A Modest Proposal : A New Tradition

This  post isn't really singular to being a stay at home Dad or anything to do with Fathers particularly.  A little bit with children.  But it has been on my mind.  It does have some connections with parenting in general.

Two weeks ago from this writing was Witches day.  April 30th.  I cant go into the background of this tradition, this day, perhaps there is more to it that I am missing.  I should provide a link of a history of witches day, but for the time being, the short of it is the town gets together in the community center or the local soccer field and sets up a cloth witch stuffed with paper or hay and decked out as an emblem of the real witch.  She, and yes all these witches are she, is on a pyre of wood beams and chips.  The town gathers and ... the witch is burned.

In our town some people dress up as witches.  Children also can dress up as witches.  I am not sure whether this is to mimic the witch or make a joke of the witch, but none of these people are burned.

I watched this year as the flames climbed.  When they reached the dress of the witch, the crowd

cheered.  When they hit her face the crowd cheered again, especially the children.  I couldn't help but feel sadness when I heard the children cheer when her face was burned.  I started to think that we were burning the wrong person and we were out of touch with reality and we should update this outdated tradition.  After all I think we have learned that many witches are very good with using natural healing processes and cultivating bio food, and perhaps also being vegetarians, though I am not sure of that last point, as they might use animals in other harmful methods.  Also because I have read so many Terry Pratchett books, I have come to view witches as good.

I propose we change the witch burning tradition and modernize it.

Pedophile in Big Lebowski film

I propose instead we make an effigy of a child molester, a pedophile and burn them.  For instance the likeness of the convicted killer of Etan Patz, as now his killer has been convicted.  Or maybe we don't even need an effigy.  We can have a real life child molester hooked up to the stack of wood and burn him, as long as it was 100 per cent clear he was a convicted molester.  I think that is something burned that even I could cheer and for sure kids could cheer the burning man too with a clear conscience.

If this would be difficult or objectionable, we could burn a likeness of Adolf Hitler, although perhaps kids wouldn't understand yet, especially the young ones.  Or again, we could find some local Neo Nazi and burn him, unless he promised to convert to the local centrist political party.

The point being that, really folks, some of these traditions have to die and or be modernized and galvanized.  I really have nothing against witches, whereas even in 100 years Adolf Hitler should be recognized as evil incarnate that can be burned in effigy every year.  Or child molesters.

Also maybe some of our children's stories should be changed.  I really don't want to read Brothers Grimm fairy tales to my kids as they are too violent and not understandable to kids these days.  Again, we can emphasize to our kids to stay away from lollipop soda pop giving adults and change the witch in Hansel and Gretal to a pedophile.  Push him in the fire kids and never eat sweet sugary snacks, especially those offered by strange men.

I digress now and branch out on too big a topic.  But I have a year to ponder it and plan.  I think next year at the annual witch burning I am going to sneak a Nazi flag into the witches dress, or else make my own "witch" to be burned that has an oversized groin section with a hairy chest sticking out from his flannel shirt.

Then again, if this is a witch it would be wise  to burn it

At the end of the Witch burning we all roast wursts on sticks over the fire and eat them.
Food for thought.

I have been listening to a lot of new music this week, but,
Today during this writing I was listening to an old band
Band of Susans "Wired for Sound 1986-1993".
One of the members is from my town I grew up in.  Susan.
I saw them in 1993 in my local club.  Great guitar band.

Devil on my Shoulder, Easter Egg in my Tummy

They really do exist.  Really.  Believe it.

All those cartoon shows that had the little devil pop up on the characters shoulder, holding a pitchfork and telling the "hero" not to be a hero and indulge, in fact do the wrong thing, which will be much more pleasant than doing the right thing.  For some reason it is usually a wolf as the bad devil.  But that is beside the point.

The point is, he does exist. I saw him just a week ago from this writing on Easter Sunday.   He really did pop up on my shoulder.  Here is what happened.

We were out at my Mother in Laws little cottage, luckily sans Mother in law, for the Easter weekend, just the Sunday and Monday.  Easter is on Monday here.  Sunday night I was sleeping by myself in a little room.  Everyone else was asleep.  I don't think this has ANYTHING to do with anything, but I had just finished watching one of the all time best movies ever made,  "The Big Lebovski" for the 4th or 5th time in my life.  Nope nothing to do with anything.  Except that I had my late night hankering for some snack.  Preferably Chocolate or potato chips.

