All That Distance

It's such a simple little note. But it tore me to shreds when I found it.

The little boy who wrote this - the amazing, smart, funny, clumsy, aggravating, loving, sarcastic, lovable little boy with the huge blue eyes - hasn't seen or heard from his father in a year.

His father told me a year ago today - as we were in the process of moving to our new house in a better school district with less crime and more room where our son could finally have his very own bedroom for the first time in his life - he told me that I couldn't expect him to drive "all that distance" to see his boy.

All that distance. Those words rang in my ears as I told him flat-out "if you can't make seeing your son a priority in your life, that's YOUR problem, not mine".

All that distance. He can't drive it to see his son, but he can drive it to play in a softball tournament. I know he did, because I saw him that day, right here in the same town where we live now.

All that distance. He can't drive it to see his son, but his wife can bring their other two kids to town to go swimming in the pool that's less than a mile from our house. I know about that because a mutual friend saw them there and mentioned it to me later.

All that distance. He can't drive it to see his son, but he can drive triple that distance to have a birthday party for his daughter and not even bother to invite his son. I found out about that one when another friend shared some pictures with me.

All that distance. In this day and age, distance doesn't really matter, does it? There are cell phones and computers and Skype and FaceTime and emails and texts just to say hi or to send a funny picture or to find out why his insurance company is suddenly getting bills for emergency room visits and plastic surgeons and allergist appointments.

All that distance, in reality, is 15 miles. FIFTEEN MILES. That's how far it is from my house to the town where he (supposedly) lives. I say "supposedly" because I have no idea, honestly. I know he moved, but the last I had heard he had only moved a few blocks away from where he had been living - but I was never given an address. Thanks to my phone getting run over by a car one day, I no longer have his phone number so I can't just call him - but even if I did, why should I? He's made it clear that all that distance is too much for him. He's pulled this crap before (although not for this long) and always comes crawling back with a bunch of excuses about how he was oh-so-busy and just didn't have time to make contact. I've tried to force the relationship, and it just didn't work.

And that sucks.

But you know who it sucks for the most?

Him. He's the one who is missing out. He's the one who missed the baseball games and the soccer games and the basketball games. He missed the parent/teacher conferences and the open houses and Christmas and birthday and Thanksgiving and everything else. He's the one who may be a willing participant in fatherhood with his other kids, but who has made the choice to walk out on this one.

For this amazing little boy though? He's going to be just fine. He has a mother who loves him no matter how much trouble he gets himself into, he has siblings that can't wait to hang out with him and goof around with him, he has The Dude to show him all of the necessary manly stuff, he has teachers who can't get over how smart (and mischievous) he can be, and he has friends knocking at the door almost every single day wanting him to go out and play with them.

All that distance that he's put between himself and his son is only going to hurt him in the long run - because we are just fine.

697 days

We reached a milestone today.

697 days.

Daniel was born on June 10, 2007. On May 6, 2009 - I told his father to leave our home for the last time ... 697 days later.

Daniel and I met The Dude for the first time on November 25, 2011 - 697 days ago.

As of today, The Dude has been a part of Daniel's life longer than his biological father was.

It's bittersweet for both of us. I asked The Dude today what he thought about it and his response was "conflicted". He's glad to be a part of Daniel's life, but at the same time he feels bad that Daniel will never get to know his father.

Honestly, it's the same for me. I know that his father loved him. I know that he had the potential to be a great father. But it just didn't happen that way. The addiction was too much to overcome and it tore our family apart before it took him away from us forever.

But, we have a good life now. We have come so far as a family and we are finally in a good place. The Dude has been amazing to all of us. Daniel looks to him as a father and I am so incredibly thankful for that. He knows that he has another father - but he also knows that The Dude is there for him and loves him even though there isn't a biological connection.

At his age, Daniel doesn't realize the significance of today. I've been thinking about it for weeks, because not only do I realize what this means for Daniel, but I realize what it means for me. I never dreamed that I would allow anyone to become such a huge part of our lives, but yet somehow, The Dude has wormed his way in and he still claims that he plans on staying. We have gone through so much crap in the past few months between work schedules and house hunting and injuries and illnesses and vehicle breakdowns and stress and chaos and panic - and yet we're still hanging in there (and creeping dangerously close to our 2 year anniversary) and doing everything that we can to care for our family - even if it's split between a couple of different residences for a few more months.

Life is good. Crazy, chaotic, and not always predictable, but it's good.

Fishing and Father's Day

The Dude and I decided to take Daniel and go for a spur-of-the-moment fishing trip late yesterday afternoon. We grabbed some hot dogs and s'mores fixin' stuff and took off for a few hours. The fish were absolutely NOT biting at all, but we still had a nice, quiet, relaxing time (in spite of the drunks at the next campsite). The fish started biting after it got dark, but none of us caught anything.

Heading out

Always a gorgeous drive

Lakeside

Relaxing

Still one of my all-time favorite views

Why, hello there Mr. Turtle. Now go away.

Bored out of his skull

Beautiful sky

The sunset was amazing.

Discussing the finer points of s'mores, I'm sure.

Fishing by the light of the moon.

Love nights like this.

