Such Is Life

The other night, on a whim, my son and I rented Return Of The Jedi. He loved, loved, LOVED the first twenty minutes of it. And then he fell apart and locked himself in his room.

For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what had upset him so much. He had run out during a scene where not much was going on. No fighting or even bad guys on the screen. No foreboding music. Just Luke Skywalker talking about his life.

Baffled, I re-watched the apparently offending scene. I listened carefully to what Luke was saying and all of a sudden I knew what the problem was. I went to my son’s room and after gaining admittance sat on his bed beside him and said five words that I NEVER thought I would have to say:

"Your father is NOT Darth Vader."

My son nodded but was clearly unconvinced, so I pushed forward.

“Darth Vader is evil and he wants Luke to be just as bad as he is. Your dad is NOT evil (he’s not even bad) and he wants you to grow up to be a better man than he is. A truly bad person wouldn’t want that for their child.”

My son’s lower lip began to quiver and he looked away from me. “I understand why your marriage had to end,” he said softly. “I understand why you couldn’t be his wife, but why did he have to leave me? Why did he have to move all the way across the country? Out of reach?”

This was breaking my heart but I knew it was something we needed to deal with so I took his hand and explained carefully. “As I said, he wants you to be an even better man than he is. He just doesn’t know how to teach you how to do that so he leaves raising you to me because he thinks that I can help you become the wonderful man he knows you can be.”

“But he could teach me how to be a good person,” my son insisted. “He is a good dad.”

It was hard to respond to this because the reality is that my ex is not a good dad. He has spent a total of five hours with our son in the last twelve months, called to talk to our son perhaps six or seven times within that same period and has neglected to return our child’s phone calls on more than one occasion. No one in their right mind would call that parenting. But reality isn’t really important here. What’s important is my son’s perception of reality and he is currently clinging to the idea that his father is a wonderful parent who left him. Here’s where it gets tricky. If I paint a picture of his father that is undeservedly idyllic my son will put the blame for his dad’s absence on himself. After all, a perfect dad would never leave a good kid. But I don’t want to bash his father either because I don’t want my son thinking he’s the spawn of…well…Darth Vader. So we talked about how his dad needed to work on being happy with himself before he would be able to make the people around him happy and how he needed to find a way to get his illness (he’s bipolar) under control. After much discussion my son asked the dreaded question: “Will he ever come back to me?”

The temptation is to lie, but of course I told the truth instead which is that I don’t know. I could see the devastation on my son’s face and I took him in my arms and reminded him of all the people here in Northern California who love him; knowing even as I uttered the words that they weren’t really helping.

That night, out of morbid curiosity, I Googled my ex-husband’s name. Seems he landed a management position at a new, locally owned, business. There was a newspaper article written about him in which he explained that he moved back to his hometown (Back East) in order to be “closer to (his) family.” There’s some truth to that (he’s currently living with his mother) but still, I couldn’t help but ponder the irony of the statement. But to my surprise, I wasn’t angry. I actually believe all that stuff I told my son about his dad. I believe that underneath the illness and the self loathing there is a good man struggling to get out. I believe that he loves our son, despite is inattentiveness. I also believe that if he’s unwilling to deal with his own issues it probably is best that he not be actively involved in our child’s life.

As long as this is the situation (and at this point I have no reason to think things will ever change) I will comfort my son and be the best parent I know how to be. But I can’t protect him from everything and I don’t even think I should try. Instead I’ll teach him how to cope. I will continue to remind him that it’s okay to love his father even though he rarely sees him and it’s okay to be angry with him even though he loves him.

This is my son’s cross to bear. We all have one (or two, or three). All I can do is help him shoulder the weight.

I’m sharing this because I know there are a lot of single moms who read this and I know, (as a woman who was raised by a single mother and who now is one) how emotionally difficult it can be for a child when one parent is basically out of the picture. I also know you can get your child through this without causing any undue trauma. It just takes a little sensitivity, a lot of honesty and a whole lot of love.


Kyra Davis
http://www.kyradavis.com/
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