100,000 Miles: every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

We have reached the end of the road. After nearly five years and precisely 100,000 miles, my days as the Frequent Father are done. My beloved children are now living with me, in my home, 500 miles away from their mother's little insane asylum. One might think that this would be the best news imaginable, that I finally got what I wanted, that I've reached my desired destination. But it turns out that there was another road laying beyond the end of the previous road, and the new road is steeper and more treacherous than I could have imagined.

It all happened on September 11, thirteen years to the day that shattered so many worlds and reshaped my own. I was awoken at 5:00 by my wife, who was six months pregnant and complaining of acute abdominal pain. We feared she may be going into (very) premature labor, so I got dressed and spirited her to the ER. It turned out to be a minor issue resulting from her fibroids, and all was OK. We got home by 9:00 AM and I was able to get some work done, but had to leave at 10:30 for an appointment. Soon after I left the house my wife, still woozy from not sleeping, slipped on our front walk and hit her head on the sidewalk. Fortunately she was OK and didn't have to go back to the ER, but the day was certainly not going well.

Around noontime I was having lunch with a business associate when my phone rang. The caller ID said it was my wife and, given the sort of day she'd been having, I excused myself to answer the phone and prepared for more bad news. It was quite the opposite: my attorney had received the judge's decision, and the children were awarded to me, effective immediately. And...BOOM...that was the moment when everything changed forever. I raced home after lunch, booked a flight to Boston and a rental car, and readied to leave for Maine early the next morning to retrieve my children. Everything was on track.

Unfortunately--and predictably--my ex-wife was not about to take this lying down. She obviously received the news around the same time and thus had several hours of a head start on breaking the news to the children. I had made a commitment to not say anything to the kids during the court case, as I didn't want them to be anxious about it, and their mother was certainly not ever going to give them the impression that they might have to move away, so they were blindsided. I will never know exactly what she said to them, but it's clear that she communicated at least the following: 1) Daddy lied to the judge, 2) Daddy is stealing you away from Mommy, and 3) Mommy is going to get you back very soon.

I got a taste of all of this well-poisoning that evening. I called my ex-wife's house to talk to her about the pickup arrangements the next day. I intended to keep everything perfectly civil and focus on the business at hand, but that was not to be. Instead my son answered the phone and he refused to give it to his mother. He then unleashed a stream of anger and hate at me, full of words and emotions that should never come out of the mouth of a 10-year old. He hung up on me. I called two more times, with the same result. My elation at the news instantly crumbled into guilt. While I knew that I was doing the right thing by getting my kids out of a toxic environment, I realized at that moment just how difficult this change would be for everyone.

The next day was fraught with fear and stupidity. My ex would not answer her phone, and I was unable to confirm with her exactly how and when the exchange would occur. I had to have my attorney communicate with her attorney and, even then, it wasn't clear how things would go. I worried about a violent scene, so I visited the police department when I got to town to explain the situation to them. An officer told me that he was sympathetic, but that he couldn't show up to escort the kids out--the best he could do was to wait around the corner in case of trouble, which he was kind enough to do.

The scene was set. I drove up to the house at 2:00 PM on a Friday afternoon. The kids had not been sent to school that day, so their mother had all day to get them riled up with sadness and hatred. My attorney pulled up 100 feet behind me, close enough to the corner that she could see the police officer and signal him if there was any trouble. The kids' bags were sitting on the sidewalk, but there was nobody in sight, and the shades in the house were pulled shut. I didn't quite know what to do. I then caught a glimpse of my beloved children hiding behind a bush and wasn't sure what to make of it. Were they hoping that I wouldn't see them and would drive away without them? Did their mother put them up to this? Were they just being silly?

I got out of the car and, making sure to not set foot on the property, I called out to them. My daughter peeked out her head and gave a little smile. She trudged over to the car and got in without any objection. My son remained behind the bush and refused to come out. I told him that he needed to come with me, but that he could take a minute if he needed it. After 10 minutes of waiting I was ready to go bang on the door but he eventually came out on his own and got in the car. He remained very angry and wouldn't talk at all during the ride to Boston. My daughter, meanwhile, was as sunny and happy as could be. I had always figured that, if this day ever came, she would be the one who would be crying and screaming. It was a fitting omen for just how unpredictable things have been since that day.

*    *    *

We are now seven weeks into our new reality. The fact that it has taken me this long to have the time and energy to sit down and write about it is a strong indicator of just how difficult the transition has been. The fact that the judge's order came down a week into the school year was a major contributor to the chaos. I had assumed all along that the decision would be made before Labor Day, so the kids could at least have a fresh start to the school year. Instead, they had the last two weeks of August and the first two weeks of September to start their Fall activities in Maine and start getting into the flow of the school year. And then, suddenly, they were ripped away from their lives and given two days to prepare to start from zero. It was totally unfair to them, and I will always be upset at the judge for dragging his feet for nearly a month before making a decision.

