Borrowed and Gone

It’s a given. You know from the moment you see a little face change color and scream, that God has let you borrow a child. We call them our own, raise them as best we know how - but in the end they leave you to live their own lives. It’s a moment we live for, threaten to celebrate, hope comes sooner than later, then the day comes when you’re cleaning up after them for the last time and find water leaking down your face.

I look around the room - the rooms, he called his own and move the scattered piles of memories folded or piled in heaps and see in them his life as I knew it.

A dozen and a half years ago he came to me, welled up into this world out of an incision and became a part of my world. Nine years later he was mine and mine alone forsaking and forsaken by his mother.

Sitting in his room(s,) surrounded by all the years’ accumulation of clothing, gear, cards and pictures, I feel like a part of me has gone out and left there now, is an empty hole that is sucking the energy out of me. I know he’s not gone, as all the world knows gone, dead and gone. He’ll be back, but when he returns he’ll be a man - not my little boy who needed me.

Eight years. Eight years of holding everything together, being the pillar of strength for this little family. Eight years of being the Father, the Mother, the maid, the laundry girl and every other thing, teacher, counselor, chauffer and mechanic. I can’t say never, but rarely did I let the teardrops fall - and my boys didn’t see them on my face.

The problem, as I see it, with raising children, is that if you do it right there is no need for them to come back to the nest and ask for your help. Four sons I’ve raised from childhood to fathers themselves. The oldest have their lives, their children and their wives. They are making it in the world and sometimes come by to visit. But none really need me to hold their hand as they go on in the world. Yes I’ll pat myself on the back, there is no one else in this empty house to do it for me.

So I’ll pack up the house. The children’s home for their entire lives, mine after the divorce, but theirs since their inception. I’ll pack up their lives and move some of it into storage, send some to good will, haul much of it to the dump, and pack me up to another life somewhere down the road.

I know that life is more than the stuff we gather to ourselves. That beyond this life are riches beyond measure. But being a Dad, and living just to be a Dad for all those years…

I sit in his room, surrounded by the scattered remnants of memories lived and discarded as a boy traveled the road to manhood.

And I cry.

humorous wanderings

V - I bet you think I'm an animal.
Me - duh! The choices were animal, mineral and vegetable.
V - Never know - it could be vegetable - rarararararararararararara
Me - Animal, just like me
V - rararararararararararararara
Me - I like veggies
V - Guess what?
Me - never met him but heard that Who kisses pretty good
V - rararararararararararara
Me - ahhh ahhh ahhh need water!
V - what happened?
Me - (after gulping water) found something in my mouth and crushed it but it was a Jalapeno seed
V - (laughed)
Me - (laughed too)
V - Why do we do the things we do?
Me - because of what we learned when we grew up
V - but the social mores of society teach us
Me - yes but how does a society devoid of morals teach us to be good people?
V - very carefully
Me - (rubbing eye) I think I got something in my eye
V - maybe you should have washed the Jalapeno juice off your hand before you rubbed your eye
Me - is that why it's burning now?
V - (laughing harder) rarararararararara
Me - do you suppose we should let the puppies out?
V - probably a good idea
Me - yeppers
V - I studied Abraham Laslo in college {or someone close to that}
Me - really? wow
V - rarararararararara



(Side Notes - this was commentary interspersed with driving home and laughing at each other after we got home - too funny not to share and I'm sure I lost half of it in laughing so hard I can't remember it)

Another week, wow that was fast!

Vernie was in Utah for 10 days - felt like a lot longer. He drove all night getting back here and came straight to the office to say good morning before heading home to get some rest. It was so sweet and so wonderful to know that he missed me as much as I missed him.

The kids were happy to have him home too - Gabe sent me a text message saying "Vernie's home!" when he left for school. And the girls were just happy to have him home - so happy that they ran and gave him hugs in front of their father. It was a little weird for Vernie and more so for Ferron but it was good for the girls.

I popped my knee out again this weekend - had a few hours of not being able to walk but it's doing better now. Just have to be very careful how I step on that foot though it does bear weight again which is a good thing! I managed to totally freak out Vernie and the children though. Especially since this was coming off a week where my neck was out of whack and that one still isn't totally resolved.

The girls started orchestra at school last week and are both happy to be playing the instruments they wanted - upright bass for Jessica and cello for Lizzie. I spoke to the instructor about the bass briefly and ordered the correct size instrument for Jessica. (We already had the right size for Lizzie.) They are looking forward to the concert in December though Lizzie has a bit of stage fright when she thinks about it too hard.

