The Good Son
During the time when I was trying to rescue my marriage there was an incident with my oldest son that stands out. It had been cold and snowy, and now the snow was starting to melt. The boys were crawling up the walls to go outside. They went outside, and decided to play football on the slick slushy front yard. Not a genius move, but typical of boys. They played for an hour or more, and then there was the cry of pain. My oldest had tackled my younger boy onto the stairs, and he hurt his elbow. It was bad enough that we needed to get x-rays.
She berated my older son for hurting his brother. Made him feel tiny, tiny, tiny. I almost took him with me to the hospital. I had a friend come by and check on things instead. She called him a psychopath, and then went on to scream at me. She yelled “I am still leaving your ass, nothing has changed, and you can take that little psychopath with you. I don’t want him.” Understand that this was all done with in ear shot of all the children. This is my son who really struggles with being in foster care, and the separation from his biological mother. He has attachment issues, and it was just announced to the whole family that his current mommy doesn’t want him. I regret not taking him with me. I was shocked and shaken, and worried for my other son. My hind site tells me I screwed up. Nothing happened, but he needed my encouragement as a father.
His brother bruised his elbow. They thought it might be a sprain, and had it splinted for a week, but since there was no pain after a week they decided it was just a bruise. He was fine. There was no reason for his brother to be made to feel like something less than as important as his brother.
Now fast forward to present day. She has moved out. I am still in the marital home 45 minutes away until the end of the week. I get a call from her. He is screaming at her. I am pretty sure he is telling her that he wants to live with me, but I can’t hear it all. She screams “Good, when your dad moves, you can go live with him, and I won’t ever have to see you again.” I don’t want to split my kids up, but I may have to for a while. If things keep going this way, I am going to have to drop the idea of shared custody, and get the lawyers involved and go after full custody of all the kids, and limit the visitation to a standard schedule. I can’t have her throwing away kids. Once she throws him away the other two adopted kids are going to see themselves as disposable as well. This is a sad day for me. I was hoping that we can make things work so our kids had two parents working together, even though one is selfishly destroying the family. I know it was a stretch, but I was hoping.
Ten-Foured,
JeD