So the kids did start school here in Virginia on the following Monday, and I moved quickly to get my son on a football team and my daughter in a dance class. They needed to have at least some semblance of continuity to ease the transition, and those activities have definitely kept them occupied. Everything else has not been so easy. My son has continued to express anger at being here, though his resistance has waned in the past couple of weeks. His confusion is being fueled by his mother, who used her phone calls in the first few days to reiterate the three lies she told him before letting him go. This, of course, further upset him and led to oppositional behavior from him that I had never before experienced.

The bigger issue with my son is the fact that he is 10 years old, has Asperger's Syndrome, and has never received any support or counseling to help him with his special needs, as his mother is opposed to the mental health profession. Not a day has gone by since he's been here that he didn't have at least one angry--if not violent--outburst directed at me, my wife, my daughter, my stepsister, or another neighborhood kid. The outbursts are almost never justified: they are typically over being told to eat something, over someone not sharing with him, or over some perceived "unfairness" that is usually unfounded. I don't blame him for this, as he was made this way, but I am deeply concerned that it is too late to help him, as his bad habits and fatalism have been encouraged for so long. More troubling is that, like his mother, he is so far incapable of admitting that he has made a mistake or a bad decision. There have been times when multiple kids saw him do something wrong and, instead of admitting it, he claimed that they were all lying. We are trying to get extra services for him to help with his Asperger's issues, but that's not likely to begin for another month or two.

The end result is that the entire household has become captive to my son's explosiveness. My wife and I are always on edge with him. My daughter, who is used to his behaviors, often goes silent and withdraws. This behavior concerns me a great deal, as I behaved the same way as a child when my older brother went off the handle (he was a lot like my son is now). My stepdaughter, who had been an only child for nine years, had gotten resentful and moody, and keeps saying that nobody ever gives her any attention--I don't blame her for feeling that way. We started working with a family counselor soon after my kids arrived, but it will obviously take time for those efforts to bear fruit.

Meanwhile, my wife isn't getting any less pregnant, and the baby will be born in less than five weeks. We are already struggling to keep up with the practical and emotional aspects of having three kids in the house, and I am flipping out over the prospects of adding a newborn baby to this already volatile mix. We have figured out that we simply cannot have both of us working full-time with four kids, but we also can't afford to lose either person's income. I am actively looking for a higher-paying job, and will hopefully find one before my wife would have to go back to work in March, but there is no guarantee of this happening.

In brief, life is rough for everyone in our home these days. I try to comfort myself with the thought that, however things may be here, at least my children's lives are not endangered by living with a raging alcoholic stepfather and a delusional mother.

Things in Maine have actually gotten even worse since my kids left. My ex-mother-in-law's house caught on fire under mysterious circumstances a couple of weeks ago, and I strongly suspect that my ex-wife and her husband orchestrated the fire with the hope of collecting on an insurance settlement. I am thus very happy that my kids aren't living in that environment, but they aren't totally free of it. My ex is actually here in Virginia this weekend (she's a long distance parent now!) and I'm sure she is filling their heads with terrible things. Worse, the kids will be traveling to Maine for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, giving her (and her drunk husband) plenty of time to do their damage. It is terrible for me to say this, but I think the best thing that could happen for my kids would be for their mother to be convicted of arson and insurance fraud and go to jail for a while. They would be free of her influence, and they would learn an important lesson about the consequences of bad behavior.

*    *    *

 

The Frequent Father is dead. There will be no more nightly phone calls behind the Iron Curtain. There will be no more sleepless nights wondering what the screaming in the background of my phone call was about. There will be no more expensive travel itineraries booked for the sole purpose of watching my children grow up. There will be no more overnight bus rides, nights spent sleeping in rental cars, or long winter days holed up at the Howard Johnson's. There will be no more stares from people wondering why I lugging a car seat through the airport with no child in tow. If all goes as planned, I will never again set foot in the State of Maine. I know the scenery is beautiful and the lobster is delicious, but I do not need to be reminded of all of the years of pain and sadness that I endured in that place. I think I'll vacation elsewhere from now on.

 

Now I'm just plain Daddy, having to do all of the things that any other parent has to do every day to raise children. It isn't exactly normal, as I now have to deal with the long distance parent on the other end of the phone. But, assuming she doesn't go to jail, I have to believe that she will eventually accept reality and move here. When I first met her, she lived 15 minutes away from where I now live, so it's not exactly foreign territory, and she would have no trouble finding a good job here--that's something I never could do in Maine.

