Twenty years ago, I divorced my former husband, the father of YD and OD. In hindsight, I know that we should never have been married in the first place. He was my polar opposite. I was naïve, with a need to fix broken things, and I married an alcoholic. After twelve years, two kids, several breakups and beatups, I finally got wise. It was an epiphany. One day I was holding my newborn YD in my arms, and looking at my drunk husband who had passed out in his underwear on the floor in front of the TV. He had just told me what a fat, useless piece of crap I was for the hundredth (or thousandth) time. In that instant, a switch went off and I went from loving and wanting to “save” him, to hating the air that he breathed. Someone with a darker heart would have murdered him where he layed. Instead, I packed our belongings and took my babies to my mother’s house, where we lived for 18 months until I could afford my own apartment. We tried to reconcile once, just as my babies and I were moving into our apartment, but the only thing that kept us together for another two years was the fact that he was in the U.S. Navy and was gone for 18 of those 24 months. When he finally came back for good, I knew that it was better to be alone than to be married to someone who made me feel so bad about myself. So I set about creating a life for my daughters and me, and it’s always been just the three of us. Their father moved away immediately after the divorce.
I wish I could tell you stories about what a great mom I was, but the truth is that motherhood was a mantle I wore reluctantly. I love my daughters, with the fierce and protective love of a mama bear. So I made a conscious decision to raise my daughters alone rather than bring a series of “father candidates” into their lives. But sometimes I wondered what it would be like to just walk away from my responsibilities, leave my kids with someone and be “free.” Then one of them would do something silly or funny or girly, and life would go on – seemingly slow motion – but looking back I realize that time was moving way too fast for me to cherish every moment.
Fast forward twenty plus years. Their father lives in Illinois with his wife and “new” daughter who is 18 years old. She’s the apple of her father’s eye. The wife, who is from the Philippines where they met when he was still in the military, is a loyal and loving wife. He’s been sober for ten years. And he doesn’t understand why our daughters have no respect or love for him.
I know he believes that I’ve had a hand in alienating him from his older daughters, but I’ve never spoken badly about him to the girls. I’ve always felt that they’d make up their own minds about him, and even told him that once. I had called him to beg for money because he hadn’t sent child support in several years and we literally had no food. His response was that I should find someone new who could help support the girls – or I should send them to live with him. He finally agreed to send a couple hundred dollars a month, which is all he said he could afford. After all, he had bought a new home and had a new family to support, so I shouldn’t expect any more. My girls were nine and eleven at the time, and he faithfully sent that $200 a month until YD turned 18. Then it shut off like a faucet and he considered his responsibilities fulfilled.
OD put herself through college with scholarships and loans, and the little bit that I could help her with. Her father was busy remodeling his home and couldn’t afford to help. Then a week before her college graduation, he informed her that he was attending her graduation. He hadn’t been invited, but as her “father” it was his “right” to be there. He stayed a week with us, sleeping on an air mattress in the living room. I was very welcoming and played the role of a good hostess for the sake of my children. They hadn’t seen their father in over 15 years, and for what it was worth, I was going to give them this time with dad. They went to the zoo and an amusement park and to dinner. Then he got on the plane and went back to his “family.”
In the four years since then, his relationship with our daughters has consisted of occasional phone calls from them requesting money. He always makes a big deal about the fact that they never call him except when they need money. He will frequently ask to speak with me, and I listen patiently while he goes through the litany of his latest illnesses and woes. There is no anger or hatred in my heart for him anymore. Only a kind of amused acceptance and awe at what a blind fool I was to have thought this man was the center of my world.
This week, knowing that neither of my girls had given a thought to Father’s Day, I sent him a card and signed their names. He called to acknowledge it and tell me that he knew the card was really from me. He resents their lack of gratitude and respect. I never confront him with the truth – it’s a lesson he’ll need to learn on his own – if he ever does. He made himself believe that someday they’d want to know their father and there would be some kind of happy, made-for-TV reunion.
The truth is, he burned that bridge years ago with the choices he made. In their minds, he left them behind like an old pair of shoes. To rebuild the bridge would require him to have a contrite heart, to acknowledge his mistakes and ask for forgiveness. He was never the kind of man who apologized, but I'm praying on this Father's Day that the past 20 years has given him the experience and maturity to understand that "owning" your mistakes is the first step to forgiveness.
