Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Absent Parents

   As the holidays are coming up fast, I've been wondering a lot about whether to send anything out to my kids' father or not. I haven't heard from him much lately, which is not a surprise in the least. I've been getting lots of questions lately from teachers and friends about the situation and I'm sick of having the same answers over and over. ZoKo has stopped asking to talk to him because, as she puts it, "He should call me if he loves me". Now, if you've ever had a 6 year old say this sort of thing to you, I feel sorry for you. Because there is nothing you can do to make someone change how they feel, act, or who they are. And two months ago her question was, "Does he still love me?". I tell her yes, that it's just harder for him to show it, or that he's just busy enough he doesn't think about it, or some other thing I can easily come up with when these questions come out of nowhere. Honestly, what else can you say?
   My family was never big on the holidays, and definately never big on the family concept in general (we were the black sheeps on both sides of the line), and so I really don't know where my strong ideals towards family values come from. And I don't mean family values in the sense of what's appropriate to watch on tv or some other mundane entity. I mean value of family, the family concept as an ideal. This has bugged me since I was a child, because I've always felt that somehow people should be able to look past the crap in life when it comes to family. Not that it's always great, or that you aren't wishing you were not related to certain people, and not going way out of your way for someone that ultimately loathes you (whether related or not), but that you should be able to do the basics involved to keep the relationship maintained at at least a suitable level for normal random discussions about life, simply because they are family. Even the once a month call to see how the kids are doing, or checking in after you know someone has been sick. These seem like no-brainers to me when you're dealing with family. Why people can not do this without yelling or acting like there's a perverbial gun to their head, is beyond me. I will never understand it.
   Likewise, I will never understand how you can let go of a relationship with your own child before it even really starts. Anytime that a girl this hopeful starts to let those hopes fade, something is drastically wrong. And the worst thing is, this isn't the first time. She's stopped asking questions for now, and in one way I'm relieved because I no longer have to answer them. In another way, I feel very sad because I know that eventually she may decide to stop asking those questions and that those hopes and dreams that danced in her head my be forever gone. And some day, "tomorrow" or "next week" may be too late. By then she may no longer care, or have just moved on past that. And then how do you explain that she no longer needs one of the two people every child is supposed to need in life?

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