 

Seven weeks into this new reality it is very hard to imagine things ever settling down. But I feel a lot better knowing that we've all survived the hardest part. The initial shock has worn off, and each passing day makes things a little less strange for everyone. I am not sure if I will continue to write about my parenting experiences from here on out, as they really aren't going to be that much different from anyone else's. It has been a long journey to this point, and I am frankly amazed to have actually gotten to this point in one piece. The road ahead will not be easy, but it will be different. That alone is worth celebrating.

 

Long live The Frequent Father.

99,000 Miles, headlights pointed at the dawn

It is astounding to me that I haven't posted anything here for more than five months.  I guess I have been afraid to sit down and confront my deepest thoughts and emotions, and have contented myself to bury them under a veneer of moodiness and depression.  I have avoiding writing because I was fully expecting the next entry I wrote to be the last entry on this blog. The court case was supposed to be done in April. In May. In June. In July. In August.  And still...

It would take several entries to recount all that has happened in the intervening months.  I spent two long weekends in Maine, one in late March for my son's 10th birthday, and one in late May for my daughter's dance recital and my son's debut as a starting pitcher in Little League.  I then got the kids in late June and had them with me for most of the summer--I only returned them to Maine eight days ago.  There were many great times had, and a summer full of angst about what would happen, when it might happen, and what I would even say to my kids to explain things. 

Alas, that is a problem I've still yet to have to face.

The custody trial is over, it happened six days ago.  It was the farce I expected.  I went first and told my story.  My ex-wife then took the stand and claimed that, well, she just didn't understand what alcohol abuse was, had no idea that alcoholics lie and deceive people about their drinking, and now recognizes that she was naïve and has learned her lesson.  She went on to say with a straight face that her husband has now been totally sober for eight months, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.

The guardian ad litem (GAL) took the stand and presented his report, which stated very clearly that the drunk guy was still drinking, that my ex wasn't going to keep him away from the kids, and that the kids should come live with me.  He added that, in 20 years as a GAL, he had never felt so strongly about his recommendation.

Then the drunk stepfather actually took the stand.  He looked lobotomized, or at least heavily sedated.  His hands shook during his testimony.  He was incoherent and kept forgetting what he was saying.  His behavior screamed DRY DRUNK. Finally, my ex-wife's brother took the stand--he is sick about what his sister is doing to my kids, and he offered his services.  He is a drug addict with a checkered past, but he was very convincing in presenting his accounts of the alcohol abuse in her house and her refusal to acknowledge the danger.

And then, it was 3:30 PM and both sides rested.  And the judge said that he wasn't going to render a decision and that he was leaving for a two-week vacation in two days and didn't guarantee that he'd have a decision before he left.  The case was specifically added to the August docket as a back-to-school case that needed to be decided before Labor Day.  It was heard on August 18.  He did not rule before he left for vacation.  If he lets it wait until he returns, school will have started and my kids will return to their school in Maine.  The arrogance and laziness of this man is simply shocking.  How can he just leave us all hanging like this when he knows very well what is at stake?

Well, my question doesn't matter, because that is exactly what is happening.  The judge is on vacation, and won't return until after Labor Day.  I've been told that it's possible he will send in his decision while he's away, but he's given no indication of this.  I have literally been in shock for the past week about this turn of events.  I feel completely confused and empty, and have been scarcely able to go to work, eat a decent meal, or sleep at night since returning from Maine.  There isn't even any guarantee that he will render his decision when he returns.  My attorney has told me that she has another case with the same judge that has been hanging on for more than a month without a decision.  I do not understand how a legal system can exist that allows a judge to avoid doing his job with no repercussions.

So now I am sitting here alone with my thoughts on a Sunday afternoon.  My kids are back in Maine.  My stepdaughter is in Atlanta for two weeks with her father, though he's been an useless as ever and she has been bouncing around amongst other family members.  My wife is out shopping for school clothes, leaving me in complete isolation and feeling desperate and hopeless.  I have been having terrible headaches and stomach problems all day, and feel like just going back to sleep, because consciousness is the worst possible thing for me at this stage.

I am burned out with my job, and seriously contemplating leaving it, either to find something that pays more so my wife can quit or just up and leaving it to have time to be with my kids if and when they come here for good.  I didn't mention that we are expecting a baby in December, which would mean four kids in the house, including an infant.  There is no way we can both go on with full-time jobs like we have now, so something is going to have to give.  I am not exaggerating a bit when I say that I am at my breaking point.  I have used up all my strength just to get this far, and don't feel like I have anything else in reserve for the future.  And this is all assuming that the judge rules in my favor and I get my kids.

