Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Making Lemonade

Pop quiz hotshots -

You are the parent of two children both under the age of 5. Your spouse one day tells you that he/she wants a divorce. They want you to leave the house so the mandatory period of separation can begin.

Now tell me, what do you do?

I kept the question simple and basic for a reason. Forget what the spouse has, is or will do. Just answer the question for what it is.

I can say with little hesitation that I know more about divorce law and specifically Maryland divorce law then most people should or would ever want to. One thing I will address in a latter post is how our country's government is contributing to the decay of our social values making divorce too easy in a lot of states. Luckily, Maryland still makes the process a little more difficult. Not that people don't have a right to divorce, it's just that divorce should be harder then getting a fishing license.

But again I digress....

The cardinal rule in separations/divorces is that you NEVER leave the home. Go ahead and google 'separation and leaving the home', I'll wait......

Ok so now we understand this rule. Never leave your home.

As for what's best for your children, you need to decide that for yourself. I will give you this bit of advice, your first instinct may not be what you really want.

When my wife dropped all of this on me my first instinct was to get the hell out of there. Leave the house, start again. It's what I do, fly when I should fight. And that's exactly what my wife counted on. But then something strange happened.

In a discussion for another time I'll talk about God and what he/she means to me. For now I will say that something happened in the following week that made me utter the following statement. I said 'God, this is way too much for me, I can't deal with it and I will fail in whatever decision I make because I won't be committed to it fully. I will always feel that I should have gone the other way. So God, I'm giving this to you. You need to take care of this. Just give me a sign. Show me what I should do."

And God's response was the following.

A couple of days later Nikki had school and it was our day for either my wife or I to be the teachers helper. The wife decides she wants to do this so while she's at the school, Jessie and I go and do our thing. We return to the school to pick Nikki up as my wife has to rush back to work and can't drop Nikki home on the way. Jessie sees her mother in the parking lot and goes to give her a hug. Afterwards my wife drives away and Jessie pulls me down to eye level with her. She had such a serious look on her face and says, "Mommy goes to work and you take care of us." This was my sign

I am the caretaker of my children. Period. My wife has never (except for one time that I had to go out of town) sat in our home with our children for more then a few hours and even in those instances, she will call me several times asking when I'll be home. This is a fact that I can back up. She has shown no sign that she is capable of taking care of our children while she has shown on several occasions she will harm them. Not to say that she will do this intentionally but she just doesn't understand the consequences of her actions.

So going back to original question, what would you do? And then ask yourself how anyone could blame you for staying with your children.


Ok, so I want to set up the topics for the next couple posts just to keep my thoughts in order. I want to talk about my father, it's really important that I do this. I also want to talk about my wife's friends and family who will blindly offer support while she continues endanger her own health and the well being of her children. What they don't know and what communications I've had with the people closest to her.

And in other news.
We have ticks everywhere. I've found two on myself and one on Nikki today. Nikki asked me why ticks are bad. I told her that some ticks carry a disease called Lyme disease. She then asked me if the disease made you want to eat limes. She's so cute.

And yep, Clem is still running around. I'm surprised he's hung on this long. I'm not yet optimistic about his chances but each day he surprise me

Keep smiling

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess I will be the first to answer your question, however I have to say before I do that I am bias, as I am the primary care giver for my 3 kids. I will try to put this as short and sweet as I can - for this is not my blog and I could go on and on, especially when it comes to this subject... so here goes

There is NO way in hell that I would ever leave my kids! I am fortunate that my husband is a kind, loving, understanding man and on top of all of that he is a wonderful husband and a great father. So the decision behind me not leaving would not be because I don't think he could (or would for that matter) take great care of them - however they are MY KIDS... You are a dad and I will tell you that I carried them inside of me true and most women would use this as their number one reason that they are the better parent, however I don't think that is true, I think it is what you do after they come home that matters most (there are some cases where carrying a child means nothing to a mother, believe me I have met them as I am sure you have too) however by agreeing to be their primary care provider I agreed not only to "stay home" with them, but to nurture them, to raise them, to kiss booboo's, to stay up all night with them when they were sick or scared. I agreed to make sure NO harm would come to them by anyone including myself until they were old enough to do this for themselves. I agreed to hold their hands, teach them, guide them, discipline them and in doing so they now look to me for guidance, trust, understanding and along with all of this lets not forget the "unconditional love"! For all those people that would tell you what they “gave up” to be with their kids I say – screw you! There is nothing in this world that I would not “give up” if you will, to trade for the comfort of knowing that I am making my kids happy! This is where I could go on to recite all the stuff that I am giving them, however in my opinion that is about as important as who carries them in the womb... NOT AT ALL.... Kids need very little in life, shelter, food, clothes and LOVE all the rest is icing on the cake. How could I possibly leave them? How could I entrust the most important job that I will ever have in my life to someone else?

In the beginning I said I was biased and I am however now that you know what my kids mean to me I can say with great certainty that I also would NEVER ask my husband to leave his children either! I am against divorce, strongly when there are children involved! If the decision I had to make was between being unhappy because I am too lazy to do what it takes to be happy, or get a divorce and make my kids suffer - well that would be an easy one for me... I would silently suffer, get off my butt and find the things in my life that make me happy (i.e. my kids) and raise my children to know that sometimes in life we don't always get what we want, but we should do what ever we can to make the best of what we have!

Doesn't that sound like a much better lesson than - Go through life hurting people, don't worry about values or morals, just make sure you get what it is you want. Once you have it if you then find that you don't want it anymore then repeat the process until you are left all alone in life with nothing or no one that can possibly make you happy - because you have made the decision to be unhappy NO MATTER what! No one can make you “unhappy”! You control you and you either let yourself be happy or you let yourself be unhappy and the only person that is to blame for your “happiness” is yourself!

Sorry for the long response - like I said this is a subject I could go on and on.... (I guess you can say you hit a nerve) - I love reading, thanks for sharing!

- Bubble wrap girl !

MDStayathomefather said...

Bubble Wrap Girl -

Thank you. (and know that "thank you" nowhere near covers how I feel about your comment)

You mentioned the whole 'just because a woman carries the child" argument which is extremely important for people to remember. I am extremely proud of my wife for what she had to go through with Nikki. I had to give her shots everyday during the IVF, and she wasn't as young as most mothers. But it doesn't mean that the children are just hers or that she's a better parent.

I read this joke where a mother and father are getting divorced and they're fighting over custody . The mother says "Well I gave birth to him so he should stay with me." And the father says "Well, if I put a dollar in a soda machine and a soda comes out, does the soda belong to me or the machine?"

Anyway, thank you. Really.

W