The other week a friend of mine shared a
video on Facebook. The video chronicles a couple that got divorced,
and then both parents remarried. This couple put their child first, and
the video is celebrating the new step parents.
I cried like a little baby during
pretty much the entire six minute video.
I haven't talked much about what
happened here in Laramie after I moved here. Briony moved in with me
pretty much right after I got here. She was not in a good place when
I got here, and though I made things better for her, she still was
not happy living here. Just over a year after I moved here, she moved
to Wales to live with her birth mum's parents. She has struggled
there as well, but our relationship is better than it ever has been.
We are planning vacations together and she's going to be coming to
visit this summer. I can honestly say she's one of my two best
friends. We share everything, and that's not something every mother
can say about their relationship with their daughter. I miss her like
crazy, but we are in communication a couple of times a week, and that
makes it manageable, at least.
That first year Cale came over for
dinner once a week. He and Briony continued to have a close
relationship, and it made my heart happy to come home from work and
find them hanging out together, in an unplanned visit. I think they
probably got along better than they would have if they lived
together, because they weren't constantly getting on each others
nerves.
The week after Briony moved to Wales,
Nid cut me off from Cale. I had made him mad by speaking my mind, not
rudely, I was just honest for the first time since he'd moved. People
asked my why I was so supportive of Nid after he left, and this is
why. I knew that if I upset him he'd cut me off. And he did. It was
his choice to let me continue to have a relationship with the
children when he moved. Legally, I had no rights. But he wanted me to
continue to be their mom, and assisted me by taking them to and from
the airport so that I could have them for school breaks in Virginia
before I moved here. Then I said one honest thing, and that was the
straw that broke my relationship with my son.
Aside from occasionally passing Cale at
the park with his friends, and the soccer games I was able to make it
to, I have not seen Cale in nearly two years. And my heart breaks
every day with the loss. Briony has been gone the same time, but at
least I can have a relationship with her. All because Nid and his
wife are too insecure to share our son with me.
Am I a perfect parent? Certainly not!
I'm hurt by what they have done to me. But the person that is hurt
the most is Cale. He is given whatever he wants, and left to come and
go. That sounds like a great childhood, but what he's missing out on
is real love. He is missing out on having a parent that cares enough
to make him to his schoolwork so that he can get scholarships to
college, instead of getting Ds and Fs. I have continued to buy him
presents and cards, I regularly write him notes, and I put money in a
savings account for him. I hope to one day give these to him, so that
he knows that regardless of what he has been told about me, if
anything, that he is never far from my thoughts.
I haven't wanted to air my "dirty laundry" in public before, but I didn't do anything wrong. Do I want to hang out with and socialize with Nid and Carissa? No. But I am a grown up and I could do it. For the sake of the children. It wouldn't even be that hard, since I have learned over the years, that we are all better off for the way things happened.