And if I don't...well, I'm trying not to think about that, but I already know the answer.  We will have no choice but to give up our life in Virginia, such as it is, and go back to Maine.  I have the promise of a steady stream of consulting work from a colleague, so I wouldn't have to be in an office all day, and could be a stay-at-home dad with the new baby and my wife can keep her job, as it's a telecommuting situation.  With the housing cost difference, we could actually get by up there financially.  But I doubt we'd get by in other regards.  We both hate it there--we hate the people, the culture, the weather, the lifestyle, you name it.  The only thing there is my two wonderful children, but I feel that would take precedence over everything else.  I've been away from them for five years, and I am done with this.  No more.

But I have to assume that, in spite of the delay, this ultimately will fall in my direction.  The evidence and the GAL's report are squarely on my side.  To believe my ex-wife requires believing in a whole bunch of fairy tales and coincidences.  My attorney even asked my ex if she knew what Occam's Razor was--she didn't, so it was explained that it is a philosophical principle that, in the absence of a known answer, the simplest explanation should be assumed.  In this case, the simplest explanation for all of the incidents and accidents (and hints and allegations) in my ex-wife's home is the presence of a raging alcoholic.  I think that sums it up very well.

So that's where things stand right now.  My kids are 500 miles away and, as far as they know, they will be going back to their familiar school routine in nine days.  I have every reason to believe that they will be coming here to live very soon, but I have no idea when "very soon" may actually occur.  And when that day does come, I have no idea what I'm going to say to them, nor do I have any faith that I will be able to provide what they need, given my fragile emotional and psychological state.

It is dark right now, so dark that I have a hard time even imagining the dawn coming over the horizon.  But all reason and rationality suggest that the sun will be rising at any moment.  I somehow need to pull myself together before the dawn comes, if it comes.

88,000 Miles

This summer put a lot of miles on the frequentfatherometer, which I'll get to.  I only got five weeks this year, not by choice, but due to my ex-wife's unique combination of dishonesty and inflexibility.  The divorce judgment grants me visitation "beginning one week after the end of the school year and ending on the first Saturday in August."  Last year that was six weeks.  I wasn't so lucky this year.

This year, the school calendar showed that school would end on a Wednesday in June, so I asked if I could get them on the following Sunday, but my ex refused, saying "that's not a week...you can wait until the following Wednesday."  Of course she knows that I can't come to get them in the middle of the week, so I made plans to get them 10 days later, on the ensuing Saturday.  Well imagine my surprise when, three weeks before the school year ends, my son tells me on the phone that school would be ending two days early, on a Monday, as there were two fewer snow days than expected (global warming again?)  I then asked my ex if I could get them on the following Sunday, since that was six days after school ended, and she breezily refused, saying I could come on Monday.  Well, I suppose I could have done that, but I am new at my job and can't just blow off days, so I gritted my teeth and kept to the plan.

So five weeks it was, but being the Frequent Father, I had to pack everything into that amount of time.  The rundown:
Fly to Maine to get kids
Fly to Atlanta for July 4th week with my wife's family, gamely attempt to work while a hired babysitter watches six kids upstairs.
Drive back to Virginia, put the kids in day camp for three weeks, try to work, but leave early every day so as to not miss out on any fun with the kids.  Go swimming nearly every night, and take lots of fun field trips on weekends.
Fly to Orlando for a week at Disney World, the first time my kids have been there, and hopefully fill them with a desire to see the real world, the one beyond their mother's bubble.
Fly back to Maine, arriving at their mother's house at midnight, because she didn't want to pick them up at the airport, citing her fear of driving at night.
Take the first flight home in the morning after three hours of sleep, and feel jet-lagged in spite of never leaving Eastern Daylight Time.

And then...what?  My credit card bill just came, with the tab for all of this fun now coming due.  I consider it the price of getting on with my life.  If I had stayed in Maine, I'd be making half (or less) of what I'm making in Virginia.  I have calculated that the Frequent Father lifestyle costs roughly one-third of the difference, leaving me the rest to have a nice home for my kids--as opposed to the two-room divorce apartment I had in Maine--and to save for their future.  The financial side is under control.

It's everything else that has me up early in the morning to spill more virtual ink.  I worry about the world of insulation and isolation that my ex has constructed around my children, a world in which they go to third-world schools that can't give them what they need, never go more than five miles from home, never have playdates, never have excitement, and never get to see anything new.  I worry about my ex's psychotic quest to breastfeed my daughter until she hits puberty (made far worse by the fact that she obviously pumped every day over the past five weeks to keep the flow going...that's just unfathomable).  Most of all, I worry about the stinking drunk SOB who still lives with them, and what he's going to do someday when he's in a bad mood.

