Little Man,
I don’t know if you remember much about me. I am your father.
We last saw each other at a gathering to celebrate your sister’s 9th birthday. It was at a pizza and game place. Your grandfather, my dad, and his wife treated us all to a great time. We ate some good food and he bought you and your sister a handful of tokens. You two played games for about an hour and had an excellent time.
That was four years ago.
By the time you read this, you’re probably going to be much older than you are now.
During these last years I have not been allowed to contact you in any way – no letters, or calls, or visits. Actually, I was allowed to visit with you at a special place, but that place costs money to pay the people who help and I never had the money. The reason I never had the money is all my own and frequently I feel guilty because I was not able to pull myself together and keep a job long enough to get back on top of my obligations to your mother.
Any extra money I had needed to go to “child support” which is a payment one parent makes to another to help out with buying food and clothes for the children. I was always behind because my work ethic was spotty at best.
This whole mess was entirely my fault. Sometimes kids will look for reasons within themselves and tend to blame themselves for trouble with one parent or between their parents. I suspect that you do not have this problem because your mother is so good at helping kids learn and understand their world.
I thank God for your mother.
You probably don’t remember, but we used to see each other on the weekends.I would pick you and your sister up and we would try to do something fun. We went to a game place frequently where you two would play video games or Ski-ball. We would usually eat someplace, too. You and your sister loved to go to this little Chinese restaurant where you loved to eat the soup.
The last summer we spent together, I was living in an apartment complex with a pool. We would all get suited up and I would grab your life jacket and then we’d march down to the pool and hop right in.
Ok, your sister and I would hop right in. You would walk around the side and think about hopping in for a while. You were only three – my little man – and not quite ready to learn to swim. Sometimes you would wade using the ladder or sit with your feet in the water. Only occasionally would you jump into my arms.
That summer I was so depressed that I didn’t want to do anything. The depression got worse and worse. I missed seeing you every day and I missed your mother and I missed my mother and I missed my job and I missed the rest of my family. I hated being in the situation in which I had put myself (and you).
I got so depressed that I started just lying in bed when you and your sister were over. Your sister would sit and watch television while you tried to entertain yourself by playing with your airplane or pretending you were Spiderman.
One time you came up to me and said over and over, “Play with me, Daddy.Please play with me.”
I’m crying now pleading with my past self to just get out of bed and put on a smile and play with my little boy.
I have missed you more than I hope you will ever know. I just want to hang out and play with you and ask you all sorts of questions and hear your stories about your friends and school. I want to see how you and your sister get along. I want to give you a hug and a kiss. I want to wrestle and play video games and watch movies and eat Chinese soup with you.
I miss you, little man.
I wish this all would have been different. I wish I would have done what it would have taken to get my life in order. The depression was caused by how I was looking at life – thinking all the time about what I had lost and what I didn’t have (and thinking inaccurate things about a dismal future) – all these thoughts were completely within my control, but I did not exercise that control.
I have to trust that this has all been for the best though. After we last saw each other, I made my life much worse. I intentionally sailed through dangerous waters. At times my behavior was erratic and that definitely would have been a terrible example to set for you and your sister.
Little Man, life is never easy and that is by Design.
What is the pleasure in winning a video game that’s easy? You play hard video games, right? Getting all the way through a hard game is much more fun.
Here though is some advice.
Life is not about material things.
Stuff will never make you happy. Stuff can actually make things worse. If you get into the habit of acquiring new stuff to distract you from problems you’re having then when using that stuff gets old, you still have the problems, now neglected and potentially more of a problem.
You control how you feel.
People will never make you happy. They also have no power to make you angry. You are the master of your universe and you travel through the world in a little bubble. You choose what to think about every situation and about every word you hear.
Think before you speak.
When someone hears you say something, those words are forever. You can apologize for unkind words and the person might forgive you, but a residue of what was said always remains.
Never lie.
There is a moral and a practical aspect to this tidbit. You will live a much more comfortable life and have much better relationships if (a) you never have to remember what you said – you’re always yourself, and (b) people know they can trust that you mean what you say.
Never run in the wrong direction.
There is a school of thought that any action is better than no action, but I disagree.
In your life, you are going to be tempted to take some easy routes. You’re going to run downhill because you think you see something you want in the valley.Remember though that if you get down there and you don’t like it, you have to run up the hill and running uphill takes much more effort.
Similarly, be careful of wasting time climbing hills when really you want to climb mountains.
I’m being vague on purpose.
Before you start down any path, consider where that path leads and the terrain you’ll have to cross.
Stay in school.
I left college because I was homesick and I was very unhappy and I was offered a job in Tulsa which paid like four times what I made at my part time job on campus. It seemed like a great solution, but it ended up really costing me.
No material comfort, no emotional comfort, nothing is worth more than preparing for your future.
No matter what, finish school.
You decide what amount of schooling you require. Dream of big mountains and then prepare to climb them by getting the best education you can.
Drugs?
Don’t run in the wrong direction. I wrote that you travel through the world in a little bubble, right? You may be tempted to think that you can make life in your little bubble better by changing your brain but remember that your bubble depends on people in their little bubbles. If you want to get along with the world, don’t use drugs to shut it out.
Love.
Love everything and everyone.
Even love the bee that stings you. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time and the bee was triggered into doing what it does to protect its sisters.
People may be unkind to you at times, but be confident that their disregard for your feelings is rooted into something they have learned in the past and that it has nothing to do with you. You just triggered some hurt inside them and they reacted without much thought.
Condition yourself to love first and ask questions later.
Forgive.
Forgive anything.
Practicing forgiveness doesn’t mean to leave yourself open to someone you’ve learned you cannot trust, it just means to let go of feelings of anger and dreams of revenge against those who wrong you.
There is a very famous prayer attributed to the most famous human. One of the lines in there means that we justify God’s forgiveness of us by forgiving those that “trespass against us.”
Little Man, my prized son, I love you more than you can possibly understand until you have a child of your own. I have not abandoned you. I am confident that I am going to be around for many more years and I know that I can be of assistance in all matters, great and small, in your best interest.
I’m going to leave you with the following joke:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Chicken-butt.
Note: This entry was modified to remove the name of my child by order of the court.
Leave a Reply