Hey Son,
This is the longest letter ever! (Which cracks me up a little as I write this as for the last year or so you ask me about things the are big or long or old in that way..."Wow Dad! Do you think that is the biggest tree EVER?!?!?!?")
Yes son, I am trying to write you the longest letter EVER through the miracle of blogging. If I am successful, this one will last for years.
Blogging in general is a horrific waste of time, but I have wanted to do this for you for a while for a number of reasons.
==========Note: Don't read beyond this point until you are older or I am gone ==========
Primarily because I am old. You see I was born in 1971 and you were born in 2009.
(Yes, it took me 38 years to find someone who could deal with my weirdness and thought I wasn't a throwback or backup plan. Stay on topic. We will cover that in a dating post.)
The point is I'm 44 now. My expiration date could be a year from now, it could be 40 years from now, or it could be tomorrow.
I have had a couple health scares in the last year that have my thoughts in kind of a morbid place. Not a suicidal place. A nervous place.
I had gotten up to about 250 lbs and I wasn't sleeping well. I snored and felt like I was smothering under fat. I would run across the parking lot at work and my knees would hurt. I had never had knee pain in my life. I had a few nights where I lay in bed totally exhausted and I felt like my life was just draining away. I felt like I was on a pathway to death.
I just couldn't do that to you. So I got on pay diet and lost about 50 lbs. As the pounds fell off, my sleep improved and I felt better.
I feel pretty good today, but you can't take life for granted. I just read you "Clan Apis" (one of my all-time favorites --- I bawled at the end reading it to you) and there is a line in it where the queen tells a worker, "The only thing guaranteed in life is death".
I am going to do my best to hold it off as long as I can for you to help you get solidly entrenched.
But when it happens, I have a feeling it will not be something I can stop.
My will is in my room by my computer on my desk. I leave just about everything to you. That may change should we acquire siblings for you, but I think between your mother and I, financially you'll be OK, but I need to make sure you'll be OK emotionally.
I want you to have this permanent record of my feelings for you, my thoughts about your potential, my advice for you in life, in case death shows up for a matinee and I am not around to tell you these things in person.
Or other things could happen. I work in a job where I sit all day. I could have a stroke and be left in a coma with giant holes in my brain. Or maybe it would destroy parts of my brain and your Dad could be a totally different person. I could turn into a total Dick.
If that is the case I want you to have a record of my feelings and thoughts about you from a time when I was only partially a dick. :)
And there's more.
There is the cold, bitter, sucky fact that you are alone in this world without siblings.
This haunts me.
I am sorry about this situation.
It means you will have to grow up strong and tough. Where others can be reeds, you need to be a proverbial mighty Oak. You have to be able to stand alone.
If it seems I push you sometimes harder than most and hug you far too often, this is why. One day I won't be around to hug you. I hope you'll remember what it feels like.
When I am not around to help you or teach you how to do things or listen to your fears or give you advise, I hope you'll find some comfort here in this blog. As you read this, know that even if I am not here, I am here for you.
One day you'll have to make your own way in the world when things are tough without siblings to huddle with. I want to do my best to prepare you for that day.
I can't tell you how much that saddens me that I could die and potentially leave you with that burden. I'd love to find more siblings for you. I hope it happens, but I am pretty much garbage at romance.
I had always wanted to have 3-4 kids, but it took me forever to find even one person who was partially willing to even concede the idea of potentially having kids with me --- Your Mom.
Your Mom never intended to have kids. She didn't think she would be a good mom and claimed not to have a feel for it. Never has one woman been so wrong.
The story of your conception is goofy. I was convinced I was unlikely to ever have kids. I used to joke with your Mom that I had old hobbled sperm on crutches from years of neglect and that she should let me try anyway as nothing was likely to come of it. She laughed and said no every time. I laughed and told her "I will convince you".
One night I had bought your mom some mint chocolate ice cream on my way home from work. She was really touched by that (she really liked that flavor) and decided to let me have my never-going-to-happen shot to have a kid.
Some children arrive because a condom breaks and there is nothing wrong with that. That is just nature telling you, it is time for this person to arrive.
But you were formed on a night were we both decided we loved each other intently and we made the active choice to give nature an option to give us a child.
