Update on the "Summer Blow Out" With Dad

Last week was my daughter's birthday and lo and behold we received a gift from my parents for her. They have made no attempt to contact Steve nor me but they somehow found it appropriate to send my dtr. a gift. As much as we would love a reconciliation, this was not going to work. Now, I know this sounds like a sweet attempt on their part.....but we sent it back with a letter written by my husband. Before you go and think that was such a horrible thing we did, read the following and I think you will understand. Let me add, that I am so proud of my husband....he is truly my hero.

Ted,

Yesterday we received your gift for Mollie. Thank you, it was very thoughtful.

However, at this time we cannot accept it. At the beach house you expressed numerous times that you did not want to continue a relationship with my wife. Since then there has been no contact, I am assuming that this still holds true.

As Thea’s husband and Mollie’s father a resolution needs to take place before any relationship is resumed with any member of my family. Circumventing parental relationships in order to maintain a grandchild’s relationship is not acceptable.

In order for a reconciliation to take place, several things need to happen:

1) An apology for your behavior at the beach house to my wife and my daughter Mollie who witnessed your outburst.

2) An acknowledgement that your anger is, and has been, a destructive problem.

3) An agreement that an attempt will be made not to use your temper with or against any of my family in the future.

4) An agreement to respect my choices in how I lead my family in regards to parenting, education, number of children and religion. I am not asking you to agree or like my decisions, just respect them. If you have any concerns regarding any of these areas, I would prefer you go through me to discuss them as opposed to making comments to / through the children and family gossip. We will abide by this in regards to your life choices as well.

Sincerely,

Steve

In case I haven't already said this, I love that Steve sent the above letter. My Dad responded with this letter:

Steve,

Thanks for the letter that arrived yesterday. It helped explain why you sent Mollie's present back.

Frankly, I don't have much interest in getting into an endless exchange of recriminations over the subject of your letter, so I won't. Other than to deny what I'm being accused of.

Per your request, I won't make any efforts to contact you or your family except an occasional birthday card. It seems cruel to use the relationship between me and my grandchildren to accomplish your objectives, but hey, you're holding the cards.

On the chance that you haven't got it in for Leslie (my step-mother) as much as you have it in for me, I haven't told her what you have done. She's still nourishing the thought that Mollie got her present. She bought it, and wrapped it. All I did was sign the card and mail it. If you want to clarify your attitude toward Leslie, You will have to tell her yourself. I didn't have the heart to tell her what you had done.

Ted


Isn't it neat that he is now playing the victim? I guess I "had it in for him" when I was four and I "forced" him to shove food down my throat because I was not eating fast enough. How utterly insensitive I was. Let's not forget how cruel I was when I made him punch me. And now we "have it in" for him and Leslie. I guess we do "have it in for him" if we are protecting our children due to his past behavior with me. Please. He acts as if I started this whole thing. If you read my account of this horrid event on the post "The Last Goodbye", you will read how it all occurred. Amazing.

Then to top it off, my older brother called me out of the blue after not having contacted me for over 11 years. He's kind of a "floater". He had heard of the conflict between our family and my Dad. He then began to encourage me in what we had done and recounted all the physical abuse my Dad had wrought on him. I'm tell'n ya, I got off easy. His stories were heartbreaking. How I wish I could have been there to protect him as a little boy. He definitely got the brunt of it. I still can't believe my Dad refuses to acknowledge the abuse. There is no way he could have forgotten, but he is willing to re-write history and lose his grandchildren just to save face. It truly amazes me. Can someone really forget this stuff? I'm trying to wrap my head around this possibility. I know my brother and I are not making it up....my Mother was a witness to part of it. And the main reason why my Mother divorced my Dad was because of his horrendous temper and threats. It is obvious to me that my Dad is willing to lose a lot over this. I just don't get it....I really just don't get it.

All that being said, I still have no regrets....but I do have true grief over it all. How I wish my Dad could just get "real" about all that has happened. I would love him more for this..but he doesn't see this. Accountability for one's actions can be so painful....but in the end it has tremendous rewards.

To all of you who have true heroes for Daddy's, ....please count your blessings and carry on this legacy to the next generation. Your children, and the entire world will be blessed by this. And for those, who did not have heroes for Dads.....well, Jesus can fill that void....I know, He did for me and has blessed our current family and my marriage with a hero that my children will never forget.......my husband.

Stepping In It Again.....

This morning my family and I were invited to a church by our family babysitter and dear friend, Marli. She was going to do a dance performance, which I have to say, was expressive and emotional enough to bring me to tears. She is Psalms with feet...

Anyway it was a good service with a sermon that spoke volumes on loving when we don't feel like it and being committed to this way of thinking....as Jesus was. He broke bread, his last meal, with someone who would betray him to his death, he broke bread with someone who would deny his name three times and he washed their feet with unending love for them. That's love......when you do it when others don't deserve it and expecting nothing in return.

