Give Thanks

It's that time of year.  I love Thanksgiving and the holidays.  I love the muck encrusted, glitter spewing projects that come home with my daughter.  Usually.  Today my sweet pea presented me with this:

Sweet, right?  Smile and encourage "Oh what a great job you did, baby!" While in my head I'm going "really, WTF kid??" because there is NO DAD.  Well, there's 2 fathers but no dad.  Yeah, I know....because my life was (is?) like a soap opera.  Except without the awkward product placement.  (Because no one reads my blog yet.)

"I just don't know how I would survive motherhood without Cheerios!"

The "Dad" she means is the only dad she really ever knew.  Not her biological father because she has never met him.  He saw her once, in court, when she was 14 months old and that's the extent of their relationship.  "Dad" refers to my ex boyfriend.  We started dating when she was 2 months old.  Two & a half years later, we had mapped out a future, marriage, adoption, more children, etc.  That future began with me buying a home 2 miles from where he lived so we would be close enough that he could live here part time.  He had bought the house his parents lived in...they were both very sick and he lived there to take care of them and.....oh cripes, it's such a long and convoluded story.  Let's suffice it to say, I was a naive love-struck idiot who proceeded to ignore and justify every HUGE, bright red flag that bashed me in the ol' noggin. 

So here's me, about to venture into my first home purchase, all strategically planned around him and his promises.  And the week of the closing, where I would have lost $17,000 if I backed out, he decided he wasn't sure if he was up for this whole relationship, marriage, parenthood thing.  And this has to be the best breakup line of ALL time.  "I love you and I want to be with you and Bianca but I just think that it's better if we break up now because what happens if we break up down the line when Bianca is older and then it will be so much harder for her."  Go ahead and read that again.  Yeah....even though I "love" you, we should break up now to avoid it being painful later.  Um, okaaaaay.  And so now here I live.  In his town, 2 miles from his house with daily reminders of why I will never be an idiot again.  Well, at least not about a guy.  Otherwise, I'm pretty much an idiot all the time. 

Fathers Day

Before I start my rant, I want to wish a very Happy Father's Day to all the Dad's out there who are standup guys and take an active role in the lives of their children.

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It's easy for me to forget that those men exist sometimes because I've sure as heck never seen one. My own father managed the remarkable feat of being an absentee dad despite the fact that he still lived in our house. He'd been known to remind me many times that he "liked me fine until I started talking." Yes, he's a real gem, that father of mine. He's still alive and even lives in the same state I do but we've long since stopped communication. I tried over and over again to extend the olive branch and see if we could have a relationship. In the end I had to accept that he's a broken, bitter and hateful man and that nothing I say or do will ever turn him into the caring father I want.

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Likewise, my daughter has an absentee father. Hers is a true absentee father. He's never met her. He did see her in court one time but he's never spent any time with her at all. We no longer correspond. He doesn't know one thing about her. I don't understand how he does this; how he has other children who he is involved with and then chooses to deny one. I surmise that he did it for self preservation because, as I mentioned in my initial post, I found out when Bianca was 7 months old that he was married. Perhaps it was an ultimatum from his wife; last I knew they were still together. Perhaps it's just his anger at me. I don't know. I will never know. I'm a girl who craves answers so it's hard for me to accept that I will never be able to know. It's harder to accept the impact it has on my baby.

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Father's Day was first celebrated locally in 1910, initiated by a woman wishing to honor her father who was a widower and Civil War veteran. Apparently the idea was mocked and came up against much opposition. It wasn’t until 1924 that President Calvin Coolidge made it a "national event." Then, in 1966, President Johnson signed a proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June as Father's Day. President Nixon made it law in 1972.

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I wonder what those who lobbied to make this a national holiday would think about the state of fatherhood today. In America:

~ An estimated 24.7 million children (36.3%) live absent from their biological father.

~ There are almost 17 million children (25%) living with their single mothers.

~ 1.25 million or 32% of all births in 1995 were out-of-wedlock.

~ 26% of absentee fathers live in a different state than their children.

~ About 40% of the children who live in absentee father households haven't seen their fathers in at least a year while 50% of children who don't live with their fathers have never stepped foot in their father's home.

~ Children who live absent from their biological fathers, on average, are more likely to be poor, experience educational, health, emotional and psychological problems, be victims of child abuse, and engage in criminal behavior than their peers who live with their married, biological mother and father.

~ Currently, 57.7 percent of all black children, 31.8 percent of all Hispanic children, and 20.9 percent of all white children are living in single-parent homes.

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Is this worth celebrating? I suppose the good fathers deserve a celebration in light of how rare they are becoming. The rest of the deadbeats....well, I hope they have a crappy day fraught with guilt, shame, self-reproach....and maybe some food poisoning, too. ;oP