The Results Are In…YOU ARE THE FATHER!

Being my son’s mom is the most important job that I have. Walking away for me wasn’t an option or even a possibility. I will never understand how some parents walk away and act as though they don’t have kids. They make the choice not to be part of this wonderful gift, that didn’t ask to come here.

Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward. Psalms 127:3

My womb became my son’s home for 9 months and 2 weeks. I was the source of his shelter, protection, nourishment, and love. I sacrificed everything for him and I would do it again and again. I’ve always referred to my son as “my son” because he’s always been with me. I’ve always been the one doing for him. “Our son” would imply shared support, shared sacrifices, and shared responsibilities.

I have forgiven my son’s father for not being in our son’s life. I even understand why his role in our son’s life was as small it was, but that doesn’t excuse his behavior. Although I understand it, I don’t accept it. Just because you know that your child is being taken care of doesn’t excuse you from your responsibility as their parent. No one makes a child alone and no one should have to take care of him or her alone. It was never about the money. For me, it was more important for him to have a relationship with his father than to be supported by him. Since he didn’t want to make the effort to see him, eventually, I filed for child support. He wasn’t going to dodge his responsibility completely.

Even after all that, I still never talked bad about my son’s father to my son. When my son was younger, he used ask about his father. I would tell him, “Sometimes people aren’t ready for the responsibility of being a parent.” Then I told him, “He loves you and eventually, he will come around.” I was right. We made several 4-hour trips to take him to see his father and his father’s family. Yes, that was a lot, but my mom and I were willing to put my son’s needs first. When my son first started visiting his father, his father wouldn’t come around. Regardless of his level of involvement or lack thereof, my son’s great grandmother always claimed him and accepted him as one of her grandbabies. She was instrumental in getting my son’s father to start coming around and actually being there when we brought my son to visit. I never understood why he went through all that trouble. I was never one of those crazy babymommas trying to use my kid to get to his father. I didn’t want him then and I don’t want him now. As my son’s mother, I had to put my feelings aside and go above and beyond to do what was best for my son.

One of the reasons that I never badmouthed my son’s father to my son was because I knew that as he got older, my son would learn and see things for himself. My son and I were having a conversation last week about his father’s family. I was asking if he would be interested in going to see them since he hasn’t seen any of them in almost 7 years. The last time he saw his grandmother, his aunts, his uncle, and his cousins were at his great grandmother’s funeral. The conversation then turned to his sister. He hasn’t seen her in 3 years, but when she came up for his graduation; those two were fighting as if they saw each other all the time.

The discussion then turned to his father. I was telling him that I was writing this blog and that it was about the relationship he had with his father. We started talking about the number of times that he’s actually seen him. I gave his father the benefit of the doubt and I said that he could count on two hands the number of times he’d seen him. My son wasn’t so generous. My son only counted three. I can positively say that there were at least three other times, but my son said that he was not going to count times that he was young and didn’t remember.

My son saw his father a week after his 1st birthday, a week after his 2nd birthday, and maybe one other time when he was little, that my son didn’t count. What he did count was when he came up for his 5th grade graduation. My son told me that he wanted his father to come to his graduation because he wanted to show the other kids that he did have a father. As his mom, I had to make it happen. His father showed up and he was over the moon. It’s funny because although he didn’t see him that often, the few times that he did see him, he acted as if they saw each other all the time.

Seven years ago, we went to my son’s great grandmother’s funeral. His father was introducing him to everybody, proud of him like he had something to do with who he was and how he turned out. He had him to sit up in the family section with him and the rest of his family. The last time he saw his father was almost 3 years ago when he came up for his high school graduation. I guess his gift was the fact that he came to his graduation because he didn’t give him anything, including his undivided attention because he sat and played games on his phone during our son’s entire graduation ceremony. I was so annoyed.

Contrary to what his father might believe or even admit to, he’s missed a lot and he continues to miss a lot. My son used to play soccer (from ages 4 through 18) and his father has never seen him play. He doesn’t know what he’s into, other than skateboarding. He doesn’t know who his friends are. He doesn’t know his likes. He doesn’t have any pictures of him or with him that I didn’t take or give to him.

I could fix a lot of things in my son’s life, but this one thing, it just wasn’t in my power to fix. I’ve had numerous conversations with his father about doing better by our son, because I know that their relationship bothered my son growing up. I was even optimistic, but he was never willing to put in the work. Although it bothered me when he was younger, the relationship between my son and his father is no longer my concern. My son is an adult and if he chooses to have a relationship with his father, that is totally up to him. I don’t have to be a part of it, because that relationship is no longer any of my business and not my responsibility. I do know that since my son knows how it feels to not have a dad in his life, that if and when he has kids that he will use his own experiences to make him the best dad he can be so that no kid of his will ever have to feel what he has felt growing up.

