Doghouse

Adam

Adam walks his sister to the snack shack at China Camp Beach to get shrimp cocktails.







It's far to easy to overlook Adam in all of this. He's the most communicative, open and gracious of all four kids who are much the same. He has a heart a mile wide, a mile deep and is 6 feet tall at 13. He is respectful but also has a healthy sense of himself.

Very low maintenance. And in such a situation we all worry about the 8 year old girl and for good reason. It is unhealthy for her to be witheld from her natural father because this si the formative time when young girls get their depiction of men. If father is aloof or unavailable it does not bode well. And if mother has the power to deprive a young girl from seeing a loving father than damage is done as well.

But see? It's so easy to gloss over what Adam is feeling.

We talk on the phone pretty much daily and IM back and forth. He thinks, as I do, that this whole mess that L has conconcted is simply "dumb". He misses me and I miss him.

We play Starcraft together when he is here, and I bought him the game for his new computer that LIBF bought him. He is very good at the game and I don't think I have yet yelled at him the way I use to when Sean, Thomas and I use to play. We are not talking bad yelling...in fact I was talking to Thomas recently and we were laughing about that. We use to go to Prima early Saturday mornings and play for a couple hours. I'm very competitive and I suppose I have mellowed now. I think I stopped ragging on them when Thomas started kicking my ass in Tribes.

I'm really good, but he can still kick my ass.

Adam is a "hugger" which is unusual for a 13-year-old...but as I said he has a very open heart and feels secure in himself. So he saunters out in the morning and comes over and gives me a big long hug. It's a nice moment. Lately we had been playing basketball together down at a schoolyard.

I was thinking last night and wondering why I continue to not be worried or distressed. I mean it has been at least 5 weeks now and I have not seen my daughter or son and there is no end in sight. I feel very calm although I miss them. I suppose it is because I know with an unshaleable conviction that I am right in this. That is unusual...very unusual. I am often my own worst critic...but in this I see the greater good of two children having equal access to both parents and the detriment of one parent lording it over the other.

See I would never do that. I would not make it a matter of ego and power to deprice my children of time with their mother. No possible way that happens unless she starts beating them or they get locked out of the house on a regular basis.

Well she does not beat them, and they do not get locked out regularly and I am a patient man (or have become one). I know they are safe and my only concern (besides the lack of father-nurture) is that they are being farmed out and neglected for pride's sake. My daughter spent Saturday sitting at her mother's work in San Francisco when she could have been walking around the Zoo with myself and Reese not too far away.

L will say.."but you could have come and got her for an hour or so". Do you see how utterly screwed up that is? What message does it send a child when she is "allowed" and hour here or there?

Part Two coming up next... 

posted by Obi-Mac BakDon @ 6:33 AM