I really don't know why my body metabolism is so lopsided, but it is.  I am never hungry in the morning and cant stop eating in the night.  I just like to eat when the day is done and you can relax and, well, eat in peace.  And a dessert is the most necessary part of that eating.  I mean I do have a sweet tooth, but it comes out the most in the late evening after a meal.  I need a dessert. It is like closure to the day.

So what is staring me in the face in my bedroom as a logical conclusion to the days end?  Of course my youngest daughters bag of chocolate Easter eggs wrapped in different colors of tin foil.

Pop!  That little miniature devil dressed up as a wolf with a pitchfork appeared on my shoulder.  Was it my left or right shoulder?  I think it was my left shoulder.

"Eat the chocolate dude.  Just one chocolate.  So what.  She has a whole bag of them.  So what if she misses one.  It is just exactly what you need right now for the end of the day.  Eat one chocolate egg dude.  Mmmm, chocolate.  Just one egg."

It was so wrong.  It was the wrong thing to do.  I knew that.  Way wrong.  Where was the good angel?  I guess my conscience was there and that was good enough to tell me that it was the bad choice and show some restraint. Parents always have to show restraint and patience.  C`mon show your strength and DON'T eat the chocolate and do the right thing!  These small incidents really mean a lot to little kids.  Missing one chocolate egg  DOES make a difference.  They notice it, it hurts them.

I just ask myself even now, maybe even next year, or years in the future, for crying out loud why did I have to pick the most obvious chocolate that she would notice was gone?  Stupid.  I had to have done it on purpose, like I wanted to be found out.  I took the only egg wrapped in green tin foil.  There were so many other eggs wrapped in yellow tin foil, she might not have noticed if I had taken one of those.  But I didn't.  I did the dumb ass, devil thing and took the only chocolate egg wrapped in green tin foil.

I took it out of the bag.  Unwrapped it.  Put the green tin foil wrapper in my pants pocket and ate the whole thing down.    Yes, I have to say, in a matter of fact, intellectual tone that I can hear my Father speaking in,  it was a good egg.


6 o clock in the morning my youngest daughter comes into my room.  Why she came at this time, I have no idea.  But she did.  Could the missing egg have been calling her, like a ghost calls the living from the grave? She noticed the bag of chocolate eggs on the book case and she noticed... the missing green egg.

"Where is the green egg, Daddy?"

"I hid that one.  You will have to find it".

"Did you eat it?"

"No no.  I hid it for Easter. That one.  You have to find it".

And she ran off and woke up her Mother and promptly went into a monologue on how the green egg was missing and how Daddy said it was hidden, but where was it?  Phew.  I got out of that one.

But I didn't.  All morning she asked me where was the green egg.  She couldn't find it.  Where was it?

The devil popped up on my shoulder again - why didn't anyone see him? - and I went to the kitchen and came back to the living room and gave my youngest daughter the chocolate egg wrapped in green tin foil as if I had taken it from its hiding place.  She opened it up and ate it and it was gone.  End of problem.  Um,  No.


Long about 5 in the afternoon, my older daughter came running into the living room where again we had gathered.

"My only chocolate egg in green is missing.  Has anyone seen it?"

If ever there was a case of two wrongs DO NOT make a right, this was it.
Shame, shame on you bad Daddy.

No. 9: Walking my daughter to school.... not any more

As I wrote in my last post here, it was all whirlwind, heat and flash. Within an hour the parents were made to stay at home and the daughter hit the road to school on her own.

What I mean to say is that my wife was late taking our daughter to school one day and in a minute she decided that our daughter would go to school on her own starting the next day. My daughter was perfect with that.   I,  was not.  In fact the next day I did go with her as she was late in getting off and I said you cant go by yourself when you are late.  Because I KNOW how to get there on time when we are running late.  She does not.

Look how awful that grey car is driving crossing the line

But the point being that now she would be going to school on her own.  I lost out on that argument.  I thought that in this post Etan Patz world, I think it is better if girls are in 4th or 5th grade or 10 years old when they start going to school by themselves.  My daughter is 8 in the third grade.  And she doesn't go with anyone, just by herself. I don't know if it is a good idea. I just don't know.

We did some test runs at the end of 2016, following 20 yards behind her.  At first she didn't know.  Then she did.  But then we didn't continue with this, with the next step and let her go by herself. I don't know why not.  Until my wife had a fit and decided in early February this year that our daughter would go by herself.