This morning, we all slept late - even me. By the time that we got up and got moving, we were all hungry and so we decided to take The Dude out for a Father's Day lunch. Daniel gave him a card that he had picked out and signed all by himself, which totally melted my heart - and I think that The Dude was pretty darned happy with it too.

Walking to lunch

Stopping to check out the scenery under the bridge

The card.

Not a bad weekend, if I do say so myself.

The now infamous Tooth Fairy letter.

Holy crap.

That's about all I can say right now. Had I known what would happen when I posted a picture of a letter that the Tooth Fairy wrote to Emily at about 1:00 this morning, I might have thought twice. Or not.

The letter.

I thought that a few people would get a chuckle out of it, and that would be it. Now, here I sit less than 24 hours later....and there are almost 1900 likes on it on facebook and it has been shared almost the same number of times. More than 300 new people have come to my facebook page and have 'liked' that as well.

Really? It was just a silly letter to try to get my kid to clean her room.

I would say that well over 99% of the comments that I received and/or saw on other pages were positive - something that shocks me. It seems like even the most innocent share can trigger the haters and trolls to come out of the woodwork - so I got really nervous when I saw the numbers exploding after I posted it.

There were a few questions raised, and rather than attempt to answer them through comments on facebook, I figured I'd just address them all here. It's easy. And I might have a lazy streak in me at times.

The most common question related to the "bodies" in the bed. Yes, Emily is 11 years old, so no, there are no boys in her bed (unless one of her brothers sneaks in there during the night). The only other live body was that of her 13 year old sister, who insists on sleeping in the bottom bunk with Emily more often than not. And it irritates me to no end - whenever they sleep in the same bed, they end up fighting over the covers or who kicked who in the face or whose breath stinks the worst or whatever. So I hate when they sleep in the same bed. Plus, there were several inanimate bodies in the bed as well as a bunch of extra pillows and covers and all sorts of crap that made it next to impossible to find the tooth pillow under her pillow.

Tooth pillow. What's a tooth pillow? I saw that comment somewhere. If you look at this post you can see a picture of the tooth pillow. I got it when I was little, and the kids have all used it. It makes it much easier for the Tooth Fairy to find the tooth under the pillow in the bed if it's in this, and then the money gets stuck in the pocket so that it doesn't get lost either.

One comment that really kind of ticked me off annoyed me caught my eye was on one of the shares, where someone said something to the effect of me being a horrible mother, and my kid was going to be scarred for life. Uh huh. Whatever. I'm pretty sure that not getting her buck for her tooth until her room is clean is going to put her in therapy. Get over it.

There was another that wanted to know why she had to ask THE MOTHER and not THE FATHER. Too bad that was on a share too, so I couldn't comment and tell that person that there is no father in this house. I'm a single mom. I have The Dude, but he doesn't live here, and he's not their father. That one kind of bugged me too, but I just chalked it up to someone not being familiar with the story.

Probably the most common question was "did it work?"

Before

The answer to that is yes. And no.

Let me start off by saying that I do take responsibility for some of the mess in this room. We rearranged a month or two ago, and I had to take some of their shelves off of the wall in order to do it, and things kept distracting me and I didn't get the shelves put back up. And well, it's hard to put things away when the shelves aren't there. However, that has nothing to do with the dirty laundry all over the floor, or the garbage in general that was spread out all over the place.

They definitely started out strong. They got in there and they really started working. I got the shelves put back up (busted out some power tools to do it too...hehehe) and got some other shelves anchored to the wall and they got a lot of stuff put away. We had to stop to take Sarah to the school for open gym, and then we came back and worked some more, and then we had to stop again to take Emily to the school for basketball practice, so we kept getting distracted.

During

I thought that things were going really well in there, and it was starting to look really good, but then they dug into a huge tub (the green one in the 'before' picture) that was full of old artwork. It had been stored in cardboard boxes before, but the boxes got broken down over time and so we tossed everything into this tub. And they dug it all out and started going through it, so more of a mess was created. But, we got rid of a bunch of it, so that will help in the long run.

So yes, it worked to a point. The room is not clean by any stretch of the imagination, but they put in a good effort. So I may go ahead and allow the Tooth Fairy to come back tonight - especially since they'll be at their father's house for the next couple of nights. However, considering that it's after 11:00 and I can still hear them, I may cancel it again tonight.


Now....for something really funny. While Sarah was at open gym, I took the other 4 kids to the convenience store to get drinks. I left Emily and the boys in the van and went in to get what we needed, and then realized that I didn't ask her what she wanted. So I went back out to the van with drinks for me and the boys, and sent her into the store to get something for herself. She came out with a bottle of Jones soda.

If you're not familiar with Jones soda, they have little sayings under their caps. Keep in mind that we got these in the middle of the cleaning spree - and this is what Emily got:

(*Edited to add: In case you're wondering about how Emily has handled the hubbub around the letter, read this post - especially if you're one of the people who has something negative to say about it.)

(*Edited again regarding the hateful comments and judgment that I've received about this thing.)

(**Edited again to add: Emily has written her own post about this thing. If you'd like to read that - and you should - you need to click here.)