That was it. One night.
I am apparently surprisingly fertile.
Your Mom freaked out when she found out she was pregnant. I calmed her down. She was worried I'd leave her alone with a kid. (She never really understood how I loved her or got how much I appreciated her having a kid with me when no one else would even consider it. I went through my adult life feeling like a background element or at time some hideous monster until your Mom made me important---finally the main character in my life. She never understood how much I appreciated her on a variety of levels.)
We got married very quickly so your mom would be insured. Kapa and Tutu flew down and they were the only two other people at the wedding. We were married in town at the city governmental offices.
Your mother and I are lousy at getting married. We were overcome with emotions (good ones) and cried the whole time we were saying our vows. I am sure no one understood a damn thing we were saying. It was one of the happiest days of my life and I am sure your Mom feels the same.
But your wedding day bliss doesn't last. Your Mom, I think, quickly realized she made a mistake in marrying me.
Early in our relationship she revealed to me that her type was physically similar to me but with white skin (either red or blond hair, I cannot recall.)
You can dye your hair, but you can't dye your skin.
I brushed it off, but I am not going to lie. That hurt me a lot.
Now I want to be clear, despite that comment's unseeming nature, your Mom is not racist.* I just wasn't who she wanted to be with physically or in terms of personality and that reality came through.
We had a lot of conversations with splintered moments that seemed to note my inadequacies vs. her ideal mate.
* And I want to be clear, everyone in your Mom's family, except one of her cousins, have been nothing but decent to you and I. Your Mom's aunts are especially nice. (That cousin is a mess though. She made me feel very ostracized when I met the family by conspicuously putting her hand over her chest whenever she was near Lindsey and I and only then. It was a very showy "Can't have that black guy looking at my white woman boobs" thing that was one of the worst things anyone has ever done to me. No one has ever done that to me before or since, so I am pretty sure I am not just some crazy boob oogler. It was just awkward for the hours I was meeting with her family. I never wanted to go to Arkansas in the first place as it doesn't read like a fun place to go for someone like me, but I thought I'd go in with an open mind. And with that lone exception, Arkansas folks proved immensely decent people. But I never wanted to go back to Arkansas after that.)
But getting back to your Mom, I think it boiled down to the fact your Mom liked me a ton, but maybe didn't love me on the right level to be happily married to someone.
She stayed with me for a few years. She was told me over that time when I pressed her for what was bothering her that she was haunted by constant second thoughts. That really bothered me, but I felt some relief from my guilt ---had I derailed her life? --- that at least she was comforted with the fact that I was a good provider and that she adored you.
It was kind of heavy. Some days she seemed on board with me; Some days not. I was torn by not knowing how to deal with that and wanting you to have siblings.
She made me a series of deals with me over that, "Do this and we can have another kid." I did each one and then she would make another request. In retrospect, I can see it for what it was --- She felt alienated from me and a part of her just didn't want another kid.
Marriages don't fail on one end. Her feeling distant from me was my fault. I didn't give her what she needed. At the end of the day I realize I probably was the biggest reason our marriage failed. And that is a sad, humbling thought for me.
The last time she made a kid deal with me was in return for agreeing to buy another house. As we drove away from viewing the house we were going to buy, she told me she didn't want to have another kid. About a week later she asked me for a divorce.
I tried to talk her out of it for a while with a ton of unseemly groveling. (For the record, that is never a good plan. You look pathetic. Your girl may take you back for a few days to stop the embarrassing groveling but she'll leave again. In a breakup, just man up and deal with it.).
When it became clear she was set on her course, I recovered some self-respect. I filed the papers and granted her a divorce.
I told your Mom we would split custody 50/50 so we could both be in your life equally and we never deviated on that, because doing so would cheat you.
The first year had a lot of rough spots, but over the years we have become better friends who rely on each other a lot. Today I love your Mom for being your Mom and a great Mom. I think she feels the same way about me. It's a different kind of love, but its a better, healthier love in that the focus is on what we appreciate about each other, not focusing on what we didn't satisfy in each other.
Well this is heavier than I intended, but I hope you know me a little better now.
I love you son,
Dad
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