After that next day I went with her I was expecting to go with her also the following day, but as I said in my last post, it didn't work out.  They wouldn't let me.  So I took my coat off which I had thrown on over my Homer Simpson pajamas and went to the window to watch her walk up the street.  We live on the fifth floor and have a little alcove over the street so we can have a nice view all the way up the street.  The problem was that I didn't have time to put on my contact lenses and my glasses are old and my eyes are worse, so I couldn't really see much.  I saw several dots walking up the street and although she has a big red and blue back pack which is nearly as big as she is, I had trouble figuring out which dot was her.  I am looking out the window like a blind mole trying to figure out which moving dot was my daughter, trying to see the people crossing the street at the end of the block.

That just didn't work.

I think that was Wednesday.

By Friday she asked me to walk with her to school and I was relieved and thrilled.  It is kind of boring walking by yourself to school.

On the way home I walked very slowly and looked at all the store fronts and garages and looked for any basement type work shops that mysterious, nefarious men could jump out of to grab her. I recall that Number 9 on that street looked... hauntingly scary.  I repeated it in my head for further investigation one day.  "Number 9 Number 9 Number 9.  You become naked."  Wait a sec, where did that come
from?    I am going to take some pictures of "unsafe" looking doorways to keep on hand, to check out sometime.

Of course I am half joking.  But only half.  The other half I am serious.  I joke on one half of the equation because I find myself acting ridiculously that I have to look for some bogeyman that doesn't exist.  Most of the child nappers, abusers are friends or relatives of the family and are "known people".  This is statistically true.  The smallest percentage of child kidnappers, under 10 per cent if I can give that number without looking it up (in other words, don't take my word for it on that number), are "dark strangers" from the street.

ON THE OTHER HAND, even with the slight possibility, the low percentage that something could happen, I would rather play it safe than sorry of course.  I would rather still walk with my daughter to school, also because its nice to do this, but if she doesn't want me to, at least I can make sure it is a safe journey every day.   I would rather err on the side of safety and caution than be sorry for the rest of my life.

At the time of this writing it is the end of February and slowly I am getting used to sending her off by herself.  I suppose I needed time myself to make that leap of letting my daughter go by herself.  Sometimes I put my contacts on and watch her walk all the way up the street till she is a small red and blue and brown haired dot somewhere at the end of the block.

Child to Teenager in one easy step : Hate your Father

Let the record show that on this week in February 2017 my 8 year old girl became a proto teenager.

How is that possible you may ask?  An 8 year old?  Maybe a ten or twelve, but not an eight year old.  Well, I go by the definition that a teen ager, besides being in their teens a) likes to do things on their own without the responsibility that comes with doing things on your own and b) dislikes what their Fathers say and do and tries to disassociate themselves from their Fathers who tell way bad jokes, are old stinky farts (no matter if he is 30 or 50) and embarrass them in front of their friends.

Let me explain and you be the judge.

Earlier this week stemming from an incident last week (which I will be writing about soon), my daughter started going to school by herself.  We thought we would start in the new year, but we didn't right away, then my wife decided rather abruptly in a fit of misplaced anger that our daughter would go to school on her own.  I was rather taken aback and scared at the prospect.  I still thought we should wait till she reached 4th grade or even till she was ten years old.  I thought 8 years in a post Etan Patz world is still a bit young.  But my daughter grabbed the opportunity and demanded to go by herself.  She  didn't even want me stalk.. uh shadowing her twenty yards or meters behind.  She would go by herself.  Completely. 

I found this a bit unnerving, also because she demanded it.  She demanded to go by herself! She yelled AT ME when I started putting on my coat over my Homer Simpson pyjamas to go with her.  It Sounds like she is going to demand to drive the car by herself when she is older too (good thing I dont own a car).  Or is she going to demand we leave the house so she can have sex with her boyfriend too (not now, I mean several decades in the future, silly) ?

In my opinion she was demanding to do it on her own without FULLY understanding the minute, fine points of reading cars and learning where and when to cross the street.  True I had been teaching her this for two years now, but this is a very intricate knowledge which can only be understood by over 40 year olds, ergo Hugo I should still walk her to school.

Didn't happen.  She won out.  The 8 year old won the disagreement.

