#fathehood

[thedaddycomplex]

Hey, nerds! I’m giving away three copies of my new book, Are We There Yet, over on The Daddy Complex Facebook page.

That means you—yes, YOU—can win this incredible example of literary text sure to be placed among the greatest contributions to the artistic world alongside things like Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and the Squatty Potty®.

Please, please. There’s no need to thank me.

[sylwiaoutofwork]

(via Best dad , for Fathers day Magnet by Outofwork)Officially, Father's Day is one, but we appreciate our fathers every day

[alphonsenicholson-blog]

This lil dude warms my heart. Big blessings, big smiles! 😁💙👑 #myboy #blessed #fathehood #steadygrind #everydayhustler #bite #iphone8plus (at Greensboro, North Carolina) https://www.instagram.com/j_fonz/p/BrvmvPmA4nO/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=v9zxrkgw3764

[theramblingark]

Smell it in the light.

Max and I were getting ready this morning and he picked up the cold wax hold on top of the Scentsy thing in our bedroom.  I sniffed it deep and said, “Hmmm.” I asked what he smelled and he said nothing.  He proceeded to exclaim it was because he was “not in the light.” So, he turned on the hallway light and sniffed the wax under the light.  

Still no smell (we need to change out the scent!), but he was satisfied he’d followed through on his idea.  The fact that he is formulating thoughts and feelings and scenarios for life in his brain is simply amazing.  I dig seeing it happen in real-time.  

[jingukid]

“It’s one of the hardest thing to be a parent but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.” 

[caexman]

They Carry my Heart

I spend a great deal of time trying to work out the relationship I have with my ex-husband.  To specify: I really think about ways I could approach it differently, talk to him differently, use a different tone, be absolutely, in no way argumentative—and so on.  I try this because my children have no father, and I blame myself.  I am not alone in this.  He blames me as well.  So we agree on one thing—I fucked this thing up.  Here is my problem: Everyone (read “totally everyone”) tells me otherwise.  My shrink, my therapist, my family and my children.  My shrink literally tells me I am too nice to my ex-husband in taking it upon myself to try to build a relationship between a father and his children.  This, I am told, is his job to do.  But I am one of those people.  I keep thinking, “I could do this better.  I could help them talk to each other.”  Last Friday, I tried and I was proven, again, how very wrong that theory is.

  They cry for him, though.  Except the youngest.  My daughter, who is sixteen and has nothing but horrible memories of living with her father, feels him to be a stranger.  During the last eighteen months, we have weathered a custody battle over her.  She was forced to spend all of her visitation times with her father—except when he was otherwise engaged.  They had all that time to form a bond.  He had all that time to get to know her and she, him.  What she came away with was a picture of a man filled with hatred, with prejudice, and with no interest in whom she was as a person.  She is sixteen (and so much more mature than her age), and he still talks to her as though she were in middle school.  Madeline will be fine without her father.  God, think of that—the heinousness of that statement.  She will be better off without learning his lessons of hate.  Well, wouldn’t anybody?

  The older two—they remember.  They remember the father who read them bedtime stories, who gave them baths, who loved them without judgment—a parent’s utmost responsibility.  The new person this man has become breaks their hearts—and to hurt them is to kill me.  So I am trapped.  I am helpless.  Benched, again.  I find the sidelines an intolerable place to be.  And, as a mother, it makes one want to rip one's hair out.  

There has been a lot of death and illness in our family this year.  I still think of calling my grandmother to taunt her about Obamacare.  She is gone.  My mother weighs half of what she should.  She has a hole in her side.  Still, she goes on; life goes on.  I am told time makes things better, and, as a rule, I tend to believe it.  This father thing, though; I think it will be a problem.  My older children are in therapy.  They are learning what I still constantly struggle with: It’s not their fault.  The weight of this man’s choices does not belong on their shoulders.  Some days I think they believe it, but sometimes I see the tears in their eyes, and I know there has to be something I could do to make this better.  I am their mother, for God’s sake.  Shouldn’t I be able to fix this?

  I’ve been in therapy for fifteen years.  I am bipolar and it comes with the territory.  Yet, I still need this one thing pounded into my head: You did not do this.  You did not tear them to pieces with rejection.  As I write this, I cry, tears rolling down my face for the man, the better man, I know he used to be.  This has been the summer of death, with a lot of mourning.  I see this as one more death, a completely unnecessary one. When will time come through on this?  When will time put salve on the wounds?  I have no words.  Not for my beloved children and not for the man who is lost.  I cannot fix what cannot be controlled.  I find this infuriating.  I hate the sidelines.  The problem is, as e. e. cummings put it—they carry my heart.  They carry it in their heart, and if theirs breaks, mine does too. 

[babiesanddad-blog]