As for me, the odometer keeps rising, but I'm not sure if I'm getting anywhere.  On paper, I should be content.  Four years ago I was stuck in a backward small town with a dead-end career, few friends, and a bad marriage to a controlling tyrant.  Now I am living in a big city, with a great job, a nice home, a bright future, and married to my long-lost love.  Two and a half years ago, in the depths of my depression, I made a list of things I want to change in my life before turning 40.  Well, I turn 40 this coming weekend, and it turns out that I've accomplished most of those changes.  But so long as my kids live 500 miles away under the iron fist of their demented mother, I'll always struggle to move forward.  No matter how many miles I travel in the right direction, this way of life will always cause me to spin my wheels.

Nevertheless, I guess another year of Frequent Father adventures awaits.  As with each year before, I will hope and pray that this is the last year of living this way, that next year my kids will be unpacking their suitcases and decorating their rooms in Daddy's house, getting ready for the school year.  I know it's not healthy to have such thoughts, but I can't help it.  Well, there's no point to it anyhow, so all I can do is prepare myself for the long year and the thousands of miles ahead.

81,000 Miles

I'm back from another long weekend in Maine, one that turned out exactly like I thought it would in my last post when I gave a rough sketch of my next four visits to Maine.  It was February.  It was very cold and windy.  We stayed in the Howard Johnson's in South Portland, which due to its age, one-star rating and the season, cost just $53 per night, including breakfast.  We spent a lot of time in the indoor pool there, and my daughter finally decided that the floaty vest would, in fact, keep her afloat, so she didn't cling to me all the time.  I tried not to spend too much money, but opened up the wallet to go snow tubing one night, to the movies one afternoon, and out to a couple of better-than-fast-food dinners.

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.

80,000 Miles

I have sat down at my computer so many times over the past four months with the intention of writing my next blog post but it has (quite obviously) never happened.  In the meantime there was a long weekend in Maine, Thanksgiving in Atlanta, and New Years' in Virginia, totalling 6,000 FFMs, an awful lot of money spent, and a treasure trove of good times and sweet memories. 

Now that I am entering the fourth year of being a non-custodial parent I am finally starting to pick up on the rhythms of life that the visitation schedule forces upon me.  The summer is great, of course, with the kids basically living with me for an extended period.  The fall is not too bad, as the memories of the summer are still fresh, and the gap between longer visits is relatively short.  But, come January, with winter weather all around and the next long visitation nearly six months away, the mood drops instantly.

From now until school gets out in late June, I will have four weekend visits to Maine, each of which has taken on its own tradition.  February will be a long weekend for Presidents' Day spent mostly at the indoor pool at the Howard Johnson's.  March is the shared birthday weekend for my son and my wife, and we will go to the Japanese hibachi place for dinner and have a fun getaway party--this time at an indoor waterpark in New Hampshire.  Late April is a springtime weekend, with a lot of time spent at playgrounds.  Early June is a beach weekend spent at the Ocean House in Old Orchard Beach and always involving going to the rides at Palace Playland.

In between those good times are gaps of four to six weeks when I become just a voice at the other end of the phone to my kids.  I have maintained my commitment to my son to call every single night.  My ex-wife has made it clear that she doesn't like that I call every single night--she sent me an email saying that it takes away from her "fun time" with the kids, and she has flat out told the kids that she wishes I didn't call so much.  It's just more evidence of her selfishness, her lack of understanding of my connection to our kids, and her absolute disregard for how badmouthing me might affect the kids.

While the distance and separation aren't quite as hard in year 4 as in years 1, 2, or 3, there are times that it feels overwhelming, particularly when my kids are having a hard time and I can't be there for them.  My son has had ongoing conflicts with a couple of kids at his aftercare, which is basically a function of his Asperger's-related inability to regulate his emotions and impulses.  I have pushed for three years to have him see a counselor who can work with him, but my ex hasn't agreed.  I have been working through his school to try to get them to provide him with such services but they have used every excuse and dodge known to man to avoid this responsibility.  Last week, I finally got the school to consent to set him up with a counselor from a local nonprofit social services agency, but his mother is again resisting.  She apparently thinks (incorrectly) that this agency only works with juvenile delinquents and she (incorrectly) fears that he is going to be taken out of school and sent to some sort of detention center.

I will still never understand what exactly goes on in her head that tells her that our son's obvious emotional issues do not exist.  I know she is herself mentally ill, but for godsakes, aren't there parental instincts that take over at some point?  I am confident that I can successfully work with the school and get her (under threat of court action perhaps) to consent to getting our child the help he so clearly needs.

