“But after that day, my mother and grandmother didn’t make it easy for my dad to see me. I remember asking myself all these questions: Where is he? Why doesn’t he come pick me up? Doesn’t he know where we are?”
A powerful story from Jordan Monroe on NPR about Parental Alienation. Another example of how difficult it is for fathers to remain a part of their children’s lives in the face of mothers’ hostility and a family law system which too often acts as an angry mother’s enabler. His sad childhood remembrances also shed light on the way a child processes losing a mother or father after a divorce or separation.
From Standing In My Father’s Shoes (All Things Considered, 6/19/09):
My dad and mom separated when I was 3 years old. I can still remember the day my mom left him standing in the driveway of The French Quarter, a Creole restaurant he and my mother built and ran in Alameda, Calif. He was wearing a light-colored shirt and stood watching as I waved back at him through the car window. It was as if it were a normal goodbye.
But after that day, my mother and grandmother didn’t make it easy for my dad to see me. I remember asking myself all these questions: Where is he? Why doesn’t he come pick me up? Doesn’t he know where we are?
My grandmother made her opinions clear. She didn’t like my father. “Your daddy ain’t never done nothing for you,” she would say whenever I mentioned his name. Well, he didn’t give me anything for my birthday, I thought. Maybe she was right.
What I didn’t know then is that I would come to understand my father when I became a dad. My longtime girlfriend and I had a baby when we were young: I was 21 years old. A few years later, we separated. I went from kissing my daughter goodnight and being woken by her jumping on me in the morning, to dropping her off at her mom’s house and giving her goodnight kisses over the phone
My daughter’s mother seems to resent me the same way my grandmother resented my father. When I started noticing my daughter developing a bad attitude toward me, I heard my grandmother’s voice in my ear: “Your daddy ain’t never done nothing for you.”
Standing in my father’s shoes, I was able to see things more clearly. My grandmother’s opinion about my dad was just that — her opinion…I know [my father] was thinking about me all those years we were apart. I no longer see a man who did nothing for me my whole life, but a man who has always loved me.
Read the full piece here.