Being Dad
An Aspiring Poetic Memoir
by
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That evening, my wife and I took our usual walk with the children in a stroller. I was supposed to act as if I knew nothing, but my mind wouldn’t let it be. A heart attack was certainly imminent after we walked up the long hill pushing the kids and my thoughts in the stroller. The stress of the situation was more than I could bear. Back at home, we put the kids off to bed and my wife asked me to come upstairs with her. I didn’t want to have sex with her or even talk for that matter. She told me she loved me and wanted to be with me that evening. She rubbed my back and attempted unrepentantly to be with me, in my mind, in my heart, over my suffocating body. I couldn’t stand it and thought I would lose my mind keeping all this inside. Rebuffing her efforts over and over, finally I got up, turned on the light and put a chair by the bed. I proceeded to confront her about the previous evening. The Shoe drops slowly When the binds grow weak The visions of time in a history are lost Gripping the thoughts of binds now broken The shoe drops slowly from the pair I loved my wife, accepted her for her faults. Our home and children meant the world to me. It was so much more than I had ever dreamed possible. We were happy and had our families undivided attention. Each of us had recovered from our past failures, or at least I thought we had. We had so much to lose and I couldn’t believe she’d take this risk. I was so distraught with her actions and flagrant abuse of my trust, that I couldn’t initially find the words. In my heart, I wanted to forgive her. But an end to this game was upon us as I told her what I knew to be true. Unable myself to live and sleep with her, deception as my mate, I needed to understand her motivation. We were on a self-destructive course and I wanted our marriage to last. She would need professional help and we could be discreet. How could I continue on any longer, listening to more lies while tying to smile at her everyday? She is my wife and we could get past this thing if we were willing to try. But getting to the bottom isn’t always that easy.
And the time is sorrowful and bleak
The shoe drops from its place underfoot
To the bottom of realities root
A marriage crumbles at the cost
Of a shoe that drops down from the pair
As steps taken tumble in despair
Words mean little of emotions, than tokens
Time slows to hear the crack of that heel
As hearts break the scars that won’t heal
And the steps are lost on a narrowed stair
Balance crumbles forward in time
With the remains of weight and rhyme
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About the Book
One out of ten fathers are separated by divorce from their children as they struggle to recreate "the way it has to be." In a generation of divorced parents our new fathers have grown up questioning their own identities while they now experience divorces of their own. This memoir is the story of a child of divorce becoming a parent of divorce. Each chapter leads with an inspirational quote and poetry accentuates the emotions of the narrative text. Growing up in the 70’s with a Veteran, alcoholic father dealing with post traumatic stress disorder, I generated an abundance of emotions toward the man I called Dad. Struggling with my own identity as an adolescent, I hadn’t yet considered the lasting images I buried of my father. From my personal "Superman," to the man who betrayed our family with another woman, I was left confused and abandoned to become the father I had to contrive from shattered memories. As a young adult I married and became a father before I had processed the end of the marriage my Mother, Sister and I had survived. Too early in this young marriage we found life’s challenges to be devastating while the past haunted my days. Forced to sort through the wreckage and make amends with myself, I found faith and inspiration in uncommon places. Eventually, I remarried and had the life I dreamed possible with my second wife, two younger children, and her two children from a previous marriage. But it too ended with her excursion into adultery and betrayal. Settling the past hadn’t been enough to hold onto the present for this now father of three. Finding a road to healing and representing the man I wanted my children to witness required reconciliation with the past, divorce, and my co-parents. The struggles were overwhelming, but I continue to aspire to be "better" than the past. Starting over and over I’ve created an inspirational story of recovery from the depths of divorce despair with the sole desire of just Being Dad.
About the Author
As the child of an alcoholic, abusive, Vietnam Veteran, the author survives the life and divorce of his parents to encounter divorce in his own life. With the purpose of redefining his role for his children and the "way it has to be," he tells a tragic yet inspiring encounter with the culture of divorce in America. An aspiring writer, poet, and leader for the God given rights of fathers, the author hopes to encourage and inspire all parents to find the forgiveness, acceptance, and courage to settle the past with their own fathers, co-parents, and within themselves. Only then, he writes, they may know their purpose as a parent and find their way back to faith in the "master plan."