Meanwhile, in Frequent Father land, I have at long last gotten the great job I have been chasing for more than 10 years.  I am now working as a researcher for a major public university, doing really fun work and earning a good salary.  I have still not gotten my arms around the fact that, for the first time since before I married my first wife, I don't have to fret over my career or my professional future.  It is, in a way, a similar feeling to what I experienced after my divorce.  When you spend year after year in an unpleasant situation, you develop both a hard shell and the defensive mechanisms needed to keep the shell intact. 

I have mostly overcome my personal Stockholm Syndrome, thanks in large part to the love and support of my second wife.  We've been married for nearly three years now, but I feel like I was a ghost for most of that time, either physically living away from her or being so preoccupied with my personal and professional demons that I didn't pay much attention to her.  For all of this time I have kept my head down, operating under the creed: "when you're going through hell, keep going."

Well now, I suppose, I am no longer going through hell.  I have crawled my way out of the sewer pipe and am standing in the sunlight on the other end.  I no longer need to look straight ahead and imagine a future that will have to be better than the unpleasant present.  As much as it's possible as a long distance parent, I have reached the other side.  I have a great job, a great marriage, a happy home, a stepdaugher who calls me "Daddy" more often than not, and, yes, two kids who love and need me no matter where I live.  I'll be going to see them in two weeks, and then again and again and again.  Before I know it summer will be here and my kids will be in my home for six weeks, thus beginning another annual cycle.

74,000 Miles, going nowhere fast

The silence has continued, punctuated by a case of vertigo.  Last Tuesday I was eating lunch and felt myself becoming more and more dizzy and nauseous as the meal went on.  I began to suspect food poisoning, and left the office early to hopefully sleep it off.  When I awoke I wasn't nauseous any longer but the dizzyness persisted.  I forced myself to go to a work-related meeting, but I couldn't concentrate and felt more and more out of sorts.  Again, I figured I would sleep it off and all would be well.  On Wednesday morning I forced myself to go to work, but my head was buzzing all morning.  I finally went to the urgent care clinic around lunchtime, where I was swiftly diagnosed with vertigo.  The doctor's instructions were to drink lots of fluids and move as little as possible until I felt better.

For the next two days that's just what I did.  I stayed home, in a quiet house all by myself, as my wife and stepdaughter were away.  I slept a lot.  When I did have to get up I moved very slowly.  And, of course, I had far too much time to think about my job, my life, my kids, and my future.  The more I thought, the worse I felt; the worse I felt, the more I thought, and so on.  I forced myself to go to work on Friday morning just to be out of the house, but I was still too dizzy to be of any use, so I left around noon.  I got home, took a nap and, mercifully, woke up to find that I was no longer dizzy.  And that's when things really took a bad turn. 

In my moment of clarity the silence, loneliness, and isolation, piled on top of my career frustrations, my anger about my situation with my kids, my emptiness at losing my dad, and my general feelings of disappointment with my life, all came crashing down on me.  I sat on the couch in the dark and just felt the weight of my circumstances.  How in the world could I ever put the pieces of my life back together?  Where would I even begin?  I just didn't see any possible way forward for myself.  Though I didn't contemplate ending my life I did find myself wondering how I could go on living.

My wife called to talk to me, but I was too upset and angry to carry on a decent conversation with her, and I lashed out at her attempts to try to offer me any suggestions.  She told me that I should go to the hospital and check into the ER for an evaluation.  I decided to go to sleep and see if one more sunrise would cure my problems.  Sadly, it didn't, and I woke up this morning feeling every bit as freaked out as I did last night.  I finally decided that I need to find out just how bad off I was, so I drove to the local ER.

After waiting more than two hours (what if I had actually been suicidal?) I got a chance to talk to a counselor, who went over my options with me and told me that, if I so desired, I could be admitted to a locked psych ward, but that I would be surrounded by low functioning people, many of whom were psychotic, most of whom had tried to kill themselves in recent days, and all of whom (including me) would be monitored 24-7.  My other options would be a referral to a partial hospitalization program (PHP), which would consist of several consecutive all-day therapy sessions and an appointment with a psychiatrist, or to just ramp up visits with my current therapist and try to get an appointment with a psychiatrist, which could take a month.

I spent the rest of the day in a reverie of sorts, not speaking to or seeing other humans, with the exception of a brief phone call to my kids. Sitting around like this made me increasingly more depressed, but I simply lacked the motivation or self-confidence to do anything else. I have lost faith in my ability to be of any good to anybody, which is what brought me to the ER this morning in the first place. I had decided that I was going to proceed with the PHP.

After more consideration I then came to the conclusion that wallowing in my troubles for seven hours a day for several consecutive days with other miserable--and possibly unstable--people is not what I need.  I'm instead ramping up my therapy sessions and making a new commitment to staying as busy as possible so I can't get stuck in the morass of bad feelings again.  I suppose I've come to grudgingly accept that "fake it till you make it" is the only thing that's going to work for me.