And a small note, in the morning when I was brushing her teeth, she said I was totally smelly and she had to hold her nose while I was brushing.  That was unfair, I had only been wearing those pajamas a week and I had only had a couple sweat dripping dreams of killing Frankenstein (actually Herman Munster of the Adams Family) and yelling at people, nothing unusual like my waking up screaming dreams or waking up pounding on the wall.  Had I become an old stinky fart Grandpa for her already?  Unfair.  Untrue.  Foul I yell.

 I took a long bath and washed my hair just in case.  Maybe I shouldn't eat those onion and cheese sandwiches before bedtime though.   

But the real clincher came that evening around bedtime.

My younger daughter asked to watch one cartoon of "Martha Speaks" before bed.  Since it is a PBS
kids good programming with word education I rather like it when they watch this show.  Better than Barbie (r)(c)(Mattel).  So we watched two shows and it was after 9pm when they finished and they had to get in bed quickly.  Their regular late bedtime is 9pm. 

My older daughter started to read and that got me angry.  Reading got me angry?  No no, it got me angry that it was after 9pm and we had watched TV and NOW she was going to read.  I said, "you cant read now, it is bed time."  She refused to stop and demanded to read.  I said, "Look if you wanted to read you shouldn't have watched Martha Speaks about the talking dog."  "Daddy is right," said my youngest daughter.  But my older daughter persisted in reading and I turned out the light.  But she continued to read because the night light was on.  I repeated that she should have read earlier and not watched TV.  I turned it out and made it completely dark and she got ALL angry and started yelling at me.

I thought that was unfair.  Didn't she see the sense of it?  SORREE, but you have to go to bed and you cant read now.  You chose TV earlier.  Cant choose reading now.

But the logic escaped her and she turned away from me and wouldn't let me hold her hand before falling asleep or even let me kiss her good night.  "Go hold my sisters hand," she yelled.

It really wasn't fair.  I was devastated.  But there you have it.  She wanted to do her thing AND do her thing, watch TV and then read.  And on top of it all, I was the evil one.  Well, hate the police and hate Daddy too.  I am the baddy.  And thus did my 8 year old daughter turn into a proto teenager hating her Father for turning out the light and not letting her read and making her go to sleep.

Look, I don't drink alcohol and I definitely don't believe in drowning out your sorrows or problems in liquor.  It usually makes the sorrow and problems worse.  HOWEVER, at this moment I was not averse to trying to lift my spirits with my little cat nip of Irish Cream in hot milk. Pictured here.

I became so tired from that drink, that I couldn't finish this post and had to finish it my next free night.

Epilogue:  I had finished the milk with my cat nip and in the morning my girls were all angry there was no milk so they couldn't have a morning cocoa.  They started putting the puzzle together and said, Daddy drank it, he always eats our stuff or drinks our drinks.  Bad Daddy.  I had just wanted a bit of nice friendly hot milk to cheer me up.  

Jeez, hated Daddy.   Not looking forward to teenagers in the house.

2 more kilo overweight and three months of debt: post Christmas blues

Christmas is long gone, but the debt is not.  The debt will be with me for another month or two.  Why is that it can take such a short time to fall in a hole which takes three months to dig out of?  I am sure it happens the other way too, but for me more bad things come to mind than good things.

Let me explain.

 It takes a week to buy Christmas gifts and Christmas lasts a day.  It takes three months to pay off the debt.  You have a couple days off at Christmas and you eat a lot and sit around, maybe watch TV, play a lot with the kids, relax and don't do much.... and gain 2 kilos or 5 lbs.   It takes three months to lose the same 2 kilos, if not longer.  I never lost the 5 lbs I gained Christmas 2015 and I gained 5 more Christmas 2016.  I better work on it.  That is the thing.  You have to work on it for three months what took one week to appear. 

The problem is, is that January and February are such contrarian, "anti working" months.  They work against you.

Let me explain.

Everybody wants to make changes in January.  Everyone is making those resolutions that now they are going to do something and make things happen.  For a small business owner,  that can only mean bad things.  January started off very badly for me.

