I spoke with my kids for a short time yesterday. They seem to be having fun with their mom, although most of it is spent on video games and movies. They are not doing much else.
I miss the Hell out of my children. When I hear their voices over the phone, my stomach drops a little bit. It is hard talking to them without hearing a whole lot of sadness in their voices. That's a little crappy and selfish, but I guess I wish they missed me a little more.
Not a reasonable request.
When they are here with me, they are also in school. I take care of them from September to June. And then they spend the summers with their mom. So with me they have homework, book reports, chores, school, and studying. With their mom they have summer, swimming, family visits, video games, and dvd's. Add all that to almost no rules or boundaries and you get a two month party with their crazy aunt mom. And how on Earth can I expect a 12 year old boy with a pathalogical video game addiction and a 9 year old girl with a blind devotion to her mother to miss their overbearing, hard-ass father?
So I call them every day or every other day to hear their voices and I look at the photographs I have of them on my cube wall at work and miss all of the summer-type things that I won't be able to do. Playing catch with my son, throwing my daughter into a swimming pool, bar-b-cues and campfires.
I do not express this well. I shut my mouth about it and never speak on the subject and when the people closest to me ask about it, I just tell them I am fine. Then I get ticked off that they don't walk on eggshells around me or notice that it upsets me. All this seems to accomplish is to project the image that I don't care about my children.
My goofy son just turned 12. He is too large and gangly for his age and he is having trouble getting used to being physically awkward. I had to go through the same thing. And when I look at him or think about him what I see is a 4 year old reduced to tears by the guy in the insulting tomato throwing booth, and running to his dad to be hugged. Then turning and telling me to, "Go GET him!" Those days are gone. That is something that will never happen again, and I'm lucky to even get small flashes of it.
My over emotional little girl will turn 10 in about 6 weeks. She will always be free with giving me hugs and kisses, but the days of her crawling into bed with me in the middle of the night because she had a bad dream... are gone. And over the next year she will pull away from me more and more and look toward female role models instead of her dad. I know that this is normal, natural... it just makes me a little bitter.
So, to read this over, I am a half angry, sad, bitter father with a propensity for poor communication about the two people who I need the most.
And I miss my kids.
I agree with Steve on this. And, since I know you personally, and don't really like you, I am totally AMAZED at what a good father you are! and, by the way, if you're not doing anything tomorrow night, Thayer, Jill, Mary and I are lifting at few at Uno's around 6:30.