A recent birthday made me think about and really miss my adult children. They don't understand yet how much a parent misses a child when they don't see them. When my oldest three were little, I was a stay at home dad for six months before their mother divorced me. She didn't really want them but changed her mind when some of her divorced friends told her about child support money. Then she wanted me to take the second oldest and she would keep the other two. I was happy to take the children but did not want to split them up. Finally she decided to keep them. This worked out okay at first because I lived near enough to watch them for her daily. She convinced me to give her my car saying that she needed it since she had the children. This became a problem though when she started dropping them off just before it was time for me to leave for work. I lived near enough to walk or bike to work but finding a babysitter at the last minute, especially without a vehicle to transport them, was not reasonable to expect me to do time and time and time again over and over and over. Especially when she claimed to want to be the custodial parent. I quickly burned through all of my available vacation and sick time until I risked being fired from my job. It was still evident she did not really want to be a mother if it meant she had to be responsible for taking care of children. It wasn't that she didn't love them, it was that being a custodial parent was inconvenient to the lifestyle she wanted to be living.
When she got remarried, they ended up moving out of state. I tried to call so I could speak with the children but she would not let me talk to them. She also denied me from having visitation. I had to research and figure out how to file papers through the court to enforce having parent time with my kids. After we went through court mediation, she began to let me occasionally speak to them on the phone but it was often interfered with and interrupted. There were tears on the other end of the line when one or more of them were denied having their turn. I would call back and try again until I made sure they had their turn. I tried calling at different times to see if that would help but it didn't because they did not have a consistent daily schedule. I wrote letters to them in addition to calling. Every summer it was a battle with my ex-wife to be able to see my children. I came to expect that, in order to see my children, I would have to take time off from work in order to go through court mediation so that parent time would be enforced. When my children became teenagers, they rejected me. This I did not expect and it hurt me deeply. I always thought they were smart enough that I would not have to tell them about what their mother was doing and that they would eventually see through all of her lies. I thought that they were smart enough to figure things out for themselves. So far that hasn't happened. Maybe it will as they get older.
I got remarried to a wonderful and beautiful in every way amazing woman. None of my three oldest children came to my wedding. My son has met her once but the other two haven't wanted to meet her. They are missing out because she already loves them and has made room in her heart for them. She prays for them would love to have them be part of our lives. I did not tell my oldest three children about what their mother was doing when they were younger because I was trying to shelter and protect them from knowing. I don't know if that was a mistake but I was doing what I felt was best for them. I didn't think that children needed to be burdened with adult issues and I wouldn't have known how to explain what was going on without speaking poorly of their mother which is something I wasn't willing to do. I just loved them and tried to be there for them as much as she would allow. I do not like confrontation but I was willing to fight to see them even if it meant going back through court mediation every time I was supposed to see them. Sometimes mediation wasn't resolved before opportunities had already been lost.
I did the very best I knew how to be a good husband and a good father. When my ex-wife wanted out of the marriage, I continued to put the children's interests before my own and do what was best for the children. I postponed my education in order to continue paying child support. My children have no idea the amount of sacrifices I had to make year after year just to be able to see them. They have no idea how hard it was to go through the court process yet again when their mother wouldn't allow scheduled visitation or when she wouldn't even let me talk to them on the phone. I never knew if they got my letters. I don't think she was trying to hurt the children by denying them access to their father. It was that having me be involved was inconvenient to her life now that they didn't live close enough for her to have me watch them. It never cost her money because I paid the cost of travel both directions but it did cause inconvenience for her to let me be part of their lives. When I was not notified of major life events, so that I could have been involved, I thought it was done out of spite in order to be hurtful. It might have been done simply out of a desire not to be inconvenienced. Letting me be involved in my children's lives would have taken meager amounts of effort on her part at communication and cooperation. Maybe she wasn't deliberately sabotaging my efforts. Maybe she just didn't want to be bothered.
