DadJack.com Blog

The kids have been gone since Saturday, It’s always a strange feeling when they are out of town… There is a certain comfort, even if they’re not at my house, knowing they are just a few congested freeways away.  Adding to the weirdness is knowing that they are at my Ex-Wife’s wedding.

I was thinking about it the other day, Stretch always is filled with so much anger and sometimes at things I just cannot grasp being that upset about.  I can’t find that anger towards much of anything… Including my Ex.  It is more disappointment, in both of us.  I am disappointed in her for all the obvious reasons and in myself for trusting her, believing all she said during our relationship, which now all has been proven false.

In the limited exposure I have to her (during exchanges, at school events) she acts as if nothing is wrong, as nothing has happened, like we’re friends…  We are not friends.  I have great friends, who I have known much longer than she, that have never let me down, toyed with my emotions or tried with all their power to destruct my life on all levels… Those are my friends.

I guess you just think of your kids as yours, as your realities being in sync, but that is not true anymore… My kids and I live in different worlds.  They, in one with me and one with their mother… Different locations, experiences, friends, family, et cetera.  And I, in one with them and then in another when they are not with me… When you become a parent it becomes your whole world, all encompassing, everything you do is focused and revolved around your children, especially when they are babies.  I embraced that, my kids were my total focus… Now I am unfocused on them most of the week and have to try and rebuild a pseudo-pre-kids life, like I had before marriage and kids.

It’s odd because it is what so many people with spouses and kids say they want back, that freedom and personal time lost by family life… Trust me, it’s not all as it’s cracked up to be and it’s very different from what you remember.  I am not 25 anymore, living as if I am as very little appeal…  I want my boring life back, I was good at that, I enjoyed it.

Although I say I want my family life back, and it’s true, but as I have earlier written, I am not going to get into a relationship just to be in one… I see that too often, I saw it with my my Dad.

So for now, I will live in both my worlds, separately together.

It’s not the cooking, or the laundry, I’ve always been able to handle that.  It’s not the trips to the super market, one kid taking a “test bite” out of each apple we have selected while his sister tries to sneak Lucky Charms and anything else Daddy has deemed “junk” into the cart.  It’s not going to the aquarium or the zoo, I can always rope my Sister or Mom into helping me with those special trips.  It’s not getting both kids bathed and into their jammies, we work together and get it done quite smoothly.

The hardest part is watching it all happen alone, all the special times.  I don’t mean sitting 5 or 6 rows away from my ex and her husband at Lucy’s school events, I mean those special moments that happen almost daily as your kids grow and discover.  The little things that amaze you or overwhelm you, the things that can only truly be appreciated by your partner, the person who you created these miracles.

When you check on them sleeping and they look so peaceful, snoring those little snores or  when they are laying on the floor concentrating so hard on the drawing they are making, crayon in fist, creating a mini-masterpiece.  When you are cooking together and you go through almost the full dozen eggs just trying to learn how to crack them correctly (And Baby ends up wearing more than actually get in the mixing bowl).  And the millions of other tiny, but amazing, things that they do on a daily basis.  I capture many of these moments on tiny SD cards, and share them with friends and family… I have filled dozens of them.  But mostly, I fill my brain with them, filing them away under the “extremely important” category, understanding how special each one is… And that I am the sole keeper of these historic moments…  And that there is a full set of these moments, happening on the other side of the hill and across the basin that are being shared with someone unworthy of their greatness and power, that I will never know.