74,000 Miles

My ex-wife had a running joke in her family that dates back to when her oldest brother, who is now 41 years old, procrastinated on a middle school book report and was forced to write a last minute essay about a work of fiction that was so fictional that it didn't even exist.  Amazingly, his act of creative academic malfeasance resulted in him getting an A.  Three years later his younger brother wrote a book report about the same phantom novel and also got an A.  Another three years on, their little sister followed suit with the same results.  The (nonexistent) book in question was called "All is Quiet Now," written by the great (nonexistent) author Estelle Pendleton.

I think of that moment tonight for a variety of reasons:

• It's a funny story that can't help but stick with me
• It's a reminder that she actually did once have a close relationship with her siblings
• It illustrates how far back her ease with telling lies goes
• It really illustrates how much she and her family have always believed themselves to be smarter than those around them and thumbed their collective noses at authority
• The author's first name was the same as their grandmother's, who recently passed away
• It proves that the teachers and schools in their little town have always more than a few books short of a library, both literally and figuratively
• Most of all, in my house, all is very, very quiet now.

It's been 16 days since I took my kids back to Maine.  Though I was sad to drop them off at the end of six great weeks together it somehow didn't feel quite as awful this time as it did every other time before.  In the past, the car ride from the airport back to my ex-wife's house (as if she would pick them up!) was always a funeral march, with my soul filling with anger and sadness until the tears inevitably sloshed out of me around the time I had to say goodbye to my kids.  This time it was a goodbye party--we joked and laughed all the way.  After kissing them each one last time and bidding them farewell I actually felt at peace, and drove off with a clear mind.

I have to believe that the tighter bond we forged with each other during the summer had at least something to do with the difference in everyone's mood.  My kids had been an integral part of my new life and home for an extended period of time, and they both enjoyed it.  I got to feel like a real parent, and not just a "frequent father," and felt secure in the knowledge that next summer would be the same way.  I wasn't worried about the trip back to Virginia, the two months until I would visit Maine again, or the thousands of miles that I'd be traveling over the next 10.5 months just to maintain a relationship with my kids.  All of my anxieties drifted away in that moment, and smiled as I drove off.

The positive feeling lasted for a few days, as if I had just visited a particularly skilled acupuncturist, and the tingly feling lasted longer than usual.  The intervening two weeks have not been quite so kind.  I came back to my job, which has quickly become tedious and unfulfilling, and I've been having trouble motivating myself to do much of anything.  I took a quick trip to Arizona with my wife, ostensibly for us to have a brief getaway, but really to help my mom and aunt figure out what to do with my 93 year old grandmother, who is rapidly descending into dementia.  My ex's phone went out for two days and, since she refused to get a cell phone, I ended up having to call the cops to do a welfare check (they were fine).  Finally, my wife and stepdaughter have been in Atlanta for the past 10 days--it was supposed to be my stepdaughter's time with her dad but, to nobody's surprise, the bum has only seen her for one afternoon so far.

And, thus, all is quiet now.  I've been largely alone with my thoughts for 10 days.  I work in an office with just one other person and we spend much of our collective day at our respective computers, with little occasion to socialize with each other.  I come home to a dark, empty house and have to motivate myself to do more than slump on the couch.  In between I have forced myself to stay active and busy by playing soccer, riding my bike, and even going to the movies with a high school friend.  All of it has been a largely unsuccessful exercise in not dwelling on my situation and getting on with my life.

I have determined that the only way I'm going to keep going in the right direction is to find a career path that engages and motivates me.  My job is paying the bills, but I come home each night drained and tired, and feeling like I'm just treading water.  If my life at home was in good order, any old job would suffice, and I'd find a way to keep going.  But I need more--if I don't find some meaning in my work I will undoubtedly fall back into a depression. 

There will be many more miles to travel in the coming months.  I am hopeful that I will find my way professionally soon, so that I have the strength and energy that I need to soldier on as the Frequent Father.

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.

69,000-72,000 Miles

I started this post six weeks ago with the odometer at 69,000 miles.

"Mentsch tracht, Gott lacht," said my 93-year old grandmother to me no fewer than five times yesterday.  While her short-term memory loss causes her to forget what she just said moments earlier, her mind is still there, and her Old World wisdom survives.  The saying translates as "Man plans, God laughs," and she kept repeating it as we sat in Room 4D23 of Shady Grove Hospital while my dying father lay sleeping in bed a few feet away.