The service ended, and I was relieved as we did not put our sweet young things in the childcare and they proved to be a challenge during the service. We walked out to the lobby where people were chatting and a nice young man walked up to our family and introduced himself as Ryan. My husband and he started to converse and it inevitably came around to finding what each other did professionally. Ryan stated he was the owner of a software company and Steve asked what the name of it was. Ryan just stood there.......pause, pause....even a longer pause. It was obvious that he had heard Steve's question but seemed to not remember his own company's name. So finally, Ryan spits it out. Thinking this was weird, and kind of funny, I say "Geesh ! It took you THAT LONG to remember your own company's name?!" All of you that know me well, know that I am capable of just being straight forward but with an endearing smile on my face.....but nonetheless tactless. Ryan then looks at me and says "Oh, I have a s-s-stuttering problem and sometimes the easiest things refuse to come out."

Crap. Crap........and C-C-C-RAP!!!!!!

Steve, at this point, is giving me a look of utter disgust mixed with a look of absolute mortification. And for some reason when he is disgusted or horrified with me, it just makes me want to laugh....like a pee my pants kind of laugh. I'm in a bad spot now with little self control in a church that just preached on love and grace. Both of which was not present in the mounting giggle about to catapult out of me. So to prevent Steve from actually considering the thought of divorce I say something lame like "Man, Ryan....um, I'm s-s-s-s-orry!" I stuttered because I was embarrassed and trying not to break out in a social suicide like laughter and certainly not in the attempt to make the situation worse. Socially, there was no hope for me with Ryan so I quickly excused myself to go talk to Marli purely for damage control reasons. A look of pure relief came over Steve's face.

When we reconvened to finally leave, Steve says, " A stuttering problem?? Holy cow Thea, could you be any more tacky???" Let me stop right here and give you some insight with Steve and I. First of all, he is still in his learning curve, after 14 yrs. of marriage, regarding what he really got himself into when he married me. Also, the two most frequent questions he asks me in all sincerity are:

1) Are you normal?
2) You didn't really just (do / say) that did you??!!

But I know deep down inside that he loves this about me. I am the social canary in the coal mine to him....because I say / do what he would love to and I live to tell about it. I think he is dumbfounded that we still have any friends at all.

Well, how does anyone end a story like this? ....except just to say that we all lived happily ever after, I survived to tell about it and we will never go to that church again.

Cutting Bangs.......in the Wind

It's 1:30am and I can't sleep because I took a 3 hr. nap this afternoon....and my pregnant body loved it. My lame excuse for a dog is sleeping next to me on the couch snoring like a large fat man with apnea. Every once in awhile, he'll start to "sleep yelp" and I can only imagine that he's finally grown the cajones in his slumber to chase after the bully dog next door.

As I sit here, I can feel my baby jump inside me. I can't wait to meet this little one....to hold him/her. We've decided to name this sweet addition Jesse if it's a boy and Jesi if it's a girl. I have no feeling whatsoever what gender this child is. I am always wrong and always surprised. I love not knowing. It always amazes me to hear other people comment on how they know what this child is going to be by the way I am carrying it, or the way my skin looks...or even how moody I am. What I do know, is that this child will be a gift that I don't deserve but am willing to accept any day.

I had someone comment on my blog address of "never cut bangs in the wind". You know there's a story behind this right? Of course, I'm full of them. Annie, my third oldest, was about five years old. Her bangs were out of control and I took the shortcut.....not pun intended. At eight months pregnant, I didn't feel like hauling her upstairs, pulling out the sheet and taking the time to meticulously trim her sweet bangs. Instead, I took her outside onto our back porch with scissors in hand. That way, any hair that dropped, I could just sweep off into oblivion. The minor detail that affected this location was the fact that the wind was probably blowing at about 10-15 mph. Hey man, they're just bangs!! So I put my hand on the top of her head to keep her and her bangs still......snip, snip, snip. There. That ought to about do it. I lift my hand off her head........crap. I try to go back and correct the unattractive and unintended slope (ok, several slopes) to her bangs. Lifting my hand again, I realize what I have created is irreversible and worthy of being reported to the CPS. Poor little Annie is searching for some reassurance in my eyes or expression that tells her she still looks beautiful. She comes up empty. I tell her to "wait right there" as I run to go get Steve. I knew I was going to catch some flack for this one and just wanted to get it over with. "Hey Steve?........um, you might want to come look at Annie. I think I really messed up." He comes down stairs and out to the porch. His lack of words and emotionless stare are what started me giggling...because, well, there was just nothing else I could do. He starts to say something to me in regards to how irresponsible I am but I am lost, gone and swept away by a laughter that has hijacked me. I am now laughing so hard, I can't see through my tears and am struggling to breath. In order to get the breath I need with my swollen belly, I literally have to go down on all fours. By this time, Annie is horrified. She starts to cry and I have no way to comfort her because.....well, let's just say it, I'm a DORK. I pull myself together enough to try to reassure her that she looks fine and that hair does grow. She's not buying any of it and neither is Steve. He takes her by the hand and leads her off curtly saying that he's taking her to SuperCuts to get it fixed. Right. Good Luck. She didn't even have enough bangs left to fix. When they come back, she looked like a mini version of the Dumb and Dumber character played by Jim Carrey AND she was not happy. All I could say to Annie was "Well sweetheart, now you can see!" My approval rating as a Mom hit an all time low with Annie. But, like I said, hair grows back and so, eventually, did her love for me. And hence, my journal entry that night was: Note to self: Never cut bangs in the wind.