation one day, insisting that her boyfriend was sober and posed no threat to the kids, and the next he was guzzling Thunderbird in the garage. I was obviously irate.

I thus made the decision to not sign the mediated agreement, so it looks like we're headed for a trial after all. I don't know what will happen, but I do know that I cannot trust my ex at all. The court is going to have to decide what to do about her boyfriend and, possibly, about the kids. I don't know that I will get them, but one never knows.

As for me, I haven't found a job yet, but I've had several promising interviews, and I at least feel like there may be good news soon. More importantly, I am getting back to living again, and making it possible for me to be a good father to my children for many years to come. I know they can sense it, and that takes away some of the sting of living so far from them.