The land lord

The landlord of my store comes in in the first week, and says something like, `you know, its been a year that the space next to you has been empty with no renters and I am losing too much money.  What I am going to do is give you a contract that says I can kick you out with three months notice.  See, because if someone wants the space next to you AND your space for a good price, then I want to give it to them.  Look, I know you have rented here a long long time, but you know, business is business.`  what he didn't say was that the space next to me was empty because he was asking too much money for it all year.  And he didn't say that people had made offers for the full space including mine but for the same price as what he wanted for two thirds the space.  The point is that it was a new year and it had been a full year with no rent from the other space, NOW he was going to do something about it.

The next week my worker sends me a text message that says he will only be working till the end of February.  Its a new year after all and he decided that he makes more money at his other job and he will do that job more and quit his job with me.  Fair enough. I cant pay a lot because I am paying too much to the landlord.  But the point is, the worker, a pretty good guy who I trusted and who knew his job fairly well, and I trusted him, I did mention that, decided its time to make a move in the new year.

See, if you are a boss, or manager, you want things to run smoothly, rational and routine like.  But what happens is that in January everyone and everything decides the opposite of running smoothly and routine.  The computer in the office broke and the computer fixers try to Jack me because hey they know people, as their logo says, and they know I know absolutely little about computers and hey, they have to fleece more because its January and no one is buying.   EVERY THING goes against you just because, well, its a new year, things have to change.

January just works against you.

And February...  February always reminded me of a copycat lazy brother of January.  It wants to be bad ass just like its January brother, but, its just too lazy and tired. So all the resolutions are still in place, but nothing more happens with them, but the problems are still there.  The problems are still there, but they are sleeping.  People mostly sleep in February. Or go on long weekends and ski.  It doesn't get worse, but it doesn't get better.  And you resign yourself to thinking forward to tackling the problems in March and the Spring. February is just a sleeper.

I resolved last Fall that I would start my swimming again for exercise.  And I did.  I had to break it for Christmas time, but I figured I would start it back up in January. And I did. Then my daughters started off another round of sickness.  Starting with my youngest daughter who of course got sick after we had a very nice weekend outside skating.  Six hours of weekend enjoyment landed her at home sick for the whole week.  I was home with her much of the week. On Saturday my other daughter and my wife were on a ski weekend.  For some reason my older girl got a stomach flu on the Saturday night and cut the weekend short and landed herself in bed for three days.  The very next Saturday I new something was wrong when I had no desire to eat chocolate or potato chips in the evening.  By 11 pm I too was sitting on the bathroom floor head deep in the toilet bowl.  Man that stuff burns when it comes up the other way. It just leaves me gasping for breath. 

I ended the month with a total of one swimming day.

January just works against you.  February is a sleeper.   

Pay off debt

Finally in March you can start to pay off your bills and do your exercise and maybe lose a kilo and get out of debt.  Start.  Maybe.  If you dont have enough to pay off from there being no business in January and February. 

One week of Christmas, three months of digging yourself out of the hole from Christmas.  

The Importance of Doing Something which is Probably Wrong

Just before the Christmas holiday I started to prepare myself. Namely I started to turn myself into an eating machine/ lazy sloth.  Not to degrade the sloth, it is just a saying.  Sloths are quite good.  I intended to be a lazy pig.  Oh wait a sec.. another good animal.

Here I am sitting in front of a table that is devoid of food because it is in my stomach. There used to be a roast of some sort there in the middle of the table, but.. lo and behold it is not anymore.  I really wanted to sit there for another half an hour in front of the imagined fireplace, so the roast could find its proper place in my internal being and we could, together, achieve an equilibrium of zen and harmony, before I shat it out.

As I said, I was preparing myself for Christmas. 

Not to be.

 I was told by my wife that the girls wanted to go out and ice skate.  As much as I love my daughters, there are two times of the day that I would rather do my own thing than my daughters thing.  That is, in the morning when I still need to sleep and after a meal when I uh,, need to sleep.  But my great love for my daughters and the realization that I would be in the dog house with my wife if I didn't, got me off my ass and into my winter clothes.  Time to turn my slothfulness around and be a Father.

When I was growing up I was a very lucky child.  We had a backyard which froze over in the winter. We had a private ice rink to do whatever or make whatever mistakes in learning or playing that we needed to.  The irony of this is that no one in our family learned to ice skate.  But all the same, the possibility was there.

Now when we go to the public ice rink, which is still a luxury which I am grateful for,  there are all types of skaters of all different levels.  I should say that most of the people are polite there and all types of skaters are accommodated.  But like the general populace, there are usually one or two bad apples.