Lessons Learned:

1) I am partly responsible for the relationship that my son has or had with his father, because I picked him.
2) People do what they know. Sometimes you can’t just look at the parent in your situation. Sometimes you have to look a little deeper and look at the parent’s relationship with their own parent.
3) You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Translation: you can do everything in your power to make your child available to their other parent, but you CANNOT make the other parent be a parent.

Hey Kool Aid

Blood is thicker than water, or at least it is supposed to be, but sometimes I think that the liquid that connects me and some of my cousins is Kool Aid. There is some of my family that I’m really close with and others, not so much.

Who says you can’t pick your family? Contrary to what people say, I can pick my family. I pick who I claim. I pick with whom I associate. I pick with whom I spend time. I pick who I pour into. I pick how much I interact with them and how much and what I tolerate from them. I pick the people in my life that I turn to when I’m going through life’s highs and lows. They are the people that are there for me consistently without hesitation. They do it expecting nothing in return, knowing that if the shoe was on the other foot, that I would be right there to help in whatever capacity I can.

As a child, I was always taught to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. As an adult, I’m learning that sometimes, you have to distance yourself from some people and love them from a distance. There are several branches of my family tree that I have distanced myself from because interacting with them is unhealthy. My relationship with them has never been great and it seems to have diminished over the years. Even though they are family, being around them bothers me because I have to pretend to be happy to see them when I’m really not.

Several years ago, I had a conversation with one of them about our relationship. We vowed to work on things, but it was short lived. I was willing to change and treat them different however; their treatment of me stayed the same. I don’t know why they thought that was going to work, but I just opted to walk away and not worry about it.

I’ve been called the mean girl in the family and sometimes a pitbull in a skirt, because I can be mean sometime, I’m moody, and I’m always off doing my own thing. My close cousins know that I participate if and when I feel like it. I do stuff if and when I feel like it. They know me and love me. They get how I am and they accept that about me. They also know, that I am not a cousin or family of convenience. I’m all or nothing. Some of my family has NEVER supported my branch of the family in anything. For that reason, I don’t support them or attend their events. Others might continue to send them invitations, optimistic that they’ll change, but I’m done. I’ve moved on.

Some of my cousins get so worked up about certain people in our family and the things they say or do or don’t do, and I have become the voice of reason, me, the baby. I always tell them “It’s not worth it. They are not worth it. You care, but they don’t. If they cared, they would behave differently.”

I’ve grown up over the years. Things that at one time I felt I should care about, I don’t anymore. I don’t need people in my life that act as though they don’t want to be there. This relationship is not vital to my happiness. Because we are connected by blood, or Kool Aid, I will love always, but I will do it from a distance. I will be cordial, when I see them, but I won’t let their existence affect me in mine.

Lessons Learned:

1) Sometimes you have to let people go.
2) Family isn’t always about blood.
3) You can love people from a distance.

 

 

Left Behind – The Day I Became a Daddyless Daddy’s Girl!

Today would have been my dad’s 76th birthday. On the 28th of this month, he will have been gone for 11 years. I miss him. He died from lung cancer. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in February of 2003, by May of 2003, he was gone.

His journey through chemo and radiation was like everyone else’s. One positive is that I got to spend a lot of time with him. When I got home from work, we would talk for hours about what was going on in the news, the world of politics, etc. He showed such great strength during his battle. I remember one day he was in tears. My mom asked him what was wrong; he said that he didn’t want Mart (my son) to see him like that, not being able to do stuff for himself. My mom told him, “Mart doesn’t care, he’s just glad that you’re here.” Mart was only 8 at the time. During my dad’s battle with cancer, I really learned how special of a kid that I had, not that I didn’t already know. One day my mom and I needed to go to Walmart. We didn’t want to leave my dad home alone, and Mart said, “Mommy I want to go, but I’ll stay home with granddaddy.” My heart just melted. It was confirmation that we (me and the villagers) were doing a great job raising him.

Over the course of his illness, our house became the Harris hangout. There was food. There’s always food. We had people coming and going. There would be people scattered throughout the house, some in the kitchen, and some in my dad’s room laid across the bed or sitting in chairs. I remember we had a birthday cookout for my dad and because he couldn’t come outside, we opened the windows and everyone sang Happy Birthday from the yard.

The day he died, my mom was talking about how she was going to look into having someone come and stay with my dad during the day, since she and I, both worked. A couple of days prior, my mom had gotten my dad a wheel chair because it was getting harder and harder for him to move around. It took a lot of his strength.