It is the saddest thing I've ever witnessed to see my own father, lying motionless with an IV plug in his arm, oxygen tubes in his nose, a catheter bag hanging from the bedside, and, as of yesterday, a feeding tube in his stomach.  I studied him, his eyes opening and closing, and wondered what motivates him to keep breathing.  Is he hopeful that all of the tubes will be removed and he will stand up and walk out of the hospital?  I hope not, because that's not going to happen.  The bacterial infection that sent him to the hospital 10 days ago is gone now, but his body was so weakened by its effects that he can't swallow, sit up, move his arms or legs, or even talk.  Even if he does regain his strength, the wasting disease that has already stolen his old age has been advancing and was likely going to kill him off by the end of the year remains, meaning that he'll have to spend many weeks in a rehab center just to re-learn all of the basic motor skills that his body has forgotten.

Last night, after my mom and grandmother left, I spent a couple of hours alone at the hospital with my dad.  He would try to speak, then stop, then close his eyes, then, open them to look at me, then try to speak again, then drift off again, and so forth.  Every time his eyes shut I felt myself hoping that they would not again open, that he would not have to go on suffering as a prisoner in his own body.

That's as far as I got that night.  I was exhausted and had to get to sleep to go to work in the morning.  I'll pick up the story here.

My dad died two weeks later.  The last 14 days of his life passed exactly as I hoped they wouldn't, with him in and out of consciousness, his fever up and down, his breathing uneven, his speech all but nonexistent.  I spent endless hours by his bedside, first at Shady Grove Hospital and then, at the very end, after the community hospital had finally thrown up its hands, in the care of the best doctors available at Georgetown University Hospital.  He was brave through it all, facing his untimely death at 68 years old with grace and without fear.  I won't say any more about it now, as there will have to be a whole post on another day about the complex emotions of saying a long goodbye to a deeply flawed but ultimately decent man with whom I never really developed a true father-son relationship.

The intervening six weeks have been a time of constant motion, transition, and upheaval that have left me on the first steps along a new path, but unsure of where the path will lead and even less sure of how I will find the strength to continue walking.  In that time I have traveled to and from Atlanta twice, once to pack and once to drive the moving truck, and to and from Maine to be present for my daughter's first dance recital.  In just ten more days I will travel back to Maine to retrieve my kids for my six-week summer visitation--their first extended time in my world since I left their home three years ago.

And so I find myself here in a new life, a life I'm just learning how to live.  My wife, stepdaughter and I are living in a rented townhouse in Northern Virginia, 20 miles from where I grew up, but a world apart from it.  I'm commuting to a mostly meaningless job in which I'm running a small nonprofit agency and drawing a respectable paycheck while knowing fully well that this job is just my audition for another job that won't necessarily be in the same city.  I am, as my father pointed out at the end of his life, now the de facto head of the family, since my mother will defer to me and my brother simply doesn't care.  So now at 38 I am the breadwinner, the wise man, the head of the household, and the boss, but my children still live 500 miles away, making all of the above somehow feel empty.

While I am aware that the six weeks I'm about to get with my children will at least temporarily plug the leaks in my psyche, I have no reason to believe that this brief chunk of the year will in any way compensate for all that I have already lost and continue to lose from my decision to live in Maine and have a family with their mother.  I know we will do a lot of great things and create a veritable photo album of lasting memories, but they won't call my house their home and they'll talk about their family and mean their mother and her louse of a husband, and they'll go back to Maine and resume the lives that will be waiting there for them.  Then for the next 10.5 months the cycle will repeat, and I'll fill up more blog posts with tales of sadness, emptiness, loss, regret, anger, frustration and, on rare occasions, poignancy and humor.  Then they'll come back for another six weeks and the whole process will repeat itself for another 12 years and then their childhoods will be over and I will have missed out of them.

Thinking about the crushing weight of the responsibility of being a father under these circumstances has nudged me ever closer to the point of giving up.  I've come to realize that the only times I've been truly happy over the past three years have been when: 1) I'm with my whole family (wife, kids, stepdaughter), or 2) I'm deeply involved in something else so that I don't think about my kids.  Since I'm not going to ever get  Scenario 1 full-time--barring a tragedy and/or a miracle--I have to exist in Scenario 2 as often as possible in order to soldier on.  By that logic, wouldn't my life be better if I just cut ties with my kids and moved on? Sure I'd be upset, but I could treat it like a death, and train myself to live life without them in it.  I have all but convinced myself that burying my children would be easier than continuing to be the Frequent Father.

My wife has told me that she understands why I'm feeling this way but that I love them too much to actually walk away from my children.  I don't know if she is right or not, but I also don't know how I'm going to find the strength to keep on living this way for another 13 years.  I guess I will just dive into the six weeks that I've got them and then do my best to figure out what it all means after they've gone.