I think this is the second winter my older girl has been skating.  My older girl is taller and more like myself, she is afraid of falling down.  She is getting to the point where it is kind of far to fall down and she doesn't want to fall on her back.  As a result she is a bit stiff legged and "upright" in her skating.  She needs to loosen up a bit.  She walks skates.  It is pretty good, for a beginner.  But of course the local six year old future starlet who is an ugly little rat, comes up to her,  she doesn't even know her for Pete s sake, and says, "you skate all wrong, you cant skate".  in that mean voice, not in the "here I want to help you" voice. I was standing at the side of the rink watching.  My daughter comes skating up to me and told me what the girl said. My girl was crying her heart out. 

Now here comes the tough part. You have to act.  You have to tell her both that it doesn't mean anything and it shouldn't make her cry and who is that other girl anyway? BUT you have to act, you have to pull off a retaliation.  Say Something. Start a war.  Well, that is how wars are started, aren't they? 

Now any parent would know that its no big deal.  Little kids say these bragging, mean things all the time.  But any parent also knows, or should know, that these things, as silly or small as they seem to parents, mean a lot to our small kids just starting up.  I also remember that sometimes these little mean digs stick in our brains and can keep us from going forward and totally destroy us when we are small.  "You cant sing, you are ugly, hah hah", can have such a terrible impact on our young life.  I was determined not to let that happen to my little girl.  I wanted her to continue skating, no matter if she would be a professional, or just do it once a year for fun. 

Did you know that John Lennon was so profoundly affected when he was labeled "the Fat Beatle" that in the 70s he was on some strange diet of one sort or another for most of the decade that curtailed his full potential and probably didn't help him with his nutrition or mental well being at all? (reference Albert Goldmans book "the many lives of John Lennon" which admittedly is a very negative picture of John Lennon)

The girl of evil nature came skating up to a woman and starting talking to her. they skated together too for a bit.  I gathered that this was the mother.  When the girl skated away, my daughter was still standing crying next to me on the edge of the rink, I started talking to this Mother. I said, "look your daughter said a mean thing to my daughter, that she couldn't skate and it has totally upset her."  You know how hard it was to say this, and it came out rather in a gobbledy gook and not very coherent and I was shaking in my voice because I was scared, but it probably sounded that i was shaking with anger.  My daughter started to cry all over again, but i wasn't sure if it was because I was making a fool of myself and her or that she was still sad that this girl had told her she couldn't skate.  For better or worse, I decided on the second.

The Mother kind of looked at me as if she didn't totally understand my words.  Well understandable as I don't think I had said them correctly. (Looking back, I am not even sure of what I said)  And then she said, "I'm not her Mother, I m her Aunt.  Her Father is over there, he works here".

Oh.

The Aunt seemed to make some contact with the Father and said something, but after that nothing happened.  The only thing I could tell is that the Father seemed to be ready for something bad to happen, he watched his girl and was ready to skate on the ice and ... do something, as far as I could tell.  He seemed to hold his daughter closer to his attention.  But to protect her, not to yell at her.  He looked like a professional skater.

Well, that worked out as well as cooking a lobster in a pail of cold water.

My daughter watched the evil culprit skate around a little more.  Slowly my daughter got back on the ice rink, but made sure she was always on the other side of the rink from the mean one.  And my daughter kept coming up to me and saying, "that s the girl"  and glared at her, or started crying again.  Curses on that mean girls future. 

I wondered if this would dampen my daughter s desire to skate?  I wondered if I had accomplished any thing what so ever by talking to the Mother who turned out to be the Aunt?  I wondered if maybe for all involved it would`nt have been better if I had just sat at the table like a log as I had intended after lunch and let my meal properly digest into my internal being, like the Buddha.

Basically I still wonder if I did the right thing at all.

Ah, the love and labor of being a Father.  Sometimes you just don't know if you are doing it right. In fact many times you are not sure if you are doing it right. 

For a successful outcome of something similar you should read Raymond Carvers story called "Bicycles, Muscles and Cigarets" .  Or you should listen to Louis CK s account of how he got back at a little boy who was being mean to his daughter, "you gotta protect your children".  

Single Fathers Stay Strong

I was going to bring up something else on this post, but I met a friend on the metro yesterday and I just had to tell his story.   Its a message to all men bringing up kids, but maybe mostly those who are doing it by themselves, yes they exist, to stay strong. 