That morning, he had gotten up and my mom helped bathe him and got him ready for his doctor’s appointment. He was in his wheel chair in the kitchen. My aunt was coming to take him to the doctor’s because my mom had to take my brother to catch the airport shuttle to go back to Seattle. I was home with my dad and Mart was still sleep. My mom and brother left, so that she could drop him off. I was in the living room and he wanted to sit with me and talk to me. Shortly after my mom left, my dad said, “She’s not going to make it back.” He grabbed my leg and went into cardiac arrest. I was terrified. I pulled myself together and called 9-1-1. The dispatcher asked if I could get my dad out of the wheel chair. I told them no, my dad was 6’5 and was probably a good 190-200 pounds. As soon as I hung up the phone, I called my uncle in VA. I told him that I had just called 9-1-1 and that it wasn’t looking good. I knew that it would take him at least 2 hours to get up the road.

Luckily, the fire department is just around the corner from our house. They were there within a matter of minutes. I know there were probably like 9-10 people that walked through the door. It took five of them to get him out of the wheel chair. I was praying that Mart didn’t wake up and come out into the living room to see all of these men working on his granddaddy. Thank God he didn’t. My aunt that was supposed to take my dad to the doctor came after they had taken my dad to the hospital. She told me to tell my mom that she would be back for her, but she had to run home. When my mom returned home from dropping my brother off, I met her at the door. I told her that I had to call 9-1-1 and that they had taken my dad to the hospital. My aunt came back and got my mom. I couldn’t leave because Mart was still sleep. I woke him up and got him ready for school.

I kept getting phone calls from my cousins telling me that I needed to get to the hospital. Before I could leave and go to the hospital, I had to call the airport and make sure that my brother didn’t get on his flight back to Seattle. Our next door neighbor and a family friend both went to meet the airport shuttle and were fighting over who was going to bring him to the hospital.

My whole family was at the hospital. There is something about my family and hospitals. When our loved ones are there, we have a way of taking them over. My mom’s siblings, my dad’s siblings, and my cousins were all at the hospital. Everyone was in tears. I remember being in the room and thinking to myself, I have never seen my uncles cry and to see them cry, I knew things were bad.

The doctor informed my mom that nothing else could be done. My dad’s organs had begun to shut down. When they unhooked him from the machine, he was gone within minutes. It had been raining all day. Me and the rest of my family had been crying all day and as soon as my dad passed, it stopped raining, the sun came out, and a rainbow appeared outside of his window. I believe it appeared as a symbol from God to let us know that he was okay, that he was home.

As if losing my dad wasn’t hard enough, I had to tell my son that his granddaddy was gone. When I picked him up from the babysitter’s house, I told him I had something to tell him. When I said that, he said, please don’t tell me granddaddy is dead. He just burst into tears. As you can imagine, that broke my heart and then I was in tears all over again.

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Psalm 30:5

Sometimes I struggle, being a daddy’s girl without a daddy. I think about my future relationship with a man that will never get to meet my dad. My future boo joint joint (lol) or husband will never know the man that my father was. He will never know where I get my moodiness. He will never see where I get my creativity. He will never be threatened by my dad to take care of me, his girl. I think about how any future kids that I have will never know how great their granddaddy was. It’s hard to be around his side of the family. Many times, I feel like I don’t belong. Although we are very close, I feel like my connection to them is gone and that I’m intruding on their family time. When my dad died, my uncle told me that I still had a dad, assuring me that if I needed anything that he would be there for me and he has been, but in all honesty, it’s not the same.

When I attend family functions, my cousins usually chalk my anti-socialness up to me being moody, and a part of it might be, but most of it is me missing my dad, wishing that he was there and being sad that he’s not. I see them there with both of their parents and their families and I feel like a friend of the family, like an invited guest. It has nothing to do with them, they just don’t understand. Having shared all of this, although I may have my moments, I know that my dad is always with me. I carry him in my heart and sometimes I can smell his cologne. I used to think I was going crazy until one day; I called Mart into the room and asked him if he smelled anything, he said, “Yeah, I smell granddaddy.”

May is always hard because it’s his birth month and also the month that he died. I shed some tears writing this blog and I’ll probably shed some more on his angelversary, but with everything else in my life, I’m in a good place. Although I would love for him to still be here, that would be selfish of me because he would be here suffering. I find comfort in knowing that he is at peace and that he is cancer free. I’m glad that I had him for as long as I did and that we had the chance to create all of the memories we could in the time that we had together.

 

Sending kisses to heaven.
Gone, but not forgotten!