I pick the girls up on Friday around 7PM and bring them back at 2PM Saturday.\u00a0 Friday usually goes awesome.\u00a0 We get something to eat, bring it home, and watch some movie or two.<\/p>\n
Saturday, not always so well.\u00a0 It starts good, but as the leaving time draws nearer, the Elder will start to get grumpy, and sometimes go into a full-on tantrum.\u00a0 Every parent knows what this means.\u00a0 They’re hungry.\u00a0 They didn’t get enough sleep.\u00a0 Something is wrong and what they claim to be the problem probably isn’t.<\/p>\n
Worse, every parent knows the hell of this situation.\u00a0 The kid won’t listen.\u00a0 The kid tosses off her shoes and runs a block away and stands there, and every time you approach she moves further as if the bubble of your existence is pushing her away.<\/p>\n
We had an 11AM lunch at Old Country Buffet.\u00a0 They had a hell of a good time there, picking at all manner of foods.\u00a0 This one happened to be beside one of those Spirit Halloween seasonal stores, and they were looking forward to going there, so we do.<\/p>\n
It all starts fine, and they’re having fun being scared and looking at goofy costumes.\u00a0 But the time wears on, and we’d planned to go to the mall for some shoes, and so I start telling them it’s time to go.\u00a0 And I make the mistake of saying they can get one thing, under $5 or so.\u00a0 But Elder can’t make up her mind, and eventually gets frustrated and starts out the door, so I have to tell Younger I can’t get her something and not her sister, so we’ll just have to go.\u00a0 Younger is preternaturally easy-going, and though mildly disappointed, OK with that, and we go outside, where Elder is leaning against a post like some 50’s juvenile delinquent, casting me an icy glare as I approach.<\/p>\n
So, the usual chasing to and fro with her in her socks.\u00a0 I finally get her to stand still, and she says she just wishes we had more time.\u00a0 I tell her I’ll be taking her and her sister down to my mom’s next week and we’ll have the whole four days and she responds “But that’s a whole week from now!” and moves to another post.<\/p>\n
I follow, kneel down, and look at her, and she’s so sad.\u00a0 And I did this to her.\u00a0 Not all me (not by a mother fucking longshot, which is part of the frustration), but I brought her into the world, and once I told her\u00a0 that “your mommy and I will never split up, honey.”\u00a0 A horrible promise to make to a child.\u00a0 So why did I say it?\u00a0 Because mine did.\u00a0 Half-dozen marriages between them.\u00a0 And I was never going to do that to my kids.\u00a0 And at the time, I was blissfully ignorant of my wife’s deep dissatisfaction with the marriage and still assumed she just adored me as she always had and we’d always be together as per the father\/husband role I had assumed and settled into over the past decade.<\/p>\n
So, I am kneeling, and thinking these things, and knowing I have a part in making this poor little beautiful innocent girl cry.\u00a0 I gave her life and then turned her life even worse than life usually is.\u00a0 And I’m frustrated, because I can’t tell her why this all happened.\u00a0 I don’t know, myself.\u00a0 I know if I’d had my way we’d still be married.\u00a0 Not to the woman my wife has become over the past two years, but in that apex of the marriage where all seemed right.<\/p>\n
And I start to sob.<\/p>\n
And I croak out, “I’m so sorry, honey.”<\/p>\n
And I grab her to me and hold her and cry into her chest, “I’m so sorry” over and over and I can’t stop myself.<\/p>\n
And she starts crying.<\/p>\n
And the Younger is nearby, just watching, and I tell her to come here and I hold them both as tight as I can and I’m still crying saying “I’m sorry” repeatedly.<\/p>\n
And the the Elder pulls up my chin and strokes my hair, but the Younger, she’s fucking laughing!\u00a0 And I ask her, “What the hell are you laughing at, you stinker?” and she says, “I’ve just never seen a daddy cry before.”\u00a0 So both of them start laughing, and now I’m laughing and crying, but mostly sobbing terribly.<\/p>\n
A side note:\u00a0 My voice has been shot all week and I can barely speak as it is, so it really is with a croaking voice that I’m apologizing to them.<\/p>\n
Finally, I compose myself and the kids seemed to have achieved an exquisite cathartic release in seeing daddy cry, so we all start back to the car, but I’m still weeping and stuttering out apologies and trying to tell them I want to say something, but I physically can’t get it out through the sobbing and coughing.<\/p>\n
And that’s the meat of the story.\u00a0 The epilog is similar to the final scene of “Ordinary People” where Conrad (Timothy Hutton, the son) and Cal (Donald Sutherland, the father) are sitting outside talking about Cal’s separation.<\/p>\n
\r\n\r\n CONRAD\r\n\r\n It's my fault.\r\n\r\n CAL\r\n\r\n Don't do that to yourself! \r\n It's nobody's fault! Things happen.\r\n People don't always have answers.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/p>\n
The Elder girl says it’s her fault, and so I snap at her, “No, it isn’t. Never say that. It’s not your fault.”<\/p>\n
She seems to understand.<\/p>\n
But she’ll always blame herself.\u00a0 We always do, just a little, for everything.<\/p>\n
And everybody hurts, and everybody cries.<\/p>\n
Even daddies.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I pick the girls up on Friday around 7PM and bring them back at 2PM Saturday.\u00a0 Friday usually goes awesome.\u00a0 We get something to eat, bring it home, and watch some movie or two. Saturday, not always so well.\u00a0 It starts good, but as the leaving time draws nearer, the Elder will start to get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[5,89,31],"class_list":["post-222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-me","tag-parenthood","tag-raw","tag-separation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":630,"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions\/630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}