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Nineteen years ago I stood in a courthouse in Belleville, Illinois, waiting for the judge to dissolve my marriage. My wife was not with me. At the time I had no idea where she was. I had filed for divorce a year earlier, then had spent much of the time trying to track her down to get her to sign the divorce papers. She signed them finally and that was that. Nine years later I dated her long distance for a bit, in a foolish thought that she might have matured. She hadn’t. I last saw her in 2003. I haven’t talked to her in maybe six years and haven’t communicated with her at all in about three.
So it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense that I am writing this to thank her.
She was not a good wife. At the time, I probably wouldn’t give myself too much credit as a husband. We married too young, and one of the things she said when she left was that she was too young to be a wife and a mother. I don’t know about her as a wife nowadays--as far as I know she’s not married (although she did marry and divorce after me). But next year she turns 40, and she is still nothing as a mother.
I divorced in July and then moved to Germany in October. Between then and 2004, it was just Robyn and me, not counting summers she would spend at Grandma’s or that horrible eight-month period when I had a three-week TDY to Las Vegas, a three-month deployment to Italy, and a new assignment to Nebraska. It was probably not the best thing for Robyn, and I have had everybody and their mother and MY mother tell me, “a girl needs a mother.” But if it wasn’t for Brandy being the suckass parent she was (and in this case, it looks like I ended up marrying somebody like my father, instead of my mother), then I wouldn’t have had the experiences I did with Robyn.
I had a best friend (and still have the same one), but for a long time there, right or wrong, Robyn was pretty much my best friend. I, for the most part, raised her alone, so a lot of what makes her her comes from me, so we were into a lot of the same things.
I’ve talked about that before...but the thing is that those trips, those concerts, those time exploring caves, those moments we shared getting irritated by the same people doing stupid things, those wouldn’t have happened, at least not the same way, if Brandy had been a better parent. It’s a shitty thing to say that, because I benefited because of it, while I can’t say the same thing for Robyn.
Maybe people are right. Maybe a kid needs her mother. Maybe, despite the awesomeness that is her, she would be a better person if she had her mother around. Then again, maybe I would be a better person if my father had been around. But the way I am a parent and the way I am with women are directly because I made a conscious decision not to be like my father. Who knows who I might be if he had been in my life as more than a better-forgotten disk of angry poems?
So thank you, Brandy. You’re a determined, purposeful person, who has apparently achieved what she wanted in life. But you’re absolute shit as a parent, and I thank you for it.
So it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense that I am writing this to thank her.
She was not a good wife. At the time, I probably wouldn’t give myself too much credit as a husband. We married too young, and one of the things she said when she left was that she was too young to be a wife and a mother. I don’t know about her as a wife nowadays--as far as I know she’s not married (although she did marry and divorce after me). But next year she turns 40, and she is still nothing as a mother.
I divorced in July and then moved to Germany in October. Between then and 2004, it was just Robyn and me, not counting summers she would spend at Grandma’s or that horrible eight-month period when I had a three-week TDY to Las Vegas, a three-month deployment to Italy, and a new assignment to Nebraska. It was probably not the best thing for Robyn, and I have had everybody and their mother and MY mother tell me, “a girl needs a mother.” But if it wasn’t for Brandy being the suckass parent she was (and in this case, it looks like I ended up marrying somebody like my father, instead of my mother), then I wouldn’t have had the experiences I did with Robyn.
I had a best friend (and still have the same one), but for a long time there, right or wrong, Robyn was pretty much my best friend. I, for the most part, raised her alone, so a lot of what makes her her comes from me, so we were into a lot of the same things.
I’ve talked about that before...but the thing is that those trips, those concerts, those time exploring caves, those moments we shared getting irritated by the same people doing stupid things, those wouldn’t have happened, at least not the same way, if Brandy had been a better parent. It’s a shitty thing to say that, because I benefited because of it, while I can’t say the same thing for Robyn.
Maybe people are right. Maybe a kid needs her mother. Maybe, despite the awesomeness that is her, she would be a better person if she had her mother around. Then again, maybe I would be a better person if my father had been around. But the way I am a parent and the way I am with women are directly because I made a conscious decision not to be like my father. Who knows who I might be if he had been in my life as more than a better-forgotten disk of angry poems?
So thank you, Brandy. You’re a determined, purposeful person, who has apparently achieved what she wanted in life. But you’re absolute shit as a parent, and I thank you for it.
