relationships…devices people use to control love, and other people. does anyone love freely anymore? to love? and to celebrate a spirit in our lives? or that we can share time with someone? does anyone give love away because they love loving? and want to help you grow? or does everyone come with a bottom line, a codicil, a demand. people…we don’t even know what love is. to many, it is something in there somewhere, behind all the other attachments that guarantee us nutrients and objects and situational leverage. we forget that in love is freedom. and removed from it, love dies….we use our feelings as a volley, we send them out expecting a return. often when we don’t get it the way we want, we bare our teeth. is this, love, then? are lovers people we would bite to death if our kisses were denied?
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for weeks i’ve been taking her and the kids out to dinner. or having them over here. i’ve pedaled up to her house more than a couple times to see them, or to help her move furniture when i was asked for help. i’ve been slowly growing despondent—before i was even aware i was—that i’ll be watching yet two more of my children grow up from a distance. not teaching them daily. not having them in my home. finding strange places in their personality that i do not recognize, and cannot account for. gradually knowing who they are less than i did once.
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my first son is now 21, and we are not talking at the moment, i guess. he has taken on his mother’s anger over my $3000 arrears that i am whittling away monthly. he had taken to writing me snide messages over it when the check was late. it was not fun to watch her complaint become his. it was dispiriting.
life is so weird. when he was 15 and found out his mother was preventing me from seeing him because of money, he became angry at her. and said he didn’t care about that, he wanted to see me. see, he hadn’t known that she was interfering for that reason, and had been for years. just as how my eldest daughter’s mother dresses up a lack of contact after intercepting and throwing away my mails, my eldest son’s mother presented the story to him as if our not seeing each other much was only because i was irresponsible and unwilling to see him. she sort of left out the times i wanted to see him but was stopped by the Toll Gate of her financial demands. that all faded. but she got pregnant again recently and re-focused her anger on me and what i owe her. my son was drawn into this…i don’t blame him for that. i’m sure she talks to him about it and he is still living with her, so he is sort of bound to feel it as pressure. in his life, at 21 he has been taught to blame me when there is not enough food in the cabinet, i take it. in my life, i was out trying to figure out the world at 15, on the street, on the road by then. not saying it was a good life or the right one. but i don’t even know how to dealwith that gap in worldview sometimes. it makes me sad though.
and my eldest daughter…whom i love so very much. and miss, every day. she is 16 now, but her four-year old face gazes achingly at me from a poster on my wall. a mask she made hangs above my bed, a big orange cat mask. but she is not in my life so much anymore. in 2001, her grandmother appealed to me for help in wresting her away from her own mother due to her mother’s unstable marriage and her mother’s mental instability, but it was a trick. once i helped her do that, she then cut me off from my daughter. and now that is the family game. change the phone number when i find it, steal my mail, and tell my daughter stories about how ugly and deviant i am. luckily, my daughter has nothing but loving memories of me. i’ve never been anything but kind to my children. it still keeps us apart, though.
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the grinding experience of everyone in the world having more control and access to my own children than me, of arrogant dimwitted stepfathers calling my phone to tell me they are the Real Dad Now and also what a fuckup i am, of knowing my kids are being lied to, and having my own children used as legal weapons against me time and time and time again weighs on me more than i can communicate. these injustices have marked me deeper than anything else in this world, perhaps. i normally do not talk about them. they are not realities to be tossed about in the tempestuous and splinter-witted tides of the internet or even casual conversation.
and there’s no one to complain to about how these things turn out, you know. it’s just life. it’s…love.
update:
should i make clear that this is my emotional experience? my diaries are my reality, based on my remembrance of the facts. i try to be fair to others when i write reality-centered prose, but it is meant to convey my experience of what happened, not to be an almanac of every instance that played out, not to be impartial, but very subjective. please always understand that about this collection of writing.
Nezua, after reading your post “Love Device” I just had to respond to the beauty and pain that drips from every word. Clearly, by your photos and words, you are a very gentle and doting father and “Love Device” reminds us that fathers many times can be deeply effected when separations and dollars come into play. Your post, bravely and intimately, share with us “the other side” – the side that we never seem to consider.
thank you.
I think when I was younger I was a lot like your eldest son, and I blamed my father for a lot of things. The money was just the easiest thing to complain about, but that wasn’t the real issue… I was so angry. My dad was definitely very absent from my life, for a hundred different reasons that are somewhat easy to label if you are on the outside looking in yet are never, ever that simple. But I only have positive memories of the times I’ve spent with him. By the time I turned 18, (I’m 22 now), I’d realized that he did the best he could, which is all anyone can ask for. At the end of the day, I know that my father has a good heart and kind eyes, and I am proud of him–no matter what anyone else says. He may not have been the best “father,” but he is truly a GOOD man, which is more than can be said for most people in this world. Your children must know that you are a good person, and that is the most redeeming quality there is.
thanks for telling your story here.
yes…i guess i have my feelings about that side, too, being the son of an absent father. i never blamed mine for money. my mother never taught me to think that way…or i never found reason to think about that side of things.
i guess on my end with my own son i was just disappointed that argument came out of it, no matter what. and i guess my bar on fathers is low since my stepfather/adoptive father was sort of out of control, and i spent years just wishing he were absent.
i appreciate your words on seeing who is a good person in your family. i think, too, my son is at an age where he’s gonna be finding things out, thinking hard, becoming more independent, becoming a “man” or thinking about it a lot. i’m sure it will all be well, or at least just as it is meant to be.
thanks again. :)