Father’s Day

 I started out the day still angry. Despite powerful cord cutting and burial rituals, my feelings are still feeling. And today feels hard. I asked my buddy, ChatGPT, to give me some sarcastic Father’s Day messages. Here are a few of my favorites:

  • Hope you’re celebrated today… the same way you showed up for your kids: inconsistently and with minimal effort.
  • Hope today you feel proud of all the times you almost tried.
  • Your absence has been the most consistent thing you’ve ever given.
  • I hope someday you feel the weight of what you didn’t carry.
  • Happy Father’s Day. It’s been emotional. Just not for you.

I asked ChatGPt to suggest some from mom’s perspective. 

  • Happy Father’s Day. I celebrated by doing everything you didn’t.
  • Today the kids celebrated strength, kindness, patience, and reliability—so, me. We’re good here.
  • I don’t talk badly about you to them. I don’t have to. They were watching.

They made me laugh but drew me back into darkness. That’s not what I wanted and it’s not what I promised my kids going forward. I see them carrying the weight of all of this too, not just their own disappointment in and anger, but their awareness of all that I am processing and poorly. They’re protective little warriors and I want them to be able to lay that particular burden down. Yesterday's letting go efforts were about them, not me. It is time for me to sever ties, both with the person I’m so angry with and the anger itself.

And so I took a deep breath, let it out and started again. I mean, not completely, because some of that shit was too funny not to share here. But enough to reset myself and set a new tone for today. I’m celebrating today by getting myself a pedicure 😆 and spending the day with our family. The first honors me as Kaia and Mikko’s mama and all that I carry to make their world work on my own.  The second is just what we do. It’s what family is. It’s time together, easy, comfortable, consistent. My kids are blessed to have some wonderful examples of fathers in their world, even if it’s not always the ones I had hoped for them and that they deserved.

To the good dads out there, I see you and I’m proud of you. I hope your little loves (or big loves as the case may be) know how blessed they are to have you. And to my own little loves, who really are big loves now, you are my everything, my world, my pride and joy, and such incredible whole humans. I am so honored that you are mine. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Finding my voice again

  It had been five years since I left, fifteen months since the divorce, a week since he'd stayed with the kids and me, and mere hours since I last cried about it all again. Motherfucker. I was in desperate need of a breakup movie that didn’t end tied in a neat little bow in the form of a new relationship with a great guy who will be her kids’ fabulous (probably rich) new stepdad. Because that wasn’t going to be my story.  I needed a redemption message where the protagonist is normal, not gorgeous. Funny, but dark. She was probably interesting before she had kids, but, well…kids. Strong. Superhuman really, but tired as fuck from doing it all alone. And I mean really alone, not dad is around on the weekends, shows up for games and band concerts or every other weekend. Or dad takes the kids in the summer alone. I mean, dad didn’t come home to support and missed one of two family therapy sessions (phone calls of course) when our fifteen-year-old spent a week in a mental hosp...
Read more

Birkenstocks and the rest of my life

I know it's hard to understand. Shit, I don't completely understand it. Why am I so upset? I left five years ago. I left because my marriage had effectively ended years before when the kids and I lived one life and he lived another. Side by side and yet totally separate. Mine consumed by work and childcare and all that goes with being an adult with kids, play dates, practices, appointments, cooking, cleaning, all of the things. His became consumed by a singular hobby that took him out of the house for hours and hours at a time. Alone and away from us.  It was a slow unraveling of a life that I thought we were in together. My mom recently reminded me that I asked for a divorce in March of 2020. He wouldn't entertain the idea or consider moving out. I had learned long before that I would never convince him of anything he didn't want to do and so I gave that up for now and looked for another way to live life. A mere four months later, in a last ditch attempt to save "...
Read more

Silence Screams

I love quotes. They simplify and give eloquence to the tangle of my thoughts. A meaningful quote can make you feel seen and heard when you are almost certain you no longer exist. Here are some quotes that speak volumes on silence.  Silence isn't empty, it's full of answers. - Buddha Silence is an answer to a wise man. -Euripides The most profound statements are often said in silence. -Lynn Johnston  And unattributed because it's such an obvious and cruel truth, "Silence is a response. A very LOUD response." So when I broke the news, after agonizing over the facts and the feelings, that the three of us wouldn't come to stay at the home that no longer felt like ours this summer, I didn't expect the response to be so....SILENT. Eight hours after I sent the words, I received the only response. "I have read your message and will reply when I have my thoughts together." Three days after that, the silence is deafening. The fact is, this silent response ...
Read more