Vernie has managed to almost catch up on the rest he didn't get while he was packing his house up and is looking forward to unpacking and starting to settle in at our home. And we're looking forward to that as well. Turns out I'm fairly allergic to his dogs and have been sneezing up a storm since he got back with boxes filled with items covered in their fur and/or dander. Good thing he found other homes for them or I'd be in even bigger trouble!

Gabe has been having an interesting first month of school. Algebra was kicking his butt but now that he's figured out that doing the homework actually helps in class, he's doing better. He also caught a head cold - not surprising since he always does but hard on my baby nonetheless. And he is enjoying being back in band with Mr. Marcus, who is his favorite teacher two years in a row now. I need to get him a new hearing aid ...

Working out the details for the reception/welcome to the family parties that are coming up in October - will pass that along as soon as we finalize it (hopefully tonight or tomorrow).

Visitation and Mediation

So I met last night with the little kid's father and both our attorneys. The idea was to come up with a compromise to the visitation issues so that he could get what he wanted and I could still feel like the kids were being protected and kept safe.

It was only a couple of hours but it felt like longer. In the end, I think we'll all be happy - at least for now.

We added every other Saturday for 6-8 hours to Ferron's visitation schedule. He agreed that we could take the kids to Salt Lake for conference every conference without him interfering. He will work with the kids and their counselor (assuming the counselor is okay with this) to help him learn how to interact with the kids without scaring them.

Eventually, more visitation will return. He's still unlikely to get overnight visits back as he has nowhere to take them. But maybe he will learn to be a dad and that's what is really important.

Everyone walked away feeling like they had won. That's the best part.

Chelsea's Law

Designed to keep predators from harming young children repeatedly and to keep violent offenders from harming any child repeatedly, the law has flaws. Okay, so all laws have flaws and most people are going to disagree with me about this. But listen before you decide.

Chelsea King died a senseless death after being raped by a paroled sex offender, who had more than one parole violation. This was not good by any stretch of anyone’s imagination. Or at least any healthy person’s imagination. The law was written to prevent such atrocities from happening again.

And the law passed, essentially in the same language as it was originally written. Minor changes were made, as expected, on its way through the legislative bodies in the State of California. Then the governor signed it into law, in San Diego County where Chelsea lived and died, on September 9, 2010. Because the crimes are violent in nature and seen as an imminent threat to society, the law is effective immediately. There is no time to file a judicial appeal or go through the standard process of “what ifs” that most laws go through with their six or nine month wait until they are effective.

This is both good and bad.

The people sitting in the jails today, waiting for their trials and their sentences to be handed down, will face the new rules and the new penalties. They and their victims will cope with different sentences than anyone else before them has had to cope with. Where the victims and the criminal are not related, this is one of the best things that has ever come along. But what happens when they are related?

What if it’s your child and your spouse involved? Under the old laws, you might have considered reporting the crime because it would be a few years apart, some counseling, time for the children to grow up and move out on their own. But now, would you report a crime that will cause your spouse to spend the rest of his life in prison with no possibility of parole?

This law will be a deterrent – my question is whether it will be a deterrent for the criminals or the victims who will not want to put their parent or sibling or grandparent or other relative in prison for life. There is no paragraph written into AB1844 that allows for flexibility where family members are both victim and criminal. Since the bulk of child molestation and rape cases are committed by family members, how does this help the victims? I see how it helps society. I don’t see how it helps the victims.

They now face an impossible choice. Continue to be abused or put their family in prison for life.

Could you make that choice? Would you?

Welcome

I decided to create a place where the family could comment and talk about things we are interested in. Here it is!

We are a newly created family having just been married on August 21st. Its been good for all of us as we explore what it means and how it works to be in a relationship where love is the first and most important part of each day.

My children are happy, at least most of the time. They love having an adult male who respects them in their home. They love laughing with him, tickling him, punching him and just hanging out with him.

For Vernie and I, it is nice to not be alone after so long of being alone. There is someone else to share the burden with - to care, to hold, to be there, to love. Its a good thing for all of us.




On Labor Day, the girls wanted to have a tea party. So they put it all together - lemonade and water in the tea pots, two kinds of sandwiches, peaches, apples, oranges, pluots, celery, cucumbers, red bell peppers, tomatoes, peas, carrots and chocolate! It was yummy and all got demolished fairly quickly.