Two Down.

Sometime last year (or was it the year before?) Jon decided he didn’t want to visit anymore. He would rather hang out with his friends. “It’s boring,” he said. Fair enough.

Today Timothy let me know (via his mother) that he didn’t want to come over either. And I thought he wanted to be stuck in his room, playing X Box every waking minute. Whenever I went to his room to talk, he wasn’t interested in anything else. What do I know.

Indeed. What do I know. In 1990, when Jon was born, I realised how little I knew. Zip. About being a father, less than nothing. How come my Dad seemed to know so much?

And now, every year, I know less. More surprises, more melted expectations, more space, more drifting. Where is my life going? Do I have one? Did I trade Me in for Dad?

I’m so torn between being Distant Dad,  Money Lending Dad,  Stepdad and Resident Dad, I don’t know how to keep them altogether inside one head. Then there’s Husband, who seems to be more like My Son’s Stepdad at times.

I would just like to be able to maintain some consistency, to always know which hat I’m wearing, or to be able to trade them all in for one multipurpose cap. I wonder what that would look like. Perhaps it would have to be more like a bearskin, like the Buckingham Palace guards where. There would be lots of space in there. Lots of space.

One trait of mine that I don’t like is that when I get depressed I just want to sleep and sleep. Right now I could hibernate. Wake up in the spring.

I just don’t know which spring.

No Compromise

Jon is a very smart boy. I am confident that intellectually he could do anything he wanted. I don’t have any career expectations of any of my children but I do expect them to work hard and reach their full potential. Perhaps parents just see things from a different angle. So while I felt disappointed when Jon opted out of his public high school, I now feel relieved that he’s attending a more relaxed, outreach program high school. At least he stands more of a chance of realizing his dreams. I guess I have to let go of perfection and trrade it for realism without compromising. I still want the best for Jon. I know he’ll get there, one day. I’m so proud of him.

Moving On.

Too many questions, too little balance, too much frustration and not enough time.

Ain’t that a great way to cheer up a reader and invite them in to read more?! Well, as an update to the last entry, things have been up and down. I guess that’s the norm, really.

So, after depositing the correct amount for child support, I got a text message saying I needed to go to a mediation meeting. That was about three weeks ago now. The lawyer present, who was supposed to be non-partisan, started grilling me about my low income. I work at home and manage to write off a lot, which makes my declared income very low. I don’t make that much anyway, so I’m not scamming anyone. I don’t take cash for any job, everything is above board. One hundred percent. But obviously it didn’t look that way. I didn’t take the pounding lightly, lost my cool, and left. That isn’t what the meeting was supposed to be about. X then told me she would see me in court.

The letter announcing my court date never came. Instead I got a stream of text messages stating how she (X) wanted to stop fighting and just wanted the kids looked after. Of course, same here! I kept it blunt, asked for receipts, and left it at that.

I’m learning that to keep everything on the level, and to stop the violent swings, it is much easier to keep everything chilled and businesslike. I get receipts, I pay. No text messages about ‘feelings’, no jumping off the handle, nothing personal, just the fact, ma’am, just the facts.

I like it this way. It makes my home life simpler and quieter (I detest talking about the X crap in the house, it creates a stench in the air). It leaves me to be a Dad instead of an ex-husband, because really that hasn’t changed. I’m still a Dad. I have been for sixteen years and will be for the rest of my life. But instead of being an ex-husband, I am now a  husband. My wife’s husband. This is what I am currently. Being an ex, seeing myself as one (and seeing X as one, come to that) is talking in the past.

From now on, X will be referred to as D. No more exes!