I ve known this guy for about 15 years off and on, but I still think he is under 30.  He would come into my shop to buy music.  I don't know if he wanted to be a DJ full time, but he was into it and kind of serious.  It didn't seem like he had to pull much money to survive at the time, not that he had silver spoon money, but just that he knew how to and did survive on little.  A good guy.  He had his tough times too.  But he was and is a very positive sort who maintains good vibes. 

 He came into my shop say a year and half ago after not being there a long time.  He brought his girlfriend and .. his new baby.  He still bought some music but said he had to pay attention to the needs of others and had to stay on a budget.  Understandable.  

Then I met him on the metro yesterday from the day of this writing and in the trip of four metro stops he gave me his update, though it might not be 100 per cent correct as I couldn't always hear it properly on the metro with the noise, but here it is:

His wife or girlfriend (don't know if they got married), "left him" several months after their baby was born, I would guess after the child was more than six months.  She didn't take the baby with her and she didn't exactly leave him and the baby, she just went back home or stayed at other people s houses and not with him or the baby. She was probably partying.  So it seemed.  My friend was taking care of the baby, but still I think he said that the Government said that if she didn't shape up some, they might have to take the baby away from both of them.  

She returned to them.  Left them again for a couple weeks.  Then came back.  She wanted to stay and be a good Mother.  But she would have a date to go out and promise to be back at 10 pm and come home at 4.30 am.  

She doesn't have a job.  I would gather they are getting some State support.  But if she leaves him for good with the baby, she has to pay child support to him.   

The Father, my friend, has a job.  He is a personal caretaker.  I met him on Saturday morning at 11am and he said he was getting off work just then.  He was probably at work taking care of an elderly person from 6am, helping them with their shower and clothes, getting their breakfast ready and served and maybe setting them up with anything for the rest of the afternoon.  He would probably go back in the late afternoon, make supper and maybe prepare the person for bed or at least the evening.  He might have to stay there till they went to sleep or beyond.  He worked on Sundays too. 

The Mother was actually at home taking care of the baby.  She was back with them at this time.  But whether she would be back forever or leave again was a question.  

He couldn't get help from his girlfriends Mother as that Mother didn't like him and did not accept the situation, so I understood.  It seems like the girlfriend was kind of estranged from her Mother also.  So there was no support from that Grandma.  Which, OK, we cant always expect our Grandparents to take care of things.  They are older, maybe not capable anymore of lending help.  But....I don't know.  

My friend said, his girlfriend needed to be out and get out. He said he understood it and was cool with it.  It seems she was younger and not ready for the responsibility, or just immature. 

So he is de facto the single parent both taking care of the baby and having a job. He didn't know when the Mother would be in or out.  Maybe mostly at night she was out.  However, she might just pick up and leave again totally.   He was OK with that.  He wasn't complaining, he was just giving me the update.  But it was a tough story. I realize there are many many single Mothers, many more than single men, who do this,  but it doesn't matter. It is a tough situation.  He was STILL keeping a very positive outlook.  

I felt devastated for him.  More so, I felt devastated for the baby.  I told him, "Man, you know you got to stay strong.  You got to stay there for your baby, because the baby needs parents.  It needs the warmth, it needs the hugs.  You`ve got to stay strong for your baby, Man"  Sh... I felt like crying over the situation.  If the Mother leaves again and he falls apart, then the baby has nobody.  And that, that is too too much.  One more baby, one more Being brought into this world who wont get the love who wont get the nourishment they desperately need.   And how will that effect them growing up?  What will they grow up into?  

We rounded the corner outside the metro and were going in different directions.  I said, "Stay strong, my friend, you are doing great work.  It is no problem to be a Father and be taking care of a baby these days, it is not strange.  So stay strong.  You've got to,"  I told him as we parted, "I am with you," and put my hand on my heart, but really that doesn't help him physically if he cant handle it and starts to fall apart, it wont mean much to him.  I wish it would.  I think he is a strong enough individual that he can keep it together and give his baby a lot, not all, but a lot, of what it needs.  It does need two parents, but that isn't certain it will happen.  

For what its worth, I hope the strength of God is with him.  And to all you single parents out there,  you've got to stay even stronger over the holiday season.  Look, you may not be able to give your kids everything, but what you do give them is great and giving them love and nourishment is probably the best.   

Stay strong.  
Respect.